1. Variety , 23 December 1905, p. 3. The reference is to Porter and McCutcheon's The Train Wreckers .

2. MPW , 30 November 1907, p. 629.

3. Film Index , 5 May 1906, p. 11.

4. Film Index , 6 October 1906, pp. 3-4.

5. Film Index , 6 October 1906, p. 3. This article indicates that Bowery film theaters drew most of their patrons from the Lower East Side and that Italians from this area were important moviegoers, contrary to Robert C. Allen's assertions in "Motion Picture Exhibition in Manhattan 1906-1912: Beyond the Nickelodeon," in Fell, ed., Film Before Griffith , pp. 162-75. The paucity of nickelodeons in many of these Italian neighborhoods can be explained by information that Allen provides but misinterprets. The fact that these Italian neighborhoods had heavy concentrations of single males who would repatriate does not mean that these men forsook the movies, but rather suggests that they were free to travel to the motion picture theaters outside their neighborhoods, to the entertainment districts.

6. There is an extensive literature on nickelodeons and their audiences. This includes Sklar, Movie-Made America , pp. 18-32; Garth Jowett, Film and the Democractic Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), pp. 30-50; Russell Merritt, "Nickelodeon Theaters 1905-1914: Building an Audience for the Movies," in Balio, ed., American Film Industry , pp. 59-82; Judith Mayne, "Immigrants and Spectators," Wide Angle 5, no. 2 (1982): 32-40; Miriam Hansen, "Early Silent Cinema: Whose Public Sphere?" New German Critique 29 (Winter 1983): 147-84; Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will , pp. 191-220; Robert Sklar, ''Oh! Althusser! Historiography and the Rise of Cinema Studies,'' Radical History Review 41 (Spring 1988): 11-35. My own research in this area can be found in The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York: Scribner's/Macmillan, 1990), pp. 415-47.

7. Film Index , 1 December 1906, p. 3.

8. Billboard , 18 May 1907, p. 43.

9. Clipper , 7 October 1905, p. 842.

10. Billboard , 16 June 1906, p. 26.

11. Carl Laemmle, "This Business of Motion Pictures" (unpublished manuscript, ca. 1935), p. 41, CBevA.

12. Billboard , 6 October 1906, p. 22.

13. Greater New York Film Rental Company, certificate of incorporation, filed 25 March 1907, NNNCC-Ar.

14. Billboard , 11 May 1907, p. 8.

15. Clipper , 23 September 1905, p. 795. For a filmography and an account of Vitagraph's activities subsequent to this date, see Jon Gartenberg, "Vitagraph Before Griffith: Forging Ahead in the Nickelodeon Era," Studies in Visual Communication 10, no. 4 (Fall 1984): 7-23.

16. Clipper , 19 January 1907, p. 1266. Kalem Company, certificate of incorporation, filed 2 May 1907, NNNCC-Ar.

17. Peerless Film Manufacturing Company, certificate of incorporation, filed 29 April 1907; name changed on 9 April 1907, ICC.

18. Edison Manufacturing Company, statement of profit and loss, NjWOE.

19. Film Index , 24 November 1906, p. 6.

20. Edison Company, Film Sales 1904-6, NjWOE.

21. Film Index , 25 April 1906, p. 6.

22. Edison Company, Film Sales 1904-6, NjWOE. The discrepancy of $3,000 between this figure and the one cited in Edison Manufacturing Company, statement of profit and loss, may be accounted for by the rental of studio space and other miscellaneous activities.

23. John Hardin to William Gilmore, 16 October 1906, NjWOE. The $.1027 per foot cited in the previous paragraph is lower than Hardin's $.12 per foot owing to jobber and agent discounts.

24. Clipper , 13 January 1906, p. 1207.

25. Edison Films , July 1906, pp. 70-71.

26. Clipper , 10 March 1906, p. 94.

27. "Edwin S. Porter," MPW , 7 December 1912, p. 961.

28. One potential exception was Honeymoon at Niagara Falls , for which the Edison company offered to sell discrete scenes; no one, however, took advantage of the offer.

29. Edison Manufacturing Company to Colonial Virginia Company, Inc., bill no. 27,045, 17 May 1907, attached to Alex T. Moore to Frank L. Dyer, 13 August 1908, NjWOE. Edison bought the film back for $150 in 1908 and to release it through normal channels.

30. Alex T. Moore, deposition, 13 May 1912, White and Schermerhorn v. Waters , NNNCC-Ar. There was some disagreement over the extent and nature of this expansion. Porter was not overtly unhappy with the arrangements, but his facilities were far from satisfactory.

