Movies in american history, volume i III

MOVIES IN
AMERICAN HISTORY


This page intentionally left blank


MOVIES IN
AMERICAN HISTORY
AN ENCYCLOPEDIA
Volume 1
Philip C. DiMare, Editor


Copyright 2011 by ABC-CLIO, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a
review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Movies in American history : an encyclopedia / Philip C. DiMare, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Includes filmography.
ISBN 978–1–59884–296–8 (hardcopy (set) : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–1–59884–297–5 (ebook (set))
1. Motion pictures—United States—Encyclopedias. 2. Motion picture actors and actresses—
United States—Biography—Encyclopedias. 3. Motion picture producers and directors—
United States—Biography—Encyclopedias. 4. Motion picture industry—United States—
Encyclopedias. I. DiMare, Philip C.
PN1993.5.U6M68 2011

791.4309730 03—dc22
2011006901
ISBN: 978–1–59884–296–8
EISBN: 978–1–59884–297–5
15 14 13 12 11

1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.
Visit www.abc-clio.com for details.
ABC-CLIO, LLC
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America


CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

xvii

Introduction

xix

Films
Ali
Alien

All about Eve
All Quiet on the Western Front
All the King’s Men
American Graffiti
American in Paris, An
Angels with Dirty Faces
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
Badlands
Bambi
Batman
Battleship Potemkin
Best Years of Our Lives, The
Big
Big Chill, The
Big Heat, The
Big Parade, The
Big Sleep, The
Birth of a Nation, The

1
3
5
7
8
10
12
14
15
18

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35
37
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41

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Contents

Blade Runner
Blair Witch Project, The
Blue Velvet
Bond Films, The
Bonnie and Clyde
Bowling for Columbine
Boys in the Band, The
Boyz N’ the Hood
Breakfast Club, The
Breaking Away
Breathless
Bridge on the River Kwai, The

Brokeback Mountain
Bulworth
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Caddyshack
Carnal Knowledge
Casablanca
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Chinatown
Cinderella
Citizen Kane
City Lights
Cleopatra
Clockwork Orange, A
Clueless
Conversation, The
Cool Hand Luke
Crash (1996)
Crash (2004)
Crying Game, The
Dances with Wolves
Days of Wine and Roses
Dead Poets Society
Deer Hunter, The
Deliverance
Die Hard
Dirty Dancing
Dirty Harry
Do the Right Thing
Double Indemnity
Dr. Strangelove

Driving Miss Daisy
Duck Soup

vi

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99
101

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Contents

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
East of Eden
Easy Rider
Erin Brockovich
Exorcist, The
Fahrenheit 451
Fail-Safe

Falling Down
Fargo
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fatal Attraction
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Few Good Men, A
Fiddler on the Roof
Finding Nemo
Flags of Our Fathers
400 Blows, The
Frankenstein
French Connection, The
Friday the 13th
Front, The
Full Metal Jacket
Gattaca
General, The
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Giant
Gladiator
Glory
Godfather Trilogy, The
Going My Way
Goldfinger
Gone with the Wind
Goodfellas
Graduate, The
Grapes of Wrath, The
Grease
Great Dictator, The

Great Escape, The
Great Train Robbery, The
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Halloween
Harold and Maude
Harry Potter Series, The
Heaven’s Gate

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Contents

High Noon
Hoop Dreams

How Green Was My Valley
In the Company of Men
In the Heat of the Night
Independence Day
Indiana Jones
Insider, The
Interiors
Intolerance
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Iron Man
It Happened One Night
It’s a Wonderful Life
Jaws
Jazz Singer, The
Jerry Maguire
JFK
Judgment at Nuremberg
Jurassic Park
Karate Kid, The
Killing Fields, The
L.A. Confidential
Land Beyond the Sunset, The
Last Picture Show, The
Lean on Me
Left Handed Gun, The
Lethal Weapon
Letters from Iwo Jima
Lion King, The
Little Big Man
Lord of the Rings, The

Lost in Translation
Love Story
Magnificent Ambersons, The
Magnificent Seven, The
Malcolm X
Maltese Falcon, The
Manchurian Candidate, The
Manhattan
Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, The
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The
Mary Poppins

