Comments on: William Friese-Greene – Beautiful Dreamer and Legendary Loser

By: L Lord

L Lord — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:07:21 +0000

I think Robert Donat is just superb in this film. I saw it in the late fifties for the first time, and was absolutely captivated. His portayal is masterful.

By: Joe Masefield

Joe Masefield — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:23:02 +0000

FDR was wrong when he said,”Today, Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a date that will live in infamy…” because the date that has lived in infamy was the day the movies were invented. Never has an invention brought more wonderment, news, fantasy, romance, science, and pure joy, while creating a previously unknown worldwide theatre system which thereafter entertained everyone on earth. But from its very inception the nacent business also included theft, double-crossing, murder, copyright infringement, and corruption. Hopefully, persistent cinema forensic anthropology will ultimately award William Friese-Greene’s proper place in the history of the movies.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:50:00 +0000

I don’t have any documentation on why Guinness turned the part down but I suspect that it wasn’t worth his time since he was suddenly a big star by 1951 with Man in the White Suit and Lavender Hill Mob and possibly not as generous as someone like Olivier.

By: Al Lowe

Al Lowe — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:25:24 +0000

I saw the movie in Pittsburgh over 30 years ago. It aired during the wee hours of the morning on a Steubenville (Ohio) television station.
Oddly enough, it might have been the first Robert Donat film I’d seen. I caught up with Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Winslow Boy and The 39 Steps later.
It is amazing that Donat beat out Clark Gable in the 1939 Oscar race (held in 1940). Gable was up for Gone with the Wind. Donat got it for Goodbye Mr. Chips.
It showed that the movie industry expected more great things from him. I guess they also figured Gable got his for It Happened One Night.
Well, the great things weren’t meant to be due to Donat’s asthma.
When I saw The Magic Box I was tickled by Olivier’s cameo. It is amazing. Here’s the greatest English actor, arguably the world’s greatest actor, who just earned Oscars for Hamlet, playing a very small but showy part.
By the way, why did Alec Guinness turn a part down?

By: Suzi Doll

Suzi Doll — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:33:00 +0000

Regarding Thomas Edison and his business practices during the pioneering days of the cinema, he was indeed a pirate and a bully. He thought that because his lab was responsible for the invention of the motion picture camera (in America, anyway), then he should control all aspects of it. However, copyright laws in regard to films were very loose in those days, so everyone was stealing and copying films right and left, without compensating the original moviemakers. I once saw a shot by shot copy of Porter’s GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY by the Selig Company, I think, and it made as much money as the original.

Anyway, we tend to think of Edison as some sort of lovable, avuncular egghead, but he was actually a ruthless businessman.

By: Brad C.

Brad C. — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:49:08 +0000

Edison was the Bill Gates of his era, stealing other people’s stuff for years and then redeeming himself (to some) by giving enormous tax-deductible donations to charity. Hey, he didn’t have to. He could be Donald Trump who already has one foot in hell. Seriously folks, this is an old lesson. Copyright your creativity. Don’t trust anyone. I don’t know if I need to learn the moral of The Magic Box again but I didn’t know about William Friese-Greene before.

By: Medusa

Medusa — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:21:41 +0000

Really looking forward to watching this. “The Magic Box” is one of those movie titles that I have been curious about and read a million times, yet not seen the movie ever. It looks delightful!

Thanks for the heads-up!

By: SHELDON JACOBS

SHELDON JACOBS — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:57:18 +0000

I first had seen the film in the early 1960′s on a late night showing, in color, on WNBC television in NYC. I had thought that it was absolutely terrific and look forward to watching it again.

I do know exactly how Friese-Greene may have felt with regard to the stealing of his invention, as my group faces the same with the massive industry-wide patent infringement regarding our invented and owned P2P [Peer-To-Peer] broadcast patent granted in 1999, URL below.

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=yBAYAAAAEBAJ&dq=%22jeffrey+ice%22&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html