WHAT IS SPORTS (CHAPTER 1 PART 2)

The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight Film

When Bob Fitzsimmons knocked out Jim Corbett in Carson City, Nevada, on March 17, 1897, to win the heavyweight championship of the world, three hand-cranked cameras loaded with thousands of feet of film were situated at ringside in a specially designed wooden house to capture the entire spectacle. The fight was financed and promoted by a Dallas entrepreneur and sporting man, Dan Stuart, and filming of the event was produced by the Rector-Tilden partnership, which had successfully brought off the CorbettCourtney exhibition for the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company but was now operating under the aegis of the newly formed Veriscope Company. 

Organizers of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight had to overcome considerable difficulties before being able to stage the fight. Finding a venue for the fight proved to be one of the most difficult hurdles. In October 1895, Stuart unsuccessfully attempted to stage the championship fight in Texas only to be thwarted when the governor and legislature quickly enacted a law making prizefighting a felony. A similar scenario unfolded in Arkansas, and soon thereafter Corbett announced his retirement. The title then passed to Peter Maher, who knocked out Corbett’s sparring partner Steve O’Donnell on November 11, 1895, despite the fact that Fitzsimmons had easily outclassed Maher three years earlier. In turn, Fitzsimmons knocked out Maher on February 21, 1896, in 95 seconds in a ring constructed on a sandbar in the Rio Grande, although no film of the fight was taken due to a light rain and insufficient light. With Fitzsimmons touring the vaudeville circuit as champion, the debacle on the Rio Grande prompted Corbett to come out of retirement and proclaim himself champion despite a lackluster four-round draw against Tom Sharkey. 

Only after intense lobbying was Stuart able to convince Nevada lawmakers to once again legalize prizefighting. By the time an agreement for the fight, including film rights, was signed, the commercial potential for fight films had increased dramatically as a result of the development in projection by the Eidoloscope, Phantoscope and Vitas cope. Boxing became the first sport to realize considerable profits from motion-picture reproductions, complementing the profits reaped from paid admissions, betting, and theatrical exploitation of prizefighters’ celebrity status. 

Importance of the event’s filming was evident in a Boston Herald headline that read, “The Kinetoscope Will Dominate Wholly the Arrangements for the Holding of the Battle.”52 Stuart even tried to alter the size of the ring to 22 feet square when he realized the Veriscope camera might not capture the action in one of the corners, where, as fate would have it, Corbett fell in the 14th round during the controversial knockout sequence. 

While the 11,000 feet of two and three-sixteenth-inch-gauge film stock with a wide-screen format shot by Enoch Rector’s specially built cameras on March 17, 1897, was being developed for exhibition, a variety of religious and reform groups lobbied Congress to enact legislation that would ban not only prizefighting but also images and reports of fights. Fearing that such a broadly written bill would result in censorship of newspapers and magazines, Congress took no action on the proposed legislation. Even though a number of state legislatures also considered banning fight films, few enacted laws prohibiting the exhibition of fight films. 

Several factors contributed to the defeat of such legislation, including boxing’s popularity, the absence of any clear conception of what constituted cinema, and the Veriscope Company’s effective publicity and promotional campaign.53 Exhibition of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight was noteworthy on several counts. Even before the film was made available for the public, Stuart screened the film for the New York press, generating considerable publicity about the film’s content rather than the technology. As such, each of the fighters made claims about what camera showed. 

In this regard, the company’s name, Veriscope or truth-viewer, proved beneficial in playing on the controversies stemming from the fight’s outcome. A New York World article noted that the camera proved to be “a triumph of science over the poor, imperfect instrument, the human eye, and proves the veriscope camera is far superior.”54 The possibility that the camera could prove whether or not Fitzsimmons had been down for a ten-count in the sixth round and whether or not Corbett had been fouled in the decisive fourteenth round added to the film’s attraction. 

The exhibition of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight debuted on May 22, 1897, at the Academy of Music in New York City. The film, with a running time of almost two hours, was soon offered as a stand-alone feature in many large theaters of major urban centers. As a representation of an actual event, the film was both legally and socially acceptable viewing material for an audience that cut across cultural and economic lines. In Chicago, where the film enjoyed an initial run of nine weeks, admission ranged from 25 cents for a gallery seat to one dollar for the orchestra. 

