| The 'Teddy' Bears | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Wallace McCutcheon Edwin S. Porter |
| Cinematography | Edwin S. Porter |
Production company | |
Release date |
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Running time | 13 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent film |
The 'Teddy' Bears is an American silent film directed by Edwin S. Porter and Wallace McCutcheon, and produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company starting as the fairy tale Goldilocks and ending as a political satire of United States President Theodore Roosevelt. [1]
The film starts as an adaptation of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears": a young girl enters the bears house, eat their porridge and sleeps in the bed of the bear cub. When the bears come home and discover her, she jumps out of the window and runs away with one of the bear cub's teddy bears. The bears chase Goldilocks across a snowy landscape until a hunter looking like "Teddy" Roosevelt intervenes, kills the two full-grown pursuers and captures the bear cub. The hunter and the girl then go back to the bears' house where they steal the remaining teddy bears. [2]
The film is composed of 18 shots without any intertitles. The 11 first shots are fixed camera full shots of studio sets showing the front and various rooms of the bears' house. They are interrupted by one shot showing an elaborated stop-motion animation of six model bears, a scene which took a whole week to film. [3] The next 4 shots belong to the chase movie genre, they are wide shots filmed on location in a snowy forest with small camera movements and are linked by continuity editing. The final shot uses the same studio set of the bear house front as the opening shot.
This film was one of Edwin Porter's personal favourites. [2] Scott Simmon described it as part "charming fairy tale, part violent political satire and part accomplished puppet animation." [4]
However, at the time of release, the change of nature of the film towards the end was regarded as quite unsettling. Sime Silverman wrote in Variety : "The Teddy Bears (...) is made enjoyable through the mechanical acrobatic antics of fluffy haired hand-made animals. The closing pictures showing the pursuit of the child by the bear family is spoiled through a hunter appearing on the scene and shooting two. Children will rebel against this position (...) the live bears seemed so domesticated that the deliberate murder in an obviously "faked" series left a wrong taste of the picture as a whole." [5] Musser notes that not everyone agreed with Sime Silverman. He recalls that the film was advertised as "a laughable satire on a popular craze" and that a large public would have understood the reference to Teddy Roosevelt which was based on the well-known November 1902 incident which had led to the use of Teddy Bear to designate stuffed bears for children. Edwin Porter had already directed a burlesque on Teddy Roosevelt in 1902 Terrible Teddy, the Grizzly King, [6] which was advertised at the time as "a burlesque of Theodore Roosevelt hunting mountain lions in Colorado. [3] Musser remarks that The "Teddy" Bears was not simply a children's film, but was also aimed, like Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland , at adults. [2]
Morgan concludes that "what begins as fairy tale ends with a rather grim and adult mix of satire, topical reference (to the president hunting in Mississippi), and realism. Something of this ambivalence, between the comic and the serious, between TR as harmless caricature and as a more threatening warrior figure, has remained a pattern in representations of him." [3]
The film is also an early example of cinema used as an advertising tool. It was included by marketing pioneer John Wanamaker in the holiday program for Christmas shoppers in his stores to incite customers to buy teddy bears. [7]
The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent film made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It follows a gang of outlaws who hold up and rob a steam locomotive at a station in the American West, flee across mountainous terrain, and are finally defeated by a posse of locals. The short film draws on many sources, including a robust existing tradition of Western films, recent European innovations in film technique, the play of the same name by Scott Marble, the popularity of train-themed films, and possibly real-life incidents involving outlaws such as Butch Cassidy.
Edwin Stanton Porter was an American film pioneer, most famous as a producer, director, studio manager and cinematographer with the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Famous Players Film Company. Of over 250 films created by Porter, his most important include What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City (1901), Jack and the Beanstalk (1902), Life of an American Fireman (1903), The Great Train Robbery (1903), The European Rest Cure (1904), The Kleptomaniac (1905), Life of a Cowboy (1906), Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (1908), and The Prisoner of Zenda (1913).
Life of an American Fireman is a short, silent film Edwin S. Porter made for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It was shot late in 1902 and distributed early in 1903. One of the earliest American narrative films, it depicts the rescue of a woman and child from a burning building. It bears notable similarities to the 1901 British short film Fire!, directed by James Williamson.