31. William Gilmore to Thomas Graf, 31 December 1906, NjWOE.

32. Patent reissue no. 12,037 for the Kinetograph and reissue no. 12,038 for Kineto-scopic Film. Reissue no. 12,038 was reissued again on 12 January 1904 as patent reissue no. 12,192.

33. Thomas A. Edison v. American Mutoscope and Biograph Company , nos. 8289 and 8290, C.C.S.D.N.Y., filed 7 November 1902, NjBaFAR; Thomas A. Edison v. Selig Polyscope Company , no. 26,512, C.C.N.D.I., filed 7 November 1902, ICFAR; Thomas A. Edison v. Siegmund Lubin , nos. 24 and 25, October sessions 1902, C.C.E.D.P., filed 6 November 1902, PPFAR.

34. Thomas A. Edison v. William Paley and William F. Steiner , no. 8911, C.C.S.D.N.Y., filed 23 November 1904; Thomas A. Edison v. Compagnie Generale des Phonographes, Cinematographes et Appareils de Precision and J. A. Berst, doing business under the name Pathe Cinematograph Co ., no. 8912, C.C.S.D.N.Y., filed 23 November 1904; Thomas A. Edison v. Georges Melies and Gaston Melies , no. 8913, C.C.S.D.N.Y., 23 November 1904; Thomas A. Edison v. Eberhard Schneider doing business as American Cinematograph Co. and German-American Cinematograph and Film Co ., no. 8914, C.C.S.D.N.Y., filed 23 November 1904, NjBaFAR.

35. Thomas A. Edison v. American Vitagraph Co ., no. 9035, C.C.S.D.N.Y., filed 13 March 1905, NjBaFAR.

36. George W. Ray, decision, 26 March 1906, 144 Federal Reporter , pp. 121-28.

37. 151 Federal Reporter , pp. 767-74. Biograph was using the same Warwick 35mm camera as everyone else until it constructed and used a 35mm camera covered by its original patent.

38. See Charles Musser et al., A Guide to Motion Picture Catalogs by American Producers and Distributors, 1894-1908, A Microfilm Edition (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1985), pp. 34-44.

39. Ramsaye, Million and One Nights , pp. 468-69.

40. Lawrence F. Karr, "Introduction," in Rita Horwitz, An Index to Volume 1 of "The Moving Picture World and View Photographer " (American Film Institute, 1974).

41. Charles Pathé, De Pathé Frères à Pathé cinema (Nice: 1940; Premier Plan, June 1970), p. 62.

42. F. Croydon Marks to William Gilmore, 13 April 1907, NjWOE.

43. Ibid.

44. Marks to Pathé, 21 May 1907, NjWOE.

45. Pathé to Marks, 22 May 1907, NjWOE. A franc was then approximately equal to 20¢.

46. Gilmore to Pelzer, 28 May 1907, NjWOE.

47. New York World , 29 November 1906, p. 2. This helps to explain such anachronisms as the use of a repeating rifle in a drama supposedly set in the late eighteenth century. Lest Lawrence's memory seem too faulty, the stage production was described as an eastern melodrama "set with gigantic and wonderous picturesque scenery, and in noise, excitement and movement can almost be compared with a wild west show."

48. Although Darnel Boone: On the Trail was copyrighted in 1906, internal evidence strongly suggests that the script placed on deposit had been in circulation for many years.

49. "Edwin S. Porter," MPW , 7 December 1912, p. 961.

50. Edison Films , July 1906, p. 70. A tinted print of this film can be seen through Paul Killiam.

51. Maurice Horn, ed., World Encyclopedia of Comics (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1976) pp. 223-24.

52. Translated from a Pathé catalog quoted in Sadoul, Histoire générale , 3d ed., 2:306-8.

53. The self-sufficiency of the narrative may explain why Dream of a Rarebit Fiend has been included in so many standard histories. Unfortunately its canonization—and our ignorance of its antecedents—has also limited our insight into the cinema of this period.

54. Film Index , 23 June 1906, p. 9.

55. Amusement Supply Company, Amusement for Profit (Chicago: 1907), pp. 266-70; Eileen Bowser, "Preparation for Brighton—the American Contribution," in Hollman, comp., Cinema 1900-1906 , p. 10, discusses other examples of this genre.