As such, the theater seat served as a replacement for the ringside seat, creating an alternate way of spectating this sport. Over time, the film was exhibited in various other amusement places— fairgrounds, resorts, amusement parks, storefronts, and midways—almost anywhere a screen could be hung and electricity provided. Despite newspaper reports that detailed the flickering and vibrations that proved trying to the eyes, prompting efforts to improve both prints of the film and the projecting machines, the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight remained a premiere attraction thanks to effective publicity and distribution, topicality and mode of exhibition. 

One of the noteworthy aspects of the film’s exhibition was its use of an expert who stood on-stage and provided running commentary. These experts varied from location to location, and undoubtedly the nature of their commentary also varied in terms of content and quality. Nonetheless, their descriptions of the fight’s key moments, especially its controversies, fueled the audience’s experience and drew considerable reactions, as evidenced in various newspaper reports. 

For example, the New York Tribune’s article of May 23, 1897, noted: In the sixth round, when Fitzsimmons was brought low for a few seconds, the crowd became so much excited that the lecturer who was explaining incidents had to give it up and let the spectators understand the rather complicated situation the best they could. He managed to get in just a word of explanation when it was nearly over.55 The same article related that when Corbett was knocked out in the final round, spectators cried out, “Where’s the foul? Where’s the foul?” The fight’s ending, in which Corbett crawled out of the camera’s view, no doubt left many viewers wondering exactly what had happened. The live narrator’s presence was important for at least two reasons. 

The narrator connected the fight film exhibition to the tradition of the illustrated lecture and thereby helped to assuage the concerns of those for whom boxing was an anathema by suggesting a more refined mode of presentation used in illustrated lectures on the lyceum circuit.56 Also, the spoken commentary rendered musical accompaniment unnecessary and doubtlessly inspired spectator yelling, cheering and generally playing the counterpart to the actual ringside spectators. 

Perhaps even more telling is the idea that in the use of an expert to provide commentary, sports announcing was born. Given the fact that within two years, several broadcasters, including Marconi and De Forest, would attempt to provide newspapers with live reporting of an international yacht race off Sandy Hook57 via wireless technology, the assertion is not without merit. Details and significant moments that today’s technology brings out in close-ups were emphasized by the narration and accurately illustrates the importance of this exhibition innovation in the development of an sportscast convention. 

The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight grossed approximately $750,000 with profits exceeding $120,000 after the fighters received their percentages, marking it the first motion picture blockbuster. More important, the fight’s film proved that a mass audience would pay to see a presentation of an actual event and that a privileged commentator could be used to guide viewers to the correct interpretation and feeling state, a function performed by today’s expert analyst who communicates insider information through intonation, interpretation and assertion, with the help of technological innovations like the Telestrator.

Issues

Although motion picture companies continued to film sporting events, as well as their recreations and reenactments, these undertakings were not without problems along various technical, social and legal fronts. Seeking to follow up on the success of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight, the American Vitagraph Company attempted to photograph the Jeffries-Fitzsimmons fight, scheduled at the Coney Island Sporting Club on the night of June 9. That the film industry was having a direct economic impact on the boxing world was evident in a July 29, 1899, article by Sam C.

Austin for the Police Gazette, titled “Lively Bidding for the Jeffries-Sharkey Fight.” Noting that any club wanting to stage this championship fight needed both money and motionpicture facilities, Austin argued that the exhibition of fights “has moved beyond the experimental stages ... [of the] indistinct and unsatisfactory”58 Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight film and that the potential for the upcoming fight was enormous: To such an extent has the photographing of movable objects been perfected since then that a wholly satisfactory result may be obtained, and considering the amount of interest that is now being taken in pugilistic affairs an exhibition of a genuine championship fight, such as the one forthcoming [Jeffries-Sharkey], ought to profit its promoters to the extent of several hundred thousand dollars.59 Although Austin’s claim that the photographing of movable objects, both staged and outdoor events, had been perfected was overstated, the same could certainly not be said of photographing live indoor events.

To capture this indoor event, 24 lamps were erected over the ring, but the engine that was supposed to provide the necessary watt output failed to generate enough horse-power.60 The Phonoscope reported that only half of the lights powered up. “The light was perhaps equal to about four of the lamps burning as they should have burned, and the Kinetoscope films developed out innocent of any marks that would suggest a negative.

