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The fact that just over a year after Cinématographe was invented in 1895, it was demonstrated commercially first in Joburg and then in Port Elizabeth, is indicative of the pervasive nature of technology. Moving pictures had finally been invented albeit without embedded sound. 

In spite of these restrictions, people flocked to witness the latest invention which, like all pioneering devices, would be used both for good and ill. Think of Geobbels, the Communist states and even Donald Trump with his fake news. 

Long known as bioscopes but in the modern parlance these places of entertainment with their huge screens are called movie houses or just movies.

Main picture: A little crowd gathering outside the theatre  that became the Grand

Cinématographe and the first movies
The Cinématographe was a camera, printer and projector system designed by brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière. It was first demonstrated at a scientific meeting in March 1895. The Cinématographe was used to present the first cinema show to a paying audience on 28th December 1895 at the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris.

Unlike Edison’s electrically powered Kinetograph camera, the Cinématographe was small and hand-cranked, so films could be shot anywhere – in town or country, in exotic foreign locations, even from moving vehicles. The Lumières quickly seized the commercial opportunities of their invention, establishing agencies in many countries.

Around 450 Cinématographes were made. This particular model, from the Sarosh Collection, shown on the left, was purchased by an Indian photographer, Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatwadekar (known as ‘Save Dada’) at a cost of 21 guineas, after seeing a demonstration by a Lumière agent in Bombay.

In 1901, Bhatwadekar used the camera to make what is thought to be the first Indian news film – showing an Indian student’s return from Cambridge University. Bhatwadekar went on to film the 1903 Delhi Durbar, organised to celebrate the Coronation of Edward VII.

If you are looking for the first movie ever made, you can look back to The Horse In Motion, created by Edward Muybridge in 1878. Muybridge was asked by Leland Stanford (railroad magnate, California senator, race-horse owner, and eventual founder of Stanford University) to answer a popularly debated question: When a horse trots, do all four hooves leave the ground simultaneously? Muybridge’s stop motion film made it clear that they do.

Video of first movie:

A great film tradition – the Western – started in 1903 with The Great Train Robbery, Edwin S. Porter’s ten-minute film that combined western themes with innovative cinematic techniques (narrative storytelling, parallel editing, minor camera movement, location shooting, etc.). The film famously took its inspiration from an event that became the stuff of legend: Butch Cassidy’s 1900 train heist, which ended with Cassidy blowing open a safe and escaping with $5,000 in cash. Starting in the 1920s, John Wayne began shooting the first of many Westerns and took the genre to new heights.

The first Western:

Bioscope in Port Elizabeth
At the turn of the century, Port Elizabeth was no longer at the forefront of developments in South Africa like it had been twenty years previously. That honour went to Johannesburg. Ironically the first Lumiere Cinématographe might well have been imported through Port Elizabeth. Nevertheless, the first cinematographic show was presented in the Empire Palace of Varieties in Johannesburg on 9^th May 1896. The performance, led by a stage magician Carl Hertz, culminated in the showing of the movie.

Port Elizabeth’s turn to be entertained by this new-fangled innovation, was on Thursday and Friday the 9^th and 10^th July 1896. Margaret Harradine records these shows as follows: “The first cinema show to be shown in Port Elizabeth was given at the Opera House by illusionist and prestidigitaleur Carl Hertz. It was the first production out of England of the London sensation, the Cinématographe, the most startling and scientific marvel of its age.”

Certainly, the Marketing Men might not have worn ponytails in those days, nevertheless they were well versed in plying their trade by generating excitement about this novel product.

The advertisement in another local newspaper, “The Port Elizabeth Telegraph and Eastern Province Standard” on the 9^th July 1896 announced after details of Carl Hertz’s own performance the following:

The same newspaper in its issue of the 11^th July, gave this account of the show:

After the initial show
From 1898 onwards, new shows were announced, at first every few months, and then more and more frequently, usually at the Opera House, but occasionally in the Town Hall, and once in the Drill Hall. In April 1899, it was reported in the newspapers that patrons of the Delroy season at the Opera House also saw the “new” bioscope “absolutely free from flicker or vibration”

The first motion picture production company to be established in the world was the Biograph Company was founded in 1895 and active until 1928. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over three thousand short films and twelve feature films. In September 1900, one of their production was show in the Feather Market Hall. The fact that the movie comprised some two and a half miles of film was marvelled at.

Port Elizabeth only acquired its first purpose built bioscope when No. 32 Main Street was converted into a movie house in February 1910. It was known as the “Electric Theatre” and amazingly occupied the site adjacent to that where the Grand Cinema would ultimately stand.

By July 1910, the growing popularity of the bioscope became evident when the Opera House starting including a film show after the live entertainment.

With the bioscope craze sweeping Port Elizabeth, a veritable mushrooming of halls were used for or converted for the purpose of showing movies. The first to open on the “Spot” on the 1^st March 1911 in the Mutual Hall, North End. The theatre was under the management of Mr W.A. Grace until the 1950s but as a cinema for non-whites. It had two sessions a night and admission was 3d & 6d. In July, the “Hill Palace” opened in the Liedertafel in Western Road and the “Electric Bioscope” opened in St. Patrick’s Hall. Also in July, the “Crown Bioscope” opened up in Queen Street in the old Olympia Rink almost opposite the former St. Paul’s Church in Albany Road. August 1911 saw additional bioscopes open. First to open was the theatre with a mundane uninspiring name, “The Russell Road Bioscope” and then the first café bioscope, “The Balcony Café Picture Palace” at the corner of Constitution Hill and Main Street. In December 1911, the “Tivoli Theatre” was added to the venues offering movies except that they offered live entertainment as well. Being immediately post Victorian era, one presumes that live entertainment did not include strip shows or even pole dancers.

