Oh What A Time... - #121 Silent Films (Part 1)

Episode Date: June 29, 2025

Time to go back to the golden age of cinema; this week we’ll tell the story of how sport first burst onto the big screen, how the first silent films were soundtracked and how F Scott Fitzgerald fell in and out of love with Hollywood.And we’re also discussing the things that take us back in time (like the theme tune to Going For Gold). What takes you back in time? AND PLEASE SEND US YOUR QUAINT LOCAL ATTRACTIONS! (With a pic of the leaflet if possible).You can email everything in here: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Visit Jam's Burgers and Shakes, 8 Jam Lane Bed Time, a podcast about the past. And do you know what takes me right back to the past? Like nothing else, specifically sick days as a kid. The theme tune to Going For Gold. Yes. When that comes up on Instagram, I am teleported back in time. My own one day time machine.

That specifically that theme tune. And Pebble Mill and Junior Kickstart, which I used to watch when I was ill. I of course didn't have a TV. So for me, it's like, I don't know, the sound of flicking through the pages of The Roof at the Bear And. Yeah. That's what that would be.

That's what I would do. What are you doing on sick days? So genuinely in bed with, you know, my annuals and Lucas Aid or whatever my mum would bring me. No TV at all. I think sometimes had Radio 4 in the background. She'd bring her radio up. So you're ill off school, you're nine years of age.

It's annuals, leukazade and radio four time. In our time. And in our time. I often think of you, Tom, as having like a Victorian childhood. So it's quite jarring to imagine you drinking leukazade. Yes. What I don't understand though is with this constant exposure to radio four and zero

pub culture, how are you so thick? this constant exposure to Rage 4 and zero pop culture. How are you so thick? Because thickness has nothing to do with knowledge. I'll accept that I'm thick. What happened? Because I'm thick I'm failing to take any of this information in, that's why. You should be the brightest mind I have access to. You don't know anything.

But you can put an illiterate man in a library, he doesn't come out of his bright. He just sort of sits there, doesn't he? That's all that happens. I wasn't aware of Radio 4 till I was 34? Yeah. 35? You were mainlining Radio 4. Loved it. When you were single digits. Still get a tingle when I hear the Arches theme tune.

Oh, that's what you're doing on your sick days. Absolutely. You are right there Will, I should know more. I don't know when I became aware of Radio 4. We didn't have it on in the house when I was a kid growing up. I don't. No, that's a good question. So I would never listen to Radio 1, any of that sort of stuff. I would listen to, I think we've discussed it before, GWRFM, which is the local West Country radio station on the way into school. Yeah, we'd win a wheelbarrow and people would talk about local Apple prices.

Yeah, exactly. Talk about the traffic two weeks ago. And you could win like, I don't know, a week's worth of journeys across the Seven Bridge or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Loads of prices you people are calling in for. And at home it's Radio 4, that's what we'd listen to constantly, Radio 4. Those are my, that was me, that was my upbringing. Did you, Tom, can I just see if my biases about West Country life are the same? Yes.

Well, I'll ring true. Have you ever been cheese rolling? I've watched but never taken part because I'm watching my figure. Have you ever danced around the maple? You know this, I was part of a country dancing troupe. I was the fool was my official title. Given a stick with a bell, we've discussed this and I've taken part in country dancing competitions in which we've done pretty well as well at the Bath and West show and stuff like that. So yes. Any more West Country questions? Was there like a country fair with some sort of vegetable judging competition that you went to?

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Genuinely minimum twice a year. Okay, I've got a question for Chris. He up in the East End. Ever been up a chimney? No, although chimney sweeping was, I mean, the house I've been now in East London, we've had a chimney sweep round. Yeah. And he never once broke into song. So, but what's a modern chimney sweep do? I've never met a modern chimney sweep.

I think they're still sweeping chimney sweep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I mean- What do you think? They're diversified into what? Orange juice? They send up one of those robot Hoovers, Al. They'll just do it. Have they got like a special machine? They're not sending up six-year-old boys, are they? Robots of six-year-old boys now. AI robots. Wow. It's made to replicate six-year- old boys from the Victorian era. It's amazing how things progressed.