” The magazine blamed the fiasco on inadequate planning and “demonstrates the advisability of preliminary trial before risking an installation on an important venture.”61 The piece concluded by underscoring the fact that with more time to properly install and connect the equipment, the venture could be successfully accomplished. The Edison Manufacturing Company offered “the six important rounds, including the knockout ... faithfully reproduced”62 with the actual fighters for $150, but not before Siegmund Lubin’s reproduction beat them to market, which even the Vitagraph Company used for a time. 

When Jeffries and Sharkey met in a heavyweight championship fight of 25 rounds on November 3, 1899, at the Coney Island Sporting Club, the lighting issue had been resolved from a technical standpoint. Despite shooting more than seven miles of footage on the largest film stock, two inches by two-and-three-quarter inches, Biograph’s production team encountered different problems. Some were self-inflicted and others “surreptitiously” imposed. 

The 350 miniature arc lights needed to illuminate the ring for Biograph’s cameras almost roasted the fighters. After the fight, Jeffries decried the lights, telling the New York Herald, “No more picture machines for me. The intense heat from the electric lights bothered me considerably and made me very weak at times.”63 Additionally, the cameras failed before the final round was completed, so that a reenacted ending had to be filmed some time in the seventeen days before the film was ready for exhibition. This diluted Biograph’s contention that they alone were offering the “only complete and accurate pictures” of the fight.64 

Biograph waged an intense publicity battle in order to fend off Lubin’s faked fight reenactment and American Vitagraph’s fragments shot with cameras that had been smuggled into the arena by Edison and Vitagraph’s men, despite the presence of Pinkerton security hired to forestall such an infringement. Although Vitagraph’s pirated version was copyrighted the next day by James H. White as The Battle of Jeffries and Sharkey for Championship of the World, the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company launched vigorous legal and publicity campaigns to prevent exhibition of the pirated film. Biograph took out an advertisement in the New York Clipper, offering the Edison Manufacturing Company $5,000 if it could dispute the fact that their pictures of the fight “are anything more than fragmentary snap shots of a few rounds, taken by cameras surreptitiously smuggled into the Coney Island Sporting Club and worked secretly.”65 

A similar amount was offered to Lubin, although he countered by offering $10,000 to anybody who could prove his reproduction was not copyrighted. Lubin offered both a 15- to 20-minute version of the entire fight, and a six-round highlight film. Interested exhibitors were even provided with free samples via mail. Unfortunately, fake fight films contributed to the dissolution of public interest in the real sport, which continued to struggle under the shadow of corruption and deception. Although Biograph’s exhibition of the Jeffries-Sharkey Fight met with financial success, the tour was short-lived in comparison to the CorbettFitzsimmons Fight. One contributing factor was the changed reception that existed in 1899–1900. Unlike its predecessor, this release did not engender calls for legislation and censorship. Rather, by the dawn of the twentieth century, editorial control became an area of contention between manufacturers and exhibitors. 

The Edison Company had assumed greater editorial control in the production and marketing of its films. For example, the film of President McKinley’s Funeral Cortege at Buffalo, New York was a 400-foot “series” consisting of four separate films brought together through dissolves, introduced in the printing process.66 The same process was employed for America’s Cup races, filmed in early October 1901, as they had been in 1899. The America’s Cup yacht races between “Columbia” and “Shamrock I” in 1899 and between “Columbia” and “Shamrock II” in 1901, the latter owned by Sir Thomas Lipton, drew considerable newspaper coverage. 

The New York Times reported on October 21, 1899, that “large and demonstrative” crowds gathered in front of the newspaper offices along Park Row to read the bulletins of the race’s progress, “impeding the progress of street cars and invaded City Hall Park for a considerable distance.” The crowds who gathered were both business men and “idlers who stood through the nearly four hours the race was in progress.”67 The races also provided an opportunity for Marconi to demonstrate his wireless technology. 

According to the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute by the United States Naval Institute, the tests found that the “coherer, principle of which was discovered some twenty years ago, [was] the only electrical instrument or device contained in the apparatus that is at all new.”68 A new technology was again tested through coverage of a live sporting event. The films of the 1899 America’s Cup, produced for Edison by J. 

Start Blackton and Albert E. Smith, captured select moments from each of the races. At least two were taken of the first race, contested on October 16, 1899.

