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| Written by: Samuel Hawley | Date: 30.08.2016 |
 On
March 17, 1897, in an open-air arena in Carson City, Jim Corbett and Bob
Fitzsimmons fought for the heavyweight championship of the world. The
contest was recorded by film pioneer Enoch Rector from inside an immense,
human powered camera called the “Veriscope,” the forgotten Neanderthal at
the dawn of cinema history. Rector’s movie of the contest premiered in New
York two months later. Known today as The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight, it was
the world’s first feature-length film.The Fight That Started the Movies is the untold story of Corbett’s and Fitzsimmons’ journey to that ring in Nevada and how the landmark film of their battle came to be made. It reveals how boxing played a key role in the birth of the movies, spurring the development of motion picture technology and pushing the concept of “film” from a twenty-second peephole show to a full-length attraction, “a complete evening’s entertainment,” projected on a screen. The cast of characters in the tale is rich and varied. There are inventors Eadweard Muybridge, Thomas Edison, William Dickson and Eugene Lauste, figuring out how to photographically capture and reproduce motion. There are the playboy brothers Otway and Gray Latham, who first saw the commercial potential of fight films, and their friend and partner Enoch Rector, who pushed that potential to fruition. There are fighters Jim Corbett with his “scientific” methods of boxing; Bob Fitzsimmons with his thin legs and turnip-on-a-chain punch; hard-drinking John L. Sullivan and the original Jack Dempsey and the gifted but ultimately doomed Young Griffo. There are loud-mouthed fight managers and bigtalking promoters, and Wild West legends like Bat Masterson and Judge Roy Bean when the story heads to the Rio Grande river. And finally, there is the audience, our collective ancestors, discovering that movies were more than just a curiosity to gape at, but a new and enduring form of entertainment to rival the theater. “Anyone who’s ever sat behind a wheel and wondered what it would feel like to floor it will find this cinematic account difficult to put down.” — Publishers’ Weekly starred review of Speed Duel “An epic tale with a cast of fascinating and colorful historical figures.” — Korea Times review of The Imjin War |
More in 70mm reading: Introduction to Projection and Wide Film (1895-1930) The History of 70mm Short Subjects Working for Louis de Rochemont by Borden Mace Internet link: Conquistador Press, 6-115 Wright Crescent Kingston Ontario Canada, K7L 4T8 conquistadorpress.com info@conquistadorpress.com |
About the Author |
|
 Samuel
Hawley is a graduate of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, with an MA
in history. He is the author of five nonfiction books, including Speed Duel:
The Inside Story of the Land Speed Record in the Sixties, currently being
developed into a TV series by Company Pictures, and the highly acclaimed
Imjin War, the definitive English-language account of Japan’s 16th-century
invasion of Korea and attempted conquest of China.SAMUEL HAWLEY Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9920786-8-3 ($17.95; 371 pp. + 32 pp. illustrations) eBook ISBN: 978-0-9920786-9-0 ($5.99) Publication Date: October 2016 |
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