1800's (Sights)

"The mythology begins the begin."

I suppose popular culture (where music and movies are concerned) begins in the late 1800's. The century brought us not only electricity, lightbulbs and batteries, but also photography, the motion picture and the phonograph cylinder, which transformed the way sight and sound were displayed and distributed. Visuals were no longer limited to still life, and live performances were not the only way to hear music.

The oldest surviving celluloid is a 2 second short from 1888. Filmed just an hours drive from my home, "Roundhay Garden Scene" is an experimental film shot in Yorkshire, UK by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince.

Pittsburgh, PA - claimed to be the first nickelodeon in the USA

There are many key points/dates attributed to the birth of movies, but one in particular stands out. On December 28th, 1895 (115 years ago today!) the Lumière brothers projected their films for the first time to a paying audience. 2 years previously in Brooklyn, Thomas Edison gave the worlds first public exhibition of a motion picture. The remaining years of the 19th Century saw a number of film companies emerge, with Nickelodeons popping up throughout the USA.

Selected films of the 1890's:

(1) La sortie des usines Lumière (1895)


(2) L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1895)


(3) L'Arroseur arrosé (1895)


(4) Un Homme de Têtes (1898)

• (1-3) Lumière brothers present a collection of short films to a paying audience at the Grand Café, Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. "Exiting The Factory", "The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station" and the comedic "The Sprinkler Sprinkled" (which becomes the worlds first fiction film).
• (4) "Four Heads Are Better Than One" is one of many fantasy films created by professional magician Georges Méliès.

The oldest screen starlets were born in the 1890's. Childhood friends Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish (known as 'The First Lady of the Silent Screen') found great success in the 1910's, beginning with their work with D. W. Griffith. Pickford went from 'Biograph Girl' to one of the most famous women in the world in just a few years. By the age of 21 she was the highest paid actress in the world, and from 1916 she would also act as producer/occasional writer to the majority of her films, with her contract allowing her full control of her movies. In 1919, together with future husband Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, she formed the independent film production company United Artists.

Lillian Gish (left) and Mae West (right)

Mae West's international fame came quite later on. She didn't make her film debut till she was 38 years old, however she managed to keep her age a secret for many years. She began her career as a teen vaudevillian, and went on to become a playwright, before writing and acting for the big screen, and becoming one of the first sex symbols in cinema.

The late 1800's have been depicted in such films as: The Four Feathers, High Noon, Doctor Zhivago, Hello Dolly!, The Elephant Man, Gandhi, Dracula, From Hell, The Prestige and Sherlock Holmes.

Notable Pre-1900 Births

Actors:

1899 - Humphrey Bogart; Fred Astaire; Charles Laughton; James Cagney; Noël Coward
1898 - Dorothy Gish; Randolph Scott
1897 - Gloria Swanson; Fredric March
1896 - Ruth Gordon
1895 - Paul Muni; Rudolph Valentino; George Raft; Bud Abbott; Edna Purviance
1894 - Jack Benny
1893 - Lillian Gish; Edward G. Robinson; Ivor Novello; Harold Lloyd; Cedric Hardwicke
1892 - Mary Pickford; Mae West; William Powell; Oliver Hardy; Leo G. Carroll; Basil Rathbone
1891 - Sam Jaffe; Wallace Reid; Ronald Colman
1890 - Adolphe Menjou; Groucho Marx; Herbert Marshall; Stan Laurel
1889 - Claude Rains
1888 - Harpo Marx; Miles Mander; Jack Holt; Barry Fitzgerald
1887 - Boris Karloff; Gertrude Astor; Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle; Chico Marx
1886 - Al Jolson
1885 - Otto Kruger
1883 - Douglas Fairbanks; Lon Chaney
1882 - Béla Lugosi; John Barrymore; George Bancroft
1880 - W. C. Fields
1879 - Sara Allgood; Max Schreck; Will Rogers; Sydney Greenstreet; Ethel Barrymore
1878 - Lionel Barrymore; Harry Carey
1877 - Charles Coburn

Directors/Filmmakers:

1899 - Alfred Hitchcock; George Cukor
1898 - Leo McCarey; Preston Sturges; Norman Z. McLeod; Sergei Eisenstein; René Clair;
Henry Hathaway
1897 - Frank Capra
1896 - William A. Wellman; Howard Hawks; Julien Duvivier
1895 - Sam Taylor; Zoltan Korda; Buster Keaton; Lewis Milestone
1894 - John Ford; King Vidor; Josef von Sternberg; Jean Renoir
1893 - Merian C. Cooper; Ernest B. Schoedsack; William Dieterle
1892 - Ernst Lubitsch
1891 - Irving Pichel
1890 - Fritz Lang
1889 - Charles Chaplin; W. S. Van Dyke; William Keighley; James Whale; Victor Fleming
1888 - F. W. Murnau
1887 - Raoul Walsh
1886 - Henry King; Michael Curtiz
1885 - Erich von Stroheim
1881 - Cecil B. DeMille
1880 - Tod Browning
1875 - D. W. Griffith

1800s: Lumiere bros & Georges Méliès in Paris, France. Edison in NY & NJ, USA. Lots of births starting with DW Griffith bit.ly/rPftXt

— Through the darkness (@120Yrs120Months) November 11, 2011

1800s director births: DeMille, von Stroheim, Curtiz, Murnau, Chaplin, Lang, Lubitsch, Ford, Renoir, Keaton, Hawks, Capra, Eisenstein....

— Through the darkness (@120Yrs120Months) November 11, 2011

1800s actor births: Barrymore(s), Greenstreet, Lugosi, Karloff, Marx(s), Pickford, West, Gish(s), Swanson, Astaire, Laughton, Coward, Cagney

— Through the darkness (@120Yrs120Months) November 11, 2011

1800s watched: "Roundhay Garden Scene", "Exiting The Factory", "The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station", "The Sprinkler Sprinkled"....

— Through the darkness (@120Yrs120Months) November 11, 2011

"The Kiss", "Four Heads Are Better Than One". The late 1800s also appear in High Noon, Dr Zhivago, The Elephant Man, Gandhi and The Prestige

— Through the darkness (@120Yrs120Months) November 11, 2011