James Stuart Blackton - Text
James Stuart Blackton was born on 5 January 1875 and died on 13 August 1941. He began his career as a journalist and draughtsman at the New York World, also standing out as a “lightning sketcher” in variety shows, where he shared the bill with the magician Albert E. Smith. He made his first foray into cinema by drawing Thomas Edison for the Vitascope Company in 1896 before he appeared once again, still as a draughtsman, in two other films undoubtedly produced the same year.
Armed with this experience, in 1896 he founded the Vitagraph Company with Albert E. Smith. Blackton is known above all as a pioneer in the field of animation, because he was one of the first to use an animation technique with drawings, working on a blackboard. In addition to The Enchanted Drawing (1900), a trick film playing on the visible transformation of a drawn face, he made Humorous Phases of Funny Faces in 1906, in which lines drawn with chalk suddenly begin to move; and Lightning Sketches in 1907, crossing the former film’s system with the latter film’s animation technique.
Above all, his films are cinematic adaptations of an older practice, the “lightning sketch,” or the creation of illustrations on stage in real time before an audience. Blackton’s films do not tell stories; they perpetuate an attractional logic, capitalizing on the surprise caused by a drawing which suddenly starts to move. He was also the camera operator on Little Nemo (1911) by Winsor McCay.
Bibliography
- Musser, Charles. “The American Vitagraph, 1897-1901: Survival and Success in a Competitive Industry,” in Film Before Griffith, edited by John L. Fell. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
Slide, Anthony. The Big V: A History of the Vitagraph Company. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1987. - Crafton, Donald. Before Mickey. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1982.
