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Les origines (1873-1896)

Paul Gilmore développe un intérêt pour le théâtre alors qu'il est encore jeune.

L'American Mutoscope Company (1897)

En 1897, Paul Gilmore, avec la complicité de Claxton Wilstach, va jouer dans plusieurs vues animées de l'American Mutoscope Company. Il a laissé un témoignage publié en 1915 :

I was in New York and had a job. I also had a roommate who didn't have a job. At the time I was playing what turned out to be a six-months’ engagement with Chauncey Olcott. Claxton Wilstach was my roommate. And, by the way, I never knew a Wilstach who wasn’t bright—Paul and Frank, and Clax, and now Frank’s boy John turns out to he clever, too. Well, one day Clax Wilstach bustled into the room all excitement. He had a scheme. I could see that right at the start. He also had a job, and a good one. He’d located the studio of the American Biograph and Mutoscope company, and had jumped into the movie game, or what was destined to be the movie game, with great enthusiasm. "Now,” continued Mr. Gilmore, "there had been motion pictures, but Clax Wilstach had the new idea of posing a straight bit of acting, with a real, regular actor. That was where I entered into the calculations. Would I do it? Yes, I would, and I did. The next day Wilstach and I went around to the studio, and the thing was done. I posed in a comedy skit called ‘The Bungling Waiter.' It was mightly poor when you compare it with motion pictures of today, and it gives me many a laugh when I contrast the methods used then with the ones practiced now.
"Later I took a bunch of kids who were playing in the Olcott show and we posed them as part of a bona fide sketch. I believe that was the first time a real troupe of actors posed for a complete sketch in motion pictures. The game then had hardly got beyond the stage of the mutoscope; you’ll recall the old mutoscope, the machine that had a handle, and if you turned the handle, after first depositing a penny or a nickel, a big bundle of cards were mechanically flipped so that you got the impression of motion. It was the start of the moving picture, a succession of photographs that could be made to blend into the semblance of one motion protograph. The company also made films, however, and I posed for the two varieties, the card pictures of the mutoscope and the films of the biograph.
"One day in that studio a wonderful discovery was made. It was this: that if you stopped the camera, during some action, and then started it again with a change of action, great illusions were possible. We used the idea, the same one that later on was to result in all the fake comic films— the films that show a house falling down inside of a second’s time, and all those things. But Wilstach and I made one error. We didn’t tumble to the real possibilities of the thing. If we had only guessed to cut and paste films, letting the machine run all the time, and later working over sections of the film, I wouldn’t have to be building an apartment house now in New York or doing three shows a day."
"Which nether made you induge in dreams now and then, I suppose,” was suggested.
"Yes, as I said previously," Mr. Gilmore replied, "my dream is to stage a picture the scenario of which I’ve writen myself and which I believe would be the most wonderful picture ever produced. In the meantime I am still sticking to romantic roles, and doing a bit of comedy in vaudevilles which I rather like.".

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The Birmingham Age-Herald, Birmingham, mercredi 7 avril 1915, p. 6.

La presse va se faire l'écho de certains de ces tournages que l'on peut situer vers le printemps 1897 :

Paul Gilmore of Milwaukee has been posing in some character studies for the American Biograph, which is projecting its moving pictures in some twenty its moving pictures in some twenty different theaters in this country and England. Mr. Gilmore's pictures are entitled. "His First Smoke," "The Miser," "The Monk's Story," "Love's Young Dream."

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Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, dimanche 25 avril 1897, p. 29.

Paul Gilmore has been posing for the biograph pictures. His burlesque on the theatre hat is now in its third week at Keith's, while Love's Young Dream, another picture in which he is the central figure continues one of the hits of the biograph list.

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The New York Dramatic Mirror, Birmingham, 1^er mai 1897, p. 14.

Another new picture shows Paul Gilmore as a magician doing the Vanishing Lady trick.The New York Dramatic Mirror, 4 septembre 1897, p. 16.

Et après... (1907-1962)

Sources

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1897

Love's Young Dream (154)

A Bowery Cafe (155)

The Bungling Water (156)

His First Smoke (157)

The Theatre Hat (159)

The Miser (160)

A Good Story (161)

Playing Doctor (162)

The Pillow Fight

The Vanishing Lady (271)

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