[[William Courtenay (actor)|William Courtenay]]
[[Chauncey Depew]]"},"music":{"wt":""},"cinematography":{"wt":""},"editing":{"wt":""},"distributor":{"wt":"Alexander Black Photoplays"},"released":{"wt":"{{film date|1894|10|9}}"},"runtime":{"wt":""},"country":{"wt":"United States"},"language":{"wt":"[[Silent film|Silent]]"},"budget":{"wt":""},"gross":{"wt":""}},"i":0}}]}" id="mwAg">1894 American film
Miss Jerry | |
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Directed by | Alexander Black |
Written by | Alexander Black |
Produced by | Alexander Black |
Starring | Blanche Bayliss William Courtenay Chauncey Depew |
Distributed by | Alexander Black Photoplays |
Release date |
|
Country | United States |
Language | Silent |
Miss Jerry is an 1894 American feature-length black-and-white silent pre-film "Picture Play" written and produced by Alexander Black and starring Blanche Bayliss. Miss Jerry was not a film, but a series of posed magic lantern slides projected onto a screen with a dissolving stereopticon, accompanied by narration and music, making it the first example of a feature-length dramatic fiction on screen.
Miss Jerry debuted on October 9, 1894 at the Carbon Studio in New York City. It has been described as "the first picture play" [1] and while other early film and peep-show animations produced at this time were short documentaries, Miss Jerry sought to develop what is arguably the first feature of moving pictures. This photoplay attempts to create an impression of movement with the slides changing once every 15 seconds.
"In Miss Jerry my purpose has been to test experimentally, in a quiet story, certain possibilities of illusion, with this aim always before me, that the illusion should not, because it need not and could not safely, be that of photographs from an acted play, nor of artistic illustration, but the illusion of reality'." [2]
Aware of the progress made by Eadweard Muybridge and other photographers towards the illusion of motion, Black instead set out to present a convincing narrative story in front of an audience, using still photography to present fiction in a convincing way, rather than a perfect illusion of motion.
In his 1926 history of the movies, A Million and One Nights the author Terry Ramsaye says:
No intact set of slides for Miss Jerry is known to exist.
After finding out that her father is suffering financial problems, Jerry Holbrook decides to start a career in journalism in the heart of New York City. While working she falls in love with the editor of her paper, Walter Hamilton. After being offered a job in London, the couple initially have problems but Jerry accepts Walter's marriage proposal and they leave for London together.
The following is an overview of the events of 1894 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.
A stereopticon is a slide projector or relatively powerful "magic lantern", which has two lenses, usually one above the other, and has mainly been used to project photographic images. These devices date back to the mid 19th century, and were a popular form of entertainment and education before the advent of moving pictures.
Photoplay was one of the first American film fan magazines, its title another word for screenplay. It was founded in Chicago in 1911. Under early editors, Julian Johnson and James R. Quirk, in style and reach it became a pacesetter for fan magazines. In 1921, Photoplay established what is considered the first significant annual movie award. For most of its run, it was published by Macfadden Publications. The magazine ceased publication in 1980.
A Tale of Two Cities is a 1911 silent film produced by Vitagraph Studios, loosely based on the 1859 novel by Charles Dickens.
Precursors of film are concepts and devices that have much in common with the later art and techniques of cinema.
Terry Ramsaye was a journalist, film producer and film historian, the author of A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture [Through 1925].
Fred J. Balshofer was a pioneering silent film director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer in the United States.
Francis William Powell was a Canadian-born American stage and silent film actor, director, producer, and screenwriter who worked predominantly in the United States. He is also credited with "discovering" Theda Bara and casting her in a starring role in the 1915 release A Fool There Was. Her performance in that production, under Powell's direction, quickly earned Bara widespread fame as the film industry's most popular evil seductress or on-screen "vamp".
The Strand Theatre was an early movie palace located at 1579 Broadway, at the northwest corner of 47th Street and Broadway in Times Square, New York City. Opened in 1914, the theater was later known as the Mark Strand Theatre, the Warner Theatre, and the Cinerama Theatre. It closed as the RKO Warner Twin Theatre, and was demolished in 1987.
