The train robbery was the first narrative ever made for a motion picture.  It had an unbelievable length of over 650 feet with the story made up of 14 scenes ranging in length from 4 to 118 feet.

Mr. Porter secured a train from the D. L. & W. R. R.  Its personnel were to run it to the vicinity of High Bridge, West Paterson where the major part of the action was to take place.  The conductor of the train was Samuel J. Snyder, who in 1853 was living at North Caldwell, N.J., and was at that time aged 93.  A large cast was secured with the principal actors George Barnes, Gilbert Anderson (who played five different roles), A. C. Abadie, May Murry, and others.   One of the principals, who was to play the leading role in the first and tenth sequences as agent and telegraph operator, failed to appear so Mr. Fred J. Turner was prevailed upon to play the part.  The passengers were a trainload of friends and acquaintances.  They donated their services in order to get a close up of the thrills. 

The story opens on an interior of the Little Falls Station with the agent sitting at the telegraph key.  Two masked bandits appear.  Pointing their guns at the agent, they tell him to set the block to stop the approaching train before it reaches the station.  The agent complies.  The train stops near the water tank.  The bandits gag the agent, truss his arms and legs and toss him on the floor. 

As the train slows down, two bandits who are hiding behind the water tank, board the train between the tender and the express car and, at gun point, force the express man into a corner and toss out the mail sacks.  This being accomplished they then approach the tender and cab just as the engineer is about to “run off” the train at high speed.  One bandit grabs the engineer and orders him to stop the train while the other engages in a tussle with the fireman, who put up a great fight with his coal shovel.  The fireman is finally subdued when he received a hit on the head with a chunk of coal.  He (a dummy is used) is tossed down a 200-foot embankment.

The train is stopped, the locomotive is uncoupled, the passenger car is entered and the valuables removed from the passengers.

Taking their loot and the mail they compel the engineer to run the locomotive to the woods where the bandits have their horses hidden.

Meanwhile, in the station, the agent is making an attempt to rise from the floor so that he can, by leaning on the table, tap out an alarm with his chin.  After several attempts he accomplishes this but again falls to the floor.  He is found in a semi-conscious condition by his young daughter who enters with his dinner pail.  The daughter revives him by throwing a glass of water in his face, releases his legs and hands and the agent wriggles free and dashes out to a neighboring dance hall where Mary Murry and many westerners are cavorting.  The alarm is give.  A posse is formed who follow the tracks of the bandits.  The two groups meet.  A gun battle is waged.  One of the bandits and several of the posse hit the dust but the bandits ride on and think they have finally eluded their pursuers.  Seeing that they were now in a lovely valley beside a small stream and seemingly quite free from intruders, they stop to examine their booty, quite unaware that they have been tracked again by the posse who have hidden their horses in the woods and are approaching on foot.

Another gun battle takes place resulting in the death of the three remaining bandits as well as several of the posse.

A note-worthy feature of this film is a close up of George Barnes pointing his gun directly at the audience.  In some cases, this feature was attached to the beginning of the film and in others at the end.  However, it always created loud screams from the audience.

In the filming of this picture, Mr. Porter used for the first time colored celluloid film.  A yellow tint was used for the dance hall scene and bluish-green for the woods.  Porter also edited the film, another first in filmmaking.

This film created a great sensation and has become a screen classic for it secured the future of the narrative film.  The train robbery was a story complete in about eight minutes and it set the fashion for American film, especially for the westerns and for others photographed on location rather than in makeshift studios.  Besides, the cutting bench was put into use that the directory could better tell his story.

Now interest in movies revived throughout the world and in this country nickelodeons sprang up in almost every village and town.

In Bulletin No. 1, Series 1939-40, Stories of New Jersey, entitled New Jersey – A Preview of Hollywood, prepared by the N. J. Writers’ Project of the WPS may be found a statement that, South Mountain Reservation was the scene of the Wild West Riding, and horses were rented from a West Orange livery stable. 

