Matinees On Main Street: Recent Episodes
Alan Linquist
A history of the movies from the beginning. Its about how it was created, the people who made it, the ideas that transformed it, the people who created them, the places that showed them, and the rest of us who watched them.
While California was already starting to take on movie people in 1910, Americans saw the start as someting much more exotic than that. Well look around at tht California on this episode.
I just want to let everyone who listens to this podcast to know that we have reached milestones. One hundred episodes are now available, and I'm about to achieve 2500 downloads on those episodes. So, I'll jabber on about myself for about ten minutes and then you can move on to the latest episode: THE WAY PEOPLE LOOKED AT CALIFORNIA IN 1910. Thank you!
The early movies were moving out of the studios and into the outlying areas. This includes the development of westerns, movies had in foregn lands, and comapnies starting to eye California as a place to work.
When President Theodore Roosevelt retired from the Presidency, he immediately traveled to Africa to hunt big game in the name of the Smithsonian Institute. In the wake of this expedition, movies were made both with his permission and without it.
In the middle of the Trust War, and the indie rebellion, The French eye the American market and start establishing branch companies in the US.
Theater operator Roxy Rothephal started a drive to create a better movie watching experience by promoting better looking and larger movie theaters with the kind of amenities found in theater and high class department stores.
The moralist attitudes of Victorians was starting to focus its attention on the movies, and the Trust was responding in kind.
As the movie companies become interested in making western themed movies, a shift takes place as some ofthe companies start making westerns in the west.
The Edison Company was one of the few early movie companies to leave some historical record about how it made movies. We'll take a bit of a look at the work process.
In the shadow of Florence Lawrence's success at Biograph, another young actress appeared - MAry Pickford. This is her early story.
Not very long after the studios started hiring actors on a permanent basis, on of those actors suddenly became popular - The Biograph Girl.
The attempt to organize the founding fathers of the movie industry into a Patent Trust soon led to the appearance of the first independent film companies that would have nothing to do with the Trust companies. This was the beginning of the Patent War.
The Do-Gooders start to leverage their power over the movies taking advantage of the political chaos in the movie industry.
The growing atraction of the movies grabbed the attention of America's power structure, not just the money men, but the moralists who were of two minds concerning the movies. On this episode we look at who they were.
The Patent Trust was now completely organized, so they set out to force the film distributors and movie exhibitors to operate according to rules devised by the Trust. Good luck!
After a year of political gamesmanship, the two different patent groups, one headed by Edison Company, and the other headed by the Biograph Company, merged to create the official Patent Trust.
At the bginning of 1908, Biograph Company was on hard times. Then they hired D. W. Griffith, and everything changed.
In 1908, Kalem was a brand new film company focused on making quality films. One of ther first projects was to make a movie from the best selling novel Ben Hur.
The two Chicago movie companies, Essay and Selig, were making westerns by the end of 1907, and started to explore the American West as a backdrop to those movies.
It's 1907, and the movie business is growing rapidly. In an attempt to control it, the Edison Company attempts to organized a patent trust with the other old guard movie companies.
By 1907, NIckelodeon movie theaters were spreading across America. There were problems with the concept as it existed at the time, and there were people who were not going to let those theaters get away with those problems.
In 1904, the movies were a novelty. By 1907, the movies had become a national obsession. It time to look at the bigger picture as it concerns the big change.
When the first movie companies started to make studios, and then hiring technicians to work in them, it was also time to start hiring actors.
By 1907, every company in the movie machine business was now focused on making movies, and that required cameramen, camerawomen, and directors. This episode takes a look at who they were.
The movie business really started to take off around 1907, and as it did, the first movie companies started building studios.
A look at the movies from the middle of the first decade of the Twentieth Century, from Parsifal to The Moon Lover to The Little Girl Who Didn't Believe In Santa Claus.
New York was not the only city to develop a film industry at the beginning ofthe twentieth century. Chicago also developed a strong film industry that not only made films, it distributed them. Was Chicago going to be the new leader in film making?
The murder of architect Stanford White by millionaire Harry Thaw was a scandal that made national news. And, in the end, the movies attemptedto cash in on the crime's notoriety.
The very early history of Australian cinema is told through the success of the legendary movie THE STORY OF THE NED KELLY GANG. The movie's success also allowed a group of men to create an entertainment monopoly down under, a monopoly that suffocated film making for a time.
