162: The Birth of the Movies: From Silent Cinema to the Rise of Hollywood & the First “Talkie”
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Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, as he was known, made a recent appearance in our Origin of the Movies episode.

because in addition to the electric light and countless other inventions, he also gave us the motion picture camera. It reminded me that Edison didn't do well in the traditional school classroom when he was a boy. This prolific inventor and successful businessman learned better at home. At school, it's reported that he'd likely be lost in thought. His mother, Nancy, recognized a different approach to learning was required for her son. And the rest is history. As a parent, I appreciate that.

because each of my own three children are different. They each learn in different ways, and I want them to thrive at whatever they choose to do later in life. One learning option for kids today is K-12. K-12 powered schools are accredited, tuition-free online public schools for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. K-12 can help your child reach their full potential and give you the support you need to get them there.

This is different from homeschooling, where you are responsible for teaching them. K-12 powered schools have state certified teachers, specially trained in teaching online.

So join the more than 2 million families who have chosen K-12 and empower your student to reach their full potential now. Go to k12.com slash HTDS today to learn more and find a tuition-free K-12 powered school near you. That's the letter K, the number 12 dot com slash HTDS. K12.com slash HTDS.

Hello all, Eric Rivenis with the Most Notorious Podcast here. Each week I interview an author or historian about a historical true crime, tragedy, or disaster. Subject matter ranges from gunslingers to Gilded Age murder to gangsters to fires to pirates to wild prison breaks. My guests bring their incredible knowledge directly to you. Please subscribe to Most Notorious on your favorite podcast app. Cheers, and have a safe tomorrow.

It's a sunny spring day in May 1878. We're in Palo Alto, California at the stock farm and stables of a famous Central Pacific Railroad founder and former California governor, the one and only Leland Stanford. But this isn't a typical day at the heavy-set Californian stables. No, rather than jockeys training racehorses, the grounds are filled with workmen swinging hammers and brushing paint.

They're building a 50-foot long shed with a countertop running almost the entire distance of one side. You'd be forgiven for thinking they're building a concession stand if not for the 15-foot plank-built wall going up just opposite of it. Nor is that a fence. I mean, it can't be. It's intentionally angled to lean slightly back at about a 70-degree angle from the ground. Meanwhile, painters are slathering both this open-faced shed and crooked wooden wall in white paint.

Curious, isn't it? Well, it's all in the name of science. Let me explain. About five years back, Leland Stanford hired the great globe-trotting, English-born photographer, Edward Muybridge, to take some photos, including some in-motion shots of his racehorse, named Occident. Leland's interest wasn't really an action photo, though. He just wanted to know what a horse's legs look like when charging at full speed. Specifically, is there a moment when all four hooves leave the ground?

Alas, Edward's camera wasn't able to capture a sufficiently clear image, but that didn't discourage the hefty and obscenely wealthy Californian of Transcontinental Railroad fame. Even as Edward completed other photography projects and was charged with murdering his wife's lover with an ultimate verdict of justifiable homicide, Leland never wavered in his willingness to work with the photographer, who continued to work on the technology necessary to capture crisp images of a horse at full gallop.

And well, Edward figured it out. A stereo or two-lens camera with a faster two-sided shutter that, perhaps most importantly, operated electronically, thereby allowing it to be calculated down to the thousandth of a second would do the trick. Edward returned to Palo Alto just last year and captured not a perfect but clear enough photo of Occidental to answer Leland's question. But when the images proved Leland right...

that the horse's hooves do all leave the ground simultaneously at a given point, skeptical newspapers mocked. They called the photos fakes. And that's what brings us to this recent construction at Leland Stanford Staples. He has the determination and the money to prove that Edward's photos were real. These workmen are building essentially an outdoor studio that will create the perfect conditions to photograph a horse in action.

That shed will hold 12 cameras, each 21 inches apart, each electronically triggered as the horse passes by. And bold showman that Leland is. He's invited the press to come watch this in-action photography. It's now a sunny Saturday morning, June 15th, 1878. Leland Stanford, his friends, Edward Muybridge, and of course, numerous reporters, have all gathered at the celebrity former governor's Palo Alto stables.

Today's the day, the moment of Leland's and Edward's vindication. Assuming everything goes right with the two planned demonstrations, of course. If it doesn't, both men will look like fools. Either way, it's time. Riding in a small seat situated between two massive wheels, a type of single rider carriage known as a sulky, Leland's chief trainer, Charles Marvin, drives a horse named Abe Edgington before the crowd.

Charles paces the steed back and forth a few times between the long white painted shed and the likewise whitewashed 15-foot screen of planks. It's almost blinding and an unfamiliar space for Abe. And well, the last thing Charles wants is a spooked horse. But Abe soon seems comfortable. Charles steers the horse to the starting line. Charles flicks his wrists and Abe charges down the track. As the horse does, the sulky's metal-rimmed wheels roll over wires every 21 inches.

As that happens, the corresponding camera's electric shutter goes, ensuring that each one captures an image exactly as Abe charges by. All 12 go off precisely as planned. Whew, one demonstration down, but one to go. An unidentified jockey rides out on a mare named Sally Gardner. That's right, no carriage. This time, strings spaced 21 inches apart and hanging at the height of the horse's breast run across the track.

Sally will engage a given camera's shutter when she breaks through its corresponding string. Huh, sounds a little riskier, but here we go. Sally charges forward, snapping string after string, taking pictures of herself. But between all of the gleaming whitewashed structures and the catch of the strings, she gets spooked around the eighth or ninth camera. Sally leaps into the air, breaking the saddle girth in the process.