All right then. Did you eat jelly deals as a kid, Chris? My dad, on a Sunday it was a thing. Yeah. He would go to like, I don't know, did you have this that there would be like a fish shop next to pubs, but like a little caravan dude. Oh yeah. Like he would sell seafood. I mean I do love cockles, which is a very West Wailian thing. I genuinely love cockles. And I buy cockles from a market near my house, but they come from Leoncy in Essex. And I always think that as a Welsh cockle guy, that's going to win me some favour. The guy thinks I'm a complete div.

And every time I go, what are these? Are they from Essex again? He goes, yes. And he just, we're not connecting at all. I always think we're going to bond. So in 2025, you go to the market to buy cockles. Big time. I love it. That's what you're doing in this current year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did it on Sunday. This year of all this incredible food. You live in Bristol Palace. Cockles are delicious.

You have access to London, just access to any food from around the world and you're going to the market to buy cockles. Cockles are delicious. The Welsh breakfast of cockles, lava bread, bacon and egg is unbeatable. It is peerless. You might be more cockney than me. To finish us off, any Welsh questions for Al, Chris? Well, the funny thing about my bias is towards the Welsh are often confirmed by your trips

to Wales away. Yeah, and you'd be spelt on. I've got one other stereotype question to ask you. Have you ever been in a male voice choir? No, but my grandfather's male voice choir sang at the Albert Hall. Dad was in the male voice choir? No, but my grandfather's male voice choir sang at the Albert Hall. Dad was in the male voice choir. Really? My grandfather sang in the choir of a thousand voices at the Albert Hall a couple of times.

Amazing! Yeah. That's awesome. I get genuinely moved by the sound of a Welsh male voice choir. I really do. He was in his choir his entire life actually, the same choir, and they sang at his funeral. And it was, I didn't know that sang at his funeral and it was, I didn't know that was going to happen and it was very powerful. Oh my god, I've been bit.

Because there's just so many of them. Too much. And they were upstairs, I hadn't spotted them. Just so many of them. But it's like, no but like when you- Like polyphonic spray. The clues in the title, the thousand voices. But like when you go to chapel and there's like 13 people singing, it sounds shit. But when

there's hundreds of them, it's, and they know what they're doing. It's big old, big old noise. Very impressive stuff. Absolutely. I think male voice choir beats cheese rolling and jelly deals. I think in terms of things, if we're going to keep one of them, that would be the one that I'd make. You do love a cider. I do love a cider, that's very true. Absolutely. So that part of me.

You do love a... Yeah, I like a rolling hill as well. Have you ever scrumped, what do they call it, scrumping for apples? Have you ever scrumped? I have scrumped for apples. I've done all these things, I've done it all. It's a West Country childhood, of course.

I mean, I used to go around to my friend's house and his dad was a farmer. And if I was wearing baggy trousers, as was the fashion in the late 90s, he would say I was wearing Trosses du Guitvale, which means, oh, you've got your apple stealing trousers. What's an apple stealing? Big pockets. Oh, those apples are your pocket. You're pleased to see me. But yeah, so I would go round there and hope thinking I looked like a cool skater.

And he thought I looked like I'd gone... ...feeing down the orchards. Yeah. I thought I looked like Tony Hawk and he thought I looked like I'd been stealing from an orchard. Do you think that's what combat trousers are for? Yeah. I think we should go to Drusties to give Ali your Apple steam trousers again. No.

Yes, I mean, yeah, whatever, yeah, sure, fine. He remembers people wearing wooden shoes in West Wales in the fifties. What? His dad. Yeah, my maid's dad. Are you sure? Yeah. That sounds like he's making that up.

