1. Phonograph Monthly , March 1903, p. 5. [BACK]

2. Gilmore to Edison, 27 August 1903, NjWOE. [BACK]

3. Gilmore to Edison, 2 March 1903, NjWOE. [BACK]

4. Animated Photo Projecting Company v. American Mutoscope Company and Benjamin Keith , no. 7130, C.C.S.D.N.Y., NjBaFAR. On patent no. 586,953. [BACK]

5. Thomas Armat, testimony, 2 December 1913, United States v. Motion Picture Patents Co ., printed record, p. 2184. [BACK]

6. Armat Moving Picture Co. v. Edison Manufacturing Co ., no. 8303, C.C.S.D.N.Y., filed 28 November 1902, NjBaFAR. Armat claimed Edison did not resume sales of projectors until June 1903. Thomas Armat, testimony, 2 December 1913, p. 2180. [BACK]

7. Thomas Armat to Gilmore, 11 April 1903, NjWOE. [BACK]

8. Charles W. Luhr, testimony, 27 June 1907, Armat Moving Picture Co. v. Edison Manufacturing Co . When describing the principle of the intermittent mechanism, Armat's patent simply indicated that the period of rest (when the film was stationary in front of the light source) had to be more than the period of change (when the film frame was being moved forward). This half-shutter made the period of rest equal to the period of change and, hypothetically at least, avoided Armat's patent. [BACK]

9. Howard W. Hayes, argument, Edison v. Lubin , no. 36, April sessions, 1902, PPFAR. [BACK]

10. Sigmund Lubin, answer, Edison v. Lubin , no. 36, April sessions. [BACK]

11. Edison v. Lubin , 119 Federal Reporter , p. 993. [BACK]

12. Orange Chronicle , 14 February 1903; Edison Films , May 1903. [BACK]

13. Frank Dyer, deposition, Thomas A, Edison v. American Mutoscope and Biograph Company , no. 8289 and 8290, C.C.S.D.N.Y., filed 7 November 1902, NjFAR. [BACK]

14. 122 Federal Reporter , p. 240. [BACK]

15. When Blackton and Smith were sued in 1898 and Arthur Hotaling in 1902, they either settled out of court or fled the court's jurisdiction. [BACK]

16. Hayes to Gilmore, 22 April 1903, legal files, NjWOE. [BACK]

17. Copyright files, NjWOE. References for the remaining years of this study will emphasize production dates taken from these files rather than the copyright date. [BACK]

18. For example, Keith's Union Square Theater, programme, 16 February 1903, PP. [BACK]

19. Clipper , 21 and 28 March 1903, pp. 108 and 132. [BACK]

20. Clipper , 11 April 1903, p. 168. [BACK]

21. Gilmore to White, quoted in letter, Gilmore to White, 3 December 1903, NjWOE. [BACK]

22. Gaston Méliès, Complete Catalogue of Genuine and Original Star Films (New York, 1903), p. 5. [BACK]

23. Clipper , 12 September 1903, p. 680, a review of Méliès' La Royaume des fées [ Fairyland ] shown at Keith's Union Square Theater. [BACK]

24. Balshofer indicates that Lubin, at least, continued to dupe Méliès productions into 1905-6 (Fred Balshofer and Arthur C. Miller, One Reel a Week [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967], pp. 5-9). [BACK]

25. A selection of these Porter/Smith films were integrated into the lantern show Lights and Shadows of a Great City, New York (Kleine Optical Company, Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Magic Lanterns, Accessories and Stereopticon Views [Chicago, 1903], p. 139). This program combined sixty-one slides with nine films and a lecture by Rev. W. T. Elsing. The films were used, in effect, to revitalize an increasingly antiquated form. Five of the nine films were actualities, including Panoramic View of the Brooklyn Bridge, River Front and Tall Buildings (© as Panorama Waterfront and the Brooklyn Bridge from East River ), taken by Porter on 9 May. One, Dancing on the Bowery , was staged on the streets, and the remainder were comedies, including Blackton and Smith's Burglar on the Roof . The program consisted primarily of hard-edged documentary slides, some taken by the renowned photographer Jacob Riis, but "comics" were interspersed for relief. Though Lights and Shadows was standardized by the distributor, exhibitors could introduce their own variations and refinements. With its slides and films gathered from disparate sources, the program juxtaposed diverse mimetic techniques, creating a synthetic mode of representation. [BACK]

