All about Real Classics

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Dec 2, 2002 by Max Nichols

Elizabeth B. Anthony was still in grade school when she began to enjoy classic movies. Her father, Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony, would bring home videos of movies such as Sound of Music and Mary Poppins or Mrs. Miniver and Lawrence of Arabia for Elizabeth and her three younger sisters.

"Dad didn't want us to be corrupted by the new movies of our time," she recalled, "and I enjoyed the old movies."

Elizabeth continued her interest as a high school student at Casady School. She began to see the strong characters developed by women in World War II movies, for example, compared to movies of the early 1990s. She also learned about the studio system and how the characters and plots were developed before four-letter words, sexual scenes and bloody violence were used to sell movies.

As a student at Princeton University, she started spending free time at the library, reading about old movies, actors, actresses, directors and producers. She also searched for information on her roommate's computer. "I found other students were interested in classic movies," she said. "They were sort of coming out of the closet." So during her first year at Princeton, on Jan. 20, 1997, she opened Elizabeth's Classic Homepage on the Princeton server.

Now, after graduating from Princeton and the London School of Economics, and after returning home to manage her father's re- election campaign in 2000, Elizabeth Anthony is operating ReelClassics.com as the largest classic movie Web site. With more than 1,800 pages on the stars, movie makers, commentary and reviews, an audio-video gallery, merchandise and features, ReelClassics.com is being "hit" by Internet users at the rate of 20,000 a day.

During the nearly six years since going online in January 1997, Anthony's Web site has received more than 15 million hits. It was renamed Favorite Classic Movie Web Site in December 1997 and then moved to its own Internet domain in October 1998 as Reel Classics: Elizabeth's Classic Movie Homepage on ReelClassics.com.

That's just part of the story. Anthony founded Reel Classics LLC in September 1999 to own the Web site. That firm, now based in Oklahoma City, earned a profit in its first year with 14,000 hits a day, took a loss with the down economy in its second year and has rebounded to make a profit this year.

"I make money promoting products for vendors on ReelClassic.com, consulting and building Web sites for others," said Anthony. "I also research classic movies and write commentary and reviews, which is what I enjoy the most. All this takes about 10 to 15 hours a day.

"So I am reaching the point where I will have to hire some help or sell Reel Classics to a larger company and continue to manage it."

At 25, Anthony obviously is a remarkable entrepreneurial success, but there is even more to her story. Her first homepage was awarded a "Times Pick" on July 18, 1997, by the Los Angeles Times.

It was cited as a resource for more information about the life and film career of Jimmy Stewart after his death on July 2, 1997. On Dec. 6 of that year, About.com named her homepage the "Favorite Classic Movie Site" by a poll of movie fans.

"The Web site was getting to be too large for the Princeton servers," she said, "so I had to move to its own domain on the Internet during the summer of 1998." In November 1998, McCall's magazine featured her Web site, which had about 400 pages at that time.

All this happened before Anthony graduated within three years in May 1999 from Princeton, where she majored in romance languages and literature. She also worked one summer for the French Senate, but she continued operating the Web site on a laptop computer.

During the summer of 1999, she worked for the Commonwealth Media Corp. in Boston as preliminary researcher and analyst for a projected public television documentary and art book about movie star Bette Davis and the star system of the studio era. She was allowed to work the with Davis' personal papers and scrapbooks in the Special Collections Archive of Boston University's Mugar Memorial Library.

She founded Reel Classics LLC in October 1999, shortly before entering the London School of Economics.

"I loaned the money to Real Classics to get it started," she said. "It paid off that loan during the profitable first year." She started generating reviews of classic movies for the Web site while at the London school, basing her opinions on her research. Her reviews have included the movies of such stars as Greer Garson, Jean Simmons, Oliva de Havilland and Elizabeth Taylor.

"I only write reviews after I have seen about half of the movies of a star," she said, "including the bad movies."

To promote the products of vendors advertising on her site, Anthony features trivia questions and gives products such as DVDs to winners. The classic movie Internet market, including young people, is growing.

"Video stores have been promoting DVDs," she said, "so they don't have as much room as they once had for classic movies. As a result, people are turning to vendors on the Internet for classic movies."