That old Grizz was just asking for a fight when he moseyed on in and ordered-up one of them there mojitos.
– archive.org on the silent movie: the great train robbery
From Archive.org
In 1903, an employee of Thomas Edison’s motion picture company produced a movie with a story. It was called “The Great Train Robbery.” It told a simple story of a group of western criminals who steal money from a train. Later they are killed by a group of police in a gun fight. The movie was extremely popular. “The Great Train Robbery” started the huge motion picture industry.
The Great Train Robbery was directed and photographed by Edwin S. Porter – a former Thomas Edison cameraman. It was a primitive one-reeler action picture, about 10 minutes long, with 14-scenes, filmed in November 1903 – not in the western expanse of Wyoming but on the East Coast in various locales in New Jersey (at Edison’s New York studio, at Essex County Park in New Jersey, and along the Lackawanna railroad).
The precursor to the western film genre was based on an 1896 story by Scott Marble. The film’s title was also the same as a popular contemporary stage melodrama. It was the most popular and commercially successful film of the pre-nickelodeon era, and established the notion that film could be a commercially-viable medium.
+ Source – Poster: Wrestling for Wealth: A Daredevil Cowboy Triumphs Over An Enormous Grizzly :: Library of Congress
+ Credit – Video: The Great Train Robbery :: Archive.org
