David Horsley

It was then that he met a former employee of Biograph Studios, Charles Gorman, and along with his brother William Horsley (1870–1956), they formed the Centaur Film Company.

David and William Horsley, along with other film independents, succeeded in defeating the monopolistic hold on the industry of Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company.

Frustrated, and realizing that California afforded the opportunity to make films year round, David Horsley moved his operations to the West Coast.

By the spring of 1917, he had outfitted his new operations in Los Angeles at Main and Washington streets however a series of setbacks cost Horsley his entire fortune and left him in debt.

His son David Stanley Horsley (1906–1976) trained as a cinematographer and became an expert in special effects photography, working in the film industry for nearly thirty years.