Production Resumes at Edison
When Edison filmmaking resumed in late April, the Kinetograph Department's organization and personnel had substantially changed. Not only was Markgraf the new manager, but Arthur White and George S. Fleming had left in early April. Fleming was promptly replaced by William Martinetti, a scenic painter who earned $20 per week—the same sum as Porter. With these disruptions, film sales for the 1903-4 business year advanced 20 percent to $91,122—a modest increase given the general industrywide revival and the impact of Great Train Robbery sales late that business year. Production and related film costs, moreover, increased still faster, and film profits fell 13 percent to $24,813.
Although Edison ads ballyhooed Life of an American Fireman , nothing of equal ambition was immediately undertaken. The next sixty-two copyrighted Edison films were brief scenes made for the exhibitor-dominated cinema. Most were part of the popular travel genre. Twelve had been shot by James White in the West Indies during his December 1902 honeymoon (Native Women Coaling a Ship and Scrambling for Money ). With White's arrival in Europe, Abadie was free to tour the Mediterranean basin with his camera. He started out at the Grand Carnival in Nice (Battle of Confetti at the Nice Carnival ); traveled to Syria, Palestine (A Jewish Dance at Jerusalem ) and Egypt (Excavating Scene at the Pyramids of Sakkarah ); then went through Italy, Switzerland, and Paris before reaching England on May 10th. Abadie then returned to the United States, where his films were developed and thirty-four submitted for copyright.
Edison's New York-based cameramen resumed production on April 29th, eight days after Judge Buffington's decision. Over the next two weeks, Edwin
Documenting "the other half": New York City "Ghetto" Fish Market.
Porter and James Smith shot at least fifteen travelogue-type subjects in and around Manhattan. The series included panoramas of the skyline; staged activities by the fire department, police, and harbor patrol (New York Harbor Police Boat Patrol Capturing Pirates ); parades (White Wings on Review ), and scenes of New York's underbelly (New York City Dumping Wharf ). For New York City "Ghetto" Fish Market , Smith placed his camera at a window or on a low rooftop. Looking down on an open air market, it panned along the street as one or two individuals in the crowd stared into its lens.[25] Soon afterwards, Porter stopped off in Sayre, Pennsylvania, and took Lehigh Valley Black Diamond Express , a replacement negative of that still popular subject, on May 13th. Perhaps the cameraman was on a visit to Connellsville; in any case, he had returned to New York City by May 30th, Decoration Day, when he filmed Sixty-Ninth Regiment, N.G.N.Y . as the unit marched up Fifth Avenue. Three weeks later he photographed Africander Winning the Suburban Handicap . Such subjects had been taken for the past six years and had become routine.
Méliès' entry into the American market and the resolution of various court suits encouraged U.S. film companies to produce more ambitious films with American locales and subject matter. If Jack and the Beanstalk and Life of an American Fireman were part of nonspecific urban/industrial genres found in all major producing countries, American story films made in the second half of 1903 tended to be more nationalistic. Biograph's first dramatic headliners, Kit
Carson and The Pioneers , as well as Edison's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Rube and Mandy at Coney Island , and The Great Train Robbery , all used American myths and entertainments as a source.[26] Certainly this made sense, since less nation-specific pictures could be acquired from overseas.