After an earthquake hit San Francisco in April of 1906, a series of short documentary movies were released that drew a lot of attention to the movies just as their were becoming a rage among the public.
While America and France were both aggressively marketing movies, England's efforts seemed rather anemic with Cecil Hepworth proving to be more ambitious than the rest.
By around 1906 or so, an invisible network of movie exhibition existed which has not been well researched up to this time. We'll try to take a look at this places if we can.
As America's film market rapidly grows, the movie makers ignore the expanding market, and dawdle in making movies. French Pathé, hoping to conquer the American market, rushes in to fill the void.
Looking at the legend of Harry DAvid's Nickelodeon theater on Pittsburgh, as it would soon be considered America's first movie house.
American discovered amusements after the Chicago World's Fair and Coney, and thanks to that, George Hale devised a amusement ride that involved stationary train. cars and travel movies.
Once the price for buying movies increased, the film exchanges became a very important reason why the movie market continued to expand.
William Selig was one of Chicago's major filmmakers and he now enters into the story of the movies.
This episode is about America's first great movie, as we look at the events that led to it, the paly it was based on, how the movie was made, and the influence it had at that time.
Edison's legal threats to the rest of the movie companies of the time put the entire industry into chaos. Its at this time that PAthé decided top market films in America, which in some ways made things worse. But, isn't that the way it ususally is with the film industry?
Charles Pathé starts a phonograph and movie company with his brothers. With the help of Incorporation, Pathé Freres becomes a powerful company in Europe, and then invades the American market, leaving the Edison Company to try adn figure out how to deal with this laterst competitor.
At the beginning of the 20th century, simple comedies, many of them inspired by other sources, became a popular movie trend. On this episode, we'll take a look at some of them.
George Méliès released A TRIP TO THE MOON (Le Voyage dans La Lune), so lets take a look at the movie and it's history.
Siegmund Lubin, a Philadelphia optician, starts a film company and starts making early fight films.
From the beginning, the Edison Company had a grudge against the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, and over time, the Edisons set out to destroy that company through a legal war.
After the movies settled into vaudeville houses in the big cities, traveling exhibitors took the novelty into the smaller cities and towns, and even into the coutnry side.
The first person to experiment with the idea of using moving pictures to tell stories was French filmmaker and magician Georges Méliès, and that was soon followed by Gaumont filmmaker Alice Guy.
After those years where the moving picture was a novelty, the public saw the movies as a news service. Here are some of the news events of that time and the people who filmed them.
The first important movie of the twentieth century was the championship fight film between Jim Jeffries and Tom Starkey. it was a film that finally proved you could make an exciting indoor fight film with the help of a lot of lights.
Through Inabata Katsutaro, Japan has a connection to the Lumieres, as he brings projected moving pictures to Japan.
At the end of the 19th century, one of the most popular type of films was moving images of trains, as well as the British version, known as the Phantom Ride.
At the end of the 19th century, one of the most popular type of films was moving images of trains, as well as the British version, known as the Phantom Ride.
The actual war between America and Spain in 1898 was remarkably short. The fighting took place between June and September. During that time a lot of movies about the war were made, and they were all very successful. On this episode, we'll look at a number of them.
The actual war between America and Spain in 1898 was remarkably short. The fighting took place between June and September. During that time a lot of movies about the war were made, and they were all very successful. On this episode, we'll look at a number of them.
The break out of the Spanish American War in 1898 gave the American film industry a great opportunity to show the public that it was more than just a novelty. In Part One we look at the beginnings of the conflict, the explosion on the battleship Maine, and the early films of the war.
The break out of the Spanish American War in 1898 gave the American film industry a great opportunity to show the public that it was more than just a novelty. In Part One we look at the beginnings of the conflict, the explosion on the battleship Maine, and the early films of the war.
In this episode, Leon Gaumont ends up owning a company that makes movie machines, and on her down time, his secretary, Alice Guy, starts to make movies for the company.
By 1898, Thomas Edison's production manager, William Gilmore, as well as Edison's lawyers, starting sizing up the people who were exploiting the patent that the electricity wizard lay claim to, and threaten those people with lawsuits in an attempt to coerce them to shut down or to pay a percentage to Edison. This scheme was only partially successful, but it would go on for years.
