Which was the first motion film to involve the use of actors? Who was the first film actor?
The first MOTION PICTURE FILM TO INVOLVE THE USE OF ACTORS was a brief costume drama titled The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, which was shot by Alfred Clerk of Raff & Gammon, Kinetoscope proprietors, at West Orange, N.J. on 28 August 1895. The part of Mary was played by Mr R.L. Thomas, Secretary and Treasurer of The Kinetoscope Co. After approaching the block and laying his head upon it, Thomas removed himself, the camera was stopped, and a dummy was substituted. The camera was then started again for the decapitation scene. This was the first use of trick photography or special effect work in a film. The first person employed to play a comedy role in a film was M. Clerc, a gardener employed by Mme Lumiere at Lyons, France. He was cast in the part of the gardener in the Lumiere brothers’ production L’Arroseur arrose, a film premiered at the Grand Cafe in Paris on 28 December 1895. Clerc is seen watering flower-beds with a hose. A mischievous boy, played by a 14-year-old Lumiere apprentice called Duval, creeps up behind the gardener and places his foot on the hose to stop the flow of water. As the perplexed gardener holds the nozzle up to his eye to see whether there is a blockage, young Duval removes his foot and dances with joy as a burst of water gushes into M. Clerc’s face. Clerc and Duval were the first performers to be seen on the screen, since The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots had been made for viewing in Edison’s Kinetoscope ‘peep-show’ device.
The first PROFESSIONAL ACTOR TO PERFORM IN A FILM was Fred Storey, who played the title role in R.W. Paul’s The Soldier’s Courtship, a short comedy made on the root of the Alhambra Theatre, Leicester Square in April 1896 and premiered underneath the same month.
During the early years of the film industry it was customary for performers to remain anonymous, though an exception was made in the case of established stage stars. A notable example of well-known artists lending their talents to the screen during the cinema’s infancy is the short scene from the Broadway comedy The Widow Jones, filmed by Raff & Gammon in April 1896, in which John Rice and May Irwin performed the world’s first screen kiss.
The first British performer to make a regular career as a film actor was a comedian called Johnny Butt, who made his screen debut in 1899 playing the part of a bear in a trick film produced by R.W. Paul at his New Southgate Studios. Paul paid him 5s a day, which in monetary terms put the film actor on about the same level as a tram-driver or a dock-labourer. But remained in films all his life, making his last appearance in The Informer shortly before his death in 1931.
The star system, usually thought of as an American invention, in fact had its earliest beginnings in Germany. Here, as in Britain and the USA, it was deliberate policy on behalf of film-makers not to give their lead players any star billing, lest they should over-value their services. From 1907 onwards, it was recognized that particular performers could draw the crowds, but they were identified only by such pseudonyms as the ‘Imp Girl’, the ‘Biograph Girl’ or, in the case of the German actress Henny Porten, who made her debut in Oskar Messter’s 1907 production of Lohengrin, the `Messter Girl’. It was Henny Porten who eventually emerged as the first ‘film star’–the first actress to establish a personal following among cinema-goers and have her name promoted as an attraction. This came about through the unprecedented success of a Messter film of 1909 that she had scripted herself and in which she played the romantic lead. Titled Das Liebesgliick der Blinden (The Love of the Blind Girl), it was received with such acclaim that Messter was persuaded to reveal his star player’s identity. With her name on the credits, Henny then proceeded to justify the film-makers’ worst fears by demanding an increase in salary—from £ 10 of £ 11 5 s a month. Messter refused and Henny walked out of the studio. Having failed to call what he thought was her bluff, the Director sent an assistant, Kurt Stark, to fetch the girl back with the promise that the rise would be paid. Henny returned to the studio, married Stark, and went on to become Germany’s idol of the silent screen.
In the USA, the star system emerged soon after Germany had paved the way. Perhaps fittingly it began with an outrageous publicity stunt, establishing a tradition that has enlivened and bedevilled the American film industry ever since. Early in 1910 Carl Laemmle had succeeded in luring the still-anonymous Florence Lawrence away from Biograph to work for his own company, Imp. He then arranged for a story to break in the St Louis papers that the actress had been killed in a street-car accident. Public interest in the supposed tragedy having been thoroughly aroused, Laemmle placed the following advertisement in the same papers on 10 March 1910: ‘The blackest and at the same time the silliest lie yet circulated by the enemies of IMP was the story foisted on the public of St Louis last week to the effect that Miss Lawrence, “The Imp Girl”, formerly known as “The Biograph Giri”, had been killed by a street car. It was a black lie so cowardly. We now announce our next film The Broken Path’. Within a year her name was appearing on film posters in larger type than the title.
Having become America’s first named star. Florence Lawrence won herself an international reputation on the silent screen, but with the advent of talkies she was no longer in demand and was forced to become an extra at the MGM Studios. She finally committed suicide in January 1939.