Sally, getting spooked, must have terrified Leland and Edward in the moment. But in truth, they couldn't have asked for a more fortunate mishap. Immediately heading to his darkroom, with reporters in tow, Edward develops the photos right in front of their eyes. As they watch the silhouette of the jockey and Sally appear against the stark white background, the mayor's unplanned, spooked leap appears.

This presents incontestable evidence. Nothing has been faked and consistent with last year's photos, this shows that a galloping horse does have a moment in which all four hooves are simultaneously off the ground. This is incredible, beyond incredible. These high-tech advanced cameras have advanced human knowledge. They've captured images exceeding the ability of the naked human eye. And looking at these photos in rapid succession, it looks like the horse is running.

Like the pictures are moving. Yeah, like moving pictures. And the technology is just beginning. In the years to come, further technological improvements will enable moving pictures to become even more realistic. Soon, they'll forever alter entertainment, reporting, the economy, and frankly, the human experience. America will never be the same.

Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. Edward Muybridge couldn't have imagined what sequential photos would lead to. But you and I sure can. Full-featured films. The movies. And today, we start that story with the tale of silent cinema and the birth of Hollywood.

We'll begin by placing Edward Muybridge's experiment in the larger context of advancements leading to film, including other mere seconds-long sequential photos sometimes credited as the first film. As we do, we'll encounter an old friend of ours from past episodes, the Wizard of Menlo Park, Thomas Alva Edison. He and his team, or his boys, are true pioneers of motion pictures.

While they failed to merge sound and film in a meaningful way, their silent film studio is truly innovative. But Mr. Edison can get a little jealous as we attend some history-making silent film screenings, one in Paris, France, and another at a Nickelodeon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We'll find that the wizard is trying to lock down the burgeoning film industry with his new motion picture patents company.

But he's in for quite a fight as small independent filmmakers flee to the West Coast and find great success in a small Southern California town called Hollywood. Yet, as Hollywood succeeds and its actors become celebrities, America is left to wonder. Is Hollywood, or Tinseltown, or the Dream Factory, as it's also known, a place of decadence and sin? From the personal life of Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle to the violence and sex in films, scandal is brewing.

Roscoe's is a true tabloid tale, but believe me when I say, wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothing yet. I'll just leave that line hanging there with the promise that you'll understand what I mean after joining me at the premiere of a new 1927 film called The Jazz Singer. It's a lot to get to, so let's not waste any time. Lights, camera, rewind.

So, did Edward Muybridge create the first motion picture? Well, that's messy, as is so often the case when trying to name a definitive first of anything in history. Arguably, our tale begins in the 17th century with Dutch inventor Christian Huygens, who finds that he can use light, say a candle or lamp, and a concave mirror to project the hand-painted image on a small piece of glass against a wall. It's like magic.

Hence, the crude apparatus' name: the magic lantern. But this does not depict motion. It's really the world's first slide projector. But in the early 1830s, motion comes into play as Belgium's Joseph Plateau and Austria's Simon-Rita van Stampha separately yet nearly simultaneously realize that a wheel with a dozen sequential images spun quickly and viewed through a small slit creates the illusion of movement.

This is a moving image, but this phenakistoscope or zoetrope, to use the easier name for this handheld children's toy, is only a simple and intentionally looping image. Hardly a movie then. It's more like the first GIF. Or Jif. Pronounce it as you will. I have no dog in that fight. Ah, but then, in the 1870s, we get tightly sequenced photographs.

In 1874, French astronomer Jules Janssen photographs Venus passing across the Sun. While only his model plates will survive, some say this blip from his planetary observation, called Passage de Vénus, is the first motion picture. But others say it's the 1878 sequence we just heard about in this episode's opening: Edward Muybridge's photographs of Leland Stanford's galloping horses, known as the Horse in Motion.

And side note, Jordan Peele's film, Nope, makes a reference to an unnamed black man who appears as a writer in one set of these photos. In both cases though, the sequential photos taken in the name of science are like combining the magic lantern with the phenakistoscope when viewed rapidly. In fact, Edward does just that, creating a wheel-spinning projection of animal movement. He calls it the zoopraxiscope. Perhaps this invention means Edward has indeed made the first moving picture.

Well, not so fast. In 1882, France's Etienne Jules Marais creates a rapid-fire camera that captures up to 12 images in sequence on a single disc. That's right, one camera. Switching to paper film created by an American named George Eastman, Etienne gets that up to 40 images.

Better still, between 1887 and 1890, another Frenchman, Louis-Aimé-Augustin Le Prince, successfully creates a camera capable of using a series of photographic plates to capture motion with the intent to project it. Some say his two-second round hay garden scene shot on one camera in 1888 is the first real motion picture. But alas, Louis boards a train for Paris in September 1890 and mysteriously disappears.

So does his invention. There are a number of theories. Louis' family is quick to point the finger at his biggest competitor, Thomas Alva Edison. Ah yes, our good friend from episodes 95 and 96, the Wizard of Menlo Park, Thomas Alva Edison. Or just Alva, as his friends know him. The notion that Alva has Louis Le Prince killed doesn't hold up. For one thing, the New Jersey inventor just isn't the murdering type.

And for another, Louis knew far more about Alva's motion picture machine than Alva knew about the Frenchman's work. No disrespect to Louis, but reputation-wise, he wasn't in Alva's league. That said, T. Alva Edison can be a bit ruthless, as Edward Muybridge learns the hard way.

On February 27th, 1888, the wizard takes a meeting with the British inventor slash murderer who's interested in pairing his zoopraxiscope photo projecting machine with Alva's recorded sound plane phonograph. Yes, moving pictures with sound. What an idea. Intrigued, Alva tells Edward he'll mull it over.

