Film Firsts, Pt 1 (1963)

in the mid 19th century came owns were immediately meant to use pictures to create the ill of movement dozens of devices and toys were put on the market the end of the century the intermittent shutter machines had been developed which made possible the world's newest art form an art that was to mature more rapidly than any other in the history of the world in their very first years the movies thought of and tried most of the ideas stories and techniques which we regard as standard movie fair today we think some surprises are in store for you during this half hour and a sequel half hour program as you watch film first the history of the motion picture a series in which we follow the growth of a new art its earliest Beginnings the first concept of projection the development of story and spectacle and the great Stars all a part of the history of the motion [Music] picture a child standing in the middle of New York's busy Riverside Drive barely rescued from a wouldbe hit andun driver the police just that year provided with motors on their bikes go into action and we have the movie's first highway chase the year 19 [Music] 183 compare this view of Riverside Drive with the bumper to bumper apartment to apartment Riverside Drive of today one thing is still unchanged though Grant's Tomb and there's an even more important first in this early Edison subject the trucking of the camera on a vehicle to follow the action film historians have often made the false assumption that Trucking shots were first Tried by Griffith half a dozen years later and perfected by the Germans in the 20s this was Edison [Music] [Applause] [Music] 193 more crime on the New York streets 60 years before Naked City and The Untouchables with this 192 semi-documentary the movie tradition of cops and robbers began the gangster film made not by Warner Brothers in the 30s in Hollywood but by DW Griffith in 1912 on New York's East Side [Music] [Applause] [Music] of course the movies subsequently moved to California but it's ironic that later still in the 1950s and 60s the new wave of movie making was to take many Productions back to New York for the realism of the city streets [Applause] take particular note of the good badman hero played by Elmer Booth almost exactly as James Kagney might have played him a generation later especially in this scene where he goes to claim his girl or the girl he thought was [Music] his played by Lillian Gish [Music] talking [Music] [Music] pictures this early film was 100% all talking all singing all dancing and it wasn't one of the musicals that followed the jazz singer after 1927 it was made by Edison in 1913 I am the queen of the fair and I'm going to cast a spell over the giant a spell of joy and entertainment the great inventor had first experimented with tying in sound with movies back in 1900 for this group of sound films that he made in 1913 and 14 he had recording and Vaudeville artists record the track on a revolving waxed cylinder much like the later dictaphone cylinders the big problem was that it was up to the projectionists in each theater to constantly slow down and speed up the picture and the track cylinder to keep the sound in synchronization so these talkies were not practical for continued distribution [Music] Gone With the Wind Andersonville The Birth of a Nation no this was before any of them it is a film called the battle made in 1912 by Griffith with accuracy in costuming and in the mechanics of warfare worthy of a multi-million dollar reconstruction of today the plot was the first of what today is considered a Hollywood standard The Red Badge of Courage for example a young Soldier panicked by his first experience Under [Music] Fire later inspired by the great bravery of those around him he regains his courage sizes up the desperate battle situation of the Union forces and races to headquarters with a warning that ammunition reserves must be sent [Music] up he personally leads the ammo train to the front [Music] lines and the Union cause is saved propaganda movies this film The nalists was made shortly after the unsuccessful Russian Revolution of 195 it purports to show the tyranny of the zaris regime but it could just as easily have applied in 1917 to show the bestiality of the then successful Bolshevik Rebels toward the Russian Aristocrats either way from the standpoint of film history the point is that the message is brought home in terms of brutality a technique that was to be followed in hundreds of later propaganda and atrocity films [Music] while the Neals was a breast of the times this 199 propaganda film was well ahead the story was much like the later I lived three lives about a communist spy with the FBI an impressionable young man disillusioned with his own failure in private industry has been lured into signing up with the Communist cell realized that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was still 8 years off yet here was a film telling Americans that communist agents were already spreading red gospel within the United [Music] States domestic comedy yes the year is 194 and the movies are already kidding Suburbia this is the family of a city dweller just making the move to the [Music] suburbs the clumsy moving man still worth a laugh on the newest movie or TV show today but the sophisticated audiences of 194 had seen it all a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the same film anticipated other themes of today's situation comedies kitchen help for example hard to get sport and naturally not inclined to Brook interference by [Music] mother-in-law the lady of the house plays the role of [Music] Peacemaker finally father is ushered in to [Music] negotiate and ushered out and just as it happens today the incident caus his father to miss the 804 on a morning in 1904 [Music] [Applause] doubtless you recognize the most famous of all early movies 193s The Great Train Robbery often hailed as the first film with a story which it really wasn't there had been several [Music] others but the Great Train Robbery was the first Western even though filmed in New Jersey the Curious Thing is that the western movie Deluge did not follow immediately it took a few years for all the standard ingredients to crystallize in films like this a race for Millions already the characters are individuals instead of a group of villains and a posy of good guys there's just one of each here the Crooked Claim Jumper bribes the Wells Fargo agents to let him take the express and file the claim ahead of the heroin [Music] the heroine incidentally not being an experienced horsewoman is late for her entrance and has to be waved on stage by the other actors of course you've noticed that so far the action