No, very rural area. Yeah, but that doesn't mean you wear wooden shoes. Wearing clogs and... making that up. No, it was a very rural area. Yeah, but that doesn't mean you wear wooden shoes. Wearing clogs and... The Shire from Lord of the Rings is where you might wear wooden shoes. It's not a normal upbringing, at least because it's rural. I can't believe Chris's dad used to eat jellydeals on a Sunday. He still does. That's fantastic. Let's not get away from the wooden shoes that your ancestors were knocking around in. I'll have to quiz him further on it, but not in my era, in the 90s. I appreciate that.

His dad remembered it in the 50s. This is post-World War II. You're saying most people were knocking around in wooden shoes in the valleys. Oh my God. My dad's stories about the 50s are sensational. It sounds like 1810. It doesn't sound like 1955. Imagine going up a steep valley street, like a cobbled street in the valley, really steep,

up to get to your house in wooden shoes. No, no, this wasn't in like a pit village valleys. This was like rural village as in countryside. So it makes more sense. Oh, it makes perfect sense now. Okay, fine. So it makes more sense. Oh, it makes perfect sense now. Yeah. Okay, there you go. Right, welcome to the show everyone. I hope you're well.

What is today's subject? Let's get that out of the way. Before we go to the correspondence, let's tell our listeners what we're talking about today. We are discussing the birth of film, silent cinema, etc. And I'm discussing early sports films. I am discussing an incredible Russian composer and how his early job in silent cinema saved his life. It's an incredible story.

Oh wow. And I'm talking about the godfather of the jazz age, F. Scott Fitzgerald and how he adapted for the silent movie era. But shall we begin, as we always do, with some correspondence? We will, we will. Our email that I've plucked out today is from… Our email today is just… we only get one email. Just to be clear, we get a lot of emails. This is the one I've chosen to read today. Our email this week was…

No. The email I'm reading today is from Richard Saunders who has emailed to say, hello history boys. Now, just to give some context, this email relates to Stonehenge, a subject we've talked about a lot on this, discussing whether people have been partying at Stonehenge, if they have any conspiracy theories to do with it, and Richard has emailed in with a very personal experience to do with this incredible place. Hello history boys. I was actually at the centre of the circle on the night English Heritage and Wiltshire Police decided to allow the solstice to be celebrated at the stones.

So this man was there a part of history. I was a Wiltshire police officer who joined a couple of years after the Battle of the Beanfields. Solstice was a major police operation every year in Wiltshire with all leave being cancelled. Did you know that? No, I can imagine it though. I can imagine it's a big old job. My knowledge of provincial policing comes exclusively from Heartbeat. And in Heartbeat there's about five police officers. So when they're saying all leave is cancelled, that means the five blokes who work at the police station can't be on holiday during that week. My friend Sian, who Tom knows as well, she didn't realise that Heartbeat was set

in the 60s for years because she'd assumed that the Northerners were backward in their fashion. Because she just assumed that more than us were backward in their fashion. Wow. She was like, oh yeah, they've got old cars and they're like 60s clothes still. That's remarkable. When did she think it was set? It was contemporary. Contemporary Yorkshire. With that theme tune?

Yeah, she's like, yeah, all right, they're quite tight with money, which means they're still tinkering with old cars in the 60s. All the women have got beehive haircuts. Yeah, it's fine. It's Yorkshire in 1996. Well, I will say in terms of misapprehensions to do with things, Sian has misunderstood that that was the wrong era. Chris, I think you're wrong about the size

of Wiltshire Police Force having lived not far from it. This is a proper force, it's worth saying. And Richard has said here that it meant for the first 13 years of his service, for at least a week leading up to Solstice Night, I would spend most of my time enforcing the four mile exclusion zone, manning roadblocks and sitting often very bored in riot vans,

transit vans, learning card games. So they would have a four mile exclusion zone manning roadblocks and sitting often very bored in riot vans, transit vans, learning card games. So they would have a four mile exclusion zone around the stones. Did you know this? I didn't know this. No. On solstice so that people couldn't go up to it until this night of course. Firstly, I can confirm that the stones are real, not fake. Under the circumstances, I was sick of the sight of them eventually. And secondly, the Avebury Stone Circle site near Marlborough, in my honest opinion, is better. And you can actually touch those megaliths.

