Early British Comedy

The Surviving Evidence

These films are a fascinating glance into the Victorian and Edwardian theatre but only a brief glance, there is but a handful of surviving footage compared to what was produced. None of Leno’s Mutoscopes or Warwick Trading Company footage has been found to date except for a brief piece showing Leno and his wife in their back garden improvising some comedy as they open a bottle of Champaign for their party guests. Another example, from 1897, that survives is Hanging Out The Clothes, made by actor and member of the Hove Photographic Society, George Albert Smith. A Mr and Mrs Green appear as man and wife, their maid is hanging out the clothes and Mr Green is seen flirting with her amongst the linens. Mrs Green makes her entrance as her husband and the maid hide behind the laundry, Mrs Green suspiciously pulls down a sheet from the line to reveal Mr Green and the maid kissing behind. Mrs Green naturally takes the appropriate action. Another Hove Photographic Society member was James Williamson who gave us The Big Swallow, here a man walks up to the camera, opens his mouth, engulfs the lens and appears to swallow camera and cameraman.

Most of what has survived comes from such sources as paper positives used in the Mutoscope ‘What The Butler Saw’ machines, their domestic version the Kinora and the likes of Biograph’s 68mm surviving nitrate prints. Recently a set of glass discs, the images printed in a spiral towards the centre, were finally viewed after Sony created the equipment to extract them. A major headache with these was the already tiny image size reducing the closer it gets to the centre, this causes problems with framing.