1912 also proved to be a hectic year as regards the bioscope business.The year commenced with the opening of the “Excelsior Bioscope” in January in the premises of the skating rink of that name. In April, the “Star Bioscope opened in the Odd-Fellows Hall on Russell Road.

May 14^th saw that opening of a purpose built bioscope instead of extemporised facilities. On that date, the Grand Theatre opened in Main Street. Designed by Victor Jones, the theatre was owned by the Grand Theatre Co and seated 1100 people. A journalist described it as “a little bit of London in our midst.” On the 2^nd September, the Grand Café on the upper floor, with a balcony overlooking Main Street, was opened.

As if there were insufficient movie houses in Port in Port Elizabeth, in October the “Empire” opened in South Union Street and then in November just to provide additional competition in Russell Road, the “Royal Cinema” opened there.

Probably opened just in time for Christmas, Port Elizabeth first alfresco bioscope opened in December 1912 in an enclosure next to the Beach Hotel.

Competition was having an effect on the bioscope business. 1915 witnessed consolidation and the first closure of a cinema. Mr WA Grace of Crown Bioscope took over the running of all the premises of the Theatre Trust in Port Elizabeth, the Grand, The Gaiety and the Spot. Simultaneously, the Crown reverted to a skating rink.

In order to control bioscopes, licences were issued for both bioscopes and theatres. In 1926 the Grand, Tivoli, Spot, Record and the Opera House were issued with licences. Presumably this implies that the numerous bioscopes that had sprung up in the early days, were now defunct.

Phonofilm is an optical sound-on-film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the 1920s. On the 13^th April, the citizens were able to hear sound on film at a showing at a crowded Feather Market Hall for the first time.

With competition fierce in a crowded cinema market, The Orient Bio-Café on the first floor of Birch’s in Main Street opened in June 1930 with a different business model. Owned by United Bioscopes, it showed silent films non-stop from 10:30am to 10:30pm with refreshments.

Replicating this idea, the Popular Bio-Café billed as the first talkie bio-café in the Cape Province, opened in September 1933.

The next proper cinema to open in Port Elizabeth, was the Metro Cinema on 26^th October 1931 in Jetty Street. Owned by Sam and Monte Richardson, with the irrepressible W.A. Grace in charge, the Metro showed MGM talkies. It was situated on the upper floor of the Drake Building. Initially the entrance was in Commerce Street until, in 1933, a new entrance was constructed in Jetty Street. The Metro was modern, comfortable and very attractively decorated in eau-de-nil, a pale greenish colour, and silver with bas reliefs of jungle scenes around the screen and in the long entrance passage. It was demolished in 1971 to make way for the construction of the Settler’s Freeway.

The next cinema to be constructed in Port Elizabeth opened on 1^st January 1935 as the Astra Theatre also in Jetty Street. It was designed by Jones and McWilliams and was owned by the Richardson Brothers. The colour scheme was white and silver while the foyer was faced with Italian marble. Destroyed by fire on 1^st June 1947, it was rebuilt and completed in April 1948.

The lack of a cinema in the North End area was set to rights in 1939. The Embassy Theatre opened at the end of Adderley Street on 17^th August 1939 by the Mayoress, Mrs McLean. It was the second theatre to be air-conditioned and showed 20^th Century and United Artist films. In the 2^nd half of the 1970s, it was closed.

Rupert Mouat recalls these days
When we were still at school, on most Saturday afternoons our gang went to the Gaiety Bioscope, on the comer of Queen Street (later an extension of Main Street and now Govan Mbeki Street) and Elizabeth Street, at the bottom of Eastbourne Road. There was always a serial in the programme such as “The Exploits of Elaine“, “The Clutching Hand“, “The Perils of Pauline” with Pearl White, “The Million Dollar Reward“‘ “The Man in the Iron Mask“, aand many others. Each weekly episode would end with the heroine in some parlous predicament, then the caption would flash on the screen – “Come again and bring your friends”. During interval we would go to a cafe across the road and have a large glass of sarsaparilla for 3d and a cream bun for 1d. On Wednesday afternoons we would go to the Tivoli Bio (where Edgar’s building now stands in Main Street) for 3d – increased to 4d when the entertainment tax was introduced. Popular comic screen stars were Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, and Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” with Mickey Rooney and Farina, a small black girl with enormous eyes. The first talkie shown in Port Elizabeth was ”A Train Arriving at a Station” and was shown at the Kinema where the Santam Building now stands.

Sources
http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/collection/cinematography/viewingprojection/collectionitem?id=2007-5005/1/1
http://www.openculture.com/2011/09/the_birth_of_film_11_firsts_in_cinema.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biograph_Company
The First Bioscope Show in P.E. in Looking Back dated June 1969
Port Elizabeth: A Social Chronicle to the end of 1945 by Margaret Harradine (1996, E H Walton Packaging Pty Ltd, Port Elizabeth)