A growing source of silent era film information. This listing is from The Progressive Silent Film List by Carl Bennett. Copyright © 1999-2013 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

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W.K.L. Dickson (center).     Frame enlargement: Silent Era image collection.

Cast: W.K.L. Dickson [violin player], [two dancing male Edison employees], [fourth man behind horn].

Edison Manufacturing Company production. / Cinematography by William Heise. / [?] Kinetoscope 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format? Edison experimental sound-on-cylinder sound system. / The production was shot circa September 1894 or 2 April 1895 in the Edison Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey. The original phonograph sound cylinder to accompany this film was recovered in the 1990s, although broken, and was pieced together and digitally resynched to the surviving film by Walter Murch and Rich Schmidlin in 2002.

Experimental: Synchronized sound film.

Synopsis: A musician plays the violin into a recording horn while two male employees of the Edison laboratories dance together.

Survival status: Prints exist in the Museum of Modern Art film archive; and in the Library of Congress film archive.

Current rights holder: Public domain.

Keywords: Dances - Early sound film - Musical instruments: Violins - Sound recording - Synchronized sound film

Listing updated: 6 May 2012.

References: Film viewing : Kerr-Silent p. 3; Magliozzi-Treasures n. 3658; Menefee-Bernhardt p. 89; Musser-Before p. 32; Musser-Emerge pp. 88, 601; Robinson-Palace p. 48, 49 : Website-LoC.

Home video: DVD.