After mulling, the wizard decides he can improve upon Edward's machine. He can craft a single camera that will take a slew of rapid photos. And he does. But he'll never credit the Englishman for so much as inspiring his work. Nonetheless, Thomas Alva Edison is the one who takes motion pictures to its next level. He doesn't manage to incorporate sound, but in 1891, Alva patents two inventions.

One is the kinetograph, which captures motion pictures on continuous strips. Arguably, this is the first full-on motion picture camera. The other invention is for viewing said motion pictures. A four-foot-tall cabinet that houses several sequential photos and has a small peephole through which a spectator can watch them zip by. This is called the kinetoscope.

As is always the case with any Edison invention, it's difficult to say how much work is Alva's and how much is the effort of his boys at Menlo Park. In this case, British hobbyist photographer and walrus mustache enthusiast William Kennedy Laurie Dixon, or just Dixon as Alva calls him, likely carried a lot of the water. Over the next two years, they perfect the machine using New Yorker George Eastman's celluloid paper to create more durable pictures.

The team makes short motion pictures featuring Dixon and other Edison men waving at the camera or shaking hands. Later, they film a blacksmith at work, and famously Edison employee Fred Ott sneezing. With the machines perfected and a special building constructed just for making these motion pictures, the Menlo Park wizard and his boys start looking for a way to make this profitable.

It's time to make some motion pictures, or to use Alva's word referencing the celluloid paper, to film some motion pictures that are truly entertaining. It's a late morning, nearly noon, September 7th, 1894. Thomas Alva Edison and William K. Dixon, or just Alva and Dixon, are giving directions to two boxers and their entourages inside a hot, stuffy, and strange-looking building in West Orange, New Jersey.

This tar-covered, windowless, oblong and wooden studio does not look inviting. It's dubbed the Black Maria, which is a popular nickname for police paddy wagons. Perhaps even more descriptive, though, is historian Robert Connett's term for the building. A, quote-unquote, Brontosaurus's sarcophagus. Yes, a curious coffin-like structure. Let me explain as these boxers prepare for their bout.

Here's the deal. Incredible as the kinetograph is, this early motion picture camera needs a lot of light, more than even Thomas Alva Edison's new light bulb can handle. Sunlight then. But the kinetograph isn't portable. It weighs about a thousand pounds. That's why Alva's constructed the Black Maria. This studio has a retractable roof and sits on a rotating graphite platform, allowing the whole studio to rotate and follow the sun's movement throughout the day. Brilliant.

As for painting everything black, that is to provide a high contrast between the dark background and the sunlit boxers. Ah yes, the boxers. Today, we're filming a fight. In one corner, we have the sunburned, handsome, 195-pound heavyweight champion and Broadway actor, Jim Corbett. In the other, weighing in at 190 pounds, Peter Courtney.

And I guess no one cares that it's illegal to box in New Jersey because the press is furiously covering every detail about this filmed bout today, including the fact that Alva has offered the combatants $5,000, $4,750 to the winner and $250 to the loser. The only condition, someone has to go down within six rounds because that's as much as they can film. And with that, let the fight begin. Dixon calls on the boxers to take their positions.

Both shirtless men, true specimens of fitness, strike a fighting pose as the large group of men in suits, vests, and most visibly white shirts position themselves in the background. The fighters shake hands and go to their corners. Then Dixon starts up the machine. With the kinetograph flying through celluloid, Peter rushes throwing a right hook at Jim's jaw, but the heavyweight champ dodges and laughs. Peter continues swinging his gloved fists.

Jim dodges them all and answers with several jabs, striking his opponent several times in the face. But Peter bears it all, including a vicious uppercut. Suddenly, Dixon calls the round. Ah, he has to change out the film. He grabs another 150-foot roll. And so it goes, with the film dictating each round. Soon enough, it is indeed the sixth round. Both men are tired. But both also know that if they want the prize money, now's the time.

Jim starts off, landing a hard left across Peter's jaw, followed by another with the right. Peter staggers, but as he does, Alva and Dixon yell to the dazed fighter, "You're out of focus! You're out of focus!" The fighter staggers back to position just in time for Jim to land the final blow and send Peter to the ground. Okay, so the match was heavily scripted. That doesn't stop the public from eating it up, though. Corbett and Courtney, before the kinetograph, as the film is called, sells as well as the beer in the kinetoscope parlors.

Oh, you heard that right. These parlors housing rows of kinetoscopes are popping up across the country and Americans gladly pay five or even 25 cents for the privilege of peering into the eyepiece of one of these large wooden cabinets to watch a 15 second film. When the first parlor opens in New York City in 1894, it rakes in 120 bucks on day one. And that's before running any advertisements. Whew.

Alva has no complaints about paying the fine for hosting that illegal boxing match in New Jersey. It more than pays for itself, and from cockfights to vaudeville performers to sharpshooting Annie Oakley of Buffalo Bill's Wild West fame and more, the boys at Menlo Park just keep the cash-making short films coming. But what about all those other inventors beyond America's shores?

Well, they're still at it. In fact, two French brothers have a different motion picture camera in the works, one that can easily move and film outside. Well, that sounds crazy, but also like something worth looking into. Let's head across the Atlantic for a look.

It's about 6pm, December 28th, 1895. A piano plays as we and some three dozen others, including reporters, theater directors, and even the well-known director and magician Georges Méliès descend into the basement billiard room of Le Salon Andien du Grand Café at 14 Boulevard de Capucines in Paris, France.

This is the first public screening of films made on a new motion picture device created by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière called the Cinématographe or in English the Cinématograph. Apparently it's a camera, film printer and projector all in one.

The brothers made a big splash with it at a scientific conference last March, and one newspaper, Le Lyon Républicain, says the machine is, quote, a new kinetograph, no less remarkable than Edison's, close quote. Wow. With curtains draped across the sidewalls, we sit facing a curtain-framed wall. Behind us is the cinematograph. It consists of what looks like two wooden boxes on a table.