Mr. Harry Davis, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is credited with having opened the first theatre where the first stupendous attraction, The Great Train Robbery was shown on a screen in 1905.  It was a 10-cent thriller.  All over America hundreds of Nickelodeons were opened in halls, vacant buildings, back rooms of stores, tents and legitimate theatres.  In the beginning the rooms were fitted with makeshift seats obtained from old trolley cars, benches, and folding and other miscellaneous chairs.  At one end a screen was hung; a booth where tickets were sold, was at the entrance.  Windows were darkened, ventilation was absent, but there was no lack of patronage.  Gradually, the fronts of these moving picture houses were remodeled so as to provide separate entrance and exit with the ticket booth between.  As the price of admission was usually five cents, these places of amusement acquired the name nickelodeon.  By 1908, there were more than 10,000 of these moving picture houses in the United States and the year 1910 saw them at their peak.  See list of Early Nickelodeons in Passic County
 
 

In 1896, Mr. F. W. L. Kickerson left the Edison Company and with a few others formed the Biograph Company.  At first Biograph produced shorts for the peep shows or penny arcades.  It made its debut at Hammerstein’s Olympia Music Hall in New York in the Fall of 1896 showing The Empire State Express and other pictures filled with action.  Biograph generally used the Mutoscope, a most successful rival of Edison’s Kinetoscope.

While many actors on the legitimate stage held the motion pictures in contempt, Joseph Jefferson made a scene from the popular stage play Rip Van Winkle in the early days for the Mutoscope and the great Sarah Bernhardt reenacted the dual scene from Hamlet in 1910.

In 1908, a young, good looking actor from Louisville, Kentucky, David Wark Griffith, came to New York to secure employment on the stage.  He soon found his way to Biograph and was engaged as an actor-scenario writer.  During that spring, he wrote several scenarios and played parts in them.  His great energy and initiative won for him an opportunity to direct.  The first picture that D. W. Griffith directed was The Adventures of Dolly.

This picture was an immediate success and Mr. Griffith made practically all of Biograph’s films from then on until December 1909, and all the important ones from 1909 until 1913.  What Mr. Edison was to the development of the motion picture machine, Mr. Griffith was to the art form of the picture.

During the early days in Biograph’s history, most of their pictures were made on roof tops of buildings in New York, but in 1906, they leased an old mansion at 11 East 14th Street and converted the former ballroom into a studio.  Now, instead of depending on the fickleness of the weather, they were able to get correct and adequate lighting through the invention of the mercury lamp that  was installed overhead. 

The inventor of this light was Mr. Cooper Hewitt, son of Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, former Mayor of New York City, and grandson of Peter Cooper.  Although born in New York City and living in the winter there, Cooper Hewitt spent his summers, when he was in the United States, at the Cooper-Hewitt estate in Ringwood, Passaic County, NJ.  After Mr. Hewitt developed his famous light, he sold it to George Westinghouse and the General Electric Company.  Mr. Hewitt was an inventor of considerable talent having invented a tube used for transmitting wireless, a florescent screen, the forerunner of the fluoroscope, and many other practical and noteworthy inventions.

New Jersey was favored by Biograph, as it was by other companies having headquarters in New York City.  The great variety in terrain and scenery made the state ideal for films made on location.  Many farms, hamlets, towns, hills and valleys and wooded areas of Passaic and other counties of New Jersey, readily accessible to New York, were often used in the early days of the industry.

The rural countryside along the Passaic River provided excellent background for westerns and Indian pictures.  Indians were imported from New York and home made from local residents.  Bedecked with paint and feathers they frequently made camp along the winding Passaic.  Their paper wigwams, well painted with Indian symbols, were set up in open spots.  Their war canoes, made by covering river canoes with bark or paper, were paddled up and down the Passaic before the cameras.

