''A Sound Sleeper'' is a 1909 American comedy film directed by
D. W. Griffith and produced by the
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1916. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition ...
.
The
short was filmed in one day in the Coytesville borough of
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee is a borough at the eastern border of Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated along the Hudson River atop the Palisades.
As of the 2020 U.S. census, the borough's population was 40,191. As of the 2010 U.S. census, t ...
, which at the time was a popular filming location for many early motion-picture studios in the northeastern United States. Due to the brief running time of this comedy, it was originally distributed in April 1909 on a
split reel with another Biograph release, a longer dramatic film titled ''The Winning Coat''.
No full original 35mm theatrical print of the comedy is known to exist; nor does a later copy transferred directly from original film stock survive in public archives or in private collections. This early Griffith work's existence is therefore cited as either lost or "unknown" in some printed and online film references.
[Bennett, Carl]
"A Sound Sleeper (1909) American"
catalog, Progressive Silent Film List, State of Washington, United States. Retrieved March 9, 2021. A visual record of the short, however, does exist. The record is preserved in the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
, which holds a 1909 non-projectable photographic copy of much of the film.
[Niver, Kemp R. ''Early Motion Pictures: The Paper Print Collection in the Library of Congress'']
"A Sound Sleeper
Washington, D.C.: Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, 1985, p. 306. HathiTrust Digital Library. Retrieved 8 March 2021. Printed on a roll of paper 81-feet long, the copy was submitted by Biograph to the United States government shortly before the company released the film to theaters. The roll is part of the original documentation in Biograph's application to obtain a federal
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
on the production.
Plot
As described in 1909 trade publications, this short's plot centers around a
vagabond
Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, temporar ...
or "tramp" who wanders about town desperately seeking places to sleep. Finding locations to nap is actually easy for him since he possesses the ability to doze anywhere, even in the most uncomfortable, unsettled, and loudest situations. Whenever the tramp falls asleep, which occurs often, night and day, "an earthquake or cyclone couldn't arouse him."
["Stories of the Films / Biograph Company / A SOUND SLEEPER"](_blank)
''The Moving Picture World'', 10 April 1909, p. 448. Internet Archive. Retrieved 8 March 2021. Overcome again one morning with the urge to doze, he lies down on a pile of lumber and uses a brick as a "pillow" for his head.
He falls asleep, but soon a group of ruffians begin to argue nearby and start fighting. As their battle intensifies, some of the fighters "sprawl and tumble" all over the snoozing tramp; yet, he continues to sleep peacefully.
Finally, the tramp awakes, gets up, and walks over to a large empty barrel labeled "'ashes'". He crawls inside the container and quickly lapses once more into a
coma-like state. Almost immediately, as part of their daily routine, various housewives in the neighborhood approach the barrel and begin depositing into it bucketloads of ashes, the residue they have brought from their homes' stoves and fireplaces. The tramp is quickly and completely buried by the ashes, although he remains fast asleep. Next, a horse-drawn cart arrives and workmen pick up the full barrel and transport it with other trash to the town's dump. There they pour out the ashes and the sleeping tramp in a heap. He gradually awakes again, stands up, and casually brushes off his ash-covered clothing with a small broom he carries in his pocket. Then he calmly walks away from dump.
Cast
*
Anthony O'Sullivan or
John R. Cumpson as the sleepy tramp
*
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett (born Michael Sinnott; January 17, 1880 – November 5, 1960) was a Canadian-American film actor, director, and producer, and studio head, known as the 'King of Comedy'.
Born in Danville, Quebec, in 1880, he started in films in the ...
as a gentleman
*
Herbert Prior
Herbert Prior (2 July 1867 – 3 October 1954) was an English silent film actor. He appeared in more than 260 films between 1908 and 1934. He was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, and died in Los Angeles, California.