There you are. There's useful fact for anyone listening. Avebury Stone Circle, according to Richard, is better. On the night in question, when English Heritage decided to reopen to the public, I was in a police support unit tasked with actually being at the stones. There were dozens of us who in pairs

from around midnight were ordered, this is a nightmare, Charles, imagine this – to walk around in and around the circle to discourage vandalism and just mingle with the revelers. So, yeah, it sounds like an absolute nightmare. And I bet they loved us. We were very much encouraged not to arrest anyone unless absolutely necessary. Obviously in case a riot ensued and also due to the likelihood we'd probably get our head kicked in. It was a surreal experience. The list of rules visitors handed to each attendee by English heritage was studiously ignored with people setting up tents and ghetto blasters and then getting

absolutely hammered and stoned and my uniform stank from cannabis smoke that I constantly had to walk through. He says one particular story stuck out for him though. One young female hippie, verociously told me that it was an absolute disgrace that for years we'd stopped her from worshiping at this holy place and we were desecrating it with our presence. At about 5 a.m.

I saw this same person honoring the sacred stones by squatting against one of them and taking a dump. After Salson's concluded, there was a large group that then refused to leave and were climbing on the stones. Fortunately, I was relieved by the oncoming shifts. It was no longer my problem. I genuinely remember thinking at the time, what's the bloody point in the last 15 years, like some grizzled dissolution Vietnam veteran. Anyway, love the podcast, keep up the good work, kind regards, Richard. So that, I think, we've talked a lot on this show about the idea of jobs from history we'd hate. I think probably trying to police a Solstice

celebration wherever it hates you and doesn't want you to be there must be up there with jobs that must be a nightmare. I would love access to the stones though Would you yeah, I reckon I've got the tolerance to do a six-hour shift doing that. Okay Yeah, I reckon I could police hit peace for six hours on summer solstice Yes, as long as I as long as I had a break after a couple of hours for a drink. I Reckon. Yeah a drink, I reckon. Hey! Whoa now!

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa! You're not allowed near the stones. Please! Listen, I love these stones as much as you do and I also believe that they're sacred. Please don't shit against the stones. There are... there is a toilet in the visitor centre and you can buy a guidebook. Please don't do that. Yes, of course there's vegan food in the visitor centre. It's Stonehenge.

You wouldn't expect anything else. So I'm now getting more and more angry telling you it's not your place to tell me what I can do around this sacred site. Why do you get to put the rules down? I'm approaching you angrily. How are you dealing with this? Listen, these stones have stood here for 5000 years. We want them to stand for another 5000 years. Please don't take a shit against the stones. I really… OK, someone has now run up behind you and pulled your trousers down, Ellis. Everyone

can see everything. Listen, I love good humour as much as the next guy, OK? And that is funny. We can all see it. It's just a penis, okay? It is just a penis. People are yelling not much of a truncheon, mate. Yeah, and that's a good line, okay? Because I'm nervous, I'm frightened. It's not me at my best. Wouldn't you be nervous about, you know, having a go at a white witch who's going

to start putting a spell on you? That would be the thing I would be nervous about. If they start muttering and pointing a wand in your direction, as you tell them not to defecate. I think my general trust in science would quell any nerves I had around having a spell put on me by a white witch. And then you look down, you see your trousers are slowly disappearing. Yeah, I mean, I'd like that. Completely.

You're growing a trunk. So Richard, fair play to you. I couldn't have done it. And thank you for that. That is someone who was part of a moment in history, the point at which the stones were opened up to the public. Also, to be fair, with a helpful tip as well. That was Avebury, I think was where he said, So if anyone can't be bothered to go to Stonehenge if it seems too busy, Avebury

Stone Circle site near Marlborough, according to Richard, is better. There's quite a few of them all around Britain. I can think of two in West Wales. There's Pentrave in Pembrokeshire is a good one. So if you like stone monoliths, there's honestly fully boots. Stonehenge is probably the man United of stone monoliths. Yeah, Faded Glory. So not as good as it used to be. Peaked thousands of years ago. Was great in the sort of late 90s.

