Annabelle Butterfly Dance

Proximity to New York City provided Edison's West Orange studio, the Black Maria, with the opportunity to obtain talent from the city's artistic community. An artist, invited to appear before the Kinetograph, might take the North River ferry to the west shore. There, at the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western railroad station, they could purchase a ticket and take the train directly to West Orange, New Jersey. Arriving at the West Orange station they could take a trolley or walk a half-mile to Edison's laboratory complex.

This was possibly the route followed by Annabelle Whitford, a vaudeville performer, as she went on a number of occasions to appear before the camera. Although Edison publicly professed the high-art-artistic merits of his invention, the actual films taken - cock fights, blacksmiths working and drinking, boxing matches and sexy female dancers - show a pandering to the masculine element of future peep-show patrons.

This film of Annabelle Whitford was so popular that she was invited back a number of times to do dance numbers. With her cute butterfly wings and high kicks that reveal shapely legs under her neck-to-ankle dress, it is no wonder that she was well received by the 1894 male audience. The copy I saw of this 15-second film had "copyright 1897" imprinted on the film. Her attire, was tinted yellow at the very end.