Edwin S. Porter, director of “The Great Train Robbery,” made light of news accounts about Carrie Nation’s reformist zeal in his 1901 film for Thomas Edison, “Kansas Saloon Smashers.”
Griffith and Sennett were still working at the Biograph Co. on 14th Street when this footage was shot of life in Manhattan, where automobiles and horse buggies competed for the city streets.
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 impacted many American lives, including that of D.W. Griffith. It features in the story of “The Designated Virgin.” Here is a video showing the city before and after that epic event.
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In “Mr. Jones Has a Card Party” (1909), Griffith directs John Cumpson and Florence Lawrence as Mrs. and Mrs. Jones in one of Biograph’s early spoofs of the temperance movement. When Mrs. Jones and her anti-alcohol ladies’ club leave town, Mr. Jones invites the husbands over for a wild party. (The young Mack Sennett is the one with freakishly long arms and sloped shoulders). But the gals miss their train and return to find the men not in synch with their gospel of “Demon Rum.”
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