ORPHAN_FILMS

This publication, identified in the Iowa library as Living Photograph Flip Book, is held in a few other libraries, as well as the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford (which holds a second related item of similar vintage). 

The University of Virginia Library Special Collections catalogs its as A Story without Words (Buffalo, NY: Gies & Co., 1897). Like the Iowa item, it’s printed with the notice “Copyright, M. Kingsland, 1897.”  95 leaves, 47 x 64 mm. 

University of California Santa Barbara Library’s Special Collections, uses the same metadata for its edition of A Story without Words. 

The Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries’ Rare Books and Special Collections catalog’s its item as A Story without Words: The Fight  (variant title Fight: A Story without Words).  Same publisher credits, but only 85 leaves, 39 x 58 mm.  

The Museum of the History of Science holds a different edition of what appears to be the same (or nearly same) set of images, based on the still image on its website.  http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/themes/mhs-2013-responsive/imu-media.php?irn=49903  The museum assigns the title Pocket Kinetoscope ‘Series C’ Flip Book (London: American Jubilee Company, date “end 19th century”).  81 leaves (”photographic sheets”), 52 x 37 x 15mm.  The museum’s item that bears a title simliar to Iowa’s – ‘Living Photograph’ Flip Book – is also listed as published by Gies & Co., USA c. 1897). This one contain 84 photographic images and measures 60 x 40 x 22 mm, but shows a different subject. It’s inscribed with the title The Yankee Cop, also credited to M. Kingsland. It does show “two men fighting,” but they are not boxers. “A policeman arriving to hit the first man while the second man laughs.” 

Also, a private auction site sold a flip book it describes as Story Without Words, The Fight - Finish [sic]. Despite the variant title, it too was from M. Kingsland and Gies & Co., “from their Living Photographs Series, 1897.”

The Iowa version, then, appears to be unique in its description of “James Corbett and Robert Fitzsimmons championship boxing match.” And with its inscription from “Novelty Export Co.” (The size of the Iowa thing is about the same as Notre Dame’s, but expressed as 2.25 x 1.5 inches, about 57 x 38mm.)

I still have no leads on who “M. Kingsland” was, but presumably a photographer working for the publishing and printing house Gies & Co. As I’m learning, Charles Gies’s company was among the best and largest multipurpose printing operations in the U.S., lasting from about 1871 to 1922. Mark Strong’s account says Gies & Co. operations in Buffalo, and later Pittsburgh, were “commercial lithographers, engravers, printers, publishers, general book printers, wood engravers, electrotypers, blank book manufacturers, catalogue & pamphlet printers, job & commercial printers, and bookbinders.” 

Both Gies & Co. and Novelty Export Co. appear in advertisements in The Phonoscope, a trade journal of 1896-1900. Consistent with the Iowa record, March and April 1897 ads in Phonoscope have the Novelty Export Co. (at 1270 Broadway NYC, to be specific) selling “Gies & Co.’s ‘Living Photographs.’” They don’t tell prospective amusement vendors exactly what these things were, but say “Objects move and people act as if alive.” Comedy and novelty are emphasized. “New scenes” were promised weekly, including one ad teasing “The Bedroom Scene.” All on part with, for example, the American Mutoscope Company’s subjects for its flipcard peepshow devices. 

But the novelties being exported here were not, near as I can tell, done as cinematography. Something more like Muybridge serial photography, very short sequences of action. Some editions of the Gies fight flip book say: “Pictures are taken by special photographic machinery invented by us.“ We don’t know much more about that machinery, although Gies promises high quality “pictures from first original plates.” 

The revealing detail comes from a back cover ad of the March 1897 number of The Phonoscope. Here again the vocabulary of sight and sound technologies is hybrid and confusing. “Living Photographs” are here identified as “a miniature kinetoscope.” Now the Kinetoscope was the Edison company’s brand name for its peep-show viewing device, which showed loops of 35mm celluloid motion-picture film, marketed throughout 1894-96.  By 1897, theatrical projection displaced peep shows and the brand name was used for the “Edison Projecting Kinetoscope.” Edison of course was also the inventor and seller of phonographs, which were also the focus of The Phonoscope monthly. 