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Contents

M*A*S*H
Matrix Series, The
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Meet Me in St. Louis
Memento
Metropolis
Midnight Cowboy
Million Dollar Baby
Miracle on 34th Street
Modern Times
Moulin Rouge!
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Music Man, The
My Darling Clementine
My Man Godfrey
Nixon
No Country for Old Men
Officer and a Gentleman, An
On the Waterfront
Ordinary People
Paper Chase, The
Passion of the Christ, The
Philadelphia
Philadelphia Story, The
Piano, The
Pillow Talk

Place in the Sun, A
Planet of the Apes
Platoon
Postman Always Rings Twice, The
Pretty Woman
Pride of the Yankees, The
Producers, The
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Quiet Man, The
Rebel Without a Cause
Rio Bravo
Risky Business
Rocky Horror Picture Show, The
Roger & Me
Rosemary’s Baby
Saving Private Ryan

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ix


Contents

Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932)
Schindler’s List
Searchers, The
Serpico
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Shadows
Shaft
Shane
Shawshank Redemption, The
Shining, The
Shrek Series, The
Silence of the Lambs, The
Singin’ in the Rain
Singles
Sixteen Candles
Sixth Sense, The
Sleepless in Seattle
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Sound of Music, The
Splendor in the Grass
Stagecoach
Star Trek Series, The

Star Wars Series, The
Streetcar Named Desire, A
Sullivan’s Travels
Sunset Blvd.
Superman: The Movie
Taxi Driver
Terminator Series, The
Thelma and Louise
Third Man, The
Three Kings
Titanic
To Kill a Mockingbird
Top Gun
Touch of Evil
Toy Story
Traffic
12 Angry Men
2001: A Space Odyssey
Unforgiven
Vertigo
Waiting for Guffman
Way We Were, The

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499

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508
511
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521


Contents

West Side Story
When Harry Met Sally
White Christmas
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Wild Bunch, The
Winchester ’73
Witness
Wizard of Oz, The
Woman of the Year
Working Girl
Yankee Doodle Dandy
People
Allen, Dede
Allen, Woody
Altman, Robert
Arzner, Dorothy
Ashby, Hal

Astaire, Fred
Beatty, Warren
Bergman, Ingrid
Berkeley, Busby
Berry, Halle
Bigelow, Kathryn
Bogdanovich, Peter
Borden, Lizzie
Brando, Marlon
Brooks, Mel
Burton, Tim
Cagney, James
Campion, Jane
Capra, Frank
Carpenter, John
Cassavetes, John
Chaplin, Charlie
Chayefsky, Paddy
Coen, Joel and Ethan
Colbert, Claudette
Coppola, Francis Ford
Corman, Roger
Costner, Kevin
Cukor, George
Curtiz, Michael

524
525
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528

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602
603
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610
612
614
616

xi


Contents

DeMille, Cecil B.
De Niro, Robert
Deren, Maya
Disney, Walt
Donner, Richard
Duras, Marguerite
Eastwood, Clint
Ebert, Roger
Edison, Thomas Alva
Eisenstein, Sergei
Ephron, Nora
Fairbanks, Douglas, Sr.
Fleming, Victor
Flynn, Errol
Ford, John
Foster, Jodie

Frankenheimer, John
Friedkin, William
Gable, Clark
Garbo, Greta
Gibson, Mel
Gish, Lillian
Grant, Cary
Grier, Pam
Griffith, D. W.
Hawks, Howard
Heckerling, Amy
Hepburn, Katharine
Heston, Charlton
Hill, George Roy
Hitchcock, Alfred
Hopper, Dennis
Huston, John
Kasdan, Lawrence
Kazan, Elia
Keaton, Buster
Keaton, Diane
Kubrick, Stanley
Lang, Fritz
Laurel and Hardy
Lee, Ang
Lee, Spike
Lewis, Jerry

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688
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Contents

Lloyd, Harold
Lucas, George
Lumet, Sidney
Lumie`re, Auguste and Louis
Lupino, Ida
Lynch, David
Mann, Michael
Marx Brothers, The
May, Elaine
McDaniel, Hattie
Me´lie`s, Georges
Micheaux, Oscar
Miller, Arthur

Monroe, Marilyn
Moore, Michael
Mulvey, Laura
Murnau, F. W.
Muybridge, Eadweard
Newman, Paul
Nichols, Mike
Nicholson, Jack
Pacino, Al
Peckinpah, Sam
Penn, Arthur
Pickford, Mary
Poitier, Sidney
Polanski, Roman
Pollack, Sydney
Preminger, Otto
Ray, Nicholas
Robeson, Paul
Sarris, Andrew
Schoonmaker, Thelma
Scorsese, Martin
Scott, Ridley
Sinatra, Frank
Singleton, John
Spielberg, Steven
Stone, Oliver
Streisand, Barbra
Sturges, John
Sturges, Preston
Tarantino, Quentin