26. Sklar, Movie-Made America , p. 26. [BACK]

27. See Harry Birdoff, The World's Greatest Hits: "Uncle Tom's Cabin " (New York: S. F. Vanni, 1947); Thomas F. Gassett, " Uncle Tom's Cabin" and American Culture (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1985). [BACK]

28. Biograph Bulletin no. 5, 14 May 1903, reproduced in Kemp Niver, Biograph Bulletins, 1896-1908 (Los Angeles: Artisan Press, 1971), p. 82. [BACK]

29. Mast, Short History of the Movies , 4th ed., p. 38. [BACK]

30. Burch, "Porter, or Ambivalence," pp. 96-98. [BACK]

31. Dorothy's Dream was offered for sale in Edison Films , February 1903, p. 6, as Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes . The description noted that "the title of each of the above subjects is included in the film and same can therefore be run without announcement slides." [BACK]

32. Although, as Miriam Hansen has pointed out, many American theatrical classics were translated and performed in immigrant theaters. [BACK]

33. Kleine Optical Company, Complete Illustrated Catalogue , 1903, p. 157; Jacobs, Rise of the American Film , p. 42. [BACK]

34. Howard Lamarr Walls, Motion Pictures, 1894-1912 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1953), p. 86. [BACK]

35. N. D. Cloward to Frank Dyer, 28 july 1903, legal files, NjWOE. [BACK]

36. Howard W. Hayes to J. R. Schermerhorn, 1 September 1903, legal files, NjWOE. [BACK]

37. Clipper , 5 and 12 September 1903, pp. 668 and 704. [BACK]

38. Edison Manufacturing Company, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903), p. 5; Sigmund Lubin, Uncle Tom's Cabin (Philadelphia, 1904). [BACK]

39. On Coney Island, see Kasson, Amusing the Millions . [BACK]

40. Edison Films , October 1903, p. 12. [BACK]

41. Ibid., p. 19. [BACK]

42. Clipper , 14 November 1903, p. 920. [BACK]

43. Clipper , 6 June 1903, p. 358. The film was copyrighted 30 May 1903 as The Manicure Fools the Husband and also sold as Don't Get Gay with Your Manicure . This one-shot picture is described in Niver, Early Motion Pictures , p. 199. Lubin also made Don't Get Gay with Your Manicurist ( Clipper , 13 June 1903, p. 379). [BACK]

44. American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, Picture Catalogue (November 1902), p. 51. [BACK]

45. Edison Films , May 1903, p. 19. [BACK]

46. Edison Films , October 1903, p. 20. [BACK]

47. Kuleshov on Film: Writings of Lev Kuleshov , ed. and trans. Ronald Levaco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 52-54. [BACK]

48. Interpolated close-ups occurred with some frequency in early cinema. The procedure, occasionally employed in lantern shows, was adopted by filmmakers with comparative ease. In Edison's Looping the Loop at Coney Island (made in late 1902 or early 1903) the second shot "gives a still closer view of the cars as they leave the circle and go shooting out towards the camera, the different expressions of fear, pleasure and excitement on the passengers' faces being clearly discernible" ( Edison Films , February 1903, p. 15). Another line of development, evolving through studio/acted films, was indebted to the Englishman G. A. Smith. Smith employed the close-up in connection with point-of-view shots in which an optical instrument acted as a mediating device, as in Grandma's Reading Glass . His Mary Jane's Mishaps (1903) did without the point-of-view motivation: the woman's facial expressions, shown in close-up against a plain background, periodically interrupt the narrative executed in far shot. ( Mary Jane's Mishaps was duped in West Orange before Porter made The Gay Shoe Clerk ; while both appear in Edison's October 1903 catalog, the Smith film has an earlier "code word.") [BACK]

49. Edison Films , October 1903, p. 8. [BACK]

50. Ibid., p. 16. [BACK]

51. William Selig, for example, urged exhibitors to interlace a program of his travel films with a selection of comedies (Selig Polyscope Company, Special Supplement of Colorado Films [1 November 1902], p. 3). [BACK]