One box has a light shining out of it pointing through a glass bottle filled with water. The second, smaller box, has a metal cylinder above it holding a roll of celluloid film that runs past a small square hole next to a hand crank. The actual camera is barely 20 pounds, yet it claims to do all that the half-a-ton Edison kinetograph does and more. This we have to see. With the Lumiere brothers absent tonight, one of their employees begins turning the hand crank. Suddenly, the wall illuminates.

It's like a magic lantern presentation, except these pictures are moving. The first film is "La sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon" or "Workers leaving the Lumière factory". The whole room is awed as they watch men and women exit the factory and the experience is sweetened, at least according to some sources, as the piano player improvs music. This is all mind-blowing. Such depth, such detail. It's a vision of real life captured and set against a wall.

A chuckle arises as a dog runs out of the factory. We watch several more of these location films, or les actualités, as the Lumiere brothers called them. We see a man struggling to mount a horse, a small child playing with a goldfish, a busy street in Lyon, France. But one film gets an especially great response, Le Jardinier, La Roseur à Rosé, or to use its English title, The Gardener, or The Sprinkler Sprinkled.

As a man in a white hat and overalls waters his garden, a boy sneaks up behind him and steps on the hose. As the stream of water disappears, our baffled gardener stares down the nozzle. The boy then removes his foot, spraying the gardener right in the face. The audience roars with laughter as Le Jardinier spanks the mischievous gamin.

The 15-minute program is a huge hit. Before long, there are 20 shows a day from 10 a.m. to 1.30 the following morning at a cost of one franc per person. With crowds wrapping around the block, it's big money. Now, a small film history side note. It's fun to see a Lumiere Brothers screening depicted in a scene of Martin Scorsese's over a century later film, Hugo, but I'll note that this depiction is itself art and not history.

In the scene, an audience watches the short film, La Rivée d'un Train en Gare de La Ciotat, or Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, and everyone ducks, cries, or cowers as the train hurtles toward them. It's a fun myth that audiences reacted like this, but by the time this short film premieres in 1896, people are more than used to motion pictures. We have no corroborating record of anyone freaking out while viewing this black-and-white, flickering, 16 frames per second film of a train.

I mean, it's not like the short film is in 3D. Then again, Hugo is in 3D. Maybe the urban legend scene is a low-key art-within-art meta-commentary? If so, well played, Mr. Scorsese. But even if the Lumiere brothers haven't fooled the audience, they have changed what's possible with the film camera. The barely 20-pound cinematograph can go anywhere, and soon it does. From the Holy Land to Japan and more, the Lumiere brothers have made filmmaking a global phenomenon.

But, while crowds are ecstatic to enjoy these films showing them the world in vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, and storefront theaters, there's a wizard in Menlo Park channeling some serious Saruman energy as he sees others putting technology on the market that, as far as he's concerned, he invented. That's right, old Tommy Alva Edison is about to get litigious.

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The vitascope, the idolascope, the mutascope. From film development to how the celluloid moves through the machine and how audiences view it, the burgeoning filmmaking industry of the 1890s is overwhelmed with a deluge of updates, even more often than your smartphone. Meanwhile, the Lumiere brothers and the Edison company keep the shorts coming, like Alva Edison's popular, though controversial film, The Kiss.

In it, a man and woman sit, cheek to cheek, corners of their mouths touching as they chat, laugh, and exchange small kisses. Next, the man pulls back, adjusts his great handlebar mustache, then tenderly places a hand on his smiling and laughing partner's cheek as they both eagerly lean in for the long, sustained kiss. Ah, cute and sweet, or a degrading and perverse display.

Many feel it's the latter, and these 15 sexy seconds have people watching and talking. But it's not all shorts. Movies are getting longer and more complicated. French stage director and former magician Georges Méliès practically invents the field of special effects, creating images of ghosts, banishing women, and the impression of people boiling in a giant cauldron.

His most famous work, Le Voyage dans la Lune, or A Trip to the Moon, is considered one of the first science fiction films. In this 1902 film, scientists fly a bullet-shaped rocket to the moon. They land right in the man in the moon's eye, then encounter aliens before triumphantly returning to Earth. It has multiple scenes, a storytelling plot, and runs some 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, back in the States, Edwin S. Porter's film, Life of an American Fireman, tells the tale of a heroic rescue from a burning house using scenes that, with the proper editing, the audience can tell are happening at the same time. The film is distributed by the Edison Company. Ah yes, Thomas Alva Edison. With so much development in filmmaking, the Wizard of Menlo Park wants to ensure that his company gets its due.

But it's not like he's in patent court shouting at judges, no no, Alva pays people to do that, specifically William Gilmore and Frank Dyer. The Edison Manufacturing Company either takes competition to court, which includes Alva's current or past partners like Dixon and Edwin S. Porter, or he absorbs them, as he does with the Phantoscope, on his way to the Vitascope. But unfortunately for Alva, the movie cat is out of the bag.

Films once purchased are copied and traded around like Pokemon cards, and the more he tries to clamp down, the more American business simply turns to foreign films to fill their clients' appetites. The Wizard also faces more industry disruption as two entrepreneurs in Pittsburgh change the game on him yet again.

It's an unspecified time, though likely in the evening, June 19th, 1905, and two local businessmen, Harry Davis and his brother-in-law, John Harris, are watching keenly as people stream into their small storefront at 433 to 435 Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The duo can't help but be nervous. They need a moneymaker and are hoping this newest venture will be it.

