ABSTRACT
Archibald Willard’s familiar chromolithograph of ca. 1875 The Spirit of ’76 (Yankee Doodle) enjoyed an extended film engagement, beginning with the 1905 black and white silent movie of the same name. “Billy” Bitzer shot the three Revolutionary war militia men coming alive and marching in and out of the film frame playing their fife and drums and accompanied during the screening by live music playing the familiar tune. The pictorial reference bolstered Ford’s claim to an accurate pictorial history announced by the film’s opening intertitle card. Alternatively, filmmakers might reference a drawing or painting to establish necessary information succinctly at the outset. Derived from the Latin meaning life, the Vitascope captured just that. At the Edison laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, in a darkened studio nicknamed the Black Maria, the great inventor and his cameramen made short moving pictures of people sneezing, kissing or dancing that amazed audiences with the sheer novelty of motion.