The first 100-foot film showed the “two yachts rounding the stakeboats and jockeying for a start.”69 The second film was given no description, although it had an alternate title, “Columbia” and “Shamrock” Tacking, which might be the name of another film that was not copyrighted.70 For the third and final race, three films, each 100 feet, were taken; the first two show the two yachts rounding one of the outer marks. The third, titled “Columbia” Winning the Cup, captured the decisive moment of the race. The Edison Film catalogue of July 1901 described the action: “As the ‘Columbia’ crosses the line, followed closely by the ‘Shamrock,’ we see the steam from the whistle of the Light Ship announcing the well earned victory of the American yacht.”71 

These America’s Cup films are important examples of how film was used to capture sport actualities. First, that the Edison Manufacturing Company created a series with the 1899 and 1901 America’s Cup races illustrated a desire to create and market a composite story of a sporting event comprised of multiple parts. This strategy continues to be employed to market DVDs that tell the story of a team’s victory (e.g., Super Bowl, World Series) or the story of a specific event (e.g., 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, 1981Wimbledon). 

Additionally, the decision to capture the decisive moments of a race that featured 90-foot yachts rather than attempting to capture the event in its entirety necessarily involved strategic planning, coordination, and timing. It also pointed to a completely different aesthetic than had been employed for filming fights. In capturing actual performances that unfolded in time, films of sporting events like boxing worked against conventions of the presentational approach that dominated early cinema.72 However, because of their length, their movement across a fixed course over open water, and their slow progress, these America’s Cup races lent themselves to highlight framing that could better represent the whole by capturing specific aspects of the race, namely the start, rounding marks, and the finish, signified by a cannon shot once the winning boat crossed the committee boat’s bow. This deliberate presentation of key moments was arguably the most important marker in the evolution of sportscast highlights. 

Lastly, these films served as standards against which to measure newsreel coverage of the America’s Cup races featuring J-boats in 1930, 1934, and 1937, as well as television coverage of the 12-meter boats starting in 1958, particularly the 1983 and 1987 America’s Cup competitions. This process of putting together excerpts of actualities that had already taken place and editing in more recent film was also used to promote and publicize the Jeffries-Johnson heavyweight championship fight in 1910. More and more, film was being used not merely to capture an actual event, but also to generate publicity for an event that had yet to occur.

Bifurcation

By the time the Chicago Fight Picture Company put together excerpts and knockout rounds from the recent fights of both Jim Jeffries and newly crowned champion Jack Johnson and sold it as The Making of Two Champions (1909–1910), both the film industry and the sport of boxing were in the midst of considerable change. During what was known as the Nickelodeon Era (1905–1915), the motion-picture industry changed from a loosely structured entertainment syndicate to a big business model based on mass production by a limited number of production companies. 

These studios ultimately changed both their product, concentrating on feature-length fictional films rather than short subjects, and viewing spaces, replacing storefront nickelodeons and peep show parlors with ornate theaters that showed only films. Rapid growth in the film industry is also evidenced in the proliferation of the first trade magazines—Views and Film Index(April 1906), Moving Picture World (March 1907), Moving Picture News (May 1908), and the Nickelodeon (January 1909). As Streible notes, “Amid this expansion, American Progressivism also simultaneously implemented its age of reform, critiquing and regulating the practice of cinema as it did most other social institutions.”73 This concentration on social betterment forced the film industry to reassess its relationship with sporting entities, especially prizefighting. 

In the first decade of the twentieth century, sports also experienced considerable growth as a source of popular entertainment. This growth was, in part, fueled by the continued proliferation of sporting magazines, the development and expansion of sports sections in newspapers, and the continued filming of sporting events for distribution within the growing motion-picture industry. The symbiotic relationship between these two industries generated tremendous enthusiasm by producing a constant flow of publicity through co-promotional activities. 

An article, titled “Pictures and Pugilism,” which appeared in the December 18, 1909, issue of Moving Picture World, captured the essence of this relationship: The fortunes of the prize ring are apparently interwoven with those of the moving picture. Without the moving picture your modern prize fight would be shorn of most of its financial glamour and possibilities; without the prize fight the moving picture would not appeal to so many people as it apparently does.74 

This joint venture to film and exhibit sporting actualities had to contend with reformists who continued to rail against the barbarity of prizefighting, still struggling to shed its reputation as a brutal, savage blood sport with no socially redeeming value. Ultimately, the only spark needed to incite the move toward censorship and the banning of fight films was provided when Jack Johnson became the heavyweight champion by defeating Tommy Burns in 1908. 

