PORTER, Edwin S.

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Nationality: American. Born: Edwin Stratton Porter in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, 21 April 1869. Military Service: Served in U.S. Navy, assisted in development of gunnery range finder, 1893–96. Career: Left school at age fourteen, worked as sign painter, theater cashier, and stagehand; after military stint, worked for Raff & Gammon, marketers of Edison Vitascope; helped arrange first New York screening of motion pictures, 1896; invented and manufactured projector, 1898; business ruined by fire, rejoined Edison Company, 1900; director and cameraman, then supervisor of production at Edison studio, New York City; quit Edison, founded Defender Pictures, 1909; organized Rex Film Company, 1910; sold interest in Rex, founded "Famous Players in Famous Plays" company, 1912, with Adolph Zukor; director general and treasurer, supervisor and director at Famous Players until 1915; became president of Precision Machine Corp., manufacturer of Simplex projector, which he helped develop, from 1915. Died: 30 April 1941.

Films as Director:

(partial list, also frequently sc, ph and ed)

1899

The America's Cup Race

1900

Why Mrs. Jones Got a Divorce; Animated Luncheon; AnArtist's Dream; The Mystic Swing; Ching Lin Foo Outdone; Faust and Marguerite; The Clown and the Alchemist; AWringing Good Joke; The Enchanted Drawing

1901

Terrible Teddy the Grizzly King; Love in a Hammock; A Dayat the Circus; What Demoralized the Barber Shop; TheFinish of Bridget McKeen; Happy Hooligan Surprised; Martyred Presidents; Love by the Light of the Moon; Circular Panorama of the Electric Tower; Panorama of theEsplanade by Night; The Mysterious Cafe

1902

Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show; Charleston ChainGang; Burlesque Suicide; Rock of Ages; Jack and theBeanstalk; Happy Hooligan Turns Burglar; Capture of theBiddle Brothers; Fun in a Bakery Shop

1903

The Life of an American Fireman; The Still Alarm; ArabianJewish Dance; Razzle Dazzle; Seashore Frolics; Scenes inan Orphans' Asylum; The Gay Shoe Clerk; The BabyReview; The Animated Poster; The Office Boy's Revenge; Uncle Tom's Cabin; The Great Train Robbery; The Messenger Boy's Mistake; Casey and His Neighbor's Goat

1904

The Ex-Convict; Cohen's Advertising Scheme; European RestCure; Capture of Yegg Bank Burglars; City Hall to Harlemin Fifteen Seconds via the Subway Route; Casey's FrightfulDream; The Cop Fools the Sergeant; Elephant Shooting theChutes at Luna Park

1905

The Kleptomaniac; Stolen by Gypsies; How Jones Lost HisRoll; The Little Train Robbery; The White Caps; SevenAges; The Life of an American Policeman

1906

The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend; The Life of a Cowboy; ThreeAmerican Beauties; Kathleen Mavourneen

1907

Daniel Boone; Lost in the Alps; The Midnight Ride of PaulRevere; Laughing Gas; Rescued from an Eagle's Nest; TheTeddy Bears

1908

Nero and the Burning of Rome; The Painter's Revenge; TheMerry Widow Waltz Craze; The Gentleman Burglar; Honesty Is the Best Policy; Love Will Find a Way; Skinny'sFinish; The Face on the Barroom Floor; The Boston TeaParty; Romance of a War Nurse; A Voice from the Dead; Saved by Love; She; Lord Feathertop; The Angel Child; Miss Sherlock Holmes; An Unexpected Santa Claus

1909

The Adventures of an Old Flirt; A Midnight Supper; Love IsBlind; A Cry from the Wilderness; Hard to Beat; On theWestern Frontier; Fuss and Feathers; Pony Express; Toysof Fate; The Iconoclast; Hansel and Gretel; The Strike; Capital versus Labor

1910

All on Account of a Laundry Mark; Russia—the Land ofOppression; Too Many Girls; Almost a Hero; The Toymakeron the Brink and the Devil

1911

By the Light of the Moon; On the Brink; The White Red Man; Sherlock Holmes Jr.; Lost Illusions

1912

A Sane Asylum; Eyes That See Not; The Final Pardon; TamingMrs. Shrew

1913

The Prisoner of Zenda (co-d); His Neighbor's Wife; TheCount of Monte Cristo (co-d); In the Bishop's Carriage (co-d); A Good Little Devil (co-d)

1914

Hearts Adrift; Tess of the Storm Country; Such a Little Queen (co-d)

1915

The Eternal City (co-d); Zaza (co-d); Sold (co-d); The Princeand the Pauper (co-d); Bella Donna (co-d)

1916

Lydia Gilmore (co-d)

Publications

By PORTER: article—

Statement, in Filmmakers on Filmmaking, edited by Harry Geduld, Bloomington, Indiana, 1967.