56. Film Index , 23 June 1906, p. 9.

57. New York World , 1 May 1905, illustrated supplement.

58. Adrienne Harris, "Women, Baseball and Words," PsychCritique 1, no. 1 (1985): 41.

59. Ibid., p. 51.

60. Charles Lovenberg, United Booking Offices, Reports , 3 September 1906, 6:96, Albee Papers, IaU.

61. Film Index , 4 August 1906, p. 9.

62. "Edwin S. Porter," MPW , 7 December 1912, p. 961.

63. MPW , 6 April 1907, p. 86. For a description of the film see MPW , 16 March 1907, p. 31.

64. Peter Bull, The Teddy Bear Book (New York: Random House, 1970), offers a useful collection of memorabilia from this period. Contemporaneous newspapers, however, provide many contradictory accounts about the origins of the craze.

65. Variety , 9 March 1907, p. 8.

66. The film was a huge hit and caused "much fun in the big cities," according to one prominent exhibitor, who recommended it especially for women and children. The exhibitor published a detailed description of the film that only identified the Teddy Roosevelt character as the girl's father ( Lewiston Evening Journal , 6 May 1907, p. 2, and 8 May 1907, p. 2).

67. New York World , 22 October 1907, p. 1.

68. New York American , 27 January 1907, comic section; 17 and 24 February 1907, comic section; and others from this period. The strip, however, does not appear to have been running when Porter actually made the film (see New York American , 4, 18, and 25 August 1907).

69. Film Index , 10 November 1906, p. 8.

70. Alan Trachtenberg, "Photography/Cinematography," in Jay Leyda and Charles Musser, eds., Before Hollywood (New York: American Federation of the Arts, 1987), pp. 73-79.

71. Clement Greenberg, "Avant Garde and Kitsch," in Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White, eds., Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America (Glencoe, Ill.: Falcon's Wing Press, 1957), p. 98.

72. Film Index , 1 September 1906, p. 16.

73. Raymond D. McGill, Notable Names in the American Theatre (Clifton, N.J.: James T. White, 1976), p. 26.

74. Film companies sometimes rediscovered the West's rejection of regimentation, to their dismay (see, e.g., "Essanay Cowboys Refuse to 'Punch the Clock' So It Goes," New York Telegraph , 26 October 1913, p. 5E).

75. The surviving print at the Museum of Modern Art lacks scenes 9 and 10 as described in the Film Index .

76. Clipper , 25 August 1906, p. 712, listed the cast:

77. Despite Ramsaye's assertion (p. 442), William Ranous did not act in this film.

78. Film Index , 13 October 1906, p. 3.

79. Vardac, Stage to Screen , pp. 24, 42-43.

80. Kathleen Mavourneen; or St. Patrick Eve (Clyde, Ohio: Ames Publishing Co., n.d.).

81. Van C. Lee, "The Value of a Lecture," in MPW , 8 February 1908, p. 91.

82. Variety , 1 June 1907, p. 10.

83. Clipper , 26 May 1906, p. 384.

84. Los Angeles Times , 23 May 1906, p. 2B.

85. "The Scenes of Hawaii," Hawaiian Gazette , 29 May 1906, p. 6. Ken Nelson graciously brought these Hawaiian Gazette articles to my attention.

86. "Many Scenes of Hawaii Secured," Hawaiian Gazette , 27 July 1906, p. 6.

87. Honolulu Bulletin cited in Film Index , 15 September 1906, p. 4.

88. Billboard , 10 November 1906, p. 15.

89. New York World , 1 August, 1906; Alex T. Moore, deposition, 13 May 1912, White and Schermerhorn v. Waters . Waters, however, claimed that Bonine rather than Porter took these films.

90. Most of the films that Bonine took in 1906-7 survive in the George Kleine Collection, DLC.

91. MPW , 1 June 1907, pp. 199-200.

92. MPW , 4 May 1907, p. 137.

93. This treaty was subsequently revised in 1978.

94. Bonine and Patek's lectures were part of a tradition of educational entertainment that was often sponsored by civic groups, churches, or "refined institutions." Similar subjects were dealt with by a range of traveling lecturers such as Burton Holmes and Dwight Elmendorf. See Charles Musser with Carol Nelson, High-Class Moving Pictures .

95. "In the Yellowstone," Oswego [N.Y.] Palladium , 23 May 1906, p. 4; MPW , 17 March 1907, p. 41.

96. Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America , pp. 17-19.

97. MPW , 13 July 1907, p. 295.

98. Walkover Shoe Company, catalog, ca. 1908, NjWOE.

99. Film Index , 16 July 1907, p. 8.

100. MPW, 5 October 1907, p. 487.

101. MPW , 13 February 1909, p. 176.