As long as there had been a white heavyweight champion and the social hierarchy was maintained, the exhibition of fights was tolerated, even, at times, celebrated, especially when the feature showcased a popular champion like Gentleman Jim Corbett or Jim Jeffries. For black boxers, especially those who won championships, defeating white fighters in the process, acceptance was given as long as the black fighter maintained a semblance of assimilation. As already noted, when Jack McAuliffe won the lightweight championship in New Orleans in 1882, newspapers demanded that boxing clubs no longer stage inter-racial bouts. Because John L. Sullivan and his successors maintained the color line, no black heavyweight had been afforded the opportunity to upset that hierarchy. Although the social hierarchy did not allow a black heavyweight champion, film played an important role in creating a space where black athletes demonstrated their talents. 

The camera captured these performers without cultural preconceptions. Johnson, however, not only upended the social hierarchy, but in his dominating ring presence and his flouting of social conventions by carrying on relationships with white prostitutes (e.g., Hattie McClay 1907; Belle Schreiber 1908) and marrying a white woman on two different occasions (e.g., Etta Duryea 1909; Lucille Cameron 1912), Johnson was cast as a threatening menace to the ideology of race. Even before Johnson won the heavyweight championship, the news of a black boxer defeating a white sparked considerable violence. 

As the telegraphed returns of the 1906 fight between Gans and Nelson were read at various sites, the furor of a black boxer beating a white fighter erupted in street violence. A New York Times article for September 5, 1906, with the headline “Almost a Lynching over Gans’s Victory,” reported on several incidents: There were half a dozen fights in different parts of town, which were brought about by the success of the negro pugilist. In at least one instance the trouble almost grew into a lynching. In another case a stonecutter who had applauded the decision in the negro’s favor in a saloon in Williamsburg was followed from the place and assaulted by three men. 

He may die from his injuries.75 The films of Gans’s victory did not generate the same type of mob behavior, in part because venues for the exhibitions were segregated and alcohol was not served. Two years later, when Nelson knocked out Gans, the films grossed over $100,000, a dramatic increase attributable to both an increase in the film market and to the idea that white audiences desired a white fighter to regain the championship belt. Consideration of Johnson’s fight films—Johnson-Burns 1908, JohnsonKetchel (Stanislaw Kiecal) 1909, and Johnson-Jeffries 1910—involved issues related to those racial policies that governed public life. 

One immediate result of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was the racial bifurcation of public infrastructure and accommodations. As such, black and white public spaces for seeing the Johnson films were separate and unequal. Although Johnson defeated Burns for the heavyweight title on December 26, 1908, the film did not premiere until March 21, 1909, at the Chicago Auditorium where it played for two weeks for overwhelmingly white audiences. Promoter Hugh D. (Huge Deal) McIntosh provided the commentary, which often included calls, first uttered by Jack London, that the smile be removed from Johnson’s face and that Jeffries, who had retired undefeated and therefore still the rightful champion, come out of retirement to restore the championship to the white race. 

White public outcry was accommodated by including footage of the Jeffries-Sharkey Fight of 1899, the moment of Jeffries’ greatest glory, to the Johnson-Burns film. This appendage served another purpose in addition to appeasing white panic; namely, it provided marketing impetus for a Johnson-Jeffries “Battle of the Century.” Johnson’s ascendancy to the heavyweight championship came at a time of increased political activism within segments of the black community, especially related to the film industry. During Johnson’s reign atop the boxing world, 1908–1915, efforts included attempts by blacks to redefine stereotypical portrayals of black characters in theater and cinema, and debates about racial grounds for film censorship. 

Activists called for both access and autonomy, challenging segregation of exhibition venues and establishing independent black-run movie houses. Coincidental to Johnson’s capturing the heavyweight championship was the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) by W. E. B. DuBois and others in 1909. Along with the Chicago Defender, NAACP leaders spearheaded efforts to integrate Chicago’s movie theaters, a campaign which was also taken up in Harlem. 

While there certainly was an expansion in the number of black-only movie venues during this time, the exhibition of Johnson’s films often lagged behind exhibitions in white-run movie houses. Because McIntosh alone controlled the rights to the Johnson-Burns Fight, there were fewer advertisements for black theaters showing the film, indicating a lack of timely prints of the film. A similar situation did not occur when the films of the Johnson-Ketchel fight were made in October 1909, in part because the prints were controlled by the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) and in part because Johnson himself demanded possession of the fight’s prints. 