A little background. While Harry and John own a number of nearby penny arcades, billiard halls, and bowling alleys, their biggest moneymakers, the Alvin Theater and the Grand Opera, just burned down a couple weeks ago. But these two veterans of the carnival circuit know a thing or two about how to attract customers. As Harry says, if dollars are hard to get, go after profitable nickels. So that's exactly what they're doing here on Smithfield Street with this new venture called the Nickelodeon.

Now, Nickelodeon is a well-known colloquialism for cheap entertainment shops, but Harry's and John's Nickelodeon is a little different. This operation is centered around the motion picture. They've installed a projector and 96 comfy, fancy, upholstered opera chairs with standing room for another 100 people. The charged watch is but a nickel, of course, and they'll change out the films regularly, every week or two. But like any new endeavor, they have no idea if this will succeed.

No one knows which movie Harry and John are showing tonight. Later claims that it's The Baffled Burglar can't be correct since it won't come out for another two years. So, for the sake of our historical recreation, I'm going with an educated guess that has the added benefit of introducing you to yet another classic. A favorite of Harry's, this is Edwin Porter's 1903 classic, The Great Train Robbery. And with that caveat, let's enjoy the film.

The action starts immediately as two black clad bandits shove through the door of a telegraph office. Their guns drawn and trained on the innocent and diligent operator, forcing him to signal the train to stop. Oh, they just pistol whipped and tied him up too. Once the train stops, the whole group of four bandits slips aboard. Waiting until the locomotive is again moving, the bandits burst through the door of the express car.

Pistols flash. It's a shootout as the brave attendant attempts to fend them off. Ah, but he's hit and smoke fills the screen as the bandits use dynamite to open a secured box, then bag the train car's treasures. The bandits move toward the engineer and his cab. Ooh, but he sees them. A fight ensues atop the coal car. Fists fly as the engineer is subdued and forced to stop the train so that the gang can rob the passengers. Off the train and lined up, the passengers have their hands in the air as one decides to make a run for it.

He's shot in the back and falls dramatically. The bandits take the train engine and speed away to a wooded ravine where their horses are waiting. Back at the telegraph station, a little girl finds the bound operator. She frees and wakes him with a splash of water to the face. The operator hurries to a nearby dance hall where honorable lawmen are dancing with some local women. The operator bursts in with news of the robbery and the men quickly form a posse.

They ride after the bandits, guns a-blazing, and then a shootout in the woods. The good guys prevail as the bandits drop dead. But wait. Then the bandit leader appears on the screen. His mustachioed, stone-cold face stares at the audience as he raises his six-shooter, aims directly at us, and pulls the trigger. Wow. The realism. I tell you, between the fireman film and this train robbery, Edwin Porter is quickly becoming a favorite director of mine.

But back to Harry and John. This is the moneymaker they were looking for. Their new concept of building a Nickelodeon where films aren't just one of many gimmicks, but the main feature rakes in the cash. In fact, did they just invent what we will call movie theaters? Well, just like the difficulty of deciding which two-second sequence of photos to call the first motion picture, this is messy. But the Pittsburgh Nickelodeon is a contender.

a money-making contender. And T. Alva Edison wants his cut. Trying to get ahead of the game, the Wizard of Menlo Park forms the Motion Picture Patents Company, or simply the Trust, in 1908. In brief, this ends his legal battles over film by placing Edison Studios and all of Alva's biggest foreign and domestic competitors, 10 companies in total, into this single trust. And between them all, this gives the Trust a lock on all patents concerning film production, exhibition, and distribution.

The wizard even gets celluloid film genius George Eastman's company, the Eastman Kodak Company, on board. Wow. And Alva would have gotten away with it too, if not for that meddling Carl Laemmle. Bald and bespectacled, Carl Laemmle doesn't look like the throwdown type. But this Bavarian immigrant more than earns his nickname as "The Little Fireball from Chicago" in his fight against the Edison-led trust.

See, Carl operates a film exchange where Nickelodeons can rent films at half the cost of buying them from the trust. Oh, and the big boys of film don't like that. Naturally, lawsuits follow, and the Victorious Trust soon has the law declaring Carl can't rent out their films. No problem. The little fireball pivots. He starts making his own films alongside other small independent producers, like William Fox.

And Carl lands a hard blow against the Trust in 1908 when he convinces its biggest star, the Biograph Girl of Biograph Studios, to defect. Oh, her name? This is Florence Bridgewood, or Florence Lawrence, to use her stage name, but the nation only knows her as the Biograph Girl because T. Alva Edison and his boys in the Trust don't like to credit their actors for fear they'll become celebrities who can demand more pay.

Well, Carl's happy to credit Florence as the star she is. A movie star, you might say. Other stars quickly follow, building a whole celebrity culture growing around America's film industry. Meanwhile, Carl Laemmle lands another coup.

He and his fellow independents decide to put some physical distance between themselves and the litigious Edison-led and heavily Eastern-based Trust. It goes as far west as they can, to California, specifically to a quaint town just a few miles northwest of Los Angeles, called Hollywood.

While LA already has a population of 100,000, Hollywood is still quite vacant. It has a single hotel. It's like a blank canvas under sunny, film-making-friendly skies just waiting for the artistic touch of Carl and other independent filmmakers. These conditions are perfect for making motion pictures, and with growing numbers of loyal actors, directors, and successful films, these small independents aren't small for long.

In 1912, Carl Laemmle merges with other independents to form Universal Pictures. Meanwhile, William Fox forms, you likely guessed it, the Fox Film Corporation. Adolph Zuker joins with Jesse Lasky to create Paramount Pictures.

More follow in the early 1920s. Other Southern California mergers and startups will include Metro-Golden-Mayer Studios or MGM, Albert, Jack, Harry, and Sam Warner's studio, aptly called Warner Brothers Pictures, and of course, Walt and Roy's Disney Brothers Studio. Hollywood is quickly becoming the largest producer of films in the world, and at the same time, it's growing the music industry. See, with films getting more elaborate, so is the music.