And also they're thousands of years away from another peak. So which is the PSG of the stones at the moment then, Earl? I'm not sure. I just like the idea of money like, turning off in droves now. They're like, oh, great. Whichever the Paris Saint-Germain of stones would be made from stones that have been brought from the most expensive sites around the world. Yes.

Yeah. Unassembled. And when you find out where the money's come from, it does make you question everything, actually. It makes you find out where the monies come from, it does make you question everything actually. It makes you feel slightly uncomfortable. Funny enough, I was reading about what I guess is a new Stone Circle, which is the Stone Circle at Glastonbury was built in 1992.

I found out yesterday. Yeah, which is actually... I think they've made up as far as that. Yeah, that's the MK Dons of Stone Monoliths. It's never really going to make it into the big leagues, but you've got to respect them for trying. Exactly, exactly. Well, Chris, maybe next week we will visit that stone circle together.

Who knows? If anyone who's listening has anything they want to send to this show, whatever it is, here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at oh what a time dot com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time pod. Now clear off. So this week we're talking about silent cinema. Later in this episode, I'll be telling you all about F. Scott Fitzgerald and his dalliance with silent movies.

Tom? I will be telling you about, hang on, a certain Russian composer. Life was saved by his first job in silent cinema. And I'm going to talk to you about sport in cinema. But before I begin, we have talked about this in the past, touched upon how fashions change. For a very long time, trousers were very fitted and quite tight. Lots of people were very ski trousers.

It's now swung the other way. I personally have jumped onto this bandwagon. I've gone baggy. Yeah. And whenever I wear them, I do think that I look like I'm about to go and steal a lot of apples. That happens at the time I pull them on. Yeah. I think these are apple stealing trousers. And it's it's it's quite nice to think that there's a sort of continuity amongst,

you know, men of a certain age, over the last of decades. We've always worn trousers that have been suitable for stealing up. Would skinny trousers be like runner beans stealing trousers? Straight other side of the lake. I have a question for you, Al, by the way, and this isn't a rude question, it's a genuine question. Is the decision to go baggy slightly bottom related? Because we've discussed before that you have the bum of a silverback, I think is how Chris described it. Yeah.

It juts out. It does jut out. Is the decision to go with baggy trousers completely departed from that fact? It doesn't just jut out. I actually caught sight of a thought of myself from behind. Someone had taken a thought of a party I was at. And it's my background. Obviously you never see yourself from behind usually.

And not only does my bum jut out, actually my t-shirt or shirt will just rest on the top of it. Piles up. Like the bottom of some of it. Like it's a snowman. Piles up. Like the bottom of some long curtains. Like a curtain on a stage. Yeah, like a mantelpiece. Like a safety curtain. I mean, it's very good for cycling, but it makes all trousers look ridiculous.

Could I safely balance a cup of tea on it? I think you could balance a pot of paint on my pot of paint. So with that in mind, is this decision to do with the trousers related? It's not actually. I now work with a lot of young people and if you are young, if you wear fitted trousers, they think that you are a pensioner straight from the Victorian era and I could not handle the side eye from young people. And I thought to myself, yeah, I'm fashionable for God's sake, I'll go back, he doesn't bother me. And yeah, the fact that I can balance a pot of paint on my bum, I mean, that's just a very pleasant byproduct

of this new fashion. And when... The fact they use me as a stepladder. When trousers are tight again, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, okay? Good on you. I've got a big bum. Right, now when the pioneers of cinema began to establish the new art form of cinema

or film as a popular medium, rather than make it a very highbrow thing that would be shut away in galleries or an opera house, the way they made cinema and film so popular was they achieved it through the presentation of subjects that they knew were drawing audiences. So for decades, sport had been a big part of popular theater, of musical and of vaudeville.