The latest company to attempt to make movie machines as well as make the film they use was established by Parisian Leon Gaumont with the early films being made by his secretary, Alice Guy.
The novelty of seeing pictures move was no longer such a marvel to some people, so the moving picture people started making movies that created their own novelty. These films were were slices of life, now called actualities, but the movie people also started experimenting with comedy, magic tricks, and other types of novelties to get peoples' attention.
Georges Méliès now enters the picture. He will be the first person to take the idea of movies and do something creative with them. it is through the work of Melies that we get early movies about devils, witches, haunted houses, magical orchestras, fairy tales, and even a trip to the moon.
So, after the first projector appeared, and after the first movies were shown in the theaters, what was on the public's minds about this interresting new novelty?
The very first movies that attempted to expand the length at which movies could be shown were Passion Plays, which was the narrative about the last week in the earthly life of Jesus Christ. These were made by two independent groups outside of the three main New York movie companies of that time. A lot of conflict arose over the propriety of filming religious stories, especially ones involved major religious figures.
In May of 1897, a year after projectors were introduced to the public, a terrible fire alerted the public to the dangers of the cinema, even though it was not the movies themselves, but a accompanying lantern that sparked the tragedy.
In 1897, a film of the Corbett Fitzsimmons fight showed that movies could last more than forty seconds. This is story of how the fight came to be, the way the movie was filmed, and its success.
Now that the seeds of early cinema have been planted, let's take a look at the world of cinema at that time.
After the first movie projectors spread across America, A two people in Chicago, William Amet and George Spoor, develop a projector and start making movies.
So why did New York City become the first home of the movies? This episode will explain why that happened.
The arrival of the Edison and Lumiere projectors in New York vaudeville houses proves to be and introduction of these movie machines into America. Investors start buying and promoting Edison films, while itinerant mechanics attempt to build their own projectors. Through this mishmash of mechanical creativity, the American public gets it first taste of movies.
Once William Kennedy Laurie Dickson left the Edison Company, he joined friends who had been developing a desktop viewing machine known as the Mutoscope, and the foursome organized a company known as American Mutoscope and Biograph, a company that attempted to avoid confrontations with the Edison Group, but at the came time directly challenged them in a number of ways.
The very first stars in the projector era were two young ladies whose film shorts proved to be quite popular: May Irwin and Cissy Fitzgerald.
Louis and Auguste Lumiere are ready to sell their cinematographe worldwide. Lumiere cameramen and salesmen take the machine to the various cities of the world and promote the idea of moving images to places that never saw them before, including Russia, China, Japan, India, South America, Mexico and Australia.
With projectors being introduced to Americans in vaudeville houses, the Edison Company brings out it's own projector, known as the Vitascope. This was the machine based on the projector devised by Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins.
For several years, the primary place to watch movies was in vaudeville houses. This episode give you a brief history of live public entertainment in America in the 1800s and how it led to vaudeville. Vaudeville's sudden rise, it popularity, its exhibition scheduling, and it moral influence all had an effect on the movies at its birth.
Through the efforts of the Lumiere brothers and London scientific instrument maker Robert Paul, projectors start to appear in London.
Merry Christmas. A few days after the Christmas of 1895, the Lumieres showed a series of film shorts in a small basement salon in downtown Paris. A number of people who had seen Lumiere films at private showings attended this post Christmas exhibition, as well as others. around thirty or so people attended this first showing, but the size of the crowds were grow a lot as the Lumieres continued to exhibit their films.
The star performer of the first movie clip to be wildly popular was Annabelle Moore Whitford, a dancer who became popular in Chicago at the time of the city's Columbian Exposition and World's Fair. Her dances, known as the Butterfly Dance, and the Serpentine Dance, were influenced by another Chicagoan, Loie Fuller, who turned skirt dancing into an artform, and launched the Modern Dance movement. This is the wild story of both of them.
While Edison continues to market a peephole machine, in France, the Lumieres develop a projector of their own.
Thomas Armat and Charles Jenkins, two men from the Washington DC area, develop America's first movie projector. This machine will be very important in film history, as its the first projection machine that Thomas Edison would market, but it is the damaged relationship between the two men that makes this an intriguing story.
