Lubin and Facsimile Reproductions

The Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight raised other questions about filmic representation. When live bouts had been so hard to see, urban “sports” often had to be satisfied with staged reenactments that either coincided with the event (like the one at Proctor’s Pleasure Palace mentioned above) or were restaged by the reigning champion as he toured the country’s theaters. During the 1897-1898 theatrical season, for example, Fitzsimmons toured with his vaudeville company and gave a sparring exhibition with Yank Kenny, who “wears his hair in a pompadour and greatly resembles Jim Corbett in style and action.” Sigmund Lubin took advantage of the reenactment tradition to produce his own fight films “in imitation of Corbett and Fitzsimmons.” The performers, two freight handlers from the Pennsylvania Railroad, were made up to look like the champions and acted out the drama on a makeshift rooftop studio. 16 By condensing the action and decreasing the camera speed (the number of frames exposed per second), Lubin filmed each round on fifty feet of 35-mm stock.

Lubin advertised his REPRODUCTION OF THE CORBETT AND FITZSIMMONS FIGHT a week before the Veriscope’s premiere and sent several exhibition units on the road. The Veriscope Company threatened to sue, but nothing legally prohibited the practice. Audience reaction was less easily ignored, however. In Chicago, the " ‘fake’ veriscope" opened in a storefront. According to one published account,

the fighters maul each other in unscientific fashion and the supposititious knockout in the fourteenth round is a palpable burlesque. Several patrons of the performance protested yesterday and were informed by the gentleman in charge that they were “lobsters.” “We advertise a facsimile of the fight,” he declared, “and that’s what we give. What do you expect for 10 cents, anyhow?” ( Phonoscope , June 1897, p. 12).

In many locales, hoodwinked patrons proved less complacent. When the Arkansas Vitascope Company showed the films in Little Rock, five hundred people attended opening night, including ex-governor Clarke and many members of the state legislature. According to one published account:

The audience was entitled to a kick before the exhibition was five minutes old. The views were decidedly on the fake order, being unrecognizable by people who are familiar with the ring and who know pictures of Corbett and Fitz. The first round was so tame that the lovers of the manly art could not restrain the disgust they felt at the palpable fakeness of the alleged representation.

“Fake!” “Cheat!” “Give us our money back!” and various other cries rang out in all parts of the theatre. Dozens of people picked up their hats and started out. Some left the theatre and others lingered in the entrance lobby around the box office. Some others remained in their seats hoping that the succeeding views would be better; but they were doomed to disappointment. At the conclusion of the third round, the indignation of the duped spectators knew no bounds. A rush was made for the box office and the cries of “Give us our money back!” were deafening. The “fight” came to an abrupt termination at the end of the third “round” for lack of an audience. Scores of indignant men joined the clamorous crowd in the lobby and declared that they would not budge an inch until their money was refunded. Several policemen were on hand but they could no more restrain the impatient and thoroughly exasperated crowd from rushing pell-mell at the box office than human hands could push back the Johnstown flood ( Little Rock Gazette , in Phonoscope , June 1897, p. 12).

The opera-house manager, fearing a riot, turned over receipts of $253 to a state senator who, after a brief deliberation, refunded the patrons’ money. Members of the crowd fought their way to the box office. “The fellow with a 25 cent check ran the risk of having his limbs broken, his face smashed and his clothes torn off, but it seemed to make no difference. The satisfaction of getting the money back after being duped was worth a great deal.” Similar “misunderstandings” occurred elsewhere. In Elizabeth, New Jersey, when people with fifty-cent seats learned the meaning of the word “facsimile,” the theater management also felt fooled and, anxious not to alienate its regular customers, offered a refund. 17

In urban settings, where the conventions of fight reenactments were well known, spectators came to accept facsimile reproductions as a legitimate form of amusement. Over the next ten years Lubin produced at least a score of such subjects, which found regular outlets in places like Bradenburgh’s Ninth and Arch Museum in Philadelphia and Huber’s Fourteenth Street Museum in New York. One clever manager even made moralistic arguments in favor of the reproductions, claiming that the ring’s “objectionable environment” had been eliminated. 18 Generally shown where admission fees were lower, these films were usually part of a larger variety entertainment. Lubin’s facsimile reproductions became the poor man’s way to see the fight.