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Contents

Taylor, Elizabeth
Towne, Robert
Truffaut, Franc¸ois
Valentino, Rudolph
Van Peebles, Melvin
Varda, Agne`s
Vidor, King
Von Stroheim, Erich
Washington, Denzel
Waters, John

Wayne, John
Weber, Lois
Welles, Orson
Wenders, Wim
Wilder, Billy
Williams, John
Wyler, William
Zanuck, Darryl
Subjects
Academy Awards, The
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
Action-Adventure Film, The
African Americans in Film
Ancient World in Film, The
Animation
Auteur Theory
Biblical Epic, The
Blackface
Cannes Film Festival, The
Cine´ma Ve´rite´
Cinematography
Color
Coming-of-Age Film, The
Committee on Public Information, The
Documentary, The
Drive-in Theaters
Early Movie Houses
Ethnic and Immigrant Culture Cinema
Feminist Film Criticism
Film Criticism

Film Editing
Film Noir

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Contents

French New Wave
Gangster Film, The
German Expressionism
Hard-Boiled Detective Film, The
Hays Office and Censorship, The
Hollywood Blacklist, The
HUAC Hearings, The
Independent Film, The
Intellectual Montage

Italian Neorealism
Judaism and Film
Kuleshov Effect, The
Male Gaze, The
Melodrama, The
Method Acting
Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA)
Movie Star, The
Music in Film
Musical, The
Native Americans in Film
New Technologies in Film
Nickelodeon Era, The
Politics and Film
Product Placements
Product Tie-Ins
Religion and Censorship in Film
Religion and Nationalism in Film
Representations of Disability in Film
Romantic Comedy, The
Science and Politics in Film
Science Fiction Film, The
Screen Actors Guild
Screenplay and the Screenwriter, The
Silent Era, The
Slasher Films
Social Movements and Film
Sound
Sports Film, The
Studio System, The

Sundance Film Festival, The
Superhero in Film, The
Television
War Film, The

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xv


Contents

Western, The
Women in Film

xvi

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1129

Index

1139

About the Editor

1227

List of Contributors

1229


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It was with a great deal of excitement that I accepted the assignment as General Editor
for the ABC-CLIO offering Movies in American History: An Encyclopedia, during the
summer of 2008. The project had been proposed by James Sherman, the Editorial
Manager for ABC-CLIO’s American History products, and I was pleased that he
entrusted me with seeing the project through to its end. I would like to thank James
for his patience in guiding me through the initial stages of the project—his advice
and firm hand were invaluable.
As with every encyclopedia project, Movies in American History had a great number
of contributors, some 150, all of whom must be contracted for the work that they
submit and registered with the publishing house. I would like to thank the Project
Coordinator for our encyclopedia, Barbara Patterson, who took on the monumental
task of gathering together and coordinating the vast amount of materials from contributors that flowed into the Santa Barbara offices of ABC-CLIO. I would also like to
thank all of the technical wizards who keep the ABC-CLIO Author Center site up
and running—having access to this site made my job, and those of my contributors,

immeasurably easier.
Anyone who has written or edited a book understands how important a good editor
is; thankfully, I had the very best, my Submissions Editor, Kim KennedyWhite. Over
the past 18 months, Kim, who has now accepted a position at ABC-CLIO as an Acquisitions Editor for products on Race, Ethnicity, and Multicultural Studies, has read and
commented on each and every entry that has come in from my contributors—some
450. She has also shepherded me through every moment of the project, from advising
me on how to make the materials for Movies in American History more powerful to lifting
my spirits when I grew discouraged about my progress on the encyclopedia. I congratulate her on her new position and very much hope that I will have another opportunity to
work with her in the future.
Perhaps the part of the editorial process that is least noted when a book is published
is that of copy editing. Copy editors have the often tedious task of insuring that the
technical aspects of a project—the spelling, grammar, style, and attributions—are all

xvii


Acknowledgments

correct. I would like to thank my copy editor for this project, Gary Morris, who
poured over hundreds of pages of text to find all those little mistakes that prove to be
so glaring if they are missed. In the end, he saved me from all manner of stylistic error,
something I greatly appreciate.
I would like to thank all of my contributors for the hard work that they put in on
Movies in American History. For such a project to succeed, it requires that contributors
commit themselves to producing quality work in a timely fashion—my contributors
performed admirably in this regard. Although I obviously could not have completed
the project without the assistance of all of my contributors, I would like to single out
two for distinction, Dr. Robert Platzner and Dr. Van Roberts. I have had the privilege
of working with Bob Platzner since I arrived at California State University, Sacramento
14 years ago. More than simply a colleague, Bob has been a mentor during my time at

