Film Weekly year book of the Canadian motion picture industry (1951)

HISTORY Canada and the Film THE STORY OF THE CANADIAN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY By HYE BOSSIN CANADA’S motion picture history began outside Canada. It began in New York on April 14, 1894 at 1155 Broadway. It happens that the motion picture industry itself, ac¬ cording to Terry Ramsaye, “began then and there.” It was then and there that the first commercial exhibition of the Kinetoscope — the box-like machine into which the patron who had inserted ten cents peeped and saw moving pictures — took place. A bronze tablet now marks the building. When in 1944 the motion picture industry celebrated its 50th year, the date of this exhibition was used as the basis. The men who conducted that first ex¬ hibition of motion pictures were Cana¬ dians from Ottawa, Andrew and George C. Holland. Edison had put his Kinetoscope away in a corner of his laboratory at Orange, New Jersey and there it stood for sev¬ eral years. He hadn’t even bothered to patent it outside the USA, which is why the Lumiere Bros, of France and Robert Paul of Britain based their search for screen projection on its principles. But others saw the commercial pos¬ sibilities of the Kinetoscope and induced Edison to part with certain rights and to manufacture it in quantity. Then, as Terry Ramsaye wrote in his two-volume history, “A Million and One Nights”: “The first ten of the peep show machines were shipped across the Hudson to An¬ drew Holland of Holland Brothers, who had come down from Ottawa, Ontario, to be the eastern agents of the Kine¬ toscope Company . . . The ten machines reached the Holland Brothers on April 6, 1894, and on April 14 their Kineto¬ scope Parlor, the first of the hundreds to be scattered over the world, opened at 1155 Broadway, New York City . . . Edison had now gone into the motion picture business. The industry of the films began then and there, 1155 Broad¬ way, on April 14, 1894. There is a spot that might well be marked by a tablet of bronze.” A treasured souvenir related to this occasion is a letter dated May 1, 1894 from Thomas Edison to the Holland Bros, in Ottawa, in which the great in¬ ventor wrote: “I am pleased to hear that the first public exhibition of my Kinetoscope has been a success under your management, and I hope your firm will continue to be associated with its further exploitation.” The original of this letter is now the property of the Public Archives of Can¬ ada, having been presented to Dr. Wil¬ liam Kaye Lamb, Dominion Archivist, by Fred Dillon, then executive director of the Canadian Motion Picture Distribu¬ tors Association, on the stage of the Odeon, Ottawa during the recent Cana¬ dian Film Awards. On the same occasion Mary Pickford was presented with a framed reproduction for the Edison Museum. She is a trustee of the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation, Inc., which 21