Improving pianists accompanying films starts to give way to full orchestral scores written for and timed with the movies, which are appearing in even more elaborate movie palaces. Yeah, it's not just the average Joe watching films anymore. Even the rich are starting to accept it as a real art form and worthy mode of entertainment. But the biggest silver screen hit merging these new elements in 19-teens Tinseltown won't age well. This is D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.

We already analyzed and even screened this film in episode 152's tale of the resurrected Ku Klux Klan, so I won't rehash it here. Nonetheless, let me just remind you that it is: Beyond expensive, artistically groundbreaking with its sweeping, massive battle scenes, use of tinted hues to convey emotions and still other innovations, but highly controversial with its pro-Klan and lost cause narrative of the nation's post-Civil War era known as Reconstruction.

Even in its time, the film faces significant backlash, which inspires D.W. Griffith to make a movie about how great thinkers are never understood in their time. It's called "Intolerance." Subtle, D.W. But there's one aspect of D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" not discussed in episode 152 that deserves attention in this episode. And that is the global context of its artistic advancements. In this silent era, cinema travels the world with little or no concern for linguistic constraints.

That also means storytelling techniques for the screen are flying across continents, and indeed, some of DW's artistic brilliance in his controversial historical film are inspired by his viewing of Italian director Giovanni Pastroni's epic film telling the tale of Rome's Second Punic War, Cabiria. American film continues to benefit from techniques developed abroad. After the Great War, Russian filmmaker Lev Kulshav trusts the audience to make abstract connections between separate scenes to great effect.

For instance, he shows us a man staring distantly. Then we see a bowl of soup. Ah, he's hungry. In another instance, a man's face cuts away to a woman draped on a couch. Ah, he's a loving husband. Same man, but the Kulshav effect, as it comes to be known, shows filmmakers that audiences can connect ideas. Under the new Soviet regime, Sergei Einstein effectively uses the Kulshav effect in his propaganda film Strike.

Set in Russia before the revolution, he conveys czarist violence against the people by showing the audience roaming off soldiers, then cutting footage of cattle being butchered. Yikes. Message received. But while audiences enjoy their dramas, don't discount comedy. Back in the States, one of the most popular series is The Keystone Cops, a series of comedy shorts that are essentially the SNL of its day.

It features actors that will become the biggest stars of the silver screen from Charlie Chaplin to Buster Keaton to Fatty Arbuckle. The biggest star of them all, Charlie Chaplin, creates a character called Little Tramp. With a bowler hat, raggedy clothes, and a funny walk, Little Tramp is both comedic and dramatic gold, going from $150 a week gig to a $1 million for eight films a year deal. Commanding almost as high a salary are DW's leading ladies, Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford.

While D.W. never recovers financially from his ill-received intolerance, Mary Pickford, often starring alongside the original Hollywood swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks, is the highest paid actress in Hollywood. But hey, it seems like we forgot about Thomas Alva Edison's trust, doesn't it? That's with good reason. Dwindling in power and funds, the trust is found in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1915. Appealing does the trust little good.

The courts bust it in 1918, or at least what's left of it, as the trusts Europe and U.S. straddling companies struggled amid the Great War. The independents out in Hollywood have won. But that's not to say that everything's as sunny as those Hollywood skies. As much as Americans love the glitz and glamour of Tinseltown, the newspapers love a good scandal even more. 19-teens and early 1920s movie star Roscoe Arbuckle seems to have it all.

Performing under his stage name of Fatty Arbuckle, the 300-pound actor has made millions with his hilarious silver screen antics. He's an absolute A-lister, second only to his fellow Keystone alum, Charlie Chaplin. But if we sat down with Roscoe, he'd likely tell you the same thing that, I imagine, countless future Hollywood successes would. Fame and fortune alone doesn't deliver happiness.

Though he's managed to monetize his struggle with weight, the brilliant comic is actually very sensitive about his weight. He much prefers his real name, Roscoe, to his stage name, Fatty, and has tried to fill the void in his heart with booze and morphine. But alas, those temporary escapes have left him with addictions that contribute to his current separation from his wife, fellow Hollywood star, Minta Durfee. Yes, behind the fame, money, and that iconic clean-shaven smile,

Roscoe's hurting, deeply. And this weekend, he's looking for another escape. It's Saturday, September 3rd, 1921. 34-year-old Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle is driving along the El Camino Real in his colossal, iridescent, purple and blue convertible, Pierce Aero Model 66A4 touring car. Riding with him are fellow Hollywood friends, Lowell Sherman and Fred Fishback.

It's Labor Day weekend, and the boys are heading to San Francisco to dance, eat, drink, and generally have a good time. The partying gets off to a great start. Through the long weekend, the Silver Screen Stars' three 12-floor rooms at the lavish Hotel St. Francis are little more than revolving doors for their guests, their friends, and of course, women. And despite Prohibition being in full swing, the Silver Screen Stars have no trouble getting scotch from nearby Gobi's Grill. It's now Monday, September 5th.

One of the current partiers is actress and model 30-year-old Virginia Rapp, wearing ivory beads over a white silk shirt and a matching jade blouse and skirt. The beautiful brunette is also on vacation in the city by the bay and couldn't be more pleased to meet up with her fellow movie stars. At some point, Virginia leaves the party room to use the bathroom in the adjacent room, 1219. And it's not long after that Roscoe also goes into room 1219.

And this is when the long weekend of partying takes an ugly turn. We don't know exactly what happens in there. All we can say for sure is that, when Roscoe unlocks the door to room 1219, Virginia is just waking up from a blackout and complaining of immense pain in her abdomen. A doctor is called. He gives Virginia morphine and says she's simply drunk too much.