William Laurie Dickson worked with Thomas Edison to build the kinetoscope. Unfortunately resentment, as well as pressure from others to help build machines for them is putting him in a very difficult position. What's he going to do?
Episode 14 looks at some of the stars of the first kinetoscope films. These people were primarily vaudeville stars, including those who had become friends of Edison developer William Kennedy Laurie Dickson. These people include the bodybuilder Samson, Little Miss Sure Shot, Annie Oakie, and the Spanish dancer Carmencita.
Two groups of men, one of them being Greek Americans, and the other being the investment group of Maguire and Baucus, both introduce the kinetoscope to Europe. There, they will inspire Robert Paul and Birt Acres in London, the Lumiere brothers in France, and possibly Max Skladanowsky in Berlin.
Otway and Gray Latham join with a few friends to convince the Edison Company to make a boxing film. The film will be show in their kinetoscope parlor set up in lower Manhattan, and would prove to be a success, at least for a time. This would be the first of a number of successes for the movies and boxing as they ally with each other for the mutual success of both. This episode includes a brief history of boxing up to this time.
The Edison Company starts to sell kinetoscopes through a outside distribution group formed by the Holland Brothers of Toronto, Ontario, and Norman Raff and Frank Gammon. The foursome establish a kinetoscope parlor on Broadway in the old theater district and are surprised by their immediate success.
Thomas Edison's lab is readying the kinetoscope for the world to watch. But before it's ready, test films have to be made, as well as films that will become available to customers once the kinetoscopes are available. On this episode, we'll take a look at the Edison lab's readying process, the bugs they have to work out, and these first Edison films, including DICKSON GREETING and FRED OTT'S SNEEZE.
Thomas Edison, with a lot of help from his assistant manager, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, starts to explore the idea of making pictures that move. He'll investigate the idea of linking the moving images to sound by designing a machine that will work with a phonograph, before finally making a peephole machine that shows moving pictures but doesn't have any sound.
This is an episode dedicated to some of those people not considered when discussing the the line of influence that leads to the movies. Some of them were just too early to count. Some of them, like Ottomar Anschultz and Auguste Le Prince, should be at least considered. In all five cases, more efforts should be made to research the lives and potential influence of these men.
This is how one idea, the idea of moving images traveled from Eadweard Muybridge to both Etienne Jules Marey, who would develop a moving picture camera, and Thomas Edison, who would pursue Muybridge's idea of creating a machine to produce both moving images and sound at once. Edison would then discover the machine that could capture those images, when he visited Marey in Paris. These are the meetings that would bring together the idea of moving pictures.
George Eastman, and frustrated amateur photographer looks for a way to simplify the photographic process and ends up developing a camera film that would finally allow the first inventors of movie making machines to progress in their ideas.
We follow the trials and tribulations of Eadweard Muybridge and Gov. Leland Stanford after their first horse photograph sessions in Sacramento. Muybridge faces a murder trial and Stanford leaves Sacramento for San Francisco, and the two men eventually spend two years shooting pictures of racehorses at Stanford's horse farm at Palo Alto.
In this episode, we follow young Thomas Edison as he develops his interest in telegraphy, and uses it to develop his career in inventing communications systems. We see how telegraphy eventually leads to the telephone, how the early telephone led to Edison's experiment with the phonograph, and how all of this effects the way he views his investigations into moving images.
After failing the test for his Doctor's license, Etienne Jules Marey decides to start studying the motion of animals instead. While doing so, he develops a camera that can take multiple pictures on a glass slide, at a fast rate.
A British emigrée to America attempts to make a career out of selling books and artwork during the Gold Rush, before heading back to Europe just as the civil War breaks out. Once there, he discovers the joys of photography. He turning to America after the war, he makes a name for himself in the West as a landscape photographer, before being approached by one of America's richest men to make a glamour photograph of his prize horse.
This is a short introduction to Matinees On Main Street, as I explain who I am, how I want to explain this story, as well as the nuts and bolts of the podcast.
After a brief introduction about the movies and our culture, the early ideas that lead to photography pass from the ancient Greeks to the scientists of the Enlightenment. From there, we watch as three men, Nicephore Niepce, Louis Daguerre, and Henry Talbot experiment with light sensitive chemicals as they struggle to find a way to capture images of the real world using those chemicals.