The Johnson-Ketchel Fightgenerated both sensation and abhorrence. The extant prints of the film provided ample evidence that for most of the fight Johnson and Ketchel were engaging in a 20-round exhibition more than a fight to the finish, cashing in on a money-making opportunity. As the fifth in a series of “Great White Hopes” that Johnson had fought and easily defeated since March 1909, Ketchel had earned a reputation as a fearless fighter. However, for most of his career Ketchel fought as a middleweight, and he was physically no match for Johnson. In fact, Ketchel was provided with lifts and padding to add girth to his stature for publicity photos. 

The film showed that for the first 11 rounds, Johnson toyed with the smaller man. Then in the 12th round, Ketchel caught Johnson with a punch to the head, sending him to the canvas. As quickly as Johnson went down, he got up and quickly lunged at Ketchel, catching him with a vicious punch to the mouth that knocked him unconscious and left several of Ketchel’s teeth embedded in Johnson’s glove. The film showed Johnson pawing at the glove, as if to remove the teeth. Reception of the Johnson-Ketchel Fight ranged along the racial divide, accelerating white fears with images of black power and offering black audiences “a laudable antidote to the pervasive negative stereotypes of popular culture.”76 Neither black nor white audiences reacted monolithically, however. Black critics questioned the fight’s highly suspicious ending, which appeared to one columnist as choreographed for the cameras:

If this Johnson-Ketchel fight wasn’t a pre-arranged affair, there was some awful clever catering to the moving picture machine.... After the supposed blow Johnson went down on his hands and toes, rolled over backward on one hand, and facing the moving picture machine all the time; then, seeing that Ketchel was waiting for his cue, he jumped up and rushed at Ketchel like a wild man.... The referee stood squarely over Ketchel, counting him out, and all three were in full view of the moving picture machine.77

In addition to concerns about playing to the camera, black critics were also beginning to question Johnson’s exorbitant lifestyle. Conversely, not all whites viewed the film within a racial discourse. Regardless of their attitudes about race, white fans of the sport doubtlessly appreciated Johnson’s boxing skills. When the fight film was shown at Hammerstein’s Victoria theater, Variety reported that Joe Humphreys provided commentary that focused on the fistic and economic details rather than race.⁷⁸

Those reports included details about the Jeffries-Johnson fight, the contract of which was signed on November 30, 1909, a little more than six weeks after the Ketchel fight. Promoter George Lewis “Tex” Rickard lured Jeffries out of retirement, thanks in part to the largest purse for a championship fight, $101,000, with the fighters splitting two-thirds of the movie rights and each receiving a signing bonus of $10,000. The fight, originally scheduled for July 4, 1910, in San Francisco, was moved to Reno, Nevada, when in mid–June California Governor James N. Gillett withdrew his support, bowing to pressure from civic and church leaders. 

According to a New York Times article from December 5, 1909, details of the “moving picture clause” occupied a considerable portion of the negotiations and was finally “stricken out of the articles and incorporated into a separate agreement.”79 That separate agreement included the formation of a stock company, the J. & J. Co., to handle the fight’s pictures. 

The MPPC ultimately bought up both boxers’ shares of the net film profits, paying Johnson $50,000 for his third and Jeffries $66,000, as well as buying Rickard’s share for $33,000. The Times article reported that profits would exceed $300,000. In addition to the MPPC coverage of the event, numerous independent film companies shot footage of the boxers preparing for the bout. 

Significantly, these films contributed to the pre-fight publicity so important in generating interest and building an audience not only for the event itself, but also for the films that followed. Comprised of excerpted segments, or highlights, from previous fight films and edited footage of training and sparring sessions, these publicity films constituted an important step in the sportscast highlight form’s evolutionary process, serving as precursors for not only newsreel segments, but also for the pre-game and post-game programs, as well as for Video News Releases (VNR) that became staples of the sports broadcasting industry half a century later.

