Moving pictures were invented incrementally, with many men adding tinkered improvements between 1880 and 1890.
Thomas Edison patented his kinetoscope in 1891 and the Lumiere brothers in France patented the cinematographe in 1895, and both set to exploiting their machines commercially, Edison with a peephole viewer and the Lumiere’s with the first projection for an audience on Dec. 28, 1895. They were just two of many.
On May 18, 1900 the first moving picture was displayed in Orillia, on a white screen in the new Opera House. It turned out to be a very controversial event.
Movies may dominate our culture today, but they were just a novelty way back then. The showing in Orillia was an auspicious event, but not because of the novelty. It was due to the fact it serendipitously fell on a day of celebration for the very event the movie was showing.
On May 17, the British army (with a Canadian artillery brigade) had successfully relieved the 217-day siege of the South African city of Mafeking, one of several cities surrounded by the Dutch Boers who were rebelling against the British Empire.
Newspapers had been following the progress of the army north from Cape Town for months, and news of the freeing of the desperate British supporters in the city was met with euphoria across the empire, thanks to the rapid telegraph communications. Even Orillia declared a business holiday on the May 18 when the news hit town. Church bells were rung, bonfires were lit and a spontaneous parade danced down the main street. A handful of Orillia men were part of the force that had relieved the town.
It was remarkably convenient for the Opera House, then, which had been advertising their presentation of the novel “moving picture”, that the subject of the show was the fighting in South Africa, the very thing the town was going crazy over. People were beside themselves in jubilation over Mafeking, and here were moving pictures of the South Africa fighting being shown that very day. Every ticket was sold for the show that night.
What the lucky audience got to see was pretty shabby, and they even recognized it at the time, but didn’t care. Supposedly “battle pictures,” they were obvious re-enactments with men running around a field waving banners and letting off firecrackers.
Neither side took cover as they recklessly ran back and forth in front of the camera. In reality, the Boer war was fought from trenches and hilltop strongholds with machine gun nests raking open fields, as described by Orillia soldiers’ letters home printed in The Packet newspaper. The pictures were obvious frivolity, but everyone was in such good humour they played along, cheering when the British advanced and booing when the Boers appeared.
The whole moving picture event was just seen as a bit of silliness lost in the celebration that da. And the movie, just a novelty or passing fad, worthy of a circus sideshow.
Next day, though, as the projector was being set up for a showing in Barrie, the operator was arrested and charged with copyright infringement.
It seems W.G. Ireland, operating a cinematographe projector, had the word “Biograph” flashed on the screen in the credits. “Biograph” was the name of an American company, registered in Ottawa, which produced movies and showed them across the country. The Biograph company was suing Ireland for copyright infringement.
Biograph, at the time, showed films of events of interest, like presidential campaigning and city travelogues. The famous early director, D.W. Griffiths, worked for Biograph and discovered Mary Pickford while there, becoming a key innovator in the development of movies as we know them today, as stories of drama and comedy. Biograph was a big player in the moving picture industry and covetously protected their rights.
Ireland, in defending himself, claimed he thought “Biograph” was just the vernacular word for “moving pictures,” the way we use words like “Kleenex” today. There were so many different machines out there — cinematographe, kinetograph, kinetoscope, cinetoscope, vitascope, verascope, biograph, waragraph, and more — a common name for the new technology had not come in to use yet, and Biograph, by far the biggest company, was the most familiar.
Ireland innocently thought he had done nothing wrong. Biograph was having none of it, and pressed charges. Ireland was held in Barrie for $200 bail, but the judge accepted the $172 he had in his pocket after the show in Orillia.
The Biograph Company claimed that the Boer War images Ireland had shown “were obvious fakes” and therefore “a fraud on the public.” Having the Biograph name associated with the film was a slur on their reputation.
The police magistrate hearing the case adjourned the hearing for a week to collect evidence against Ireland (getting testimony from other towns who had shown his movie), and granted the Biograph attorney an injunction to stop any more use of their name on the film. Ireland obediently covered up that brief title card and moved on to his next engagement.
Four weeks later, the case was finally tried before a judge and jury. Ireland was acquitted. Justice Roberston, in his curious decision, explained that Biograph had no claim to injury. Biograph never sold their cameras and projectors, only rented them out. And so, the judge reasoned, calling a picture on a cinematographe machine a “Biograph” was not an infringement on the plaintiff’s trademark.
If Biograph had been making their machines available for sale, it would be an infringement. He said, “It may be a fraud on the public to do so, and it may be an injury to the plaintiff, but he has not a legal cause of action.” Biograph, in not making their machines available to the public, in the judge’s opinion, did not have a legal standing to declare a copyright infringement.
Naturally, Biograph appealed. Late in July, four weeks later, the Biograph lawyer asked for more time to prepare a case, but the County Court judge refused his request, letting Mr Ireland go free, ending the case.
Such was life in the embryonic world of motion pictures.
The Opera House continued to show movies right up to 1958. A rival movie house, the Princess Theatre (four doors down from Peter Street on the north side of Mississaga), was playing movies in the 1930s, too, lasting until 1942. The grand Geneva Theatre on West Street that my generation grew up with, opened in 1939, operating until 1981.
Moving pictures, in spite of Orillia’s initial reaction to them in 1900, did finally turn out to be more than a novelty or fad. And the lawyers, lawsuits and legal shenanigans are still a part of the industry today.
David Town is a local chiropractor with a passion for local history. He has written 30 books about Orillia over the past 18 years. They are available at Manticore Books and at the Orillia Museum of Art & History gift shop.
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