Another Change in Personnel

Early in 1904 the Edison Manufacturing Company was forced to find yet another manager for its Kinetograph Department. Shortly after the release of The Great Train Robbery , William Markgraf went to England on motion picture business. Once there, he went on a month-long drunken binge. In the midst of his alcoholic haze, he bought at least 200,000 feet of Lumière film stock without proper authorization.^[91] Gilmore was forced to call his brother-in-law back to the United States and ask for his resignation. Although Markgraf's salary was terminated in late March, he had been effectively removed from any position of responsibility somewhat earlier. Perhaps because Porter assumed extra responsibilities as a result—and could claim credit for The Great Train Robbery —the studio manager's salary, which had been raised to $25 per week in October, was increased again to $35 per week. Moreover, an M. Porter, undoubtedly Porter's youngest brother Everett Melbourne, was hired at $4 per week—an office boy's salary—early in the year.

Few promising candidates appeared to fill the position Markgraf was vacating. Alex T. Moore, who had known Gilmore since their mutual employment by Edison electric light companies, applied for the job sometime in January.

Gilmore, uncertain of Moore's qualifications, sent him to be interviewed by Percival Waters at the Kinetograph Company. As Waters later recalled,

Moore came into my office one day with a card of introduction from Mr. Gilmore. He stated to me that he had applied to Mr. Gilmore who was an old friend of his for a position with the Edison Manufacturing Company. Mr Gilmore said to him that he might have an opening in the film manufacturing department, but thought that he would require a man experienced in the moving picture business and suggested that he call upon me and talk over the requirements of that business. I told Moore that I would be very glad to give him any information which I had and went over my experience and what I thought would be required of a manager of such a department. He said that he believed he could easily pick up the details. He thanked me for the information I had given him and I told him that if he should secure the position he must feel that he could call upon me at any and all times and that I would do my best to acquaint him with the business. Afterwards, said Gilmore asked me if I had seen Moore and I told him that I had and that he seemed to have a good appearance and I didn't question but that he could operate the department satisfactorily.^[92]

Waters' ties with the Edison Company had developed sufficiently for him to exercise an indirect veto over the hiring of key personnel. The exhibitor may have even been pleased at the prospect of working with an inexperienced manager, since the novice would frequently be dependent on him and his knowledge of the industry. Moore's assumption of the position in late March inevitably strengthened Waters' ability to make Edison's Kinetograph Department serve the interests of his Kinetograph Company.

Moore was conditionally hired at $50 per week. After a two-month trial, his salary was raised to $75 per week, including retroactive pay. One of Moore's first orders of business was to dispose of Markgraf's legacy of Lumière film, which had proved defective. When the stock was run through a projector, the emulsion stripped off the base. It could only be used as leader. (No wonder Eastman Kodak dominated the industry!) Joseph McCoy, Edison's undercover agent, later reminisced about the disposal of the unsatisfactory material:

Moore wanted to get clear of the Lumiere Company film. I was to sell the film to other manufacturers of films and the Edison Company was not to be known in the transaction.

I sold some of the film to the Edison Company at 4¢ a foot. Other manufacturers said if it was good enough for the Edison Company to use, they would buy some of the film.

I sold 160,000 feet of the Lumiere film. Geo Melier [sic ] of East 38th Street [sic ] bought 10,000 feet. Smith of the Vitagraph Company bought the film and Lubin of Philadelphia. They all had the same trouble with the film stripping from the celluloid base.^[93]

McCoy's practical solution typified the business ethics often practiced by Edison, his associates, and American industry. Today it would be called fraud.

Although The Great Train Robbery caused Edison film sales to surge in December 1903, such "headliners" were still considered only one dimension of Porter's production responsibilities. The producer thus turned his attention to making short comedies, including the timely Christmas subject Under the Mistletoe , and filming winter scenery, for example Crossing Ice Bridge at Niagara Falls and Ice Skating in Central Park, N.Y . Multishot comedies like Casey's Frightful Dream (January 1904) and Little German Band (February 1904) were increasingly typical. The latter film required three different studio sets—one for each shot. A small band plays music outside a saloon, and the owner invites them inside, generously giving each a glass of beer. They drink up and after one musician surreptitiously fills his tuba with brew from a conveniently located keg, they depart. Outside the band share the spoils, using their instruments as drinking vessels. The suspicious saloon keeper, however, catches them in the act. If children can be naughty and escape retribution in most early films, men who act like boys are rarely so lucky. In these comedies, punishment of adults usually involves social or sexual humiliation.

