''Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade'' is a 1909 American silent film comedy written and directed by

D. W. Griffith David Wark Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) was an American film director. Considered one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture, he pioneered many aspects of film editing and expanded the art of the na ...

, 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, ...

in New York City, and co-starring

John R. Cumpson John R. Cumpson (August 30, 1866March 15, 1913) was an American stage and film actor. On Broadway, he appeared in ''Up York State'' in 1901. With regard to his screen career, Cumpson appeared in at least 124 films between 1905 and 1912. A 1910 ne ...

and

Florence Lawrence Florence Lawrence (born Florence Annie Bridgwood; January 2, 1886 – December 28, 1938) was a Canadian-American stage performer and film actress. She is often referred to as the "first movie star", and was thought to be the first film actor to ...

."Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade (1909)"
catalog,

American Film Institute The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees. Leade ...

(AFI), Los Angeles, California. Retrieved 31 August 2021.Niver, Kemp R. (compiler). ''Early Motion Pictures: The Paper Print Collection in the Library of Congress''
"Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade"
Washington, D.C.: Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, 1985, pp. 288-289.

HathiTrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...

Digital Library. Retrieved 31 August 2021. At its release in April 1909, the

short Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as ...

was distributed to theaters on a " split reel", which was a single reel that accommodated more than one film. This short shared its reel with another Biograph comedy directed by Griffith, '' A Rude Hostess''. Original contact-print paper rolls of both motion pictures, as well as projectable safety-stock copies of them, are 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 is ...

.Bennett, Carl
"Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade"
The Progressive Silent Film List. Retrieved 31 August 2021.

Plot

The film depicts the mounting frustrations experienced by Mr. Schneider, who is living with his wife in an apartment. There he is trying desperately to concentrate on writing a special composition or "poetic effusion" for his "Liederkranz" (choir) while being repeatedly distracted and increasingly annoyed by activities and noises that surround him. He must cope with the rambunctious behavior of his young nephew Fritz playing a trombone, a squawking pet bird, a phonograph, and tolerate his wife and another musician practicing the violin."Stories of the Films/Biography Company/Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade"
''The Moving Picture World'' (New York City), volume 4, number 14, 3 April 1909, p. 412. I.A. Retrieved 28 August 2021."Comments on Film Subjects/'Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade'"
''The Moving Picture World'', 10 April 1909, p. 477. I.A. Retrieved 31 August 2021. The following summary of the screenplay, which is from Kemp R. Niver's extensive 1985 reference ''Early Motion Pictures: The Paper Print Collection in the Library of Congress'', provides additional details about the plot:

Cast

as Mr. Schneider *

as Mrs. Schneider *

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 Lena, Mr. Schneider's sister * Arthur V. Johnson as violinist * Jeanie MacPherson as maid * Owen Moore as first thief * Herbert Prior as second thief *

Tony O'Sullivan Anthony "Tony" O'Sullivan (born 7 January 1963) is an Irish people, Irish retired Hurling, hurler and Gaelic footballer who played as a right wing-forward for the Cork GAA, Cork senior hurling team. Born in Cork (city), Farranree, Cork, O'Sulli ...

in unverified role *

Clara T. Bracy Clara T. Bracy (born Clara Rose Hodges; 1 January 1848 – 22 February 1941) was an English stage and silent film actress. Life and career Bracy was born Clara Rose Hodges in London, England. Her father was Edward Hodges, and her mother was ...

as extra * Flora French as extra * Mack Sennett as extra

Production

The screenplay for this short is credited to D. W. Griffith, who also directed the picture at Biograph's main studio, which in 1909 was located inside a large renovated

brownstone Brownstone is a brown Triassic–Jurassic sandstone that was historically a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States and Canada to refer to a townhouse clad in this or any other aesthetically similar material. Type ...

mansion in New York City, 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 ...

