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Edwin Stratton Porter, while lacking in great creative ability, had more than his share of intuition. His ground-breaking film, “The Great Train Robbery”, was produced in 1903. It was only ten minutes long, but this little movie began a genre that has thrilled millions for a century -- the western movie.
Porter loved machinery -- any kind of machinery. The invention of the motion picture was a windfall to him. Here was a new and fascinating machine to tinker with -- the motion picture camera. Porter decided to get a job where he could tinker and perfect the camera to his heart’s delight -- the Thomas Edison laboratories.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it) the movies had fallen on hard times. Edison had restricted his movie output to the production of one-minute films to be used in his Kinetoscope machines. These were peep show devices. The patron dropped a penny into a slot, peered through a magnifying glass, and watched a bit of action on a 50-foot strip of film as it clattered by. At first the Kinetoscope had been highly successful, but business was falling off as of late and Edison correctly assumed that the public was tiring of the novelty of moving pictures. But, Edison will still producing a few films for his machine.
When Porter went to work for Edison, it was not as a mechanic. Rather he was hired as a producer/director for the short films produced for the Kinetoscope. At the same time, inventors with more vision for the medium than Edison were already experimenting with film projection. Edison had invented a projector several years before, but he thought that if films were shown to more than one person at a time it would cut into profits.
Other inventors disagreed. They opened mini-theaters where they showed a dozen or more of Edison’s short Kinetoscope films back to back on a large screen. Patrons came in droves. It didn’t take Edison long to see the light. He also wanted a piece of the pie.
When Edison realized that some of the other projectors were infringing on his own patents, he took some of the inventors to court to eliminate the competition. He couldn’t take all of them, however. The usually astute Edison had neglected to take out foreign patents.
But the American judicial system was effective and as more theaters opened with Edison projectors installed, the Kinetoscope parlors closed and Porter was ordered to make longer films. He responded with five minute versions of classics like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Jack In The Beanstalk”. Porter’s prowess as a mechanic also came into play and he peppered his films with primitive special effects such as double exposures, miniatures and split-screens.
The films he made were primitive by today’s standards. They consisted of five or six long static shots, as if the audience were viewing the action on a stage. But Porter had an intuitive feel for what a moving picture ought to be and it was only a matter of time until his films began to improve.
Porter made “The Life if An American Fireman” in 1902 and it was a breakthrough. This film was more than a series of vignettes. It had a real plot, a lot of action, and even a closeup of a hand pulling a fire alarm. Soon after, the movie western was born.
In August 1900, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch robbed the Number 3 train on the Union Pacific tracks near Table Rock, Wyoming. They blew up the safe and absconded with $5,000 in cash. Porter read about the robbery in the newspapers and decided to make a film of the event.
Porter must have made “The Great Train Robbery” when the cost-conscious Edison was looking in the other direction. Since he was a long way from Wyoming, Porter and a group of actors headed for the wilds of New Jersey. There Porter borrowed an entire railroad train for his bandits to rob, some horses, and hired some locals to play the posse.
One of these would-be actors was a big, beefy man named G.M. Anderson. Porter’s first question was, “Can you ride?” And Anderson replied, like hundreds of eager-to-get-a-job-at-any-cost actors after him, “Sure. I was born in the saddle.”
Anderson’s horsemanship left a lot to be desired -- he was thrown the first time he tried to mount. Porter, however, admired the man’s determination and ended up giving him a bit part. He was the passenger who is shot trying to get away.
G.M. Anderson was hooked on movies. He changed his name to “Bronco Billy” and went on to become the first movie cowboy, making over 400 films for the Essanay company. But, he never did learn to ride very well.
Every shot in “The Great Train Robbery” contained action, from the first scene when the telegraph operator is assaulted, to the last and final shootout after the posse catches up with the bandits. Audiences were thrilled beyond measure. They had never seen anything like it. Everywhere it played, “The Great Train Robbery” packed houses.
The most exciting scene of all was when one of the bandits, played by Charlie Barnes, fired a pistol point blank at the audience. Porter placed his actor in front of a black background. Then he put a thick piece of glass over the lens to protect it from flying wadding and powder burns. The scene was placed at the very end of the picture and never failed to send viewers in the front row diving for cover.
Other film companies rushed to cash in on the success of “The Great Train Robbery” with their own westerns. Some even made versions that were shot-for-shot copies of the original. Others simply struck a new negative and distributed their own prints. Motion pictures were non-copyrightable at the time.
Porter continued making short films for Edison until he turned to making features for Famous Players (the ancestor of Paramount) in 1912. Unfortunately the unimaginative Porter made his features in the same style as he had made the Edisons -- just longer. The industry had outgrown him.
Edwin S. Porter quit directing in 1916 and went back to the work he loved the best -- tinkering with his beloved machinery. When he died in 1941, the world hardly noticed his passing.
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