Backlash and Bans

Production values of the Johnson-Jeffries Fightwere not particularly noteworthy, for despite a veritable cadre of cameras outfitted with special lenses being used by member companies Vitagraph, Essanay, and Selig, the film utilized most of the conventions of earlier fight films. Cameras were stationed on a platform thirty feet west of the wing and shot the action from that distance. One difference from earlier fight productions was the allocation of a panning camera to follow Jeffries, “framing the white boxer as protagonist and privileging white spectatorship.”80 

Jeffries, however, was unable to match the ring skills of the younger, more agile Johnson, who not only controlled the action, as he had in other fights, but was also seen talking to his opponent, as well as to Corbett and Sullivan, both of whom served as handlers in the Jeffries corner. Another significant aspect that the camera captured was that during the climactic sequence in the 15th round after Jeffries had been knocked down three times, Jeffries’ handlers entered the ring (Corbett included), preempting the final knockout ten-count. 

This caused referee Tex Rickard to declare Johnson the winner and new champion rather than allowing Jeffries to be knocked out as he surely would have been. A similar, more intrusive ending had occurred in Australia when Johnson defeated Tommy Burns to win the championship in 1908. In that bout, Australian constables forced cameramen to stop filming so that the knockout of Burns was not recorded. These incidents marked only the beginning of what became a vigorous campaign to censor the films of Johnson vanquishing the Great White Hope(s). 

In the immediate aftermath of Johnson’s victory, jubilant blacks celebrated and whites lashed back, and the ensuing race riots left a number of people dead. In a July 6 New York Times article, titled “Bar Fight Pictures to Avoid Race Riots,” the Times listed seven cities where at least ten fatalities resulted from fights occasioned by the Johnson’s victory. The article also noted that Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Cincinnati were among the cities that decided “not to permit the exhibition of the pictures.”81 Despite the numerous calls for bans on the film of the fight, few decried the overt racial furor being played out in cities and towns across the country. 

The actual number of blacks killed as a direct result of white vengeance over Johnson’s victory has never been accurately documented. More telling perhaps, neither newspapers and magazines, nor church and civic leaders decried the behavior of white citizens for their actions. Rather, blame was placed on the sport of boxing or on black demonstrations of empowerment. The easiest target to censor was invariably the fight’s film. On July 6, the New York Times also reported that William Show, general secretary of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, had issued a formal statement in which he declared “that Independence Day had been dishonored and disgraced by a brutal prizefight: that the moral sense of the Nation had been outraged, but that this evil was as nothing compared to the harm which will be done by allowing children and women to view the production of the Jeffries-Johnson fight by moving pictures.”82 

Significantly, this declaration against the fight film invoked a paternalistic tone of protecting women and children from viewing the film, despite the fact that women and children were certainly not the primary audience for fight films. In fact, the literature suggests that other than the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight, few women sought admittance to fight films.83 Church leaders like James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, echoed a similar concern, namely, that the pictures would have a desultory effect on women and children. “If the pictures of this contest were permitted, I am sure hundreds of children would see them, and what would be the result? Their morals would not only be contaminated, but they would have the wrong ideal of a true hero.”84 

Although not explicitly stated, the message was clear: Johnson could never be considered a hero. Implicit was the idea that it was up to the white race to lead the way “to confer these gifts of civilization, through law, commerce, and education on the uncivilized.”85 A legal challenge was issued by Mayor Patrick Henry McCarthy of San Francisco, who claimed: “Inasmuch as the contest resolved itself into a prizefight pure and simple and was not a boxing match, the exhibition of the moving pictures would be as unlawful as the fight itself.”86 

The entire episode marked a nadir in American sporting history. Attacks on the Johnson-Jeffries Fight film did not go unchallenged. The New York Times reported on July 7 that the “moving-picture syndicate owning the rights to the Johnson-Jeffries fight films will resort to the courts of the several States to determine their right to show the pictures.”87 Black newspapers and clergy also added their voices to those advocating for the films to be shown, often pointing out the hypocrisy of the situation. The St. Paul Appeal asked, “Who believes for one minute, that had Jeffries been the victor at Reno, there would have been any objection to showing the pictures of him bringing back ‘the white man’s hope?’”88 Similar stances were taken in black press editorials and cartoons, noting that the film of Johnson’s victory would have beneficial effects for the political and psychological well-being of black citizens. 

When New York City’s mayor had made it clear that the film would not be banned, offers from theaters and houses of amusement poured into the MPPC offices on Fifth Avenue. With promises from the film’s producers and the MPPC that the films would be carefully handled, meaning “the shows will be stag,”89 the Johnson-Jeffries Fight escaped total censorship for some time. Exhibitors, in practicing class, gender and race controls, were able to show the film and charge steeper prices for admission. This meant that not all of Johnson’s supporters, especially those in black communities, got a chance to see the Johnson-Jeffries Fight. 