Prior was married to actress ...
as fighter
*
Robert Harron
Robert Emmett Harron (April 12, 1893 – September 5, 1920) was an American motion picture actor of the early silent film era. Although he acted in over 200 films, he is possibly best recalled for his roles in the D.W. Griffith directed film ...
as fighter
*
Arthur V. Johnson as fighter
*
Owen Moore
Owen Moore (12 December 1886 – 9 June 1939) was an Irish-born American actor, appearing in more than 279 movies spanning from 1908 to 1937.
Early life and career
Moore was born in Fordstown Crossroads, County Meath, Ireland. Along with his ...
as police officer
*
Anita Hendrie
Anita Hendrie ( – April 15, 1940) was an American actress. She appeared in 67 silent motion pictures between 1908 and 1912, in addition to working in stock theater and vaudeville.
She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter ...
as first "ash" woman
*
Florence Lawrence as second "ash” woman
*
Flora Finch
Flora Finch (17 June 1867 – 4 January 1940) was an English-born vaudevillian, stage and film actress who starred in over 300 silent films, including over 200 for the Vitagraph Studios film company. The vast majority of her films from the sil ...
as third "ash” woman
*
Billy Quirk
Billy Quirk (born William Andrew Quirk; March 27, 1873April 20, 1926) was an American stage and silent-film actor. He performed in more than 180 films between 1909 and 1924. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, he died in Los Angeles, California. G ...
in undetermined role
Production
The comedy was filmed in just one day, on March 18, 1909, in Fort Lee, New Jersey, then a popular filming location for various studios, especially for staging outdoor scenes.
[Graham, Cooper C.; Higgins, Steve; Mancini, Elaine; Viera, João Luiz. Entry fo]
"A Sound Sleeper"
''D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company''. Metuchen, New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1985, p. 44. Internet Archive. Retrieved 6 March 2021. Fort Lee, which is situated just across the
Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...
from New York City, is approximately 13 miles from the site of Biograph's main studio facility in 1909, which was housed in a large converted
brownstone mansion at 11 East
14th Street in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
.
On April 8, four days prior to its release, the one-reeler was
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
ed by Biograph and assigned the registration number H125502.
That copyright protection expired long ago, so any surviving theatrical footage or photographic images created from that footage are in the
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...
. Those materials would therefore be free for use without restrictions since they were produced and publicly exhibited in the United States prior to .
Cast-listing discrepancies
At the time of this film's release, Biograph Studio was continuing its established policy of not crediting on screen or in published advertisements the names of the performers in its productions or even the name of Director Griffith himself. That early policy explains why filmgoers in 1909 referred to one of the actors in this film, the rising star Florence Lawrence, as simply "The Biograph Girl". Publicly, few people knew her name then. In her 1925 autobiography ''When the Movies Were Young'',
Linda Arvidson
Linda Arvidson (born Linda Arvidson Johnson, July 12, 1884 – July 26, 1949; sometimes credited as Linda Griffith) was an American stage and film actress who became one of America's early motion picture stars while working at Biograph Studios i ...
a fellow actress and the first wife of D. W. Griffithrecalls Lawrence's anonymity, "It was some time before the company allowed the names of actors to be given out, hence 'The Biograph Girl' was only the intelligent appellation."
Biograph's non-identification policy for its leading and supporting actors accounts for many cast discrepancies and omissions in motion-picture references regarding early silent productions, especially in the cases of lost films. A positive identification of the actor who portrayed the title character in ''A Sound Sleeper'' is clouded by conflicting citations in printed and online references. In some sources,
Anthony O'Sullivan in cited as the sleepy tramp;
in others,
John R. Cumpson is credited in the lead.
While O'Sullivan was a frequent performer for Biograph, the actor regarded in 1909 as Biograph's principal comedian among its company players was Cumpson. Since Cumpson also received no screen credit in Biograph's films, he, like Florence Lawrence, was referred to generically as the studio's "funny man". In its April 17, 1909 issue, ''The Moving Picture World'' alludes only to the "Biograph funny man" in its brief description of the film's plot and its title character. That single allusion implies that Cumpson, not O'Sullivan, may have portrayed the "tramp".
