Comedy was important to the pioneer days of cinema, so that many early films record vaudeville acts, or concoct comic episodes.
For Cecil M. Hepworth's How It Feels to be Run Over (1900), a camera has been placed in a dusty road & captures a passing horse & buggy.
The next vehicle, however, is a horseless carriage which runs the camera right over, as well as, in imagination, the viewer of the kinetoscopic film.
It's really quite an creative little movie, that looks like it might really have been an accidental capture, but no such thing for a film that has to be complete in under a minute. The driver is director Hepworth himself, & the well dressed passenger is May Clark
With Cripple Creel Bar-room Scene (1899), an elaborate stage design recreates a wild west saloon interio0r, with a huge jug of "Red Eye" sitting beside the bar.
A drunk for no good reason except being drunk knocks the hat off a man who has fallen asleep in his chair, trying to start a fight.
The proprietress squirts the drunk with seltzer to try to calm him down, but he has to be thrown out of the bar. The guys who were playing poker stage right helped the proprietrice, who rewards them with free cigars.
It seems an awfully lot of stage design & big cast of six to create a mere three-quarters-minute show. It's considered a historical moment for the nascent cinema, however, in establishing the western saloon setting for oh so many future westerns, & is sometimes tagged "the first western."
Ah, the very first Sherlock Holmes film, Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1903),but with a satiric "story" completely unrelated to any written tale we may know. It's a half-minute of nonsense.
A burglar can appear & disappear at random. Holmes tries to ignore him by smoking a cigar, then tries to reclaim the sack of stolen goods, but the sack vanishes from his hand. It is so ridiculous to think the baffled man is Holmes that it really is good for a laugh.
It would be a delight to have known who the actor was who first brought Holmes to moving pictures, but his identity is uknown. The precise date of production is unknown, probably 1900, though its copyright date is 1903.
The occasionally suggested 1905 date doesn't match the 1903 copyright & is probably just a confusion for the lost Vitagraph film The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; or, Held for Ransom (1905).
The director of Sherlock Holmes Baffled was Arthur W. Marvin, who lie James H. White & others liked recording vaudeville entertainers, including the following three shorts:
Hester Street was the business district of a Jewish neighborhood, & some race stereotyping can be detected in the vaudeville skit A Gesture Fight in Hester Street (1903), but it's not hateful.
On a stage with backdrop decorated as Hester Street, a Jewish street vendor is hawking ties. Another bearded vendor comes by with a push-cart, & an argument begins with exaggerated physical gesturing quickly escalates to a fight. An Irish cop intervenes, using his billy-club vigorously.
More stereotyping on the vaudeville stage, most of the joke for A Wake in Hell's Kitchen (1900) is that the Irish are drunkards.
Set in a tenement apartment, the mourners are arrayed about the coffin of the deceased, guzzling beer. The corpse sets up in the coffin, unnoticed, & takes a long swig, finishing off the beer.
 The widow goes for a drink & discovers it's all gone & grumbles at the two men, probably her sons.
They leap up & try to dance with their old mum, who takes a tumble, knocking the coffin over. The drunken corpse thrashes about on top of her as the two men flee.
The Chimney sweep & the Miller (1902) is a lively vaudeville comedy condensed into a half-minute. a blackl-clad chimney sweep's soot & a white-clad miller's flour get all over one another in a battle of the white dust vs the black dust, until the entire screen is clouded.
Three Acrobats (1899) features vaudevillian pratfall "tumblers" (not "acrobats" as we'd now regard the term) performing their clown comedy act condensed into half-minute film.
Two men role, leap, & hop in & out of the doors & windows of the backdrop. A scantily clad woman wacks one of them with a bucket instigating a momentary slapstick fight between the tumbers.
Not much to Three Acrobats really; it looks like these tumblers had a lousy act.
 A better act is caught on film in The Tramp's Unexpected Skate (1901), a typical vaudeville scenario of a tramp vs bad boys, this time with a "tumbler" playing the tramp.
The scenario is given a backdrop conveying a city park. Two lads are sharing a pair of skates, probably because they're too poor to each have a pair. Each wears just one skate.
They spot the tramp sound asleep on the ground in the park. They kneel to remove the single skate each is wearing & sneak up to the tramp to attach the skates to his boots. They then give his legs a wack to wake him up & laugh as he skates & tumbles trying to catch them.
As in a Looking Glass (1903) is a minute-film enacting a practical joke which causes a man to fall off his chair.
Though elaborately staged, it's not particularly clever or funny, making use of the "bad boy" character in purely cliche terms.
 Charles E. Grapewin was a popular vaudevillian who has one of his routines encapsulated in Chimmy Hicks at the Races (1900).
On an empty stage, Grapewin in a long overcoat & gripping a racing form goes through all the antic postures & emotions of watching a horse race.
He really gives a sense of watching first a race for which he delightedly wins, followed by a race on which he unhappily loses more than he previously won.
 An office setting provides the staged & static location for Why Jones Discharged His Clerk (1900).
It begins with two clerks playing cards when a third man enters, seats himself at a separate work station separated by a folding screen, & begins reading a paper.
This latter chap is Jones, the boss, & between the three of these guys it doesn't look like work is something that ever gets done in this office. And as yet Jones gives no sign of caring.
A woman arrives & lazy Jones begins to make time with her, kissing & hugging. The two clerks stand on chairs to watch over a dividing screen. They lose their balance & tumble against the screen & onto the lovers. Jones beats up his dysfunctional employees & fires them.
 The Boys Think They Have One On Foxy Grampa But He Fools Them (1902) is a minute-comedy starring Joseph K. Hart as the Foxy Grampa, based on a cartoon character by Carl Schultz.
Chub & Bunt, as the boys were known in the funny pages, came up to Foxy Grampa who was sitting in the park, & handed him a banjo. As he plays the instrument, the boys tapdance wildly. Grampa gets up from the bench & danced even more wildly than the boys, accompanying himself on the banjo.
Hart again is Foxy Grampa, & Carrie DeMar is Polly in Foxy Grampa & Polly in a Little Hilarity (1902). They walk center stage with a garden backdrop, & procede to perform a delightfully goofy jig of a dance.
What Demoralized the Barber Shop (1898, but copyright 1901) must've been funny in its day, but it's not a jest that's aged well.
The barber shop is a bastian of male-on-male socializing, but up there at the top of the steps at street level, the men are able to see under ladies' skirts!
 They're not so much "demoralized" as un-moralized. It's surprising this one needed almost a minute, as it's a half-minute joke if ever.
From the same director (William Heise), at under a half-minute, is the actuality film Hockey Match on Ice (1898).
It shows boys & men playing on frozen Crystal Lake, in the Eagle Rock Reservation near West Orange in New Jersey.
It would appear to be a regional match of organized amateur teams, as one side wears all black shirts, the other all white. Nothing at all formidable or unique happens, but it may be the first moving photography of the sport.
 At the opening of Animal Act with Baboon, Dog, Kitten, & Donkey (1919), a baboon wearing clothes is playing a fiddle, & it's probably a good thing it's a silent film.
The baboon then tries to wear a live kitten for a hat, then the trainer encourages the baboon to roller skate, do a handstand, & walk about balanced on a ball while juggling the kitten.
 A young woman appears with a dog that walks in & out between her legs, then jumps rope as the woman holds one end of the rope, the baboon the other. The baboon then rides a bicycle.
An unmanageable donkey puts in its appearance & the two trainers just can't handle it, as it bucks & kicks.
At the end of this minute & a half of animal-act highlights, the baboon gives the trainer a good hard push. I love crap like this. I mean think about it, a kitten-juggling baboon folks.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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