James Sibley Watson Jr. (August 10, 1894 – March 31, 1982) was an American medical doctor, philanthropist, publisher, editor, photographer, and early experimenter in motion pictures.
Watson Jr., thus inherited both fortune and fame, and grew up in a wealthy family that cultivated appreciation for art and encouraged an active, generous engagement in the Rochester community.
[10] Despite his shy personality and natural reticence,[11] Watson was a man of many talents and interests, and pursued several successful careers during his life.
Their joint venture produced its first issue in January 1920 and featured works by friends of Thayer and Watson such as Cummings and Gaston Lachaise.
Together they produced a short avant-garde film, The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), which achieved widespread success and was hailed as the best contribution in motion pictures since The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).
Watson's close friend Alec Wilder also aided in the production Lot in Sodom by recruiting actors and acting as assistant director, and later wrote an original score for Fall of the House of Usher.
[22] Watson, apparently without Webber, later produced another industrial film called Highlights and Shadows (1938) in cooperation with the Kodak Research Laboratories.
[27] Watson also continued correspondence with many of the figures whom he met during his days at The Dial and during his film career, including Cummings, Kenneth Burke and Alec Wilder.
In the 1980s, Watson founded a private press, the Sigma Foundation, with Dale Davis to publish several authors who had appeared in The Dial.