On PORTER: books—

Balshofer, Fred, and Arthur Miller, One Reel a Week, Berkeley, 1967.

Pratt, George, Spellbound in Darkness, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1973.

Salt, Barry, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis, London, 1983.

Burch, Noël, Life to Those Shadows, Berkeley, 1990.

Elsaesser, Thomas, and Adam Barker, editors, Early Cinema: Space-Frame-Narrative, London, 1990.

On PORTER: articles—

Sadoul, Georges, "English Influences on the Work of Edwin S. Porter," in Hollywood Quarterly, Fall 1947.

Spears, Jack, "Edwin S. Porter," in Films in Review (New York), June/July 1970.

Burch, Noël, "Porter, or Ambivalence," in Screen (London), Winter 1978/79.

Schulberg, Budd, letter, in Variety (New York), 9 May 1979.

Gaudreault, André, "Detours in Film Narrative: The Development of Cross-Cutting," in Cinema Journal (Evanston), Fall 1979.

Musser, Charles, "Early Cinema of Edwin Porter," in CinemaJournal (Evanston), Fall 1979.

Ranvaud, Don, "After The Great Train Robbery . . . ," in MonthlyFilm Bulletin (London), December 1983.

Pearson, R., "The Filmmaker as Scholar and Entertainer: An Interview with Charles Musser," in Cineaste (New York), vol. 8, no. 3, 1984.

Turconi, Davide, "Hie sunt leones: The First Decade of American Film Comedy, 1894–1903," in Griffithiana (Gemona), September 1996.

On PORTER: film—

Musser, Charles, Before the Nickelodeon, United States, 1984.

* * *

In the annals of film history, Edwin S. Porter is often credited as the first American film director. Although this may not be true in the literal sense, it is not unjustified to give Porter this title. Porter was first and foremost an engineer, an inventor, and a cameraman. In the early days of filmmaking, "cameraman" was synonymous with "director," and Porter found himself handling both jobs. As his own editor, he also discovered new ways of creating a narrative. While most early motion pictures were composed of a single shot showing only one continuous action from beginning to end, Porter began to combine and juxtapose his filmed images, creating new meanings as one scene "psychologically" led into another. Porter became one of the first American directors to tell a story in his films.

Porter acknowledged an influence in his filmmaking from Georges Méliès, the French filmmaker whose "trick films" were extremely popular in the United States. A designer of motion picture cameras, Porter was able to study and discover the secrets to many of Méliès's "tricks." Most importantly, Porter was struck by the fact that these films told a story. However, while Méliès's films told a straightforward, linear narrative, Porter expanded this idea with the use of cross-narrative (parallel action) to depict two simultaneous events or points of view.

Porter's first film of major importance was The Life of an American Fireman, made in 1902 or early 1903. This film was largely composed of stock shots from earlier Edison Company films. Racing fire engines were a popular subject for early filmmakers and Porter had much footage at his disposal. To complement these stock shots, Porter filmed additional footage that depicted a mother and child trapped in a burning building. By editing these scenes together Porter created the story of the mother and child's rescue by the firefighters. Porter intercut the scenes of mother and child with stock footage of the racing fire engines, thereby creating a dramatic tension—will the firefighters rescue the two victims from the burning building in time? While this technique of storytelling may seem blasé by today's standards, it was innovative and exciting to 1903 audiences.

Porter continued to develop his film editing techniques in his best known and most popular film, The Great Train Robbery. On its most simplistic level, the film is a story of crime, pursuit, and capture. But it is perhaps the first great American chase film, a form still popular today. Again Porter edited his film using cross-cutting to show events that were supposedly occurring at the same time: the bandits begin their escape while the posse organizes a pursuit. The Great Train Robbery was an enormously popular film at a time when nickelodeons were just opening across the country, and the film did a great deal of repeat business.

Surprisingly, after The Great Train Robbery, Porter did little else to advance the art of filmmaking. In 1912 he formed the Famous Players Film Co. with Adolph Zukor and David Frohman, acting as director-general of the company. However, his films of this period (such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Prisoner of Zenda) contain none of the energy of his earlier films. In fact, they took several steps backward technically, for they were photographed in a very stagy, single point-of-view manner. Apparently, Porter was never really interested in directing films. He soon sold his shares in Famous Players and became more involved in designing motion picture cameras and projectors, including the Simplex. Still, Porter's one important contribution to filmmaking—a freer style of editing—was a turning point in the development of film as a narrative art form.

—Linda J. Obalil