How Brown Saw the Baseball Game

Last updated

How Brown Saw the Baseball Game
How Brown Saw the Baseball Game - Billboard Magazine Ad.jpg
Advertisement in Billboard magazine in 1907
Production
company
Lubin Manufacturing Company
Distributed byLubin Manufacturing Company
Release date
  • November 16, 1907 (1907-11-16)(United States)
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent

How Brown Saw the Baseball Game is an American short silent comedy film produced in 1907 and distributed by the Lubin Manufacturing Company. The film follows a baseball fan named Mr. Brown who overdrinks before a baseball game and becomes so intoxicated that the game appears to him in reverse motion. During production, trick photography was used to achieve this effect.

Contents

The film was released in November 1907. It received a positive review in a 1908 issue of The Courier-Journal that reported the film was successful and "truly funny". As of 2021, it is unclear whether the print of the film has survived. The identities of the film cast and production crew are unknown.

Film historians have noted similarities between the plot of How Brown Saw the Baseball Game and How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game. It is a comedy film directed by Edwin S. Porter, having released a year before How Brown Saw the Baseball Game.

Plot

Before heading out to a baseball game at a nearby ballpark, sports fan Mr. Brown drinks several highball cocktails. He arrives at the ballpark to watch the game, but has become so inebriated that the game appears to him in reverse, with the players running the bases backwards and the baseball flying back into the pitcher's hand. After the game is over, Mr. Brown is escorted home by one of his friends. When they arrive at Brown's house, they encounter his wife who becomes furious with the friend and proceeds to physically assault him, believing he is responsible for her husband's severe intoxication. [1]

Production

Siegmund Lubin in 1913. His company produced and distributed How Brown Saw the Baseball Game. Siegmund Lubin in 1913.jpg
Siegmund Lubin in 1913. His company produced and distributed How Brown Saw the Baseball Game.

How Brown Saw the Baseball Game was produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company, [2] a company founded by German-American film pioneer Siegmund Lubin. At the time How Brown Saw the Baseball Game was made, the company was creating and distributing up to three films a week. [3] The identities of How Brown Saw the Baseball Game's director and cast are not known. [4]

It is a silent film shot in black and white, [4] and the finished product comprised 350 feet (110 m) of film. [5] For the scenes which took place at the ballpark, the filmmakers used a form of trick photography to show the baseball players running backwards. [6] Siegmund Lubin filed a copyright for the film on October 26, 1907, [5] under the title How Jones Saw the Baseball Game. [7]

Release and reception

How Brown Saw the Baseball Game was released to theaters by Lubin Manufacturing Company on November 16, 1907, [5] and was still being shown as late as January 1910. [8] During this time, the film was sometimes presented as part of a double feature with the 1907 film Neighbors Who Borrow, a short comedy film about a man who lends nearly everything he owns to his neighbors until his wife returns home and berates him for doing so. [9] [10]

Advertisements for the film touted it as "such fun", and Lubin himself promoted the film as a "screamingly funny farce". [11] [12] It received a positive review in a June 1908 issue of The Courier-Journal which described the film as "truly funny" and that it proved to be "a veritable hit". [13]

Modern writings have often suggested that How Brown Saw the Baseball Game was produced as Lubin Manufacturing Company's alternative to the Edwin S. Porter-directed comedy How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game, [11] a film released by Edison Studios in 1906 [14] about an office employee sneaking out of his workplace to watch a baseball game only to discover his employer in a nearby seat. [6] Lubin Manufacturing Company was known for creating films similar to competing motion pictures made by other studios. Lubin had previously created films resembling Edison Studios' releases Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Great Train Robbery . [3] Author Jack Spears wrote in his book Hollywood: The Golden Era that How Brown Saw the Baseball Game and How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game "used practically the same plot"; [15] Rob Elderman's article "The Baseball Film: to 1920" in the journal Base Ball likewise notes the similarities of their plotlines. [6]

As of February 2021, it is unclear whether there is a surviving print of How Brown Saw the Baseball Game; it has likely become a lost film. If rediscovered, the film would be in the public domain. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florence Lawrence</span> Canadian-American actress (1886–1938)

