Film of Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight Was First Full-Length Motion Picture

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 672, 25 May 1929, Page 25

Film of Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight Was First Full-Length Motion Picture

XfLEVEN thousand feet of prize-fight film, exhibited at the old Academy of Music in New York, in 1891 comprised the first fulllength motion picture ever made, and marked a turning point in the motion picture industry as important in its way as the development of the sound picture.

The fight recorded was the James Corbett-Robert Fitzsimmons bout at Carson City, and Enoch Rector was the man responsible for securing and marketing the film.

Enoch Rector wandered into the Edison Kinetoscope on Broadway, New York, in 1894, and from that evening’s

expedition received an inspiration that made him a fortune. He visualised the motion picture of a prizefight as being the ideal subject for a peepshow.

Up to that time no one had considered it worth while to manufacture

a movie more than a few hundred feet in length. In fact, the peep-show, with its maximum of forty feet, was still very popular.

Rector went to the Edison laboratories in New Jersey and learned all he could about the new business of motion pictures. He prevailed on the Edison Company to make a film of a fight between two professionals, hired just for the purpose. Michael Rector made money on this venture, lost it in subsequent gambles, and seeking to recoup his losses, prevailed on Corbett, the already retired champion, to don the gloves again in a meeting with Fitzsimmons. The place of meeting was to be Carson City. For photographing this fight Rector made elaborate preparations. He had three cameras at the ringside and a supply of 48,000 feet of film. When the battle was over, Rector had successfully exposed 11,000 feet of film. The picture did a sensational business at the close of the last century.

their recent productions, like “The Wrecker,” “Balaclava,” “The Return of the Rat,” and “The City of Play,” will be shown to the trade and issued with synchronised sounds and orchestral effects. Arrangements have also been made for an Anglo-Continental sound film, “Bride No. 68,” an Australian story starring Clifford McLaglen, Conrad Veidt, and Elga Brink. This is to be directed by Signor Carmine Gallone. After that “The Hound of the Baskervilles” will be made as a sound film.