, at 11 East 14th Street. The comedy was filmed there on interior sets in just two daysMarch 8 and 9, 1909by Biograph

cinematographer The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the photographing or recording of a film, television production, music video or other live action piece. The cinematographer is the ch ...

s G. W. "Billy" Bitzer and his assistant Arthur Marvin.Graham, Cooper C.; Higgins, Steve; Mancini, Elaine; Viera, João Luiz. Entry fo
"Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade"
''D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company''. Metuchen, New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1985, p. 43. I.A. Retrieved 31 August 2021.

Biograph's uncredited actors

Identifying cast members in early Biograph releases such as ''Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade'' is made more difficult by the fact that the studio, as a matter of company policy, did not begin publicly crediting its performers on screen, in trade publications, or in newspaper advertisements until four years after this short's release. John R. Cumpson and Florence Lawrence, although co-stars in this short, were uncredited in their roles on screen and in print, as were the rest of Biograph's relatively small staff of "photoplayers" in the studio's productions in 1909.Brown Kelly
"Florence Lawrence"
The Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP), Columbia University Libraries, New York, N.Y. Retrieved 27 August 2021. At that time, Lawrence was already gaining widespread celebrity among filmgoers. Few people, though, outside the motion picture industry knew her name, so the actress was referred to by admirers and in news publications as simply "the Biograph girl".

Release and reception

After their release on April 8, 1909, ''Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade'' and its split-reel companion ''A Rude Hostess'' circulated to theaters throughout the United States for the next year. The two shorts were widely promoted in newspapers and in film-industry publications. One unnamed reviewer for the New York journal ''The Moving Picture World'' evidently found ''Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade'' to be refreshing and wholesome entertainment, describing it to readers as "a clean bit of comedy" and "a welcome relief from some of the inane things that pass for comedy." In the months after the film's release, most published comments about the Biograph production are not independent, non-biased assessments; instead, they are from advertisers or theater owners who simply had commercial interests in attracting audiences. Also, to widen the appeal of

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

shows at the time, many theatres routinely presented several films or "photoplays" to complement the traditional offerings of live stage performances. The '' Courier-Journal'' in Louisville, Kentucky in its April 26, 1909 issue informs local residents that to mark the "second week of vaudeville" at the city's Hopkins Theatre, audiences could enjoy acts by

sleight-of-hand Sleight of hand (also known as prestidigitation or ''legerdemain'' ()) refers to fine motor skills when used by performing artists in different art forms to entertain or manipulate. It is closely associated with close-up magic, card magic, card ...

artist "Professor Leo", a

clog dancer Clogging is a type of folk dance practiced in the United States, in which the dancer's footwear is used percussively by striking the heel, the toe, or both against a floor or each other to create audible rhythms, usually to the downbeat with the ...

, storytellers, and singers. The newspaper then states that "the moving pictures" being offered on the program "cover a wide range of interesting subjects", adding that "The leading funmaking film is one called 'Schneider's Anti-noise Crusade.'" At theatres elsewhere in 1909, the "especially interesting" comedy proved to be popular and continued to be featured and promoted as the lead film in variety shows."Air Dome" advertisement
''The Log-Cabin Democrat'' (Conway, Arkansas), 14 July 1909, p. 1; digital copy of newspaper page, "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers", Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., online reference co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 2 September 2021.

Preservation status

Photographic prints and a film negative and positive of ''Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade'' survive in the

(LC)), which holds a 206-foot roll of paper images printed frame-by-frame directly from the comedy's original 35mm master negative. Submitted by Biograph to the United States government in 1909, shortly before the film's release, the roll is part of the original documentation required by federal authorities for motion-picture companies to obtain

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, education ...

protection for their productions.Niver
"Preface"
pp. ix-xiii. While the LC's paper roll of the film is certainly not projectable, a negative copy of the roll's paper images was made and transferred onto modern polyester-based safety film stock to produce a positive print for screening. Those copies were made as part of a preservation project carried out during the 1950s and early 1960s by Kemp R. Niver and other LC staff, who restored more than 3,000 early paper rolls of film images from the library's collection and created safety-stock copies.

Notes

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade 1909 films 1909 comedy films 1909 short films Silent American comedy films American silent short films American black-and-white films Biograph Company films Films directed by D. W. Griffith Films shot in New York City Films shot in New York (state) American comedy short films 1900s American films