Personal (1904) User Reviews

An Early Chase

[romanorum1 · 5/10 · 10 October 2015]

A man places an ad in the New York Herald: "WANTED: a young wealthy gentleman would like to meet a young, attractive woman. Meet me at GRANT'S TOMB Monday at Noon."

At Grant's Tomb National Memorial, the man strolls back and forth. A woman who appears to be African-American and her little girl walk by as the adults acknowledge each other and bow respectfully. Suddenly the man is surrounded by a bevy of nine young women. Overwhelmed, he flees and they give chase; they hang onto their skirts and large, fluffy, and feathery hats. The pursuit continues into the countryside over a narrow creek bridge, through a field fence, and over a low ridge. The man is unable to gain separation, and is soon captured in a bushy area of a field by a woman wearing a white dress and black hat. He walks away with her after acknowledging the others who gave chase. They follow.

This rather innocent fluff, produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was directed by Wallace McCutcheon; the cinematographer was G.W. Bitzer. The film presents a typical comedy chase for its time although it was then unusual that all of the pursuers were women. Its running time is under seven minutes.

History of Complete Rip-offs

[springfieldrental · 5/10 · 20 October 2020]

It's fascinating to view the variations of the 1904 film "Personal" and not scratch your head at the blatant copying, scene by scene, of this first effort of a rich guy placing an ad for a future wife, only to be mobbed by several suitors. You would think the Edison Manufacturing Company and its primary director, Edwin Porter, in its "How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns (1904)" would at least come up with some original women-chasing-nobleman scenarios. But the Porter film literally, besides a clip in the beginning where the man is reading his ad in the paper, duplicates each scene from "Personal."

I've read Biograph submitted lawsuits to cease such practices, but the courts allowed the rip offs to continue during this period. The plagiarizing stifled the creative juices of many imaginative minds who wanted to shape early cinema. The laborious technique of filming every woman as they chase the running man gets old after a couple of camera set-ups.

The film does interest this viewer, however, by the outfits the female sex wore in 1904. The women are dressed from head to toe, with broad hats they had to hold tightly to their heads. The movie gives an indication that even during informal times, attire was overly formal. What a contrast to how people dressed 100 years later.

But what this film is known for is that it's one of the first to introduce two plot lines: the placing of the ad in a newspaper and the funny chase that follows. And to think, one can visit Grant's Tomb today and stand at the exact spot director Wallace McCutcheon stood while creating this 1904 classic.

The Chase Begins

[Cineanalyst · 10 March 2010]

Although not the first chase film, the popularity of this 10-shot chase produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (AM&B) and the remakes of it are often credited with instigating the cycle of chase comedies in early cinema. The genre, with characteristic linear progression and continuation of narrative across multiple shots and distant spaces, helped make fictional, narrative films containing multiple scenes and lasting upwards of a reel in length the dominant product in cinema; whereas, single shot-scene attractions, such as brief comic views, dances and actualities, were, for about the first decade of cinema, the most produced and exhibited type of movie.

There were single-shot chase comedies made earlier, such as Edison's "Chinese Laundry Scene" (1895) and G.A. Smith's "The Miller and the Sweep" (1897). James Williamson is the earliest I know of to have made a multi-shot chase film, that is "Stop Thief!" (1901), which, however, doesn't seem to have been meant as comedic and which disobeys modern rules of continuity editing (because they hadn't been invented yet). Then, there was a spew of crime pictures that included chases, such as "A Daring Daylight Robbery", "A Desperate Poaching Affray" and "The Great Train Robbery" (all 1903). AM&B's "The Escaped Lunatic" (1904) is generally acknowledged as the first multi-shot chase comedy, at least in the US. The company, soon after, made this film, "Personal". At least four companies quickly remade it, which attests to the original's success. Edison remade it with the overly-long title "How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns", Lubin as "Meet Me at the Fountain" (both 1904), in Spain as "Los guapos del parque" (or "L'Hereu de Ca'n Pruna"), and by Pathé in France as "Dix femmes pour un mari" (Ten Wives for One Husband) (both 1905). Edison's remake was even a matter of a lawsuit brought by AM&B, for which I describe more on in my comment/review of the Edison remake. Even Buster Keaton's 1925 feature "Seven Chances" contains a climax recycled from this 1904 short film.