Sac State; indeed, he helped me to develop the film studies courses that I have had the
privilege of teaching at the university, and the many discussions we have had about cinema have honed my thinking on the subject. In regard to Movies in American History,
Bob was my most prolific author, contributing no fewer than 15 entries to the project.
It is an honor to have his work included in the encyclopedia. It is hard to say enough
good things about Van Roberts, with whom I had not worked before he became a contributor on our project. Van was there from the very beginning, working tirelessly on
his entries and—an editor’s dream—making every deadline. His enthusiasm, good
nature, and grace are truly unique, and he has taught me a good deal about what it
means to be a better colleague and person—thank you, Van Roberts.
I would also like to thank my colleague and dear friend Judith Poxon, who, in addition
to contributing a number of entries to the encyclopedia, was always willing to sit and listen
to my woes; and my fellow cafe´ denizen Chuck Watson, who provided me with neverending doses of encouragement during numerous early morning conversations.
Finally, I would like to thank my darling wife, Jennifer, my friend and slayer of life’s
demons without whom none of this would be possible; our precious five-year-old son,
Luca, who has spent half his young life watching his daddy work on his book; and my
sister Lesley, who has graciously watched over her headstrong brother for his entire life.
Philip C. DiMare
California State University, Sacramento

xviii


INTRODUCTION
Philip C. DiMare

The second half of the nineteenth century was marked by the explosive growth of
American industry, with the railroad leading the way in defining how this industrial
process would unfold. As rail systems flourished after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869—their development eagerly supported by local, state, and
federal governments that provided monies and land grants; and aided by technological
advancements, such as steel rails that could carry heavier locomotives, and new couplers, braking systems, and signals—these systems became foundational elements in
growing America’s market economy. Literally connecting the nation’s sprawling territories, railroads employed thousands of workers and created large-scale industrial

bureaucracies to manage their operations. They also defined the business model that
would be adopted by leaders of other important U.S. industries, such as steel and iron,
petroleum, electricity, mass-produced foods and clothing, and farm machinery
(Heilbroner and Singer, 1999).
The first great American industrialists, shrewd and often ruthless men like Jay
Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller
dominated the late nineteenth-century business world. Employing the processes of
“vertical” and “horizontal” integration, which allowed owners to control all aspects of
specific industries and to drive competitors out of those particular markets, these early
industrialists, often referred to as “robber barons” by their critics, created monopolistic
mega companies such as U.S. Steel and Standard Oil. Forming themselves into large
and powerful business “trusts,” which gave a limited number of trustees dictatorial
control over extensive, interconnected corporate networks, these business leaders drove
industrialization in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
until, by the 1910s, American industrial production would comprise one-third of the
world’s total output (Morris, 2006).

xix


Introduction

Industrialization and the Rise of American Cinema
Significantly, America’s entry into world cinema was intimately connected to the
industrial expansion that occurred during the second half of the nineteenth century
and to the extraordinarily gifted inventors it spawned. Thomas Alva Edison (see:
Edison, Thomas Alva) for instance, who had invented the phonograph in 1876, was
instrumental in driving the development of the film industry in the United States
during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Edison was intrigued by reports
that Eadweard Muybridge (see: Muybridge, Eadweard) had invented a machine