52. Wilmington [Del.] Every Evening , 9, 10, and 11 July 1903, p. 3. [BACK]

53. Wilmington Every Evening , 21 and 22 August 1903; many but probably not all the films taken for Cloward were subsequently copyrighted. [BACK]

54. Biograph Bulletin no. 6, 1 June 1903, reproduced in Niver, Biograph Bulletins , p. 83. Biograph announced the removal of its offices from 841 Broadway to 11 East Fourteenth Street in Clipper , 17 February 1903, p. 1124. [BACK]

55. Clipper , 17 October 1903, p. 820. [BACK]

56. See Biograph Bulletins nos. 10-13, reproduced in Niver, Biograph Bulletins , pp. 93-107, and Clipper for this period. [BACK]

57. "Engagements," NYDM , 3 October 1903, p. 9. George Pratt kindly brought this piece of information to my attention. [BACK]

58. For an illustrated supplement on the Essex County Park system, see Orange Chronicle , 9 April 1898. [BACK]

59. For Anderson's claim to joint direction, see "2 Survive Great Train Robbery," New York Herald Tribune , 9 October 1961, p. 13, cited in Levy, "Edwin S. Porter and the Origins of the American Narrative Film," p. 29. For Cameron, see Theatre News , 22 September 1938, p. 2. For Smith, see Moving Picture News , 2 April 1910, p. 11. Barnes and Anderson can be identified by pictures. Ramsaye (who gave Barnes the wrong first name) adds Frank Hanaway as a bandit and Mae Murray as a dancer in the dance hall scene (Ramsaye, Million and One Nights , pp. 417-18). [BACK]

60. Clipper , 7 November 1903, p. 896. [BACK]

61. This copy is made available through the Museum of Modern Art, courtesy of David Shepard. [BACK]

62. Mail and Express , 22 December 1903, p. 6; Clipper , 6 January 1904, p. 113. [BACK]

63. Macgowan, Behind the Screen , p. 114. [BACK]

64. George N. Fenin and William K. Everson, The Western: From Silents to Cinerama (New York: Bonanza Books, 1962), p. 47. [BACK]

65. Sklar, Movie-Made America , p. 338. [BACK]

66. Jacobs, Rise of the American Film , p. 43. [BACK]

67. Gaudreault, "Detours in Film Narrative: The Development of Cross-Cutting," pp. 39-59; David Levy, "Reconstituted Newsreels, Re-enactments and the American Narrative Film," in Holman, comp., Cinema , 1900-1906, pp. 243-60. [BACK]

68. Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), pp. 72-89. [BACK]

69. American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, production records, Biograph Collection, NNMoMA. [BACK]

70. Clipper , 12 December 1903, p. 1016. [BACK]

71. George C. Pratt, Spellbound in Darkness: A History of the Silent Film (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973), pp. 38-39. [BACK]

72. Clipper , 24 October 1896, p. 544. William Martinetti brought The Great Train Robbery play to Porter's attention (Ramsaye, Million and One Nights , p. 416). [BACK]

73. Brooklyn Eagle , 13 October 1896, p. 11. [BACK]

74. Clipper , 12 December 1903, p. 1016. [BACK]

75. "Outlaws Rob Station," New York Tribune , 23 November 1903, p. 1. [BACK]

76. David Levy, "The Fake Train Robbery," in Holman, comp., Cinéma, 1900-1906 . [BACK]

77. Biograph Bulletin no. 33, 10 October 1904, reproduced in Niver, Biograph Bulletins , p. 132. [BACK]

78. Kleine Optical Company, Complete Illustrated Catalog of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Slides, Films (Chicago, November 1905), p. 207. [BACK]

79. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: Trains and Travel in the 19th Century (New York: Urizen Books, 1980), pp. 25-27. [BACK]