Florence Lawrence was a Canadian-American stage performer and film actress. She is often referred to as the "first movie star", and was long thought to be the first film actor to be named publicly until evidence published in 2019 indicated that the first named film star was French actor Max Linder. At the height of her fame in the 1910s, she was known as the "Biograph Girl" for work as one of the leading ladies in silent films from the Biograph Company. She appeared in almost 300 films for various motion picture companies throughout her career.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siegmund Lubin</span> American motion picture pioneer

Siegmund Lubin was an American motion picture pioneer who founded the Lubin Manufacturing Company (1902–1917) of Philadelphia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romaine Fielding</span> American actor

Romaine Fielding was an American actor, screenwriter, and silent film director known for his dramatic westerns. He was also known as Royal A. Blandin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lubin Manufacturing Company</span> American silent motion picture production company

The Lubin Manufacturing Company was an American motion picture production company that produced silent films from 1896 to 1916. Lubin films were distributed with a Liberty Bell trademark.

<i>Outwitting Dad</i> 1914 film

Outwitting Dad is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company and featuring Billy Bowers, Raymond McKee, and Oliver Hardy in his first known screen appearance.

<i>A Brewerytown Romance</i> 1914 film

A Brewerytown Romance is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company, starring Eva Bell, Raymond McKee, Frank Griffin, and Oliver Hardy.

<i>Long May It Wave</i> 1914 film

Long May It Wave is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company, featuring Raymond McKee, Mae Hotely, Marguerite Ne Moyer, Ed Lawrence, Ben Walker, and Oliver Hardy.

<i>His Sudden Recovery</i> 1914 film

His Sudden Recovery is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company, featuring Oliver Hardy, Eloise Willard, Frances Ne Moyer, and Marguerite Ne Moyer.

<i>Worms Will Turn</i> 1914 film

Worms Will Turn is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company, featuring Raymond McKee, Julia Calhoun, Ed Lawrence, and Oliver Hardy.

The Rise of the Johnsons is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company, featuring John Edwards, Mattie Edwards, and Oliver Hardy.

<i>He Wanted Work</i> 1914 film

He Wanted Work is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company, featuring John Edwards, Mattie Edwards, Billy Bowers, and Oliver Hardy.

<i>Back to the Farm</i> 1914 film

Back to the Farm is a lost 1914 silent comedy short film that co-starred Oliver "Babe" Hardy and Herbert "Bert" Tracy. Written by Will Louis and produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company of Pennsylvania, the short was filmed in Jacksonville, Florida. It was directed by Joseph Levering, likely in collaboration with the chief director on Lubin's production staff in Jacksonville, Arthur Hotaling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West End Park (Houston)</span> Former baseball park in Houston, Texas

West End Park was a baseball park in Houston from 1905 to the 1940s. It was the primary ballpark for the city when it was constructed, and the city's first venue for Negro Major League games. From 1909 through 1910 and again in 1915, it also served as the spring training facility of the St. Louis Browns as well as the 1914 New York Yankees of the American League and the 1906 through 1908 St. Louis Cardinals of the National League in Major League Baseball. After its use by its primary tenant, the Houston Buffaloes of the Texas League, the ballpark was sold to what is now known as the Houston Independent School District for its use until it was demolished.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vim Comedy Company</span>

The Vim Comedy Company was a short-lived movie studio in Jacksonville, Florida and New York City. Vim bought out Siegmund Lubin's Lubin Manufacturing Company Jacksonville, Florida facilities at 750 Riverside Avenue in 1915 after that company went bankrupt. It was founded by Louis Burstein and Mark Dintenfass. Vim specialized in two-reel comedies, producing hundreds of them in the short time it existed. Notable Vim actors were Oliver Hardy, Ethel Marie Burton, Walter Stull, Billy Ruge, Rosemary Theby, Billy Bletcher and his wife Arline Roberts, and Kate Price. At its peak Vim had a workforce of nearly 50 people. The Vim Comedy Company went out of business in 1917 after Oliver Hardy discovered that both Burstein and Dintenfass were stealing from the payroll. Vim was bought out by the King-Bee Films studio started by Burstein.

The Bold Bank Robbery is a 1904 short crime film produced and distributed by the Lubin Manufacturing Company. The silent film depicts a group of burglars who plan and execute a successful bank heist. Company employee Jack Frawley was the film's director, also coming up with the story and serving as cinematographer; the cast's identities are unknown. The silent film was the first Lubin Manufacturing Company release to feature an original narrative.