Another Job for the Undertaker is a 1901 silent comic trick film made at Edison's recently opened studio at 41 East 21st Street in Manhattan. It was photographed by Edwin S. Porter and co-directed by Porter and George S. Fleming. The two-shot film was copyrighted on May 15, 1901 and is approximately two minutes in length. It lacks a head title, which would have been supplied by projecting a separate lantern slide before screening the film.
The Edison Manufacturing Company, originally registered as the United Edison Manufacturing Company and often known as simply the Edison Company, was organized by inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison and incorporated in New York City in May 1889. It succeeded the Edison United Manufacturing Company, founded in 1886 as a sales agency for the Edison Lamp Company, Edison Machine Works, and Bergmann & Company, which made electric lighting fixtures, sockets, and other accessories. In April 1894, the Edison laboratory's Kinetoscope operation, which was about to be commercialized, was brought under the Edison Company umbrella. In 1900, the United Edison Manufacturing Company was evidently succeeded by the New Jersey–incorporated Edison Manufacturing Company. The company's assets and operations were transferred to Thomas A. Edison, Inc. in 1911.
The Night Before Christmas is a 1905 American silent short film directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It closely follows Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem Twas the Night Before Christmas, and was the first film production of the poem.
Charles John Musser is a film historian, documentary filmmaker, and a film editor. Since 1992, he has taught at Yale University, where he is currently a professor of Film and Media Studies as well as American Studies and Theater Studies. His research has primarily focused on early cinema, and topics such as Edwin S. Porter, Oscar Micheaux, race cinema of the silent era, Paul Robeson, film performance, as well as a variety of issues and individuals in documentary. His films include An American Potter (1976), Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter (1982) and Errol Morris: A Lightning Sketch (2014).
Terrible Teddy, the Grizzly King is a 1901 American silent film directed by Edwin S. Porter. Produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company, it is the earliest known political satire in American film. It features three actors, all of whom are unknown.
Wallace McCutcheon Sr. was a pioneer cinematographer and director in the early American motion picture industry, working with the American Mutoscope & Biograph, Edison and American Star Film companies. McCutcheon's wealth of credits are often mixed up with the small handful of films directed by his son, Wallace McCutcheon Jr. (1884–1928).
Jack and the Beanstalk is a 1902 American silent trick film directed by George S. Fleming and Edwin S. Porter. With ten sequential shots, Jack and the Beanstalk was twice as long as any previous studio film. According to Porter, "It took in the neighborhood of six weeks in the spring of 1902 to successfully make this photograph."
George S. Fleming was an American actor, director, and scenic designer whose short films were influential early projects in the medium.
Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison is a 1901 silent film produced by the Edison Studios arms of Edison Manufacturing Company. The film is a dramatic reenactment of the execution of Leon Czolgosz by electric chair at Auburn Correctional Facility following his 1901 conviction for the assassination of William McKinley. It is considered an important film in the history of cinema.
Faust and Marguerite is a 1900 American silent trick film produced and distributed by Edison Manufacturing Company. It was directed by Edwin S. Porter and based on the Michel Carré play Faust et Marguerite and the 1859 opera Faust adapted from the play by Charles Gounod.
Parsifal is a 1904 American silent film produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company and directed by Edwin S. Porter. It is based on the 1882 opera Parsifal by Richard Wagner, and stars Adelaide Fitz-Allen as Kundry and Robert Whittier as Parsifal.
Daniel Boone; or, Pioneer Days in America is a 1907 American silent film directed by Wallace McCutcheon and Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It starred Florence Lawrence, often called "the first movie star."
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.
Rube and Mandy at Coney Island was produced, directed, shot and edited by Edwin S. Porter Copyrighted on August 13, 1903, the 725 ft., 35mm film lasted roughly 10 minutes if projected at 20 frames per second.
Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show is a 1902 American short silent comedy film directed by Edwin S. Porter, featuring a naive spectator trying to interact with films projected onto a screen. It is an almost identical remake of a British 1901 film directed by Robert W. Paul, The Countryman and the Cinematograph. Paul's film was the first to feature a film shown within a film.
The Train Wreckers is a 1905 American silent drama film, directed by Edwin S. Porter. In the film, the daughter of a railway switchman and lover of a locomotive engineer defeats outlaws trying to derail a train.
Laura Comstock's Bag-Punching Dog is a 1901 silent short film directed by Edwin S. Porter. The film depicts a vaudeville act featuring Laura Comstock and her trained dog, a pit bull named Mannie. Comstock's act was currently appearing at Keith's Union Square Theatre.
