What Happened on Twenty-Third Street, New York City
About What Happened on Twenty-Third Street, New York City
From a sidewalk on Twenty-third Street, the camera watches pedestrians and traffic. A man and a woman in an ankle-length dress walk toward the lens. She steps on a sidewalk grate. Hot air blows her skirt up. She laughs, and the two walk on.
Cast & crew
More about What Happened on Twenty-Third Street, New York City
George S. Fleming and Edwin S. Porter directed it for Edison in August 1901. Porter also photographed it. The film runs about 77 seconds. A. C. Abadie and Florence Georgie play the couple. The same pair appeared that year in Soubrette's Troubles on a Fifth Avenue Stage.
Themes
Making
Porter set the camera at street level and waited for the draft. The rest of the shot is ordinary Twenty-third Street traffic around a joke that lasts a second.
Look
Edwin S. Porter photographed it from the sidewalk, holding the frame long enough for the couple to reach the grate and pass it.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
The film survives and circulates as an Edison actuality.
Notes
- The gag is a blast of air from a grate, not a staged interior wind.
- Abadie was an Edison actor who also appeared in other actualities the company staged on New York streets.
- The picture mixes unmarked street traffic with a planted couple, which is how many Edison 'actualities' of 1901 were made.
Scenes
- The woman's skirt lifts over the grate. She laughs and keeps walking.
Also available
- Internet Archive (What_Happened_1901)
