1. Newark Evening News , 15 November 1902, p. 1B.

2. Ramsaye, Million and One Nights , p. 415. Eileen Bowser, ed., Film Notes (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1969), p. 3, and other publications cite Arthur White as the star of Life of an American Fireman . This can be traced to an interview with Arthur White from the 1940s in which he takes credit for many of his brother's accomplishments ( Motion Picture Herald , 12 February 1944, p. 28). In fact, James White seems to have remained in the film.

3. "White-Dede," NYT , 1 December 1902, p. 9.

4. New York Herald , 8 March 1903, 14E, see ad for Circle Theater; Keith's Union Square Theater, programme, week of 13 April 1903, PP.

5. Reading [Pa.] Eagle , 10 April 1904, p. 4.

6. Both lectures and all twelve images are reproduced in Charles Musser, ''Bob the Fireman,'' Les Cahlers de la Cinémathèque 29 (Winter 1979): 147-51.

7. "Last Week's Bill/Keith's Union Square," NYDM , 3 October 1896, p. 19.

8. Edison Films , September 1902, pp. 66-67.

9. Selig Polyscope Company, minutes, 18 December 1900, p. 9, CLAc.

10. S. Lubin, Catalogue No. 3: New Films (Philadelphia, 1902), p. 8.

11. Georges Sadoul, Histoire générale , 3d ed., 2:400-401.

12. A reproduction of this painting can be found in Linda Nochlin, Realism (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 136.

13. History of Coney Island (New York: Burroughs and Co., ca. 1905), pp. 12-13; Biograph Bulletin no. 27, 11 August 1904, reprinted in Niver, Biograph Bulletins , p. 119.

14. Couvares, Remaking of Pittsburgh , pp. 45-50. The concept of "plebeian culture" was developed by E. P. Thompson, "Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture," Journal of Social History 7 (1974): 382-405. Such cultural activities engaged different social classes on an egalitarian basis with the center of gravity in the lower classes.

15. Edison Films , February 1903, p. 2.

16. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis , trans. Willard Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 114.

17. Gerard J. Brault, trans., The Song of Roland (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978), pp. 145-47.

18. Ibid., p. 137.

19. Jean Rychner, Chanson de geste: Essai sur l'art des jongleurs (Geneva: E. Droz, 1955), p. 25.

20. This particular parallel was suggested to me by Brian Winston.

21. Rychner, Chanson de geste , p. 37.

22. Sergei Eisenstein, "Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today" in Film Form: Essays in Film Theory , ed. and trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1949), pp. 199-255.

23. Tbeatre Magazine , May 1913, pp. 156, 158, and viii. George Pratt kindly brought this statement to my attention.

24. Ramsaye, Million and One Nights , pp. 414-15.

25. Jacobs, Rise of the American Film , p. 35.

26. Sadoul, Histoire générale , 3d ed., 2:397.

27. Jean Mitry, Histoire du cinéma , vol. 1 (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1967), p. 237.

28. Jay Leyda has suggested that William Jamison, who made the original copyright photographs for Life of an American Fireman while working for the Edison Company and later worked at the Museum of Modern Art, may have been responsible for this modernized version.

29. Macgowan, Behind the Screen , pp. 113-14.

30. Mast, Short History of the Movies , 2d ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976), p. 42. His reference to Last Year at Marienbad alludes to Robert Gessner, "Porter and the Creation of Cinematic Motion," Journal of the Society of Cinematologists 2 (1962): 1-13.

Page 522

The most recent edition of Mast's book unfortunately does not revise this section based on current scholarly work, perhaps because the DLC version does not fit into his historical framework.

31. Deslandes and Richard, Histoire comparée , 2:385.

32. For a detailed comparison of the two versions, see Charles Musser, "The Early Cinema of Edwin Porter," Cinema Journal 19 (Fall 1979): 29-31; and André Gaudreault, "Detours in Film Narrative: The Development of Cross-cutting," Cinema Journal 19 (Fall 1979): 39-59.

33. In 1908, the Amusement Supply Company still devoted many pages of its catalog to programs for which the exhibitor integrated slides and films.