It has been posted on all these groups probably (California Disasters, Californiasearthquakeforum, Geology2, Allthingshistory, etc.). However, at that time this background story of the investigation of the film reel and what it revealed was not at all known and published so in that regard this is an all new story well worth sharing.
Kimmer
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 6:38 AM, <robert-blau@webtv.net> wrote:
Gosh, haven't we seen this before?
Posted by: "Kim Noyes" kimnoyes@gmail.com kimusinteruptus
Mon May 3, 2010 11:48 pm (PDT)Market Street on film 1906soundtrack<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NINOxRxze9k>)
The video below is titled "A Trip Down Market Street" and it's true to
its
name, a 13 minute trip from 8th Street down Market Street to the Ferry
Building just days before the great quake of 1906. You'll see a vibrant
metropolis full of cars, bikes, horses, cable cars and people traversing
Market St. The detective story behind the film clip is almost as
interesting
as what it contains. (Please note that there are rolling frames and a
slight
stall in the early part of the film which end at the 1 minute 40 second
mark.)
The film was shot by early San Francisco film innovators the Miles
Brothers and has been widely available through the Library of Congress
and
You Tube (which has a novel version set to an Airhere<http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/papr:@field%28NUMBER+@band%28lcmp003*01142s1%29%29>
and was originally dated to the fall of 1905 but recently local author
and
silent film historian David Kiehn made some surprising discoveries about
its
date. He had seen "A Trip Down Market Street" many times over the years
but
it was only around 2005 that he managed to get ahold of a 16mm print
which
made him "all the more curious about it." The Library of Congress had
researched and dated the filming to September or October of 1905. Per
Kiehn,
"some thought it was shot earlier in 1904 but since the Library of
Congress
had narrowed it down to that point everyone thought that it was shot in
1905." Read the Library of Congress' description of the film's dateArgonaut <http://www.sfhistory.org/index.php?pageid=34>.
.
At first Kiehn was just trying to confirm the 1905 shoot date so he
thought
"gee, there were 5 newspapers in San Francisco at that time so somebody
must
have written about it." He dug through the San Francisco Public
Library's
collection of microfilm starting with August of 1905 and running through
October 1905. He went "page by page and couldn't find a single thing
about
it so I looked at the film again more closely and I noticed that there
were
puddles in the cavities by the rails on the street and especially at the
end
of the film autos drive through puddles splashing water." So, he went
back
to the papers and checked the weather reports for the period only to
find
that September and October of 1905 were "as dry as a bone."
Kiehn took a look at the angle of the sun and narrowed the time of year
to
late March or April 1906. Then he examined the buildings along Market
Street, the state of construction narrowed the window down to late 1905
or
before the earthquake in 1906. To tie all these pieces together he "went
back to the papers to look for information on filming and weather
reports.
In March and April, especially late March 1906, there was a lot of rain
but
there weren't any references to any filming being done." But, "being a
film
historian I then realized that there was a theatrical magazine where
filmmakers of the day advertised their films called the New York
Clipper.
The San Francisco Public Library coincidentally has that magazine on
microfilm so I looked at late March and April of 1906."
In the April 28th edition he saw an ad by the Miles Brothers for two
films
that they were just releasing called "A Trip down Mount Tamalpais" and
"A
Trip down Market Street." The ad appeared ten days after the April 18,
1906
earthquake but Kiehn notes that this wasn't someone playing games with
history. Since print publications required a long lead time for
composition
it was most likely composed by April 18th, 1906. The films were shot on
or
around April 12th and shipped to New York on April 17th, the eve of the
quake.
That would appear to confirm the date for the film but Kiehn dug deeper
by
dating the early license plates on cars in the film. The DMV told him
that
the records no longer existed but he found them in the California State
Archives in Sacramento. He eventually found one of the plate numbers
from
the film, 4867, and traced it to a Jay Anway who registered his car in
early
1906 which further verified his research.
There are many other twists and turns along the way to confirming the
film's
date. Kiehn has written up the entire tale in the most recent issue of
thefilm<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205480/>but the Library
Kiehn has managed to get the IMDB to change their date for theyet<http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/papr:@field%28NUMBER+@band%28lcmp003*01142s1%29%29>.
of Congress hasn't updated theirsThe Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum <http://www.nilesfilmmuseum.org/>
He hopes they'll come around soon.with the Niles Plaza Grand Opening Celebrtation <http://niles.org/> .
will
be showing "A Trip Down Mount Tamalpais" this Saturday May 1 which
coincidesSilent Film Festival <http://www.nilesfilmmuseum.org/fest2010-2.htm>
The
museum will unveil more films from their cache at the annual Bronco
Billy
__._,_.___
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