During the summer of 1908, Mr. Griffith brought his company to Little Falls for the filming of his second picture.  This was called The Redman and the Child.  Charles Inslee played the Indian chief and Johnny Tansy was the child.  The picture made little Johnny very famous.  The Redman and the Child was considered at the time to have been the acme of photographic art.

Another feature picture that Mr. Griffith made for Biograph along the Passaic was one entitled, They Would Elope.  One of the elopers was Little Mary Pickford (photo on left) who, while trying to escape, was to meet with an accident through the overturning of her canoe.  When the director gave her the cue, Mary didn’t hesitate for an instant, but obediently overturned into the muddy waters of the river.  She was fished out, we are told by Linda Arvidson, (Mrs. David Griffith, author of When Movies were Young, 1925)  wrapped in a warm blanket, and placed in Mr. Griffith’s waiting automobile. 

During the summer of 1910, Biograph filmed a great many pictures in New Jersey.  Little Mary played in most of them.  As was the custom in those days and the custom to a lesser extent still persists, the movie actors were to use fictitious names. Among the great lights of the Biograph Company were Arthur Johnson, Frank Powel, Mack Sennett, Dell Henderson, Jack Pickford (Mary’s brother), Lionel Barrymore, Owen Moore, (secret husband of Mary Pickford), Blance Sweet, Mae Marsh, Mabel Normand, Linda Arvidson, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, and Theda Bara (at her climax in 1917, in Cleopatra).

For the residents of Passaic County one of Biograph’s most interesting productions was The Call to Arms.  This picture, a drama of romance and mystery of medieval times, was filmed on the grounds of Lambert Castle.  It has to do with a marvelous jewel.  The setting is a medieval castle.  During a spell of very hot and humid weather in late June 1910, Mr. Griffith brought his company to Paterson including Owen Moore, Mary Pickford, Dell Anderson, Mack Sennett, Linda Arvidson, and others.

Here at a little hotel near the station of the D. L. & W. Railroad, Mack Sennett (often somewhat difficult) said it was too hot to don his suite of armor, but when he found that Dell Henderson, the principal, was putting his on in spite of the heat, he complied.  Little Mary waiting on the lawn, clad in tights – the costume of a page.  Soon action took place.  Mary mounted her horse, with its medieval trappings, set out for her ride to bear a message.  Soon she became exhausted and before the end of her journey, she fell in with a band of gypsies. This picture was completed and licensed on Monday, July 25, 1910, by the Biograph Company.  The reviewers rated it as an excellent picture.

Mack Sennett’s Keystone Comedies became very popular from 1910 to 1915 and Vitagraph’s great comedian was John Bunny – the Charles Chaplin of Later years.  Bunny was formerly a shoestring salesman, but later became a minstrel and a stage actor before entering the motion pictures.

Paterson’s great contribution to comedy was its native son, Lou Costello (born Louis Cristillo).  His early days were spent in Paterson and before he left to join the Hollywood Colony he lived on East 33rd Street, Paterson.  Besides bringing laughs to millions he brought comfort and cheer to thousands through his great beneficence and philanthropy.  He was never too busy to visit a sick or crippled child at home or confirmed to a  hospital.  Most of his charities have not been publicized.  His untimely recent death has been a great loss to many and his native city has lost one of its greatest boosters.

New Jersey and Passaic County has contributed a large share in the making of serials.  One spot chosen for a thriller was the famous Mine Hole along the Wanaque River in West Milford Township.  Here was a great hole about 60 feet deep and 40 feet wide used as a mineshaft prior to the Revolutionary War and into which the waters of the Wanaque River now tumble.

Garret Mountain became the locale for many of the exploits of the well known Pearl White whose breath-taking exploits will be remembered by the oldsters in her great Exploits of Elaine, The Adventures of Kathryn, and the better known, The Perils of Pauline.  At the Elmwood Country Club in East Paterson one of her exploits took place in which the clubhouse was burned and Miss White was rescued from a window, amidst smoke, flames and much screaming.

Those were the days when the movies were young!

       Robert P. Brooks
       April 1959

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