The Western Movies West

The Qreat Train Robbery was probably not the first developed Western narrative in the cinema. That distinction may be held by Kit Carson, produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph company in September 1903.

?The Qreat Train Robbery was not copyrighted until December 1903. But it is much the most important as an influence on the subsequent development of the genre. It was immensely successful and led to a rash of imitations, such as The Bold Bank Robbery and The Hold-up of the Rocky Mountain Express. Companies like Essanay, Selig, Biograph, Edison, Lubin, Vitagraph and Kalem vied with each other to exploit the rich vein that had been opened up. At first the pictures continued to be shot in the east, as The Qreat Train Robbery had been; American film producers had not yet made the move out to California which was to transform the industry. Then from about 1907 there was a spectacular expansion in the exhibition side of the film business. The owners of movie theatres were crying out for product. The American industry, still beset by the patent wars which followed Edison's attempt to monopolize production, could not supply the demand, and large numbers of foreign films had to be imported. Robert Anderson has argued that the development of the Western into a fully-fledged film genre was the result of a perception by American producers that if they were to fight back they would need not just improved organization but a product which was distinctive and which could not be easily imitated by the Europeans. In January 1907 the Selig-Polyscope Company of Chicago sent a film troupe on location out west. They shot a number of films with titles such as The Qirl from Montana which emphasized both local colour, particularly scenery, and

action. Their success led to a further expedition in the summer of 1907 to shoot more films. The first of these to be released, Western Justice, was warmly praised in the trade press for its stunning backgrounds and its 'marvelously stirring and sensational chase'. The next year both Selig and Essanay were filming in Colorado. The popularity of these authentically Western productions led to a spate of imitations made in the east. But these were derided in the trade press, which was by now firmly of the opinion that 'cowboys, Indians and Mexicans must be seen in proper scenic backgrounds to convey any impression of reality.' The arrival in California in late 1909 of the Bison company marked the consolidation of the trend towards authentic locations. Bison soon became the major producer of Westerns. By 1910 the Western had become the first truly cinematic genre and the first distinctively American contribution to the new art form; as Moving Picture World put it, the Western was the 'foundation' of American dramatic narrative. So popular had the Western become that in 1910 21 per cent of all American pictures made (213 out of 1001) were Westerns, a percentage which, as we shall see, was to remain remarkably consistent over the years. Indeed, so plentiful had the supply become that in 1911 a writer in the trade journal Nickelodeon was moved to protest that Westerns were 'a gold mine that had been worked to the limit.' Such predictions of the genre's imminent demise were to be repeated at regular intervals over the years. In a review of a William S. Hart Western in 1918 the New York Times complained: 'that kind of photoplay has been done almost to death.' In 1929 Photoplay pronounced, after Lindbergh had flown the Atlantic: 'Lindbergh has put the cowboy into the discard as a type of national hero. The Western novel and motion picture heroes have slunk away into the brush, never to return.'