The Phantoscope was a film projection machine, a creation of Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. In the early 1890s, Jenkins began creating the projector. He later met Thomas Armat, who provided financial backing and assisted with necessary modifications.
Traffic in Souls is a 1913 American silent crime drama film focusing on forced prostitution in the United States. Directed by George Loane Tucker and starring Jane Gail, Ethel Grandin, William H. Turner, and Matt Moore, Traffic in Souls is an early example of the narrative style in American films. The film consists of six reels, which was longer than most American films of the era.
The history of film technology traces the development of techniques for the recording, construction and presentation of motion pictures. When the film medium came about in the 19th century, there already was a centuries old tradition of screening moving images through shadow play and the magic lantern that were very popular with audiences in many parts of the world. Especially the magic lantern influenced much of the projection technology, exhibition practices and cultural implementation of film. Between 1825 and 1840, the relevant technologies of stroboscopic animation, photography and stereoscopy were introduced. For much of the rest of the century, many engineers and inventors tried to combine all these new technologies and the much older technique of projection to create a complete illusion or a complete documentation of reality. Colour photography was usually included in these ambitions and the introduction of the phonograph in 1877 seemed to promise the addition of synchronized sound recordings. Between 1887 and 1894, the first successful short cinematographic presentations were established. The biggest popular breakthrough of the technology came in 1895 with the first projected movies that lasted longer than 10 seconds. During the first years after this breakthrough, most motion pictures lasted about 50 seconds, lacked synchronized sound and natural colour, and were mainly exhibited as novelty attractions. In the first decades of the 20th century, movies grew much longer and the medium quickly developed into one of the most important tools of communication and entertainment. The breakthrough of synchronized sound occurred at the end of the 1920s and that of full color motion picture film in the 1930s. By the start of the 21st century, physical film stock was being replaced with digital film technologies at both ends of the production chain by digital image sensors and projectors.
The Crime Doctor is a 1934 American crime drama directed by John Robertson from a screenplay by Jane Murfin, adapted from the novel The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill. The film stars Otto Kruger, Karen Morley, and Nils Asther. RKO Radio Pictures produced and distributed the film which was released on April 27, 1934.
Life's Shop Window is a 1914 American silent drama film directed by J. Gordon Edwards and starring Claire Whitney and Stuart Holmes. It is a film adaptation of the 1907 novel of the same name by Annie Sophie Cory. The film depicts the story of English orphan Lydia Wilton (Whitney), and her husband Bernard Chetwin (Holmes). Although Wilton's marriage is legitimate, it was conducted in secret, and she is accused of having a child out of wedlock. Forced to leave England, she reunites with her husband in Arizona. There, she is tempted by infidelity with an old acquaintance, Eustace Pelham, before seeing the error of her ways and returning to her family.
Barrier-grid animation or picket-fence animation is an animation effect created by moving a striped transparent overlay across an interlaced image. The barrier-grid technique originated in the late 1890s, overlapping with the development of parallax stereography (Relièphographie) for 3D autostereograms. The technique has also been used for color-changing pictures, but to a much lesser extent.
Alexander Black (1859–1940) was an American author, photographer, newspaper man, and the inventor of the pre-cinema “Picture Play” which debuted in 1894.
Picture Play, originally titled Picture-Play Weekly was an American weekly magazine focusing on the film industry. Its first edition was published on April 10, 1915. It eventually transitioned from a weekly to a monthly magazine, before ending its production run, when it continued as Your Charm, in March 1941.
The Leonard–Cushing Fight is an 1894 American short black-and-white silent film produced by William K.L. Dickson, starring Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing. Leonard and Cushing participate in a six-round boxing match under special conditions that allow for it to be filmed and displayed on a Kinetograph. The film was shot on an uncertain date between May 24 and June 14, 1894, in a specially configurated ring in Edison's Black Maria film studio in West Orange, New Jersey. Premiered on August 4, 1894 in Manhattan, the movie is the first sports film ever released. As of 2023, no full print of the film is known to have survived, making it a partially lost film. A 23-second fragment is available at the Library of Congress.
Events in 1860 in animation.
Events in 1859 in animation.