William Heise Movies

A fellow in a wide-brimmed hat, with a willowy stick for a rod and a baited hook, sits down on a plank hanging over a bridge above a stream. He...

A scene from Charles Hoyt's 'A Milk White Flag': A brass band marches out, led by bandmaster Steele Ayers. When Ayers reaches his position, he turns...

"Stable door opens and ambulance dashes out into the street. Policeman holds back a furniture van till ambulance passes by."

A short Edison Black Maria studio film featuring famed sharpshooter Annie Oakley, known as “Little Sure Shot.” Born Phoebe Ann Oakley...

Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.

They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time.

Three men hammer on an anvil and pass a bottle of beer around. Notable for being the first film in which a scene is being acted out.

The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United...

“The watchful father disturbs a dream of bliss, and the bucolic lover is taught a lesson. He made a great hit.” (Edison film catalog)

Early Edison short showing two men fencing.

“A comic subject, clear, bright and characteristic. Shows four girls in their night dresses, engaged in an animated pillow fight. During the...

Late 1800s cigarette advertisement produced by Thomas Edison Manufacturing.

A vaudeville routine: two denizens of the Bowery dance while under the influence. She's wearing a light dress with a full skirt. He wears a white...

One of the pictures to be seen in the machine, for example, was that of a blacksmith shop in which two men were working, one shoeing a horse, the...

Imagine ten pickaninnies turned loose and on mischief bent. Farmer catches one leaving but Nine. Nine Happy Snowballs on a Swing elate. One gets...

The Leigh Sisters perform a risqué Trilby-inspired dance with an umbrella. Scene from David Henderson's Aladdin, Jr. burlesque. Lost.

A showcase of trapeze artist Alciede Capitaine, billed as “The Perfect Woman,” whose daring feats on the flying bar combined grace with...

William K.L. Dickson brings his hat from his one hand to the other and moves his head slightly, as a small nod toward the audience. This was the...

The sinister mesmerist Svengali hypnotizes two characters, then dies abruptly in a Trilby segment from David Henderson's Aladdin, Jr. burlesque. Lost.

Lee Martin, one of the cowboy stars in 'Buffalo Bill's Wild West', rides a bronco as a crowd looks on. While the horse is trying to throw Martin off...