<i>Kansas Saloon Smashers</i> 1901 film by Edwin Stanton Porter

Kansas Saloon Smashers is a 1901 comedy short film produced and distributed by Edison Studios. Directed by Edwin S. Porter, it is a satire of American activist Carrie Nation. The film portrays Nation and her followers entering and destroying a saloon. After the bartender retaliates by spraying Nation with water, policemen order them out; the identities of the actors are not known. Inspiration for the film was provided by an editorial cartoon which appeared in the New York Evening Journal.

Hemlock Hoax, the Detective is an American short comedy film produced and distributed in 1910 by the Lubin Manufacturing Company. The silent film features a detective named Hemlock Hoax who tries to solve a murder, which unbeknownst to him is a practical joke being played on him by two young boys. It was one of many shorts designed to derive its humor from a sleuth whose name was similar to Sherlock Holmes.

<i>Meet Me at the Fountain</i> 1904 American film

Meet Me at the Fountain is a 1904 American silent short comedy film written, produced, and directed by Siegmund Lubin. Actors in the movie included Gilbert Sarony, a well-known cross-dressing performer. The film was inspired by Wallace McCutcheon's 1904 film Personal.

<i>Jones and His New Neighbors</i> 1909 film

Jones and His New Neighbors is a 1909 American silent comedy film written by Frank E. Woods and directed by D. W. Griffith. Produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in New York City, the short stars John R. Cumpson, Florence Lawrence, and Anita Hendrie. It is one film in a series of 1908 and 1909 Biograph pictures in which Cumpson and Lawrence performed together as the married couple Mr. and Mrs. Jones. When this comedy was released in March 1909, it was distributed to theaters on a "split reel", which was a single projection reel that accommodated more than one motion picture. It shared its reel with another Biograph short directed by Griffith, the dramatic "thriller" The Medicine Bottle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1914 Lubin vault fire</span> Destruction of a film-storage vault

On the morning of June 13, 1914, a disastrous fire and a series of related explosions occurred in the main film vault of the Lubin Manufacturing Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Several possible causes for the blaze were cited at the time, one being "spontaneous combustion" of highly flammable nitrate film, which was the motion picture industry's standard medium for cameras throughout the silent era and for the first two decades of "talking pictures". Millions of feet of film were consumed in the flames, including most of the master negatives and initial prints of Lubin's pre-1914 catalog, several of the company's recently completed theatrical prints ready for release and distribution, a considerable number of films produced by other studios, inventories of raw and stock footage, hundreds of reels documenting historic events that occurred between 1897 and early 1914, as well as other films related to notable political and military figures, innovations in medical science, and professional athletic contests from that period. While this fire was not a decisive factor in Lubin's decline and bankruptcy by September 1916, costs associated with the disaster only added to the corporation's mounting debts, which led to the closure or sale of its remaining operations the following year.

References

  1. ↑ Erickson 1992 , p. 324; "How Brown Saw the Baseball Game". American Film Institute. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  2. ↑ "How Brown Saw the Baseball Game". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved November 13, 2013.
  3. 1 2 Seiler & Seiler 2013 , p. 34
  4. 1 2 3 "How Brown Saw the Baseball Game". Silent Era. Archived from the original on March 19, 2019. Retrieved November 13, 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 "How Brown Saw the Baseball Game". American Film Institute. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved November 13, 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 Elderman, Rob (Spring 2007). "The Baseball Film to 1920". Base Ball. 1 (1): 24.
  7. ↑ Erickson 2016, p. 482.
  8. ↑ "Superior life motion pictures". Moberly Daily Monitor. January 31, 1910. p. 3 – via NewspaperArchive.
  9. ↑ "Berlin Electrical Theater". Ocala Evening Star . August 13, 1908. p. 3a. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved November 29, 2013.
  10. ↑ "Neighbors Who Borrow". Billboard . Vol. 19. December 14, 1907. p. 21.
  11. 1 2 Erickson 1992 , p. 324
  12. ↑ "How Brown Saw the Baseball Game". Billboard . Vol. 19. December 14, 1907. p. 21.
  13. ↑ "Motion picture shows". The Courier-Journal . Louisville, Kentucky. June 8, 1908. p. 10 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ Wood & Pincus 2003 , p. 12
  15. ↑ Spears 1971 , p. 258

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.