George K. Hollister

Who was George K. Hollister?

George K. Hollister was an American pioneer cinematographer.

Born in New York City, New York, little is known of his background. In 1903 he married a seventeen-year-old girl named Alice from Worcester, Massachusetts, believed to be the daughter of French-Canadian immigrants. They had a daughter, Doris Ethel, born in 1906 and George Jr., born in 1908.

Around 1908 George Hollister was hired by the Kalem Company to train as a camera operator. Under film director Sidney Olcott, he was the camera man for the pioneering Kalem team that filmed in Florida during the winter and in 1910 would be part of the first ever crew to film on location outside of the United States. Traveling to Ireland with Olcott's crew that included leading lady and principal screenwriter, Gene Gauntier, and actor Robert Vignola, George Hollister shot The Lad From Old Ireland plus a number of film shorts in Blarney Castle, Glengarriff and at the Lakes of Killarney. A Kalem crew returned to Ireland in each of the next two years and in 1912, Hollister's wife joined them and acted in the first of her films.