ABSTRACT
Until the growth of proper cinemas from about 1904 onwards, music hall and vaudeville were a primary focus of commercial attention for the film pioneers. The two first film shows which were given in London, early in 1896, were both immediately snapped up by music halls. These were the Lumière show, presented by Félicien Trewey to a paying audience at the Regent Street Polytechnic on 20 February, and the show which Robert Paul presented privately, coincidentally on the same day, at Finsbury Technical College. The Lumière show was taken up by the Empire, Leicester Square, where it entered the company of such acts as Mademoiselle Marthe Marthy, Eccentric Comedienne, and Belloni and the Bicycling Cockatoo. According to an account which appeared in the magazine Entracte on 7 March 1896, Trewey had been asking £30 an evening. On 14 March, the same magazine reported that the Empire was paying him £150 per week, and a week later they reported that owing to the show’s success matinées would be given as well. By this time the Alhambra, across the road from the Empire, was anxious to find its own moving picture entertainment. Morton, the director of the Alhambra, had missed the boat with Trewey, although he’d previously engaged him several times as a juggler and illusionist. He therefore engaged Paul, who had meanwhile been persuaded to present his show, under the name Theatrograph, at Olympia, by the impresario Sir Augustus Harris.