But he's wrong. Unbeknownst to him, and even to Virginia, the breathtaking beauty is suffering from an inflamed bladder, a condition called cystitis. Four days later, her bladder ruptures. Virginia is dead. She's laid to rest in Hollywood Forever Cemetery. What caused Virginia's bladder to rupture? Was it due to complications arising from her undiagnosed bladder inflammation mixed with a few hours of drinking orange juice and gin?

Or was it, as one of the deceased actress's friends asserts, due to complications arising from Roscoe Arbuckle sexually assaulting the Hollywood beauty? Before her death, Virginia did indicate that something happened between her and Roscoe, but was unclear about how far it went or about consent. In short, is Roscoe a rapist and murderer, or is he a victim of circumstance? The media eats it all up.

Owned by Yellow Journalism's provocateur-in-chief William Randolph Hearst, the San Francisco Examiner beats a relentless drum against the famous comedic actor with headlines like "San Francisco Booze Party Kills Young Actress" and calling Roscoe a "beast." Newspapers across the country quickly join in on the feeding frenzy with headlines like "Arbuckle Tortured Miss Rapp." After three trials, Roscoe is acquitted.

But he's also become a walking, breathing symbol of Tinseltown decadence as newspapers latch onto tales of Hollywood's rampant drug abuse, orgies, and booze. A silver screen star has fallen. Roscoe's life will never be the same as the nation never stops questioning what exactly happened in Room 1219. This isn't the only scandal in early 1920s Hollywood.

Even as the maturing industry's elaborate movie theaters or movie palaces dot the land, Americans are shocked to learn of cinema sweetheart Mary Pickford divorcing her husband to marry her dashing co-star Douglas Fairbanks after a long-running affair. To learn that director William Desmond Taylor is found murdered with no suspects, but with love letters to two of his leading actresses. And to hear that Wallace Reed dies in a sanitarium trying to kick his morphine addiction.

But it's not just the actors' offset lives that's upsetting Americans. It's the salacious content that the Dream Factory is putting on the silver screen. The sex and violence. Although, director Cecil B. DeMille seems to have found a loophole. Telling biblical stories or other moral tales, he finds that audiences are less apt to complain about the licentiousness or vulgarity as long as the sin is ultimately punished by the end of the movie. This becomes his go-to formula.

Meanwhile, Erich von Stroheim, or just Von, as his friends call him, or even the man you love to hate, as the villain playing director and actor is also known, fills the gossip magazines with tales of his decadence and waste on set. He goes vastly past schedule and over budget for his film, Merry-Go-Round.

He wastes tens of thousands of feet of film, builds elaborate palace sets, has extras drinking real champagne and whiskey, stops production at one point to get a specific orangutan on set, and wants to include a scene in which a naked woman emerges from a punch bowl. Even though Vaughn's movies always make money for Universal Pictures, the bad press and the sheer waste leave producer Irving Thalberg with little choice but to replace the Austrian director mid-production and release the film without the auteur's vision.

With calls for censorship growing, Hollywood decides to self-regulate to avoid government regulation. In 1922, the industry turns to the Harding administration's postmaster general, Will Hayes, to lead the motion picture producers and distributors of America. It comes to be called the Hayes Office, and within a few years, it issues a set of rules for moviemaking called the Hayes Code.

The Hays Code has two categories. One, the don'ts, which list what filmmakers cannot show or imply, such as profanity, nudity, or drug use. And two, the be-carefuls, such as depictions of clergy, sympathy for criminals, or ridicule of public officials. Directors, actors, and writers alike have complaints about the limitations this puts on their art and storytelling, but producers are happy to abide by these rules that will stand well into the 1960s.

But the 1960s are a ways out, and let's not get ahead of ourselves. Censorship isn't the biggest change that comes to the film industry in the 1920s. No, the biggest change is the emergence of sound. As we've gotten used to hearing in this episode, there isn't a simple answer to when sound first mixes with film. Thomas Alva Edison experimented with pairing his kinetograph and phonograph together, but wasn't able to make things reliably match.

Lee DeForest is making headway with sound films now, but so far it all falls short and nothing is impressive. But I'll tell you what is impressive. Warner Brothers' 1926 feature film, Don Juan. With their company recovering from the brink of bankruptcy thanks to a K-9 star, a French-born German shepherd and Great War survivor named Rin Tin Tin. The brothers acquire the Vitaphone Corporation and use its technology to add synchronized music and sound effects to Don Juan. It's a huge success.

But theaters aren't sold. What if these "talkies" as these sound-infused films are called, are just a novelty? Well, the Warner Brothers believe that talkies are the future. They're ready to double down on the Vitaphone sound system and believe their next film is the proof needed to convince theater owners to embrace expensive sound system renovations. Well then, let's go see it. It's about 8 in the evening, October 6th, 1927. We're at 1664 Broadway in New York City.

The street blazes with Klieg lights and flares, and the words "Warner's Theatre" shine bold and bright on the marquee. But the crowd here is enormous, and beyond excited for tonight's premiere of the new Warner Bros. film, "The Jazz Singer." It's the story of a Jewish man caught between tradition and his love of the stage. Hence tonight's premiere, which is taking place just after sundown at the end of Yom Kippur. But the real buzz about this film is that it has some recorded speech,

Again, synchronized sound is already a thing, but actual speech in a full-length film? Wow, that novelty alone is more than enough to fill the well over 1,700 seats of this just three-year-old theater. And these tickets aren't cheap. They run from $2.20 to $5.50. Ah, what the hell, you only live once. We'll splurge for the good seats. Stepping into the enormous brick building, we can see why theaters like this are called movie palaces.

