The Gay Shoe Clerk

The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903) offers early romantic comedy as the clerk in question tries to get a little too friendly with his young female client, only to be clopped on the head by her severe mother. The timing was good, and there is a subtle eroticism in the way his hand slowly pushes up her skirt to reveal her stockings...

The copy I watched was from the "Treasures of American Cinema", Volume I (first disc), and like everything else on the set is impeccably transferred and well-scored, with excellent documentation. To the lover of early cinema, or anyone who wants to explore the byways of American film in general, it's an indispensable set.

I have used this short silent clip as part of my lessons on the history of cinema with my American History students. And while it isn't the most exciting or technically adept film of the day, it's pretty funny today and shows hard far our sexual mores have changed in only about a century. It's really great as social commentary.

Two ladies enter a shoe store. The younger one tries on a shoe. As the salesman places it on her, he exposes her ankle and even a tiny portion of her calf!! And, naturally, he loses control of himself and attacks her--only to be beaten into submission by the older woman! Funny stuff and the teens I teach think it's a real hoot!

With a title that suggests a Channel 4 documentary film, this short is actually a quick sketch that is all very cheeky and funny I'm sure but hasn't really stood the test of time at all. It features a bit of a build up and some good facial expressions and finishes with the clerk of the title getting rebuked (with an umbrella) for taking liberties with his customer. It is very short and is done with just a static camera shot so I was wondering what the lasting value of it was other than being part of a bigger history. I didn't find it particularly clever or funny and, with other UK silent shorts I could be watching to see how they built the foundations, I didn't think there had been much point in seeking this one out.

Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Company's "The Gay Shoe Clerk" demonstrates the influence of British filmmaker George Albert Smith. This film is essentially a remake, or reworking, of Smith's "As Seen Through a Telescope" (1900); it uses the same three-shot plot, including a close-up in the middle, and the joke of a man being punished for looking at a woman's ankle while she lifts her dress. The setting was changed from a man outside using a telescope to view the leg in Smith's film to the inside of shoe store. Porter would've presumably seen Smith's film through the duping practices of the Edison Company, who stole Smith's film and distributed it as "The Professor and His Field Glass". Historian Charles Musser ("Before the Nickelodeon") says that Porter may have also been influenced by a Biograph subject, tellingly titled, "Don't Get Gay with Your Manicure" (1902/03).

More interestingly are the differences between the close-ups in Porter and Smith's films. The one in "As Seen Through a Telescope" is a masked point-of-view (POV) shot. Porter's view is not masked and is not a POV from any character's perspective, but is an ordinary ("invisible") close-up, matching-on-action, which isn't explained within the narrative, as a POV shot is. Standard film-making nowadays, but not in 1903. Yet, not even this use of the close-up was Porter's invention. The same fellow Smith had used the same kind of insert close-up in the middle of his three-shot film "The Little Doctors" (1901) (now a lost film), which he remade as "Sick Kitten" (1903). Additionally, Porter had previously inserted a close-up of a fire alarm being pulled in "Life of an American Fireman" (1903).

"The Gay Shoe Clerk" is imitative, but not deplorable as were the dupes and shot-for-shot remakes also made by the Edison Company and other studios. It remains well made for 1903 and an amusing exploitation of cinema viewing's voyeuristic nature, with the punitive gag of the character being repeatedly hit for looking at the woman's leg, while we moviegoers get away unscathed.

Gay Shoe Clerk, The (1903)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

This Edison short is probably one of the better known films from this era. It shows a shoe clerk working when two ladies, apparently a mother and daughter, come into the store. The clerk is putting a shoe on the younger woman who raises her dress where he gets to see a bit of her leg, which makes him lean forward and kiss her only to have the other woman attack him. That's pretty much all we've got here but I guess you could call this one of the earliest sex comedies as it appears the film certainly wants to show off the sexiness of the woman raising her dress. It's also worth noting that the legend of D.W. Griffith inventing the close-up is pretty much thrown out the window here as the lifting of the dress is done so with a close-up. You certainly can't compare this to more current sex comedies but even though this is over 100-years-old it's still pretty funny.