This March and April 1897 ad, however, does yield a definitive clue, making it clear how these flip books were connected to the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight alluded to in the Iowa description. Novelty Export Co. reproduced 4 still images from 4 different titles in its 12 newest scenes. The first is entitled The Great Fight and the includes a photo/frame with what are surely the same three figures in the all-important Iowa GIF. The caption reads “Just as in the ring, showing the heart-blow and Corbett knocked out.” (And “Copyrighted 1897.”) 

The text is artful enough to not explicitly claim these are pictures of or from the actual heavyweight championship fight between Jim Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons, recorded by the Veriscope Company on 63mm motion-picture film, March 17, 1897, in Carson City, Nevada. That event was a sensation in all media that year. There were many attempts to cash in on its topicality. Veriscope’s was the feature-length film in history and was widely seen for many months. Periodicals carried Corbett-Fitzsimmons news and pictures (photographs, drawings, engravings, lithos, cartoons) in abundance. 

In another artful and confusing advertisement, adjacent to the Novelty Export ads were pitches for “The Big Corbett Fight.” “We positively guarantee to our customers that this is the only Miniature Kinetoscope published showing James J. Corbett in the ring as a participant in an actual fight.” The advertiser was “the Edison Phonograph Company.” However the address listed to which prospective buyers were to mail ten cents for a sample was 23 South Eighth Street, Philadelphia – which was adjacent to the Lubin film company’s headquarters at 21 S. 8th. The same Lubin that marketed a 35mm movie “fac simile” of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight, a notorious fake. The ad’s claim to have picture of Corbett in the ring in an actual fight indicates that the “Edison Phonograph Company” was using the 1894 motion picture Corbett and Courtney before the Kinetograph as its source. That six-film set of kinetoscopes was Edison’s most popular early title and was sold for film projection in 1896-97, as the Fitzimmons fight approached.  

It’s a marvelous confusion of media archaeology. If this “Big Corbett Fight” “miniature kinetoscope” was ever actually produced, it must have been an attempt at a flip book likes those being made by Gies & Co. and distributed by Export Novelty Co. 

  http://orphanfilmsymposium.blogspot.com/2015/08/identifying-1897-flip-book-with-fight.html

I am still not clear from where the Iowa metadata -- “James Corbett and Robert Fitzsimmons championship boxing match” -- derives. 

Miniature Monday!  

Imagine the impact of this 1897 flipbook, before television and radio!  Ringside seats to the championship match means that this saw a lot of use and the cover of this flipbook has been worn to bits.  I could safely capture a few images from the center to bring one punch back to life for you.  

I need to know more!  These photographs are definitely not from the Corbett-Fitzsimmons championship fight of 1897, nor from the Veriscope motion picture recording of that event. Nor are the boxers/performers Jim Corbett and / or Bob Fitzsimmons.  Nor do these pictures come from the Lubin company’s “Fac Simile of the Great Fight” (1897).  

It’s clear the performers are meant to represent the pompadoured Corbett, the balding Fitzimmons, and the vested referee at the actual fight, George Siler. 

But the framing and mise-en-scene in this GIF of Living Photograph Flip Book match no films of the famed Corbett-Fitzimmons fight or any related films.  

So who photographed this? American Mutoscope? I’m very curious. 

Dan Streible

FIGHT PICTURES: A HISTORY OF BOXING AND EARLY CINEMA (2008)

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520250758

Here are a few more photos, can anyone help?

Miniature Monday!  

Imagine the impact of this 1897 flipbook, before television and radio!  Ringside seats to the championship match means that this saw a lot of use and the cover of this flipbook has been worn to bits.  I could safely capture a few images from the center to bring one punch back to life for you.  

I need to know more!  These photographs are definitely not from the Corbett-Fitzsimmons championship fight of 1897, nor from the Veriscope motion picture recording of that event. Nor are the boxers/performers Jim Corbett and / or Bob Fitzsimmons.  Nor do these pictures come from the Lubin company’s “Fac Simile of the Great Fight” (1897).  

It’s clear the performers are meant to represent the pompadoured Corbett, the balding Fitzimmons, and the vested referee at the actual fight, George Siler. 

But the framing and mise-en-scene in this GIF of Living Photograph Flip Book match no films of the famed Corbett-Fitzimmons fight or any related films.  

So who photographed this? American Mutoscope? I’m very curious. 

Dan Streible

FIGHT PICTURES: A HISTORY OF BOXING AND EARLY CINEMA (2008)

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520250758