Looking up, we see gold trim moldings, murals, and an ornate chandelier. And these seats, so plush, nothing like those old Nickelodeons. Walking to our excellent orchestra-level seats, we see the orchestra itself under the direction of Albert Housen getting settled. Meanwhile, a radio crew is talking up the whole event, including the celebrities that are here, like the picture's star, Al Jolson. I bet Al's nervous. After all, this is the famed Broadway actor's first go at film.

But enough descriptions. The show is starting. The orchestra strikes up as the screen shows us a busy New York street. It then cuts to an interior shot where we see the bearded and bespectacled Cantor Rabinowitz. He's followed by a title card that tells us he's the stubborn, quote, "chanter of hymns in the synagogue," close quote. He wants his young son, Jackie Rabinowitz, to follow in his footsteps. But Jackie likes singing jazz.

Oh, and there he is, singing in a beer garden. It's obviously lip synced, but not bad. But now his father's entering the beer garden. Cantor Rabinowitz drags his boy home, then chastises and hits him. To his mother's great sorrow, Jackie runs away. His father heads to the synagogue for Yom Kippur, where a title card shows him saying, "My son was to stand at my side and sing tonight, but now I have no son."

Flashing forward years later, Jackie, now all grown and portrayed by Al Jolson, is going by Jack Robin, and while eating at a cabaret, he's invited to sing. Wow, this number, dirty hands, dirty face, is synchronized very well. That Vitaphone technology is something else. Ah, and it's a beautiful tune. And the audience on screen applauds just as Jackie finishes. Then suddenly, it happens. Jackie doesn't just sing.

He speaks lines. Mind-blowing. All of us in the audience are aghast. Synchronized speech. It looked so real. How did they time that so precisely? Doesn't matter. Whatever. This modern technological world is incredible. The movie continues. We encounter some scenes in blackface that certainly won't age well. And finally, come to the story's resolution.

Putting his gifted voice to a religious use, Jack recites the Kol Nidre at the synagogue as his aged father listens from his deathbed. And later, Jack performs for a packed theater as he fully reconciles tradition and the stage to become a jazz singer, singing to his God. In brief, there's a lot to this film, but it was Al Jolson's spoken lines, the first ever in a widely distributed feature film, that really blew us all away.

Once the film ends, we experience a moment of art imitating life. To thunderous applause, Al Jolson, who, like his character, is Jewish, descends the aisles in the flesh to take the stage. With tears in his eyes, he proclaims, I think you're really on the level about it. I feel good. Again, Al Jolson's short pieces of dialogue in an otherwise silent movie are not the first instances of sound in movies.

But this was the first synchronized dialogue in a major, full-feature film and thus proof that sound is no novelty. To quote film historian Donald Crafton, Though the price of wiring for Vitaphone was exorbitant, the prospect of having Al Jolson play in the local theater made it a surefire investment. Close quote. Yes, the jazz singer is truly a milestone in movie history. It's made talkies the future.

But relatively rapid as the shift to talkies is, Hollywood feels the growing pains. Suddenly, loud cameras have to be covered in bulky boxes. That makes movement slow and cumbersome. Besides that, actors are now boxed into specific frames to work around microphones. All of this has some serious T.A. Edison's Black Maria vibes, as Hollywood relearns its entire craft to adjust for sound.

And if we're honest, sound, though exciting and filled with new opportunities, isn't without its cost. Silent film has existed for more than 30 years by the time Al Jolson said his famous line. That was sufficient time for silent films to develop its own unique artistry, some of which just won't work in the talkies. Dialogue also introduces a language barrier to film. As mentioned earlier in this episode, Americans had enjoyed films from around the world, like the brilliant work of the Lumiere brothers.

Even in the 1920s, they love viewing heartfelt dramas out of France like The Passion of Joan of Arc, the dynamic, visceral editing of Russian films like Battleship Potemkin or Man with a Movie Camera, and the dramatic, angled sets of German Expressionist horror films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu. But sound is changing that.

Well, at least Americans will still get to enjoy the work of other English-speaking directors like the young and upcoming English master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. Meanwhile, many are out of a job. Local musicians playing music during films are no longer needed. Same goes for Japanese performers who narrate silent films. Called benshi, once ads are more popular than movie stars. They're all but gone by 1931.

Even some actors find their work disappears as the sound of their voice or linguistic abilities suddenly become a factor. Mid-production on an epic flying ace Great War movie as talkies are taking off, Howard Hughes switches it from silent film to sound. But that makes Norwegian-born Greta Nissen's accent a problem since the leading lady is supposed to be portraying a British character. So, Greta's out and Jean Harlow's in. Can't fault Howard for that move though.

By the time this film, called Hell's Angels, releases in 1930, theaters are wired for sound. The silent era is over. It seems that Al Jolson was more right than he knew when he said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothing yet." So, we've seen the rise of the movies, the rise of Hollywood, and already changing and growing Hollywood at that.

We'll certainly be back to Tinseltown, as it only plays a larger role in the American story over the decades ahead. But we aren't ready to watch those 1930s talkies just yet. Still more to do here in the 1920s. And next time, I've got a real treat. We're heading back east. Next time, we're catching a show on Broadway. ♪♪

History That Doesn't Suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson. Episode researched and written by Greg Jackson and legendary cinephile, Will King. Special guest ragtime piano performance by Susan Jackson. Production by Airship. Sound design by Molly Bach. Theme music composed by Greg Jackson. Arrangement and additional composition by Lindsey Graham of Airship. For bibliography of all primary and secondary sources consulted in writing this episode, visit htbspodcast.com.

HTVS is supported by fans at patreon.com forward slash history that doesn't suck. My gratitude to Kind Souls for providing funding to help us keep going. Thank you. And a special thanks to our patrons whose monthly gift puts them on producer status.

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