Teacher Resources - Collection - Inventing Entertainment: The Edison Companies
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Inventing Entertainment: the Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies

U.S. HistoryCritical ThinkingArts & Humanities

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Go directly to the collection, Inventing Entertainment: the Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies, in American Memory, or view a Summary of Resources related to the collection.

The film and audio recordings collected in Inventing Entertainment provide opportunities to chronicle the evolution of the motion picture industry and its influence on popular entertainment. Footage of vaudeville performers provides a catalyst to assess the demise of theatrical film during the early-twentieth century. Films of the Western genre can prompt a discussion on how certain styles transcend the media after entering the nation's cultural vocabulary. Additional films can be analyzed to discuss the merits of public executions and to research historic firsts in technology and popular entertainment.

Chronological Thinking Skills

An August 1910 article on Thomas Edison, "Who's Who in the Film Game," describes the motion picture camera as "the absolute foundation of an amusement business that encircles the world, giving employment to thousands and numbering its daily devotees by hundreds and hundreds of thousands." The Special Presentations, "The Timeline for Inventing Entertainment," and "The Life of Thomas Edison" provide an opportunity to chronicle the early history of the motion picture industry and the relationship between technology and the development of narrative forms.

The filmography, "Chronological Title List of Edison Motion Pictures," features examples of motion pictures from the first three decades of the industry's history, beginning with the Dickson Greeting (1891). Non-fiction "actualities" of vaudeville performers, documentaries, and comic sketches featuring trick photography gradually gave way to longer narratives such as an adaptation of the fairy tale, Jack and the Beanstalk and original tales such as the famous Western, The Great Train Robbery (1903).

The Dickson Greeting from 1891.
William Dickson's 1891 Greeting.

The motion picture industry of the early twentieth century provided an opportunity to create these new types of narratives but many studios based projects on the proven success of their competitors. The Special Presentation, "The History of Edison Motion Pictures," explains that competition often resulted in different studios remaking the same film. For example, How a French Nobleman Got a Wife . . . (1904) was a remake of the Biograph Studios film, Personal (1904), but Edison's picture became the most successful film of the year.

  • How did competition and technological innovations in the motion picture industry influence the narratives of the films and establish certain genres?
  • Why do you think that Edison's studio copied other studios' work?
  • Do you think that copying other people's stories is a concern in the contemporary film industry?

Historical Comprehension: Vaudeville and Motion Pictures

Vaudeville was a popular stage entertainment in the United States during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Actors, singers, athletes, comedians, magicians, dancers, and other performers entertained middle-class audiences in theaters across the country. This collection features footage of vaudeville entertainers such as modern-day Hercules, Eugene Sandow, dancers such as the Leander Sisters and Carmencita , Venezuelan rope and slack wire walker Juan Caicedo, and the acrobatic comic duo, Robetta and Doretto. A search on the term, vaudeville, results in audio recordings of comic songs such as Gasoline Gus and His Jitney Bus and a variety of vaudeville films.

Uncle Josh dances with an onscreen performer.
Uncle Josh dances with an onscreen performer in Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show.
Film projectors entered vaudeville theaters in 1896 and they eventually became the biggest attraction on the bill. While the comic film, Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show exaggerates people's reaction to the realism of the silver screen, it also demonstrates how theaters featured a variety of short films. Motion pictures such as The Enchanted Drawing and The Magician employ trick photography as a modern magic show, almost impossible to duplicate as a live stage performance. Meanwhile, documentaries such as the series of films depicting the aftermath of a cyclone in Galveston, Texas, including, Panorama of Galveston Power House and the Panoramic View of Tremont Hotel, Galveston displayed both the devastation of the area and the impressive ability of the motion picture camera to provide news images across the country.

A year later, footage of President William McKinley's funeral circulated the theaters in a similar series. (Additional themes are listed in the Special Presentation, "Overview of Edison Motion Pictures by Genre.")

While vaudeville temporarily flourished by incorporating motion pictures in their programs, the film industry eventually took center stage as many vaudeville entertainers leapt to the silver screen and theaters were converted to accommodate movies. Additional films and other vaudeville materials are available in the American Memory collection, American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment 1870-1920.

  • What styles of humor are used in comic songs such as Gasoline Gus and His Jitney Bus?
  • Why do you think that so many vaudeville performers were featured in early films?
  • What do you think were the potential benefits for audiences and motion picture distributors in featuring a vaudeville performance on film?
  • How did vaudeville and other forms of popular entertainment influence the development of motion pictures?
  • Why do you think that motion pictures eventually became more popular than vaudeville?
  • Are certain elements of vaudeville still apparent in contemporary motion pictures?

Historical Analysis and Interpretation: The American West

During the nineteenth century, popular entertainment such as dime novels and stage plays established the Western genre while blurring the line between fact and fiction. For example, William Cody was a soldier, hunter, and Indian scout whose exploits were celebrated and exaggerated in Ned Buntline's Buffalo Bill dime novels. In 1872, Cody first portrayed Buffalo Bill on stage. He successfully adopted the public persona for future performances and later wrote his own dime novels and an autobiography about frontier life. He also established "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" in 1883.

This troupe of cowboys, Native Americans, and other performers dramatized frontier life for audiences across the United States and Europe with skill-demonstrations and reenactments of buffalo hunts, armed conflicts, and traditional dances. A search on the term, wild west, yields films such as Buffalo Bill's Wild West Parade, Native American performances of the Buffalo Dance and the Sioux Ghost Dance and skill-demonstrations such as a cowboy riding a bucking bronco and sharpshooter Annie Oakley firing at targets in Edison's New Jersey studio. Additional images of Buffalo Bill's Wild West and other photographs from the era are available in the American Memory collection, History of the American West: 1860-1920.

