The Birth of the Movies

THIS JUST IN: TUESDAY'S PRESENTATION HAS BEEN CANCELLED. IT WILL BE HELD ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 26, AT 2:00 AT THE ROBBINSVILLE BRANCH LIBRARY. CALL AHEAD FOR RESERVATIONS:
609-259-2150.

Tomorrow evening at seven o'clock I'm going to the Ewing branch of the Mercer County Public Library and do my illustrated talk on the birth of the movies, where I show people how the first American moving images were produced in Thomas Edison's studio by his assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, and where the movies went from there. It's quite an interesting show. Like a lot of things, cinema wasn't shaped by the intentions of the people who first put it together, but by its inherent possibilities.

Edison--no surprises there--saw his movies as a way to make money by selling Kinetoscopes, his patented peep-show devices. He was always a hardware guy.  When his people told him that the public wanted to gather in theaters and watch movies as a group, up on a screen, he was outraged. He figured the most you could sell would be one projector per city, whereas a good kinetoscope parlor offered at least ten peep-show machines, sometimes as many as twenty.

After he finally understood the potential of the nickelodeons, Edison still didn't get it; for a long time the films he made were suitable only for cigar-chomping men. You've no idea how low Edison could sink until you've seen his offering of a girl on a trapeze taking off her long black dress with its leg-o-mutton sleeves, then her petticoat, corset cover, garters, and stockings, all the while flinging these items at a pair of dirty old men in a nearby balcony. In the end she's dressed only in tights and a trapeze artist's outfit. Revolting.

And I'm going to show it at the Ewing Branch Library, yessir. Along with The Great Train Robbery, a later Edison Studios offering that was a huge hit because it appealed (finally) to everyone. And an early one-reeler from D.W, Griffith, which he made while he was still honing his craft (not that he ever stopped). Then I'm going to show the last half of C. B. DeMille's The Cheat, the half with all the sex, violence, and shameless racism. It's wonderful. Sessue Hayakawa was an exceptional actor all his life, but when he was young he was also a handsome hunk.

Drop around if you're in the neighborhood of Ewing, NJ, on Tuesday evening, or if you'll be in Robbinsville on Saturday, February 26, come to the Robbinsville Library at two in the afternoon, where I'll be doing the same show. Or get your own library to drop me a line and get me to come there and do it. I have a couple of other gigs lined up later. They're listed on my website (http://www.irenefleming.com/ireneloc.htm).