World's first film for a paying audience

1895 On this day, Australian boxer Young Griffo (Albert Griffiths; 1871 - 1927), a character in my novel, Faces in the Street, starred in Young Griffo vs. Battling Charles Barnett (filmed on the roof of Madison Square Garden, May 4, 1895), the world's first motion picture to be screened before a paying audience, on this day at 153 Broadway in New York City.

It premiered more than seven months before the Lumière brothers showed their film at the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, on December 28 – the event usually said to be the first movie-by-ticket screening in the world.

Young Griffo's brilliant boxing career in America came to a grinding end in New York City in 1895, at the peak of his international fame, after he was convicted of raping William Gottlieb, an 11-year-old boy. He spent the last three decades of his life drinking himself to death ...



Categories: movies, cinema, history