Although THE CORBETT-F ITZSIMMONS FIGHT was immensely profitable and the pictures served as a long-standing model for future amusement entrepreneurs, these epigones often encountered misfortune. On 9 June 1899, the American Vitagraph Company photographed the next heavyweight championship bout, between Fitzsimmons and Jeffries, at night under the intense illumination and heat of seventy-five arc lights. When the lights overheated and burned out, filming came to an abrupt halt.

Nonetheless the bout continued, with Jeffries the victor in eleven rounds. Lubin’s reproductions with counterparts filled the resulting void and enjoyed wide circulation; even Vitagraph used them for a time. Somewhat belatedly, Vitagraph and the Edison Manufacturing Company filmed their own reenactment with the actual fighters. The Palmer-McGovern fight encountered somewhat different adversity. Filmed by the American Sportagraph Company on 12 September 1899, the bout was expected to be a vicious, closely fought battle, and interest was high. Modeling themselves on the Veriscope Company, the group built their own special-gauge cameras, printers, and projectors, but when Terry McGovern knocked out “Pedlar” Palmer in the first round, American Sportagraph folded. 19

The most successful set of fight pictures after the Veriscope effort was THE JEFFRIES-SHARKEY FIGHT , taken on 3 November 1899 at the Coney Island Sporting Club. This twenty-five-round fight went the distance, with the decision given to Jeffries. Biograph shot the entire bout with 70-mm film, and some 350 miniature arc lights to illuminate the nighttime scene. The 10,050 spectators were not permitted to smoke lest it harm the quality of the pictures. Although Lubin produced his usual reenactment and American Vitagraph smuggled a camera into the club and filmed some of the rounds, Biograph enjoyed marked success after opening its program in New York on 20 November, less than three weeks after the event. This initial program interspersed vaudeville acts between films of each round—a practice that was generally not continued in other venues. Publicity once again emphasized that spectators could decide for themselves whether the referees decision was just. In Philadelphia at least, the theater manager distributed ballots to his patrons “so that every spectator may vote on the question.” 20 Biograph soon had at least six companies on the road, first playing major cities for a few weeks and subsequently touring the smaller population centers for the remainder of the 1899-1900 season.

Although fight films continued to be a prominent if financially risky genre throughout the period covered by this volume, they never enjoyed the broad-based success of THE CORBETT-FITZSIMMONS FIGHT . After their initial glimpse of the exclusively

male sporting world, women ceased attending these amusements in significant numbers. Having satisfied their curiosity and asserted their right to see such events, they withdrew. The faddish aspects of fight films passed away, and the all-male world of blood sports reasserted its homosocial identity.

Fight films focused attention on representational issues. Before cinema, an event could not really be re-presented. It could be recounted, recreated, or reperformed but the results always involved the subjective reinterpretation of the performers or reporter. Now a view of an event could be captured on film and shown again and again. Promoters and spectators recognized the possibility of, and the demand for, what is now called “observational cinema.” 21 The filmmaker’s role was to record an event and then re-present it with as little intervention as possible, so that the audience was in a position to judge the outcome for themselves. The kinds of reenactments or even jump-cut ellipses commonly found in turn-of-the-century documentary material had the opposite effect. Although fight films utilized performances of a kind as their raw material, they implicitly challenged certain theatrical conventions that had been carried over to film, for instance the indicating of unfolding time (through manipulation of the mise-en-scène) rather than a credible rendition of its actual unfolding. Fight pictures thus worked against crucial aspects of the presentational approach that dominated early cinema, even as they retained or reinforced other aspects, such as the lecture.