The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog | |
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Directed by | Edwin S. Porter |
Starring | William Courtenay, Frank Daniels, May Irwin, Charlotte Walker |
Cinematography | Wallace McCutcheon Sr. |
Distributed by | Edison Manufacturing Company |
Release date |
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Running time | 5:30 |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog is a 1905 silent short comedy film directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. The five-and-a-half minute film was an adaptation of a popular picture postcard featuring a humorously named family. [2] The film introduces each member of the Dam family, and then shows a raucous dinner scene that ends with the Dam dog pulling the tablecloth off the table, and ruining the Dam meal.
The film includes a very early example of cutout animation, with a jumble of letters coming together to spell the titles, and an animated paper silhouette of the Dam dog which wags its tail. [3]
The film begins with a caption: "DO YOU KNOW THIS FAMILY?"
Then each member of the family is presented in medium close-up, with a name card labeling the character:
A jumble of cutout letters are animated to unscramble themselves, and resolve into the title "THE WHOLE DAM FAMILY". This is followed by a family portrait-style shot of the Dams.
Another title card reads: "AND THE DAM DOG". Under that caption, a number of white shapes swirl and then resolve into a silhouette portrait of a dog. The dog's tail wags, and then a silhouette of firecrackers are attached to the tail. The dog explodes back into its component parts, and the caption is blown off the screen.
Then the family is seen sitting around a table, eating dinner. The dog is sitting in Father's chair, and Mr. Dam shouts at the family, clearly annoyed by the dog's presence. He grabs the chair and dumps the dog onto the floor, but the dog grabs hold of a chair leg with his teeth and rips the chair out of Mr. Dam's hands.
The scene resets, in an apparent retake, [3] and this time, the dog jumps to the floor and exits the scene. Mr. Dam sits down, and starts to serve soup to the family. Seeing that Jimmy is smoking at the table, Father jumps up and shouts at him to put the cigarette out. Jimmy pinches the cigarette to extinguish it, and reaches to place it on the mantelpiece, but Mr. Dam shouts again and Jimmy theatrically throws the cigarette on the floor.
Father sits down again, knocking a plate onto the floor, which has to be retrieved. Mr. Dam continues serving soup, which the family slurps up in an unmannerly way. Then the dog rushes back into the room, grabs the tablecloth and pulls it off the table, dumping the entire dinner on the floor. The family stands up, reacting to the chaos as the film closes.
It was common for Edison comedies to adapt fads of the day to the screen. [4] Edison's promotion for the film announced that it was based on "a popular fad which has been widely advertised by lithographs and souvenir mailing cards and has recently been made the subject of a sketch in a New York Vaudeville Theatre." [5] There was also a popular novelty song in 1905, "The Whole Dam Family," by George Totten Smith and Albert von Tilzer. [6]
The film's opening sequence introducing the family is a spoof on a format previously used in the Biograph Company film The Widow and the Only Man (1904), in which each principal character is identified with a head-and-shoulder close-up and a name card. In The Whole Dam Family, Porter's comic twist on the technique is that each cast member does a bit of stage business illustrating the character's annoying flaws. [3]
The animated letters sequence is an extension of a technique that Porter had used two months earlier in How Jones Lost His Roll . [3] These films introduced "single-frame filming", in which the camera was cranked to expose one frame of film at a time. This soon became the standard animation technique. [7] The process was also used in Porter's film adaptation of the song "Everybody Works But Father" (Nov 1905). [4]
This is the earliest film known to include actors in makeup (besides blackface and whiskers), which was used to give the cast a family resemblance. [8]
The Dam dog is played by "Mannie", a canine performer first seen in Edison films in Laura Comstock's Bag-Punching Dog (1901). [5]
The film is 138 feet long. [1] The Edison company sometimes sold its early films in parts to exhibitors that only wanted to show a particular scene. Four parts of The Whole Dam Family were available: "Sneezing", "Cigarette Fiend", "Cry Baby" and "Chewing Gum". [9]
The Whole Dam Family was the most popular film of 1905. [5] It sold 92 prints in that year, and 136 copies within a year and a half. [4]
Two months after the film's release, the Lubin Manufacturing Company released a similar film, called I.B. Dam and the Whole Dam Family. This copycat film only included close-up shots of the characters, and not the narrative scene.
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.
The year 1905 in film involved some significant events.
Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The props would be cut out and used as puppets for stop motion. The world's earliest known animated feature films were cutout animations, as is the world's earliest surviving animated feature Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (1926) by Lotte Reiniger.
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).
Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is a 1906 short silent animated cartoon directed by James Stuart Blackton and generally regarded by film historians as the first animated film recorded on standard picture film.
Maniac Chase is a 1904 American short silent comedy film directed by Edwin S. Porter and produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company. The film is a remake of The Escaped Lunatic, a film directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr. released at the beginning of 1904. This was one of two Biograph Company hits remade by Edison's company in fall 1904, the other being Personal, which was copied as How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns.
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."
The following is a list of films by Edwin S. Porter, head producer at the Edison Manufacturing Company owned by Thomas A. Edison, between 1900 and 1909. Later films were produced at the Rex Motion Picture Company and Famous Players Film Company.
Love by the Light of the Moon is a 1901 film by Edwin S. Porter, produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company. It mixes animation and live action and predates the man in the Moon theme of the 1902 French science fiction film A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. The animation is provided by projected slides showing the Moon's different faces.
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend is a 1906 silent trick film directed by Edwin S. Porter for Edison Manufacturing Company. It is a seven-minute live-action film adaptation of the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. The film was marketed as using several special effects in which "some of the photographic 'stunts' have never been seen or attempted before."
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.
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.
Dog Factory is a 1904 silent comic trick film directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. The four-and-a-half minute film offers a comic twist on a popular idea from film and vaudeville. The film concerns two inventors who run a "Dog Factory", in which strings of sausages can be fed into a machine, and turned into live dogs. The film has been described as an early example of science-fiction.
How Jones Lost His Roll is a 1905 silent short comedy film directed by Edwin S. Porter. The movie was popular for its clever use of animated title cards — the first example of stop-motion animation in American film.
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.
The Old Maid Having Her Picture Taken is a 1901 silent short film directed by Edwin S. Porter in collaboration with George S. Fleming. The comic film depicts an unattractive old woman arriving at a photo studio to have her picture taken, and destroying all of the equipment through the power of her ugliness.
How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns is a 1904 silent comic film directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. The film is a remake of the hit film Personal, produced by the Biograph Company earlier in the year. The film is a spoof of the "fashionable marriages" known to take place between cash-strapped European nobility and American heiresses.
Why Mr. Nation Wants a Divorce is a 1901 silent short comedy film directed by Edwin S. Porter and George S. Fleming. It is a satire on the activities of radical temperance advocate Carrie Nation, who was known for her crusade against bars and taverns. Earlier in 1901, Porter directed another film mocking Nation, Kansas Saloon Smashers; this follow-up film was inspired by news reports that Nation's husband demanded a divorce.