80. John L. Stoddard, John L. Stoddard Lectures (10 vols.; Boston: Balch Brothers Co., 1907). [BACK]

81. Schivelbusch, Railway Journey , p. 59. [BACK]

82. Mail and Express , 21 September 1897, p. 2. [BACK]

83. See note 51 above. [BACK]

84. Sigmund Lubin, Complete Lubin Films , January 1903, p. 34. This basic gag had newspaper antecedents. See "A Tunnel Mystery," New York Journal , 31 March 1898, p. 12. [BACK]

85. Advertisement, New York Herald , 24 January 1904, magazine section, p. 16. [BACK]

86. Kansas City Star , 28 May 1905, p. 7B. See Raymond Fielding, "Hale's Tours: Ultra-Realism in the Pre-1910 Motion Picture," in Fell, ed., Film Before Griffith , pp. 116-30. [BACK]

87. Clipper , 28 April 1906, p. 287. [BACK]

88. The important function of this shot has been misunderstood by historians since Lewis Jacobs, who saw it as an extraneous trick, unconnected to the film's narrative. [BACK]

89. The Hale's Tours exhibitor may have stopped his effects machines at various points in the film when the viewer was not looking at images from the perspective of a passenger. See Will Irwin, The House That Shadows Built (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1928), p. 104. [BACK]

90. Ibid., pp. 105-6. [BACK]

91. Joseph McCoy, oral history, ca. 1934, p. 24, NjWOE; James White to William E. Gilmore, 22 March 1904, NjWOE. [BACK]

92. Percival Waters, deposition, 25 May 1912, White and Schermerhorn v. Waters , p. 2. [BACK]

93. Joseph McCoy, oral history, p. 24. [BACK]

94. Clipper , 19 March 1904, p. 88. [BACK]

95. The New York Herald , which ran Outcault's strip, claimed that "R. T. Outcault's humorous ideas have been augmented by James Gorman, and between them they have written a bright book, with catchy songs, which have been set to music by several well-known composers" ("Buster Brown on the Stage," New York Herald , 26 December 1903, p. 9). Other newspapers were less appreciative. One called it the poorest vehicle that Master Gabriel, the well-known midget who played Buster, had ever had (clippings, Robinson Locke Collection, vol. 192: pp. 5, 6, 13, and 23, NN). [BACK]

96. Richard F. Outcault v. Edison Manufacturing Company and Percival Waters , no. 8743, C.C.S.D.N.Y., filed 6 May 1904, NjBaFAR. [BACK]

97. Frank Dyer to J. R. Schermerhorn, 10 May 1904, NjWOE. Outcault's friendship with Edison was only temporarily strained. By 1905 he was again visiting the West Or- ange Laboratory ( Phonograph Monthly , November 1905, p. 5). [BACK]

98. Edison Films , July 1901, pp. 57-60. [BACK]

99. Edison Films , July 1906, pp. 29-30. [BACK]

100. Clipper , 9 April 1904, p. 160. [BACK]

101. Chicago Projecting Company, Catalog of Stereopticons, Motion Picture Machines, Lantern Slides, Film Accessories and Supplies for the Optical Projection Trade , no. 120 ( 1907 ), p. 212. [BACK]

102. "New York Show," Keith's Booking Office, reports, 31 October 1904, 3:204, IaU. [BACK]

103. Kinetograph Department, film sales, 1904-6, NjWOE. This indicates that these

Page 527

films were purchased from Armat. Armat received such films "in kind" from Burton Holmes as part of their licensing arrangement. [BACK]

104. For example, New York Journal , 23 April 1904, p. 2, and 2 May 1904, p. 3. [BACK]

105. Edison Films , July 1906, p. 29. [BACK]

106. Ramsaye, Million and One Nights , pp. 434-39. [BACK]

107. Washington Star , 19 May 1904, p. 1. [BACK]

108. Washington Star , 21 May 1904, p. 7. [BACK]

109. Ramsaye, Million and One Nights , p. 439. Some time after the ruckus dissipated, Dockstader also announced that the film survived. [BACK]

110. "How Elephants Shoot the Chutes," New York World , 15 May 1904, magazine section, pp. 6-7. [BACK]