called the “zoopraxiscope,” which could project moving images onto a screen. In early
1888, Muybridge literally took his show on the road, touring the United States and
screening his short motion picture Animal Locomotion for amazed viewers. When the
Muybridge tour stopped over in Orange, New Jersey, in February of that year, Edison
invited Muybridge to visit his lab in West Orange. Impressed by Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope, Edison suggested that the two become partners. (Although Edison denied it in
his journals, the story still circulates that during their meeting, Edison pitched the idea
to Muybridge of joining together his phonograph and the zoopraxiscope in order to
create motion pictures with sound!) Although they were interested in each other’s
ideas, the partnership was never formed, and the two inventors went their separate
ways. Still fascinated by the zoopraxiscope, Edison took the technology Muybridge
had utilized to develop his invention and fashioned a more efficient projector, which
came to be called the Kinetoscope. Sadly for Muybridge, after Edison filed patents
for the kinetograph (the camera) and the kinetoscope (the viewing implement) in
1891, Muybridge and his contributions were all but forgotten (Sklar, 2002).
Edison debuted his Kinetoscope at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in
1893. Customers were able to step up to his moving-picture machine and view short
film clips such as the “Blacksmith Scene,” which ran for 20 seconds and showed three
of Edison’s employees hammering on an anvil. What was considered Edison’s first
“film” bore the rather cumbersome title Edison’s Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze. Also
known as Fred Ott’s Sneeze, the short film captured the eponymously named Edison
employee in the midst of sneezing. Other Edison films followed—American Gymnast,
for example, which showed a young woman performing a somersault, and The Barber
Shop, which recorded the everyday activities of barbers as they serviced their clients
(Sklar, 2002).
In regard to their format, all of Edison’s early motion pictures were the same: they
were simply descriptive recordings of some sort of action, what came to be called
“actualities.” Edison did expand on this notion of descriptive recording, presenting
audiences with two filmic series that possessed more entertainment value. The first of
these displayed the European muscleman Eugene Sandow set against a black backdrop
and moving through a number of different poses in order to show off his remarkable

physique. The other series featured a dancer named Annabelle Whitford, who, like
Sandow, was positioned in front of a black backdrop. For her part, Whitford danced
for her audiences in short films such as Annabelle Serpentine Dance and Annabelle
Butterfly Dance. Edison even made the first picture that shocked viewers. Titled The

xx


Introduction

Kiss, the film depicted a rather awkward kiss between two stage actors, May Irwin and
John Rice. The first cinema “still” of a motion picture image—the actors poised with
lips together—was drawn from Edison’s film, appearing in an American newspaper
and raising even more eyebrows. In the end, The Kiss elicited the first calls for censorship of the radical new medium (Lewis, 2008).
Edison had neglected to secure international patents for his kinetoscope, and inventers in Europe began to develop their own motion picture projectors. Two of the most talented of these European inventors were the French-born brothers Auguste and Louis
Lumie`re (see: Lumie`re Brothers, The). Familiar with, and inspired by, Edison’s kinetoscope, the Lumie`res created a complex machine that was camera, projector, and film
developer rolled into one. Much more practical than Edison’s machine, the Lumie`res’
cine´matographe ran at 16 fps (frames-per-second), which became the standard for silent
pictures. It also allowed images to be taken “out of the box,” as it were, and to be projected on a screen so that they could be viewed by multi-member audiences.
Toward that end, the Lumie`res rented out the basement of the Grand Cafe´ in Paris
on December 28, 1895, and the brothers became the first filmmakers to screen their
cinematic offerings for a paying audience when they exhibited a series of motion picture shorts. They opened their 1895 screening with a picture titled La sortie des usines
Lumie`re (Leaving the Lumie`re Factory). In a certain sense the picture was much like
those produced by Edison, as it merely recorded workers leaving a factory in Lyon after
a long day of work. Yet La sortie des usines had a very different feel to it, as the filmmakers had staged the scene—by the use of special lighting, camera position, and theatrical blocking—in a way that gave it a certain expressive depth. Other films followed
that had the same depth-level quality, perhaps the most famous the startling L’arrive`e
d’un train en gare a´ la Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at la Ciotat), which legend has it
had viewers covering their eyes and turning away from the screen for fear that the train
would land in their laps.

The Creation of Narrative Films and the Spread of Early Movie Houses
Unlike Edison, then, the Lumie`res by way of their use of innovative filmmaking
techniques, began to define what came to be known as the cinematic mise-en-sce`ne.
Borrowed from the stage, the phrase, which may be translated as “putting on the scene,”
defines the process by which the film set (much like the theatrical stage) is framed—how
it is lit, where the camera is placed, where the actors are positioned. Rather than just
recording action, then, filmmakers began to “put on scenes” that conveyed meaning to
their viewers. Ironically, the first filmmaker who began to make a name for himself as a
master of mise-en-sce`ne in America was another Frenchman, Georges Me´lie`s (see:
Me´lie`s, Georges). Me´lie`s was a magician who had experimented with trick photography
and what would come to be understood as special effects. Although like other filmmakers
he had begun his cinematic career by making actualities, he eventually began to make
motion pictures that told stories—Barbe-Bleue (Bluebeard) in 1902, for instance, and
later, La sire`ne (The Mermaid) in 1904 and Le diable noir (The Black Imp) in 1905.