Sharpshooter Annie Oakley performs in Edison's studio.
Sharpshooter Annie Oakley performs in Edison's studio.
  • How do the performances of Buffalo Bill's troupe depict life in the West?
  • How do you think that audiences might have responded to the performers in Buffalo Bill's Wild West?
  • How did Buffalo Bill's Wild West compare to other popular stage entertainments of the era such as vaudeville?
  • How did the skills and feats of performers such as Annie Oakley and Native American dancers compare to their counterparts on the vaudeville stage?
  • How did the performers in Buffalo Bill's Wild West compare to performers featured in the foreign village of the Pan-American Exposition of 1901?
  • What does the employment of real Native Americans and cowboys contribute to these shows?
  • After viewing some of the images in History of the American West: 1860-1920, do you think that it was possible that Buffalo Bill's performance troupe influenced life in the frontier?
  • How does the contemporary appeal of the Western genre in books, film, and television compare to the appeal of the Buffalo Bill's Wild West?

The traditions of the Western genre continued in early films such as The Great Train Robbery (1903), which Edison's motion picture catalog describes as the "faithful duplication of the genuine 'Hold Ups' made famous by various outlaw bands in the far West." In one of the most famous scenes from the movie, an outlaw fires his gun directly at the camera. Edison's catalog explains that the image can be used at the projectionist's discretion at either the beginning or the end of the film for dramatic effect.

  • What elements of the West was this film trying to dramatize? Do you think that this is an accurate depiction of frontier life?
  • How does this film compare to contemporary Westerns?
  • What do you think are the enduring elements of the Western genre?
  • Why do you think that Westerns have been popular for more than a century?

Historical Issue-Analysis and Decision-Making: Historical Reenactments of Executions

This collection contains battle scenes from the Boer War of South Africa, the Spanish-American War, and the United States campaign in the Philippines. These historical reenactments provided an opportunity to capitalize on an audience's interest in news events without jeopardizing the safety of a cameraman and his equipment.

While films such as Capture of Boer Battery by British, Cuban Ambush, and Capture of Trenches at Candaba feature smoke effects and the occasional wounded soldier, none of the participants appear to die. A search on the term, execution, however, produces three historical reenactments in which death is the main attraction.

The film, The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895), features the beheading of the sixteenth-century monarch as a "realistic reproduction of an historic scene" that greatly benefits from trick photography. In the midst of the Spanish-American War, Shooting Captured Insurgents (1898), depicted Cuban rebels struck down in a firing squad with the "flash of rifles and drifting smoke [making] a very striking picture." Three years later, eyewitness accounts were used to recreate the electrocution of President William McKinley's assassin in the Execution of [Leon] Czolgosz, with panorama of Auburn Prison. An actor portraying the assassin in the electric chair.
An actor portraying the assassin in the electric chair in the Execution of [Leon] Czolgosz, with panorama of Auburn Prison.
  • What do you think was the purpose of each reenactment of an execution? How do you think that audiences might have responded to these reenactments?
  • Do you think that there is a different intention in depicting a Spanish firing squad executing Cuban rebels and a U.S. prison executing a presidential assassin?
  • Do you think that it is necessary to have some knowledge about the events surrounding an execution to appreciate the significance of each film? Do you think that the interest of such films reside in their historical significance or in the spectacle of death itself?
  • What does the reenactment of an execution in a motion picture provide that might be lacking in portrayals through other media such as photography or prose?
  • What are the detriments to presenting an execution in a motion picture?
  • Do you think that there is a difference between viewing a reenactment of an execution and viewing such a reenactment as part of a larger work of fiction?
  • What might these films imply about the role of capital punishment in early twentieth-century society?
  • Do you think that people would watch a reenactment of a contemporary execution?
  • Do you think that people would watch a live execution?

Historical Research Capabilities

The essays in this collection describing the history of the Edison Cylinder Phonograph and Edison Motion Pictures provide an opportunity to further investigate the origins of both inventions. The collection also affords the opportunity to examine early experimental films such as the Dickson Greeting (1891), the Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894) that combined a kinetoscope and phonograph, and the Panorama of Esplanade by Night (1901), which is alleged to be the first film taken at night by incandescent light in the United States.

In addition to technological firsts, some films in this collection provide scenes of other historic firsts in the United States, including the first annual Automobile Parade (1899) in downtown Manhattan, President McKinley taking the Oath to become the first U.S. president of the twentieth century, and Coney Island's establishment as the first amusement park.

Rube and Mandy getting off of the Coney Island train ride.
Rube and Mandy getting off of the Coney Island train ride.
Coney Island was a popular recreation area in the late-nineteenth century. It featured three race tracks, the nation's first roller coaster in 1884, a Ferris Wheel a decade later, and the first enclosed amusement park in 1895. Subsequent attractions followed and Coney Island developed into an historic entertainment area. A search on the term, Coney Island, yields films from the park's first decade. Shooting the Chutes (1896) features the park's water slides, Racing at Sheepshead Bay (1897) presents one of the area's three racetracks, and Rube and Mandy at Coney Island, (1903) features the rides found in Steeplechase Park and Luna Park. (Luna Park was the creation of the duo of Frederic Thompson and Elmer Dundy who created the "Trip to the Moon" ride at the Pan-American Exposition of 1901.)
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Last updated 09/26/2002