111. It is the Biograph film that appears in the documentary film Before the Nickelodeon . [BACK]

112. Descriptions of these films can be found in Niver, Biograph Bulletins, 1896-1908 . [BACK]

113. Frank Dyer to William Gilmore, 21 July 1904, NjWOE. [BACK]

114. Charles Pathé to Edison Import House, 1 July 1904 (in house translation), NjWOE. [BACK]

115. Frank Dyer to William Gilmore, 21 July 1904, NjWOE. [BACK]

116. Alex T. Moore to James White, 10 October 1904, NjWOE. [BACK]

117. Joseph McCoy, oral history, p. 24, NjWOE. [BACK]

118. Joseph McCoy to Dyer's office, report, November 1904, NjWOE. [BACK]

119. For the 1903 calendar year, Kleine had purchased $38,974 of Edison goods, while Edison sales for its 1903 business year were $127,773. [BACK]

120. Gilmore to George Kleine, 15 February 1904, NjWOE. [BACK]

121. Kleine to Gilmore, 2 April 1904, NjWOE. [BACK]

122. Gilmore to Kleine, 15 August 1904, NjWOE. [BACK]

123. Kleine to Gilmore, 20 August 1904, NjWOE. [BACK]

124. Gilmore to Kleine, 24 August 1904, NjWOE. [BACK]

125. MPW , 6 December 1913, p. 1129. [BACK]

126. George Kleine to Several Good Customers, 11 October 1904, George Kleine Collection, DLC. [BACK]

127. Clipper , 15 October 1904, p. 796. [BACK]

128. The copyright files at NjWOE indicate that Waters almost invariably received the first print of a given subject. [BACK]

129. Albert Smith, testimony, 14 November 1913, United States v. Motion Picture Patents Co ., PPFAR. [BACK]

130. Biograph Bulletin no. 28, 15 August 1904, in Niver, Biograph Bulletins , p. 121. [BACK]

131. Percival Waters, memorandum re: Marion Conversation, 1 December 1904, legal files, NjWOE. [BACK]

132. Clipper , 15 July 1905, p. 530, and 22 July 1905. [BACK]

133. Waters, memorandum re: Marion Conversation, NjWOE. [BACK]

134. Bill of complaint, American Mutoscope & Biograph Company v. Edison Manufacturing Company , no. 10-221, C.C.D.N.J., filed 12 November 1904. Note: Many cases

Page 528

for this district were destroyed by a fire, including records of this case. Printed records survive in legal files, NjWOE. [BACK]

135. Delos Holden, Frank L. Dyer, and Melville Church, points for defendant in opposition to complainant's motion for preliminary injunction, 19 December 1904, American Mutoscope & Biograph Co. v. Edison Manufacturing Co . [BACK]

136. Delos Holden to Melville Church, 28 and 30 November 1904, legal files, NjWOE. Some historians—for instance, Kemp Niver and David Levy—have suggested that Porter thought of each scene as an individual film, basing this conclusion on Edison copyright practices. This shift in copyright practice was done for legal reasons only—most of the films were sold in only one length (Niver, First Twenty Years , pp. 85, 87, and 90; Levy, "Edison Sales Policy and the Continuous Action Film, 1904-1906," in Fell, ed., Film Before Griffith , pp. 207-22). [BACK]

137. Delos Holden to Melville Church, 29 November 1904, legal files, NjWOE. McCutcheon insisted the cartoon never existed. [BACK]

138. Edwin S. Porter, affidavit, 3 December 1904, "Defendant's Affidavits in Opposition to Complainant's Motion for Preliminary Injunction," American Mutoscope & Biograph Co. v. Edison Manufacturing Co ., no. 10-221, pp. 7-10. [BACK]

139. Allen, Vaudeville and Film , p. 217; see also id., "Film History: The Narrow Discourse," in Ben Lawton and Janet Staiger, eds., Film: Historical-Theoretical Speculations: The 1977 Film Studies Annual (Part Two) (Pleasantville, N.Y.: Redgrave Publishing Co., 1977), pp. 9-17. Allen compounds his error by arguing that fiction films were somehow cheaper to produce than actualities. In fact, the gradual nature of this shift only occurred because actualities were usually much cheaper to produce. [BACK]