The story features a French nobleman (who one assumes is broke) who placed an ad in a newspaper for a wife (one assumes for a rich American one who wants to buy the title of nobility through marriage). A viewer today will not see this exposition in the print of the film, but back in 1904, lecturers would provide audiences this additional information, and companies such as AM&B would provide descriptions of their films for this purpose. One of the few original additions to the Edison remake was a title card at the beginning providing the exposition. Just viewing "Personal" silently today without any aid, one may have no idea what the chase is about. Yet, the chase is essentially the same as in any other entry in the genre. A character commits a misdeed for which they are chased (this time, it's offering marriage to too many women). The pursued and pursuers face a series of obstacles (such as climbing a fence or scaling a hill slope, as in this film). Finally, at some point, the chase ends in the pursued character both being caught and punished (the typical punitive ending of comedies in early cinema) or getting away. In this one, he's forced to marry at gunpoint by one lucky lady. This one probably got more laughs from the pursuers all being women. At most, this film and those like it are mildly amusing today, but it's interesting and significant from a film history perspective.

The Slapstick Chase

[boblipton · 2/10 · 2 July 2018]

A gentleman places a personal advertisement in the paper asking for a young woman, interested in matrimony to meet him at a set location. When several women mob him, he takes off in a panic, pursued by them.

It was a movie that was very popular the year that Wallace McCutcheon made this for Biograph.... or remade it, since it's a remake of Edison's HOW A FRENCH NOBLEMAN GOT A WIFE THROUGH THE 'NEW YORK HERALD' PERSONAL COLUMNS. The various movie companies did a lot of that in the era, since there was no way to copyright a movie. McCutcheon, being Biograph's house director, was called on to restage the picture in Asbury Park, and did so with little elaboration.

A Rather Creative Version of the Idea

[Snow Leopard · 27 September 2004]

The early short feature "Personal" is a rather creative version of an idea that was used a number of times in the silent era, most notably by Buster Keaton as part of the hilarious "Seven Chances". You could not, of course, expect anything else to come up to Keaton's level - especially since the comic chase sequence in "Seven Chances" has never since been equaled. Nevertheless, here in "Personal" there are a good number of creative ideas, and it works pretty well.

The story starts with a man awaiting a response to his personal advertisement, and he pretty quickly finds himself in a real predicament. The story itself is quite simple, but as it plays out, it makes use of a variety of settings and props, and it shows quite a bit of resourcefulness for such an early feature.

Cinema's commn heritage

[kekseksa · 3 February 2020]

This films is most certainly not a remake of the Edwin S. Porter film, overlong (both with regard to its title and to the film itself), which did not appear until the autumn. McCutcheon's film was copyrighted in June (but the August date of the advert probably reflects the date on which the film was first expected to be shown. AM&B sued Edison for plagiarism but unsuccessfully and there had by this time been several other versions of what was one of the most important and influential films of the year. Other "remakes" that survive include Lubin's Meet Me at the Fountain, which was quite straightforwardly adevrtised as a new version of Personal, but featuring the female impersonator Gilbert Saroni, and Segundo de Chomón's L'hereu de Ca'n Pruna also made in the autumn of 1904 for the Spanish company Macaya y Marro. Quite the best film version of the story is Dix femmes pour un mari, directed by Georges Hatot, which was not made until 1905 (for Pathé).

But, as with much material used fro early films, it is quite simply a joke - and a fairly obvious one - that was already current, probably before any of the films were made. In this sense, although McCutcheon undoubtedly deserves credit as the man responsible for the most important and influential treatment of the theme, the courts were right to dismiss AM&B's complaint, much as one may regret the tendency of the US legal system to kowtow before the hugely inflated reputation of Thomas Alvar Edison.

Another Spanish film, now seemingly lost, by Fructuoso Gelabert, Los guapos de la vaqueria del parque seems to have been much the same story in ervers - that is to say a millionairess who had inherited money who advertises for a husband and ends up being pursued by all the boys in town. Gelabert later claimed that the other 1904 Spanish film was copied from his film rather than from the US film Personal. Unfortunately his film does not seem to have been made until 1905!

Before talking about "remakes" one needs to bear in mind the huge common heritage on which cinema could call for simple one-minute or two minute films. - popular jokes and anecdotes, cartoons, dance and vaudeville acts, lantern slides, early gramophone recordings etc etc etc. Edison and Lubin did copy AM&B in this case (and both made a regular habit of doing so at this period) but McCutcheon himself was simply drawing from the common well. The most enjoyable version to watch today is the Hatot one, not because it is the first but quite simply because it is the best.