["'A Sound Sleeper'"](_blank)
''The Moving Picture World'', 17 April 1909, p. 476. Internet Archive. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
Release and reception
Given the brevity of this comedy, with a film length of just 214 feet and an original runtime of approximately three minutes, it was released and distributed by Biograph on a split reel, which was a single reel sent to theaters that held two or more entirely separate motion pictures. ''A Sound Sleeper'' on its reel accompanied another much longer Griffith film, a 767-foot drama set in sixteenth-century Europe, ''The Winning Coat''.
[Plot description in advertisement for ''The Winning Coat'' in ''The Moving Picture World'', 10 April 1909, p. 429. Internet Archive. Retrieved 5 March 2031.]
Biograph in its own published promotions of ''A Sound Sleeper'' refer to it simply as "a very funny short comedy"; yet, few impartial reviews or comments about the film can be found in either 1909 trade publications or in contemporary city or small-town newspapers. A production so brief would hardly warrant considerable treatments or even marginal assessments by film-industry observers or theater owners. Alfred Greason, writing for ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' under the pen name "Rush", did question the entertainment value of the film, given its relatively meager content as a "'filler'".
[Greason, Alfred (pen name "Rush")]
"NOTES / "'A Sound Sleeper."
''Variety'' (Manhattan, New York), 17 April 1909, p. 12. Internet Archive. Retrieved 5 March 2021. In the trade paper's April 10, 1909 issue, Greason implies in his comments about the film that a substantial amount of footage from the production was cut and omitted from the picture so the comedy would be short enough to fit on a split-reel with ''The Winning Coat'':
''The Moving Picture World'' also had few comments as well about the comedy, stating only that its humor was "far fetched" and that the film was an example of Biograph's "pointless jokes" in its regular releases.
Library of Congress paper print
No original projectable prints or original
stills of ''A Sound Sleeper'' are preserved in any major motion-picture archive, including the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
, the
UCLA Film Archives
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
, in the collection of moving images at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, the
George Eastman Museum
The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...
, or in any European film repositories. No film copy is also known to exist in any smaller public repositories or in private collections. This early Griffith production is therefore currently classified as lost. All of the original master negatives and prints were likely destroyed over time in various ways. Some copies may have been deliberately or inadvertently discarded; others, improperly stored or consumed in fires; while other copies, probably the vast majority, were ruined as the highly unstable
nitrocellulose
Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitric acid and ...
film stock on which this comedy was recorded steadily disintegrated.
The Library of Congress (LOC) does, though, hold an 81-foot roll of paper images printed frame—by-frame directly from the film's original 35mm master negative.
While the library's paper print record is not projectable, such paper copies can be transferred onto modern safety film stock for screening. In fact, during the 1950s and early 1960s, Kemp R. Niver and other LOC staff restored more than 3,000 early films from the library's paper-print collection. The
UCLA Film and Television Archive
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Also a nonprofit exhibition venue, the ar ...
, for example, has in its collection such a reproduction, but not one of ''A Sound Sleeper''. Instead, it is a copy of the first film directed by D. W. Griffith, the short ''Adventures of Dollie''. That projectable reproduction was created from a copy of the LOC's paper print of that 1908 film.
[Silent film reproduction on 35mm safety print of ''Adventures of Dollie'' (1908) made from LC paper print, one reel, inventory number M27769, UCLA Film and Television Archive, Los Angeles, California. Retrieved 6 March 2021.] Currently, no such transfer to film has been done for ''A Sound Sleeper''.
Notes
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sound Sleeper, A
1909 films
1909 short films
American comedy short films
American silent short films
American black-and-white films
Films directed by D. W. Griffith
Films shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey
1909 comedy films
Silent American comedy films
1900s American films