There were sports songs. And the thing with this kind of sports songs you'd hear at sort of musicals it was a it was a combination of fandom and comment on the sport or the sports stars themselves but the thing with film it offered far greater possibilities you can actually see the stars themselves or perhaps your own face in the crowd because think about it most people if they weren't going to the games they were engaging with sports stars through things like cigarette cards and you know articles in the newspaper so boxing probably the most proletarian and working class of those sports was the first to make the transition and it's been a mainstay of sports movies ever since. And I would still, I would argue actually

that I think boxing films, probably baseball is another one, make the best sports movies. Yeah. I think that's fair. I think the good footballers in soccer sports films are very thin on the ground. I think it's quite hard to film football

in a way that reads as real and just not too pantomime. Yes, yes I agree. Where it's like rocky and stuff like that. And you can choreograph boxing. There's a filming technique, absolutely, that's exactly it. I think it's just much easier, isn't it? And like there's nothing worse, and I know you have direct link to this, Al, to watching

an actor on screen who can't kick pretending to be the centre forward for a… Well, I mean, I don't know if we ever actually got it onto the telly, but we, on Fancy Football League, which obviously Tom is a writer on, and I used to present, we'd found this clip of Home and Away, the Australian soap opera of the 90s, where one of the main characters has to take the final penalty in a shootout. And the whole thing, it is the hammiest portrayal of football I've ever seen in my life. And the way, just, he's obviously, he's grown up in Australia, so depending on where he grows up, he's probably played rugby league, Aussie rules, or cricket. It's very,

very doubtfully, at the time, obviously I think it's changed now. The way he kicks the ball is so wrong. It just looked crazy. Didn't Izzy, when she filmed the sitcom, have to have a stunt leg? Someone took a penalty for her and kicked it. Is that right? Oh my God. She cannot. I mean, I love the woman. She's my wife. She cannot kick a ball. It's unbelievable. Was it someone else's leg was used for the shot? I can't remember what they used in the end. But yeah, she's no Lucy Bronze.

Now the oldest boxing films were recordings of fights made by one of Thomas Edison's companies. So in June 1894, Thomas Edison's cameras were set up at his Black Moriah Film Studio in New Jersey where Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing would give a six-round exhibition of boxing which would then be turned into a cinematic experience. Excitingly visible anywhere in the world where a picture theater was open. Which must have been so exciting for everyone involved. You think you know this is happening in New Jersey, people in Chicago or even London will be able to watch this. That's incredible. Now Edison's company had been experimenting with boxing as a subject for the previous three years, working out

the limits of the cameras, the best placement, what the action looked like on screen. And you know, there's been a learning curve in all sport really in how to cover it. Like when you watch the early match of, you know, episodes of the match of the day from sort of 64 onwards, it's not done brilliantly, but they were working out how to do it. Like when you watch the early match of, you know, episodes of the match of the day from sort of 64 onwards, it's not done brilliantly, but they were working out how to do it. Like when they decided, when they worked out to use split screens with the darts so you could see the face of the person throwing darts and the board at the same time, that just made the whole experience so much more satisfying. So these experiments gave rise to the infamous boxing cats of July 1894. Edison promised consumers that before long it would be possible to apply this system, i.e.

cinema, to prize fights and boxing exhibitions. The Cushing-Lennard film of their bout premiered on the 4th of August 1894 Little over a month later Edison's cameras were back at the studio recording their second boxing film this time featuring James Corbett and Peter Courtney Now sadly, there are only two small fragments surviving There are 37 seconds of the first film and 50 seconds of the second, but they mark The it was a pioneering attempt to put sport on screen so three years later that's so much earlier i thought it would be in 1894 yeah that's amazing enot rector created the world's first feature film 100 minutes in length the corbett fit simmons fight

a boxing picture now if that's bob fit simmons bob fit simmons i think he's an he was the um a the British world heavyweight. I think he's a distant relative of Wayne Rooney. Oh really? Really? Wow. That's cool. Now, is a boxing picture,

established cinema, something other than, just an ephemeral spectacle. Again, there's only about 20 minutes, still survives intact. But that is incredibly compelling, because it's so old. Yeah. You know, pre-turn of the 20th century. If 30 seconds of footage of a fight involving me survived, that would be the entire fight.

