SCREEN PIONEER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 27, 23 April 1927, Page 23 (Supplement)

SCREEN PIONEER

CISSY FITZGERALD WHEN SHE DANCED BEFORE EDISON Introducing Cissy Fitzgerald, of the ‘nineties, who did her famous Gaiety Girl dance before a funny little black box camera. No less a person than Thomas A. Edison turned the handle! Cissy, film pioneer, tells her story. It was thirty years ago this winter. A bleak, dark, cold day in East Orange, New Jersey, where Edison has his laboratory. “I remember very well the day. It was in the winter of ISP6. We were bundled in furs, my maid and I. We came over from Hoyt’s Theatre in Xew York, where I was playing a musical comedy called ‘The Foundling.’ LITTLE BLACK BOX “Mr. Edison was in his laboratory. At one end of the room was this little black box with a handle. It stood on a tripod, in just the way it does today. He commenced to crank. It sounded like a Gatling gun. The noise was terrific for such a small black box. It clattered and spluttered and I danced my "Gaiety Girl’ dance. Back and forth I dipped and curtsied. I sang snatches of my little song. . . . “I’m up-to-date and rather fly, My’ way about I know. I’m not too forward or too shy, I’m neither fast nor slow'. I’m not demure nor am I loud, I keep this side the bar. I’ll push my way - in any crowd, But I’ll never go too far. . . “And my dress. White muslin that fell in a frou-frou about my ankles. A froth of lace on half a dozen petticoats. Cherry’-coloured ribbons and a

wasp waist. Hair all crimped and knotted at the back of my head. And bangs, oh, yes, ‘Cissy Fitzgerald bangs.’ “You know, I used to have a bonnet named after me, too. It was worn on the' back of the head —such a little thing—and tied with ribb’ons. If you wore a ‘Cissy Fitzgerald bonnet’ you were in vogue.” For a moment Cissy -was again the darling of the Broadway ’nineties. The cunning trick that Avon their hearts — the cocked head, the waggish forefinger, the tapping toe and Cissy w r as humming. . . . “I just indulge a little bit But never go too far. I never give myself away, I’m too particular. I’m always very careful Not to overstep the bar. I just indulge a little bit, But never go too far. “I didn’t see the film for several months. Then one day I was walking down 34th Street and in front of Coster and Beal’s Music Hall they had a huge sign. ‘Cissy Fitzgerald,’ it read. ‘Come in and see Cissy Fitzgerald.’ I went in. It was dark and smelly. In those day’s a music hall was something of a beer garden. There were little round tables, shiny-topped, where you drank lager beer and smoked innumerable cigars. And men, of course. It was patterned after the typical English music hall. Variety acts were given on a stage at one end of the room and if you didn’t like the act you could ‘boo.’ THE AUDIENCE ‘BOOED!’ “Presently they a white curtain from the top of the stage. Every thing went dark and a wheezing sound came from the back of the hall. A square of light fell on the white curtain and my name flickered on. More wheezing and a strange and jerkyfigure with coal black face and arms landed in the middle of the screen. “It bobbed and bounced about. The black arms -waved. The head performed strange actions. I had a sickening feeling. Surely I couldn’t look like that. The audience began to ‘boo.’ They had paid to see Cissy Fitzgerald in person. They were seeing only r a poor charcoal imitation of her. “Little spots of fire flashed on the screen. Static, they call it now. I thought it was a decoration. I thought they were giving me a special honour. I was a star and they were giving me a starry background. And my poor little white mifclin dress with the cherry-coloured ribbons! All muddy and drab-looking. The film was over in about three minutes and I hurriedly’ left the theatre, convinced that the stage was the best place for me. “I went to make a London appearance after that. I made a number of ‘Kinetoscopes’ while I was in London. In 1913 I returned to America. Commodore J. Stuart Blackton had formed Vitagraph and had Sydney Drew, .Robert Edeson, Maurice Costello, Mary Fuller, the Talmadge girls, Alice Joyce and a number of others in his company'. They were making five-reel pictures. The business was nothing like it is to-day’, of course, but it was well established. FIRST MET MARY “I left Broadway in the middle ’nineties for England and returned just before the war, in 1913. When I left the motion picture was practically the nebulous idea of a brilliant mind. When I returned it was a wellfounded industry, boasting of stars and directors. I recall meeting Mary Pickford for the first time at the Astor House Ball in 1913, and not even recognising her name.”