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Certainly his most famous offering, though, was Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the
Moon), which was released in 1902. Although like almost all the films of the day, Le voyage dans la lune was shot as if the viewer were looking at a theatrical stage, Me´lie`s used
what would now be considered crude special effects—such as making moon men disappear in clouds of smoke and shifting scenery around the set in unexpected ways—that
gave his motion picture a narrative quality that actualities did not possess.
The possibility of screening narrative motion pictures such as Me´lie`s’s Le voyage
dans la lune for ever-larger audiences was facilitated by Edison’s development of the
Vitascope during the mid-1890s. Dubbed by some Edison’s “Greatest Marvel,” the
Vitascope was instrumental in attracting increasingly larger audiences to film-viewing
venues. Individual viewers had initially watched moving pictures in film houses such
as the Holland Brothers’ Kinetoscope Parlor. For a small fee, customers were entitled

to view the filmic fare that flickered to life on five separate machines, an experience
they thought well worth the price. Kinetoscope parlors quickly became wildly popular,
springing up in cities across the country. Eventually, though, film shorts began to be
screened for multiple-member audiences who were attending vaudeville shows, the
most popular form of entertainment during the late nineteenth century. When vaudeville performers went on strike in 1900, theater owners wagered that audiences were so
enthralled by motion pictures that they would not care if the live acts were dropped
and they were presented with “all-film” shows. Much to the delight of the owners their
wager paid off, as audiences flocked to theaters to see these all-film programs.
By the early twentieth century, the popularity of motion pictures gave rise to the
creation of nickelodeons (see: Nickelodeon Era, The), movie houses that got their
name as a result of owners charging customers a nickel to view a program of film
shorts. By 1908, New York City could boast that 600 nickelodeons had opened there,
and other large cities also saw the growth of this cinematic craze. Nickelodeons were
not exclusively urban phenomena, however, as these early film venues spread to rural
areas, as well—indeed, by 1910, nickelodeons were even popular in Oklahoma, which
at that time was still considered “Indian Territory.”

Filmmaking Becomes a Business
The five-cent charge for entry into a nickelodeon made these public spaces available
to thousands of immigrants who made their way to America during the last decades of
the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth. Largely illiterate and
initially unable to speak English, these immigrants, especially those from different
countries in Europe who settled in East Coast urban centers such as New York City,
became part of a lower- and middle-class consumer culture that began to dominate
America’s increasingly industrialized and urbanized twentieth-century landscape.
Capitalizing on the creation of this rapidly emerging consumer culture, investors with
money and vision began to provide competition for Edison. One of his former
employees, W. K. L. Dickson, for instance, helped found the American Mutoscope
and Biograph Company, which ultimately came to be called simply Biograph. Working with a 70mm film format, which provided audiences not only with much larger

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but also much clearer images, Biograph became a force in the burgeoning film industry. Its founders, especially Dickson, were fascinated by the new medium and sought
to advance it technologically. Toward this end, they developed innovative equipment
such as a panning-head tripod that allowed the camera to swivel, at least in a basic
way, from side to side. The possibility of even rudimentary camera movement represented a vastly important step forward in the evolution of moving pictures: Instead
of being limited to viewing simple action sequences from a single perspective, audiences were now treated to screen images that seemed increasingly lifelike.
Biograph did not break completely from its predecessors, churning out its own list
of actualities; yet, by 1900, they were already making what can be considered early narrative films. Largely cautionary tales concerning the evils of alcohol, infidelity, and
prostitution, they bore titles such as The Downward Path, She Ran Away with a City
Man, and The Girl Who Went Astray. The company also produced a series of shorts
that provided viewers with troubling racist messages. Three of these films—Dancing
Darkies, A Watermelon Feast, and A Hard Wash, the last depicting an African American
woman desperately scrubbing her child in order, audiences were left to infer, to wash
away the child’s “blackness”—appeared in 1896, the same year that the U.S. Supreme
Court handed down its disturbing Plessy v. Ferguson decision that ushered in the Jim
Crow era of a “separate but equal” America (Lewis, 2008).
Edison fought back against Biograph by piecing together his own mega firm in
1908, the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). A powerful corporate trust
in the manner of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and J. P. Morgan’s U.S. Steel,
Edison’s MPPC joined together nine of his competitors—including Biograph. Like
Rockefeller and Morgan, who used the business practices of horizontal and vertical
integration to gobble up smaller companies and to dominate every aspect of their
respective industries, the MPPC overwhelmed the film industry during the first decade
of the twentieth century. Taking advantage of their monopolistic position in the industry, MPPC built larger studios, streamlined their productions, and became ever more
technologically advanced. Their commitment to organizational excellence allowed
MPPC to reap huge profits; it also led to the production of better films and lower costs