Yeah, it's long enough, isn't it? 30 seconds has only been saved, but just to reassure you, that's the entire fight. But what, because you're like Mike Tyson, you just wouldn't buy a knockout on the 20th ticket? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because Tom is a knockout machine. Tom's fights never get past the first round. I remember in year eight or nine, we did boxing briefly in PE. At least they showed us how to box.

And I remember the PE teacher telling me you weren't supposed to tuck your thumb into your hand when you punched. I knew so little about how you punch that I would tuck my thumb in and fold my fingers around it and punch like that. Incidentally, by the way, just a little sighting. That's such an interesting thing about the fact that prior to sport being filmed, let's say especially with football, there's that point where for a lot of football fans, if

you haven't been to the game, you're following a team simply through hearing about their results and maybe reading about it in the press, but you've never actually seen them. You would maybe have heard them on the wireless, possibly. I don't know if they were at that point, but that must be, it's so interesting what that experience of being a fan at that point must have been. Whereas now, even if you don't go to the games,

you see the clips, you're completely aware of who all these players, you know. Yes, now Bob Fitzsimmons, for a long time, he was the last British heavyweight world champion. He was born in Cornwall. Now, we might get to know what a shame correction corner, based on this from actual boxing historians or real historians, but I've just done a quick Google and apparently he is Wayne Rooney's great-great-grandfather. Wow.

Which is an amazing thing, isn't it? And Rooney famously was really into boxing wasn't he? Yes yeah yeah yeah. I don't know what he knows about Bob Fitzsimmons but yeah very exciting. Just talking about old boxing footage I, some of my favourite footage of old boxing to watch is like the 50s and 60s when they when like boxing filming they haven't quite worked out that they need to light the audience. When you watch those old clips, they're just lighting the ring and it's just so atmospheric like those older Ali fights. Yes, I just think that 70s boxing as well is such an evocative moment or period in sport. Yeah. When you had Foreman and Joe Frazier and Ken Oat and Anali all doing those huge fights.

Will Barron Why do you think that is? Alistair Duggan Because the standard was so high and they all had such different characters. And there was just so much at stake. And in the pre-MMA age as well, if you were the World Heavy Weight Champion, you were basically the world's hardest bloke. Will Barron You knew you were watching the world's hardest bloke. You knew you were watching the world's hardest bloke. Now there's doubt. It's like what are the rules? Would boxing be more popular if it was renamed world's hardest?

All world's hardest female. There is something very compelling about the world's hardest bloke live. Well, Katie Taylor is the world's hardest woman. I wouldn't mess with Katie Taylor. Oh, I suppose, you know, female MMA, I don't know. But yeah, in the pre-MMA age, it was, I think you could, you could say, yeah, this bloke, I'm not going to mess with him. Now, having established the possibilities of the sports movie, these pioneers moved on to weather sports. So in 1898, it was the turn of baseball. The Ball Game was another Edison production, featured real footage of a game between the Red and Cole Heavers and the Newark Bears.

Edison's cameras were positioned not far from first base and so they had a clear view of the batting line. Which is quite shrewd I think, because they often got it wrong in those early days days but I thought that sounds like quite a good idea to me. Now what followed in American and Europe was a rush to perfect sports cinematography and to adapt to the challenges of different sports. So boxing was one thing but how do you get football on screen or motor racing or ice hockey or rugby or American football and what sort of audiences might there be not only for real life news but also for fictional stories. So those would come of course with no less than Charlie Chaplin appearing in The Speed Kings in 1913 and The Champion, his boxing film in 1915. But Edison

understood that there's money to be made from audiences keen to not only see their teams in sport but also follow different sports that they might not otherwise access to except maybe via a newspaper column, or in a boy's own or a girl's own short story. So it was Edison's company again, that put ice hockey in film in 1898, soon put American football in film. There's surviving footage of Yale versus Princeton

from 1903, and this began the process, which basically ended up in Sky Sports News. And, you know know Soccer Saturday, Charlie Nicholas watching a game that you can't see on a laptop and Jeff Sterling saying Charlie what's happened? Yeah cutting to Chris Kamari who's just missed the action. Looking bewildered. Can you imagine telling the people from 1903, yeah and then in about 110 years time people would be famous for just missing stuff even though they've got maybe 20 cameras at these pictures.

