[4] In addition to his position with Kodak and his presidency of the Sales Company, Jules Brulatour also launched the Animated Weekly newsreel series and co-founded Peerless Pictures.

[5] He was also an advisor and producer for the French-based Eclair Film Company, which opened in 1911 an extensive, state-of-the-art studio at Fort Lee, New Jersey, then the center of the burgeoning American movie industry.

Eclair was a leader in technical and artistic advancements afoot in filmmaking at the time, and its American branch was hailed as a mecca for top talent, which Brulatour helped cultivate.

[11] Despite its unfortunate outcome for Brulatour personally, the consolidation of the leading independent filmmakers under the umbrella of Universal was a major turning point in the history of American motion pictures.

The merger not only signaled the triumph of a free market in the industry but lead to the creation of the first major Hollywood studio –– Universal City, constructed in 1914–1915 in Los Angeles in an effort by Laemmle to centralize operations.

In 1914 Brulatour funded the construction of larger studios for Peerless Pictures at Fort Lee as well as the rebuilding of Eclair's processing laboratory, storage vault and offices, which had burned, destroying negatives for almost all the firm's films made over the last three years.

[13] It is believed that his sudden high profile in Washington, D.C. determined him to legitimize his relationship with Dorothy Gibson, whom he finally married on July 6, 1917, a week before his first conference with President Woodrow Wilson and United States Treasury Department Secretary McAdoo.

Arguments and financial troubles arose almost immediately, and allegations flew of undue influence from media baron William Randolph Hearst and even of bribes from Brulatour; nothing was proven but he resigned under pressure.

This was a drawn-out, complicated affair, and the stress ruined his second marriage, which was finally dissolved as an invalid contract in 1919, a humiliated Dorothy Gibson leaving New York shortly thereafter to live in relative peace and anonymity in Paris.

[15] Giving up acting and singing by the early-1940s, Hope devoted herself to the high-life –– entertaining lavishly, dressing extravagantly and delighting in being dubbed "Duchess of Park Avenue" in the society columns.

[16] And in 1941, he was chagrined to learn that the boozy flop of an opera singer in Citizen Kane, the hit RKO film directed by and starring Orson Welles, was partly based on Hope and his ex-wife Dorothy.