Edison's Black Maria

Coordinates: 40°47′03″N 74°14′01″W / 40.7843°N 74.2337°W / 40.7843; -74.2337
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

40°47′03″N 74°14′01″W / 40.7843°N 74.2337°W / 40.7843; -74.2337

Edison's Black Maria Studio
A drawing of the exterior from 1894

The Black Maria (/məˈraɪ.ə/ mə-RY-ə) was Thomas Edison's film production studio in West Orange, New Jersey. It was the world's first film studio.

History

In 1893, the world's first film production studio,

Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Edison conducted the world's first public demonstration of films shot using the Kinetograph in the Black Maria, with a Kinetoscope viewer. The exhibited film showed three people pretending to be blacksmiths
.

Annabelle Whitford
doing her "butterfly dance", recorded at the Edison's Black Maria studio

The first motion pictures made in the Black Maria were deposited for

W. K. Dickson at the Library of Congress in August, 1893. In early January 1894, The Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (aka Fred Ott's Sneeze) was one of the first series of short films made by Dickson for the Kinetoscope in Edison's Black Maria studio with fellow assistant Fred Ott. The short film was made for publicity purposes, as a series of still photographs to accompany an article in Harper's Weekly
. It was the earliest motion picture to be registered for copyright – composed of an optical record of Ott sneezing comically for the camera.

The first films shot at the Black Maria included segments of magic shows, plays,

cockfights
, and scantily-clad women. Many of the early Edison moving images released after 1895, however, were non-fictional "actualities" filmed on location: views of ordinary slices of life – street scenes, the activities of police or firemen, or shots of a passing train.

On Saturday, April 14, 1894, Edison's Kinetoscope began commercial operation. The Holland Brothers (Andrew M. Holland and George C. Holland) opened the first Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155

Atlantic City, and Chicago). In 1901, the first public film was screened in Oberlin, Ohio
, starting the transition from kinetoscope to screen.

When Edison built a glass-enclosed rooftop movie studio in New York City, the Black Maria was closed in January 1901, and Edison demolished the building in 1903.

South Orange, and Orange).[5]

The Black Maria was, according to the staff who worked there, a small and uncomfortable place to work. Edison employees

W. K. Dickson and Jonathan Campbell coined the name – it reminded them of police Black Marias, (police vans, also known as "paddywagons") of the time because they were also cramped, stuffy and a similar black color. Edison himself called it "The Doghouse", but that name never took hold.[citation needed
]

The Black Maria was covered in black tarpaper and had a huge window in the ceiling that opened up to let in sunlight because early films required a tremendous amount of bright light. It was built on a turntable so the window could rotate toward the sun throughout the day, supplying natural light for hundreds of Edison movie productions over its eight-year lifespan.

When word spread about the new invention, performers flocked to the Black Maria from all over the country in order to be in the films. These

pugilists
, magicians and vaudeville performers. Their appearances at the studio were used as publicity opportunities by Edison, who would often pose with the performers for newspaper articles.

Sioux Ghost Dance
The boxing cats (Prof. Welton's)

Selected films shot at the Black Maria

In popular culture

References

  1. ^ Wood, Bret. "The Films of Thomas Edison". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on 17 February 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  2. ^ Dirks, Tim. "Early Cinematic Origins and the Infancy of Film". filmsite.org. Archived from the original on 19 February 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  3. ^ Robinson (1997). p. 23.
  4. ^ "Early Edison Motion Picture Production (1892–1895) in Inventing Entertainment: The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies", retrieved April 15, 2012.
  5. ^ A replica of the 'Black Maria' studio appeared in Universal-International's comedy Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Cops (1955).
  6. ^ Black Maria Film Festival website
  7. ^ Adams, John. "Hitler, a Film from Germany, DVD review" in Movie Habit. Retrieved March 11, 2008.

Bibliography

  • Robinson, David (1997). From Peepshow to Palace: The Birth of American Film. New York and Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press.
    ISBN 0-231-10338-7

External links

Media related to Edison's Black Maria at Wikimedia Commons

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