For the next several years, Johnson held the heavyweight championship. Unable to find anyone who could defeat Johnson in the ring, those who sought to dethrone Johnson used the Mann Act, which forbade, under heavy penalties, the transportation of women from one state to another for immoral purposes, to prosecute and jail him, forcing him to leave the country. The first attempt to ban fight films, as well as telegraphed descriptions of fights, was introduced in the U. S. Congress in May 1910 by Representative Walter I. Smith (R-Iowa). Although that effort failed, two years later, another bill was introduced by Representative Thetus Sims (D-Tenn.) early in 1912. 

Southern Democrats pushed through the legislation, which was modeled after existing federal control on obscene publications (e.g., birth control, abortion literature). With the Sims Act of 1912, passed on July 31, 1912, Congress used its constitutional power to regulate commerce by forbidding interstate transport of fight films. Because motion pictures were considered commerce, they came under the purview of the federal government. Federal intervention served a dual purpose of raising concerns about the moral effect of boxing and the impact of Johnson’s ascendancy to heavyweight champion. That the Sims Act was motivated by racial ideology was evidenced by the demagoguery deployed in the debate. On July 19, two weeks after the fight, Representative Seaborn A. Roddenbery (D-Ga.) delivered a speech in which he called Johnson “an African biped beast” and that failure to take action against “black-skinned, thick-lipped, bull-necked, brutal-hearted African”90 would lead to another civil war. Ironically, those who had been longing for Johnson’s defeat were denied the opportunity to see the bout with Jess Willard in 1915 that ended Johnson’s tenure as heavyweight champion.

Conclusion

The ban on boxing films did not mean filmmakers no longer sought to capture and disseminate sporting events. In the years that followed, leading film companies continued to capture actualities with their newsreel divisions, which began in 1911, one year before the Sims Act became law. By that time, other sporting events had captivated the public’s imagination on both national and international stages. Major league baseball began playing its World Series in 1903 and baseball was captured on film as early as 1906. Another sport that grew in popularity at the turn of the century was college football, which the Edison Company captured on film during 1903. 

Still another sporting spectacle that grew in popularity was the modern Olympic Games, which began in 1896. In short, sporting events served as important content for the newsreel divisions of the major film studios. What is especially important about the formation and development of what today is called the sport-media-commercial complex was not merely the technological improvements that allowed cameras to stage or capture live sporting events. Rather, all of the various constituencies played key roles in the evolution and development of the sportscast highlight form. 

Arguably, far more is known about the ways that inventors, promoters, exhibitors, journalists, athletes, civic and church leaders attended to the consumption of sport culture than about the audience. It is difficult to ascertain who watched sport films and what they thought of them. Economics limited the access to films by the poorer members of the working class and the poor. Drawing its audience from across the upper, middle and working classes, films sought to accommodate people of diverse financial status. It should not be assumed that the audience was comprised of males only. While the films showing the physique of Sandow, as well as the fight films featuring Corbett and Jeffries, were primarily intended for male patrons, these films almost certainly “held considerable erotic interest for women spectators.”91 

At least a few women asserted their independence by visiting theaters showing fight films and other sporting events, especially those that offered matinees. While many factors determined the composition of the audience, it is also important to understand that control of the places of exhibition was as contentious as the controlling of the content. As the motion-picture industry became financially lucrative, not all entities shared equally in the profits. 

The system of selling the rights by states spawned highly competitive practices among exhibitors seeking to capitalize on topical films. States rights owners also faced considerable difficulties in recouping their investments in specific film properties. The sheer number of motion picture enterprises, especially in the early years of projection, exacerbated the difficulties of making profits from exhibitions. As the MPPC gradually gained more and more control over the distribution of feature-length fictional films, fewer independent companies were left to compete. 

This concentration of control in the hands of the studios ultimately pushed sport films from the feature to the news actuality. With feature-length fight films no longer legal, sports became an important source and a regular part of the newsreel. As such, capturing highlights of a sporting event was established as the new operational aesthetic, one that remained an integral part of the newsreel genre, even as radio broadcasting became the vehicle for capturing and disseminating a live sporting event.