So there was one other influence on those early programmes, the cinema newsreel which took the form of a newspaper with its different sections for current affairs, gossip and sport and turned it into a visual medium. So a sort of a gazette programme a bit like Grandstand used to be. Now, in Britain, newsreels emerged just after the outbreak of the First World War with pioneers such as Charles Pathé, the Frenchman, leading the way. He understood that cinema audiences did want to see their teams in action. And so his newsreels provided visual evidence of league matches,

a kind of early highlights package. Now, as part of my job on another podcast I do, as part of the Wondering Network, the Socially Distanced Sports Bar, with Steph Graer and Mike Bubbins, we've watched a lot of like 50s footage, pathway footage of football. It is amazing the choices they make.

Is there footage of the goal? No. Is there footage of lots of people in the crowd throwing their hats in the air? Yes. Gaze with a rattle for 40 seconds. You're like, can't you not have a camera on the net? So at least we can see the ball going in? Does no one think of this? No, more hats in the air. There's lots of hats in the air. So for the first time, audiences could see more than one match in a day and they could, as Edison improved in the United States,

experience sports and they're not part of the everyday. Baseball, ice hockey, women's football. So if you were, you know, couldn't get a ticket to watch Sheffield Wednesday versus Preston North End, well you could watch the highlights at the cinema, which was amazing for sports fans. So newsreels of course favoured a national perspective, which left us a big gap, or as Blackburn-based filmmakers,

Mitchell and Kenyon put it, local films for local people. So what they did was turn up at the sports grounds and capture some of the match, but also the crowd, for it was the crowd who flocked to the cinema and would hope to see themselves on screen, again, very shrewd. So cinema became not just a window into the outside world, but a mirror of the one our ancestors inhabited. So Mitchell and Kenyon, I had the Mitchell and Kenyon DVD.

It was released about 20 years ago, fascinating. Took the earliest known film of Man United, for instance, as well as footage of rugby league games, and even the first football injury captured on film when a player in a Wales versus Ireland game in 1906 ran into the goalpost at the race course, Rexham's Ground. Wow. So, you know, that same year, 1906,

Thomas Edison's cameras were positioned on a Hawaiian beach where for the first time surfing was caught on camera and the guy falls off his board. And you just think, now I'm watching, oh, I've got access to pretty much any sport I'd like, any time I like, on my phone. If you're a sports fan, obviously, it's remarkable and it's a luxury. But yeah, back in the 1890s, it was pioneers like Thomas Edison and Michelin Kenyon who were allowing us to take those first steps of that journey. I'd argue that week in week out at the football they didn't need to be capturing loads of the fans

because the fans always wore the same clothes and they looked the same in every stadium. Just spend an afternoon getting some stock footage just to see you through the season. Some celebrating, some oh that was close, some of that stuff because it's always going to be the same look. Do you know what though? It doesn't matter. Everyone's wearing a suit and top hat. It is fascinating.

Have you seen them stress test Wembley before it was opened in 1923? Oh, vaguely. They get loads of crowds and they're getting to jump up and down. They get loads of crowds and builders, and they're just jumping up and down and they're walking up and down

and they start jumping from one leg to another to see if basically, if the stand can take the pressure of it being full. It's an interesting way to test isn't it because if it doesn't meet that standard you're in big trouble. Who's signing up for this? All right so that's the end of part one of Silent Cinema, but if you want part two now, plus two bonus episodes every month, plus access to the full archive of bonus episodes,

you can become an O What A Time full-timer. To sign up, go to owhatatime.com and you can listen to part two right now. Otherwise we'll see you tomorrow for that very same part. Until then, bye. Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. And before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.