During early 1904, Porter continued to work closely with G. M. Anderson who appeared in such productions as Wifey's Mistake and Halloween Night at the Seminary . In the latter film, Anderson spies on a group of young girls in pajamas who are dunking for apples and playing other Halloween games. When the girls discover the Peeping Tom, they dunk him in the tub of water, an overly large vagina-like container (the scene cries out for a simple psychoanalytic reading). The film's play with pleasure and voyeurism, transgression and punishment is similar to Two Chappies in a Box, The Gay Shoe Clerk , and other Edison comedies, suggesting both the popularity of this theme and the way repetition and slight, but clever, variation can be used to comic effect.

Anderson's contributions included the story idea for The Buster Brown Series , the first Edison "feature" to appear after The Great Train Robbery . Its seven scenes were taken in February and early March, except for Buster's Joke on Papa , which had been made and released as a separate short. These were listed as follows:

R. F. Outcault Making a Sketch of Buster and Tige

Buster's Revenge on the Tramp

Buster and the Dude

Buster Cleans a Bargain Counter

Buster's Joke on Papa

Tige to the Rescue

Buster and the Balloon Vender.^[94]

This comedy was made with the assistance of the comic strip's creator, Richard F. Outcault, who had worked for Edison as a draftsman and made some early

Outcault sketches for Porter's camera; the bargain counter shortly before Buster and Tige arrive.

sketches of the Black Maria before becoming a cartoonist. Eager to help his nephew Will Rising, who sometimes worked at the Edison studio as an actor, Outcault appeared in a scene making a lightning sketch of his cartoon characters. The cartoonist had sold the theatrical rights for his Buster Brown characters, however, and a musical based on the comic strip was then being previewed out of town.^[95] Outcault's enthusiastic participation in the Edison film was halted when Mellville B. Raymond, who owned the theatrical rights, threatened to sue the sketch artist for violation of his contract. As a result, Outcault tried to get the film off the market and finally sued Waters and the Edison Company in the U.S. circuit court.^[96] Edison sought to ease Outcault's embarrassment by delaying the picture's distribution; in mid May, however, the Buster Brown films were put on the market.^[97]

The legal paperwork for the Outcault case reveals much about the production of The Buster Brown Series . A memo for Porter's deposition describes the film's evolution and suggests the ways in which their collaborative working method functioned (see document no. 15). Anderson suggested the original idea. Norman Mosher brought in "Mannie," the trained dog, and a group of scenes was made. Actor Will Rising, trying to better his position, suggested filming his uncle, the cartoonist. The picture evolved casually, through the collective effort of the studio staff. Porter may have supervised and shaped the process, but clearly he tended to think and operate in nonhierarchical terms.

Each scene in The Buster Brown Series was conceived separately and treated as the analogue of a cartoon strip. Each had its own title. Although, as was done with Buster's Joke on Papa , scenes could have been sold separately as shorts, The Buster Brown Series was offered for sale "in one length only." Yet unlike Jack and the Beanstalk or any of Porter's previous "feature"-length films, The Buster Brown Series lacks the narrative development and complexity that previously justified the producer's control of the editing process. In constructing his

The once successful actor, undone by alcohol and down on his luck, works for the Edison Company.

The comic strip as storyboard.

subject, the studio manager assumed a responsibility that had once been the exhibitor's—as with the Happy Hooligan series of 1901-2.^[98] Whereas the showman had formerly acquired individual scenes, Porter and his crew now created and combined these vignettes until the larger film contained the elements Porter desired. By 1904 the motion picture producer's editorial control had grown to the point where narrative continuity was no longer a necessary basis for his intervention. He now combined a series of potentially self-sufficient scenes that had only a main character in common. As with other Porter films, however, the influence of exhibitor-dominated cinema continued to be felt within the production house itself. The scene of Outcault doing his lightning sketch was placed at the head of the film when it was first released, but by 1906 it had been moved to the end.^[99] This casual rearrangement of scenes reflected the influence of Porter's experiences as a showman in the 1890s.

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Skirmish Between Russian and Japanese
 Advance Guards, reenacting Bio-graph's
 reenactment, The Battle of the Yalu.