140. The case of the Edison Company in 1906 shows the fallacy of statistical analyses that simply rely on copyright data. Thomas Edison copyrighted forty films in 1906; twenty-nine of these were actuality films taken by Robert K. Bonine in Hawaii. Bonine's films were from 75 to 770 feet in length, totaling 3,700 feet of negative. In contrast, ten fiction films by Porter were copyrighted during the 1906 calendar year, varying in length from 60 to 1,000 feet, and totaling 6,815 feet (all but one was a "feature"). In 1906 one Porter film, Dream of a Rarebit Fiend , sold 192 copies, or 90,240 feet, while all of Bonine's Hawaii films only sold 29,060 feet. Dream of a Rarebit Fiend had three times the commercial value of the twenty-nine Bonine films. [BACK]

141. East Orange Gazette , 16 February 1905, clipping, NjWOE; "Moving Picture Exhibition," Orange Chronicle , 25 February 1905, p. 5. [BACK]

142. Edison Manufacturing Company, film sales, 1904-6, NjWOE. [BACK]

143. For How a French Nobleman. . ., Porter apparently employed the chase extensively for the first time (its use having been adumbrated in The Great Train Robbery ). Subsequently he made his own original chase films. From Rector's to Claremont , made on New York City streets and in Central Park, shows a rube chasing after a stagecoach in a vain attempt to regain his seat. It was made for a client, possibly in late summer 1904. (Without correlating information, any attribution regarding this film, which is in Paul Killiam's collection and which he dates as 1903, is highly speculative. It underscores the limitations on any close reading of Porter's work because of this "hidden" body of sponsored films.) Porter's chases in this and succeeding films, however, frequently feel mechanical and obligatory. They lack the originality and distinctive detail that make various Pathé and Biograph farces amusing and memorable. The simple and finally boring rep-

Page 529

etition of the rube and the stagecoach contrasts with Biograph's accumulation of idiosyncratic pursuers over the course of The Lost Child . [BACK]

144. Lyman Howe Moving Picture Company, programme, 30 August 1905 at Casino in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, Robert Gillaum Collection, PWb-H. [BACK]

145. Clipper , 13 August 1904, p. 574. Ramsaye reverses the pattern of imitation, claiming The Bold Bank Robbery was modeled after The Capture of the "Yegg" Bank Burglars , which he calls The Great Bank Robbery (Ramsaye, Million and One Nights, p . 419). [BACK]

146. Clipper , 15 October 1904, p. 789. [BACK]

147. Only in one instance, the burglary in the bank and the patrolling of the streets by the outside Yeggs (scenes 6 and 7), are simultaneous actions shown in successive scenes. [BACK]

148. Nitrate prints were usually struck immediately after the paper print was made. Although David Levy argues that Edison did not sell two different versions of The Capture of the "Yegg" Bank Burglars because it was not noted in Edison sales records, these records do not appear so detailed as to provide decisive evidence either way (Levy, "Edison Sales Policy and the Continuous Action Film, 1904-1906," in Fell, ed., Film Before Griffith , p. 220). [BACK]

149. Edison Films , July 1906, p. 33. [BACK]

150. Clipper , 12 November 1904, p. 895. A synopsis of Parsifal can be found in Edison Films , July 1906, pp. 50-53. [BACK]

151. Kleine Optical Company, Complete Illustrated Catalog of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Slides, Films , November 1905, p. 271. [BACK]

152. "Parsifal," ca. 1946, an anonymous note acquired courtesy of Bebe Bergsten. [BACK]

154. "Music and Drama," New York Tribune , 24 May 1904, p. 7. [BACK]

155. Copy of contract accompanying H. L. Roth to Frank Dyer, 24 January 1905, legal files, NjWOE. [BACK]

156. Edison Manufacturing Company, accounting invoices, legal files, NjWOE. [BACK]

157. Edison Manufacturing Company, film sales 1904-6, NjWOE. [BACK]

158. Clipper , 5 November 1904, p. 872. [BACK]

159. Janet Staiger's discussion of the tension between standardization and differentiation is particularly applicable to the Edison Company's commercial conduct (see Bord-well, Staiger, and Thompson, Classical Hollywood Cinema , pp. 96-112). [BACK]

160. Gilmore to Frank Dyer, 17 October 1904, legal files, NjWOE. [BACK]