has been photographed with one camera on one stage just like a play but at least the hero is motorized and here's a real film first the first Peola the camera picks up the name of the car Rainer they cut to outdoors and we see the movie's first race between a car and a train ironic that in 195 filmmakers were modernizing Western with cars and trains whereas half a century later they were to be going to great effort to recreate the authentic old west of course the hero and heroine win the race to file the claim making the villain so angry that he gets drunk and sets the scene for another movie first a challenge fight the gun duel for which Main Street is cleared of bystanders you're about to see the fastest guns of the movies in 195 half a century Before High Noon [Music] but despite the introduction of these cliches to be westerns didn't catch on generally right away something was still missing from the recipe one man thought thought he knew what it was his name GM Anderson and almost 50 years later he came to our Studios and reviewed with us the birth of westerns he said it had all started when he had been in New York doing odd jobs and by chance was engaged by Edwin s Porter to appear in The Great Train Robbery and we went to the libery table first to pick up the horses and as I started to mount the horse some flunking in the back says hey boy I wouldn't Mount the horse from that side I said what's the difference he says you mount him from that side you'll find out you know they they mount a horse from a certain side what I did I mount him on the right side and then I Jed away the other hores galloped on and I kept my horse in the gallop and he kept bouncing and bouncing and bouncing and pretty soon he bounced too much and I bounced off so then I became a train robber on foot and I played about four or five parts in that I was a fell that run away from the from the passenger train after the robbers got him all lined up and got killed and then I was a 10er foot in the uh room where they were having a dance and all the rough necks made me dance and that's the my beginning in the picture business and I thought then that that's what they're going to eventually want pictures of action and then finally that's what they what led me on to make the Western a little later on GM Anderson did continue making westerns but something was still missing and one day he realized what it was because I found out the solution why that the Wern I made didn't go they wanted a character that they could heroized and they could glamorize and love and that's what they're doing today they have a central carry today like Jim Ares Gunsmoke and the Maverick uh Have Gun World Travel it's a central figure and now that is the beginning of the western yes the beginning of westerns was the creation of the cowboy star and Anderson became the first as if by Instinct he hit on the traits that the public would love for all his strength and courage the cowboy must be a bit bashful with the [Music] ladies he must be just yet merciful never killing or shooting an opponent when other means might do [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] he must be fearless and resourceful [Music] of course he must be a skilled Horseman as he himself pointed out this was a skill that did not come naturally to Anderson and he must must have a horsey [Music] nickname and that's how the Bronco Billy started and that's how I started making BR bilage and you know and I know how they went they pented everyone went better Bronco Billy was the screen's first Cowboy personality but the first face to actually go before a movie camera had been that of Fred art not an actor but an assistant in Mr Edison's laboratory in the 1890s the first professional movie actor was Layman build as the man of a thousand faces a generation before Lan Cheney the first female movie personality was not a female at all but a female impersonator Gilbert Cerrone the first screen Embrace which you've doubtless seen many times was between May Irwin and John rice a scene from their then current Broadway play but it took another 10 years for producers to recognize and exploit audience interest in screen personalities and it was the audiences themselves who brought it about by their demand to know the real name of this popular actress build only as the Biograph girl she turned out to be Florence Lawrence but popular as Miss Lawrence was she was to remain better known to posterity as the Biograph girl and the actress who about 1910 was to establish the star system as we still know it today was of course Mary pford the first personality to become a commodity bigger than her own Studio a phenomenon that has plagued the movie industry ever [Music] since and here's the screen's first star comedian jovial rotund John bunny teamed with a colleag who acted for the cameras three or four dog Generations before Lassie [Music] this is the movie's first Cleopatra starring Helen Gardner Miss Gardner established several film precedents Not only was she the first star to produce her own pictures but she was the very first movie Vamp preceding the Bara by a couple of years and she was one of the first to recognized that the public was ready for features longer than one or two reals her fulllength Cleopatra was made in 1912 a year before the film generally regarded as the first feature the [Music] man this is the sequence where Anthony is called back to Rome and Cleopatra is reluctant to let him go crude as it may seem today the picture caused almost as much excitement as Elizabeth Taylor's version exactly half a century [Music] later no this is not our commercial this commercial is 65 years old no sooner had the movies gotten under way in the '90s then manufacturers saw the possibilities of commercials and introduced the technique of sugarcoating the hard cell with an entertaining film sequence or by tying their commercial in with a public event such as a bicycle race now for a much more up-to-date commercial and then another quite amazing film first we'll see more film first in a sequel half hour but the last first on this program is the most topical of of all made in 192 by the ingenious Pioneer George melas these are the ceremonies of loading and launching of a rocket to the moon a project which in Mel's day represented the furthest reaches of the most vivid imagination but which of course today is very real melas was a showman too and noticed that he anticipated the Warner Brothers musical choruses of the 30s with a squad of shapely maidens to help launch the rocket [Music] [Applause] [Music] his film ended with a moon's eye view of the earth as we said or should have said at the start there's nothing new in the movies [Music] the