Spooktober 24: Little Red Riding Hood (1901)

 

 

 I felt it was time to feature some more Méliès, and it is also a good idea to occasionally take the time to turn a little attention to some of his films that are, at present, lost to us. Many only have titles, and are known only by catalog entries; but some, like this one have extant materials.  In this case, all that remains of Méliès Le petit chaperon rouge [Little Red Riding Hood] is one of his drawings. What currently survives of this 1901 short, which was probably released in the spring of 1901 in France, is the color illustration made by Georges Méliès himself of his intents for the final scene of the film. We do know that the film was quite popular as it was released in both the U.K. and the U.S.; though only in the U.K. was it properly promoted. We also know that the film had hand tinting, due to the distribution in England by the Warwick Trading Company, as they had the choice to distribute the film in either color or in black and white. One small hope that we have that a copy may be found, say perhaps in the Library of Congress, in a mislabeled storing is that Edison's company, in all definitions of the word "stole" the film from Star Pictures and promoted it in the United States as an Edison production. Shockingly, laws in the U.S. at the time (written largely due to lobbying by Edison and like companies) permitted this. For this reason, it, ironically, gives film historians and film lovers some hope that copy may turn up under this bogus title.

Born Today June 27: May Irwin

1862-1938

Canadian born actress, singer and vaudevillian May Irwin was born Georgina May Campbell on this day in Whitby, Ontario, Canada.  After the untimely death of her father, her mother encouraged her and her sister to take up singing and other performance to help make ends meet.  They were eventually billed as "The Irwin Sisters" and made a formal debut over the border  of the United States in Buffalo, New York.  The were eventually booked to perform in New York City.  Though they were finding more and more success, May struck out on her own around the age of 21.  In 1883, she joined a stock company and made her debut on the theatrical stage.  In 1884, she made her stage debut in London, England.  At this time, she was making a whopping $2,500 a week!  By the 1890's she had developed signature performance numbers on the stage, one of which ended in a kiss with her fellow performer John C. Rice.  This is where movie making history steps in.  One night, one Thomas Edison happen to catch their act and decided he wanted to memorialize the kiss for his Kinetoscope production.  He was well aware that no one had filmed an actual kiss yet; probably because it was deemed too risque for the times.  So the very famous Edison short The Kiss became the first kiss filmed for a motion picture; it dates from 1896.  As far as Edison shorts goes, this is by far one of the most famous!  She appeared in only one other silent film and that came in 1914 with Mrs. Black Is Back, which was based on a play that she had been the star of on the stage.  Her likeness from The Kiss appeared in the 1936 sound documentary Fashions In Love as archive footage.  She died two years later on the 22nd of October from pneumonia in New York City at the age of 76.  She is buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York

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The World's First Movie Studio

The so called "Black Maria" opened on Edison lot in New Jersey 1893.

A Short Bit About Muybridge And The Horse Photography

The very earliest "movies" can be seen in the rise of something of a in-between technological advance in photography and true motion picture cameras:  it's called series photography and it's inventor was one Eadweard Muybridge (who was actually born in UK [Kingston-upon-Thames, England] as Edward Muggeridge.) 

Muybridge after the invention of series photography.

The first, and most famous of these, is the series of horse photographs dating from 1877 (see plate above).  Though photography had been around since the 1820's, the amount of exposure time needed to produce these images was rather encumbering in terms of portability (actually an understatement).  As the the 19th century advanced, so did technologies within the photographic world.  The reduction of exposure time from a full 15 minutes to 1/100 of a second by the 1870's, made photography a more portable and out door affair; however, it was really the change in photographic plates that made what Muybridge would conceive of as possible.  The introduction of gelatin dry plates made outdoor photography a much portable and cheaper affair (the plates before these had been wet silver plates, which didn't travel nearly as well and were much more expensive).  The new advances also improved the quality of outdoor photography especially.  

Another plate showing a series of horse photographs by Muybridge is states of motion, and one stationary photo, with measurements.

Still it took Muybridge some 5 years to work out how to achieve this (not that he was devoting his time during this period to just this venture--he traveled as a hired a photographer, amongst other things during the stretch).  It all started when he was hired in 1872 as a well known photographer by one Leland Stanford (tycoon and, yes, the namesake of the university) to prove that at some point in the stride, or gallop, of a horse, all four hoofs were off the ground at once.  It took until the summer of 1877 to pull this off.  He did so by setting up a string of electrically powered cameras at a racetrack in Sacramento California, pulling wires across the track at each camera so that when the animal ran through the string, the shutter would be tripped.  What he captured more than proved that horses do indeed have all four legs off the ground at times in full gallop; but it also sparked an idea.  By finding a way to arrange the photographs in an electrically controlled flip type machine (a perfection that he would later call a zoopraxiscope), he could actually show the animal and rider in motion.  Well hey presto, the motion picture industry was born.  Inventors like Edison, the Lumiére Brothers and others got their cogs turning independently from each other.  Taking photography to the next level of creating a moving picture which could be viewed without the use of a visible mechanism was the next stop.  Here come the movies.  Below is an embed that shows some of this horse photography in animated action.