Content area
Full Text
In April, 1993, staff members of the Southwest Film-Video Archive (SWFVA) at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas were contacted by a private individual in the small east Texas town of Sulphur Springs regarding some old films that had been moldering in a closet for some fifteen years. When the reels of film on original 35mm nitrate stock were acquired, cleaned, and inspected, a rich find dating back to the turn of the century was discovered. Eight reels of varying length contained a total of thirty-three early films predating the Nickelodeon era. Remarkably, the surviving films are substantially intact and relatively free of nitrate decomposition. The collection, which spans 1898 through 1906, includes a number of single-shot actualities, vaudeville acts, and comedies, five multi-shot story films of the 1904-05 period, and seven panoramas taken by Edison cameramen of the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Among the group is at least a dozen titles produced by Sigmund Lubin from 1901-1905, including the Philadelphian's previously unknown imitation of Edwin Porter's famous Life Of An American Fireman. The collection includes rediscoveries of several otherwise lost titles including La Clownesse fantome (English title, "The Shadow-Girl"), a Georges Melies trick film from 1902, and a William Selig Co. story film Tracked By Bloodhounds, or A Lynching In Cripple Creek (1904). In June 1994, SWFVA received a generous grant from the Louis B. Mayer Foundation to restore and preserve the collection on modern safety stock.
The following list describes and identifies the films in the Sulphur Springs discovery with analysis and general commentary. The list reflects the content of the eight reels in the order they were examined.(1)
The first ten titles were contained on a single reel in the following order:
1. The Golf Girls and the Tramp (Edison, 1902). With a set representing a low wall, a tree, and a half-moon in the sky, this one-shot comedy depicts two female golfers frightened by the approach of a Tramp. One woman resourcefully alters her golfing clothes and golf bags to make it appear she is a man wearing pants and a cap. The Tramp enters and confronts one woman before her disguised friend re-emerges from behind the tree. When she does his startled reaction is to turn a...