for exhibiting those films. By 1910, filmmaking had become a thriving industry, one
that would begin to shape the way that America looked in powerful and often unsettling ways.
Surprisingly, MPPC’s monopolization of the industry lasted little more than a year,
as independent companies started to resist Edison’s corporate dominance. A number of
these companies formed themselves into the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales
Company, and by the early 1910s, 30 percent of the industry was controlled by business interests not connected to the MPPC. In the end, the U.S. government broke
up the MPPC trust, and the independents were successful in carving out a permanent
place in the industry—they were also instrumental in shifting the geographical center
of the industry from the East Coast to the weather-friendly West Coast mecca of
Hollywood. Although there were attempts to develop filmmaking sites in Florida
and the Southwest, by 1915, the vast majority of people making motion pictures were
doing so in California.

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Introduction

The Western and the Myth of American Exceptionalism
As motion pictures became an increasingly popular form of entertainment, individual filmmakers began distinguishing themselves by producing more complex narrative
films. Among the first of these early filmmakers was Edwin S. Porter. Porter, who had
been a navy electrician and a telegraph operator, worked for Edison producing a
series of motion picture shorts before making his first two important films, Life of an
American Fireman in 1902 and an adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel
Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1903 (Sklar, 2002). Porter began to experiment with different
editing techniques in these films, and the latter set an industry standard with a running
time of 15 minutes, a stunning accomplishment during the early years of cinema. After
completing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Porter turned his attention to the film for which he is
best known, The Great Train Robbery (see: Great Train Robbery, The).
Comprised of 14 individual shots, The Great Train Robbery was a quantum leap forward in filmmaking, representing, as it did, what can be understood as the first modern

narrative motion picture. Although Porter’s shots were mostly stationary, he demonstrated his extraordinary skills as a filmmaker by cutting back and forth among these
shots, allowing him to express simultaneous action and to provide context to images that
by themselves had little meaning. With a running time of 11 minutes, the film tells the
story of a ruthless band of outlaws who carry out a train robbery, make good their escape,
and who are then hunted down and killed by the members of a posse. Featuring a fight
on top of a moving train, men being brutally gunned down, explosions, and Porter’s signature final shot of a cowboy (Broncho Billy Anderson) looking directly into the camera,
raising his gun, and firing it at the audience, The Great Train Robbery amazed viewers
with its imagistic articulation of human cruelty, revenge, and retribution.
Although it stands as a predecessor to later action adventure and hardboiled detective
movies, The Great Train Robbery can properly be understood as the first of what many
consider the quintessential American film type, the western. Sweeping tales of heroic
men who conquered an ever-expanding frontier, westerns gave expression to iconic
notions of American exceptionalism—John Winthrop’s idea of the Puritans’ new homeland as a divinely gifted “city upon a hill,” Thomas Jefferson’s description of the hardwon republic as an agrarian paradise, John L. O’Sullivan’s claim that it was the nation’s
“manifest destiny” to spread west all the way to the Pacific shore. Generally set in the
post-Civil War era—the period during which the nation’s destiny was conclusively fulfilled—and set in territories west of the Mississippi, the western “created its own landscape, its own character-types, and its own narrative forms as a way of investing this
time and place with mythic significance” (see: Western, The).
Oddly enough, by the time The Great Train Robbery was released in 1902—the
same year that Owen Wister published The Virginian, generally considered the first
“cowboy novel”—the American frontier had been “closed” for more than a decade.
The closing of the American frontier during the late nineteenth century had been
noted by figures such as Josiah Strong in his 1886 publication Our Country: Its Possible
Future and Its Present Crisis and Frederick Jackson Turner in his seminal paper “The
Significance of the Frontier in American History,” which Turner initially presented at

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