His First Ride (1907)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson

Release Date:

29 March 1907 (USA)

Genre:

Short | Comedy

Plot:

A nicely-dressed man is riding on a bicycle, but he is clearly new at it. He cannot manage to steer in a straight line, and it is not long before he becomes quite a hazard to pedestrians and to others in his path. |

Plot Keywords:

Bicycle | Slapstick | Kids And Family

Runtime:

1 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, The

Go see a trick-cyclist.

I saw an incomplete print of this film in the UCLA Film & Television Archive. 'His First Ride' was one of the many films produced early in the career of Bronco Billy Anderson at his studio in Colorado. Most of those films were cowboy shoot-'em-ups: this one (judging from the available footage) is clearly a stunt comedy.

The synopsis on IMDb's webpage is not quite correct: the rider is not 'clearly new at it'. Although 'His First Ride' supposedly depicts the efforts of an inexperienced cyclist to avert disaster, it's very obvious that we're watching a stunt performer who knows precisely what he's doing. He expertly manipulates his velocipede along a wooden sidewalk, zipping within a hair's breadth of outraged ladies in floor-length skirts. As the surviving footage ends -- at a point which doesn't seem to be the end of the movie -- he seems to be on the brink of doing either a handstand or a handspring over his handlebars.

An archivist at UCLA told me that the unbilled bicyclist was a circus performer whom Anderson filmed when his troupe were 'passing through town'; no other information is available. Which circus, then? My own research has established that the Sells-Flotos Circus were touring Colorado in 1907, but I'm unable to establish whether the company included a trick-cyclist.

'His First Ride' is clearly meant as a comedy, but the daredevil bicycle antics here are more thrilling than funny. A few years later, Al St John and Joe Jackson would (separately) perform their comedy bicycle routines in western vaudeville. St John was both a talented comedian AND a brilliant stunt cyclist who could manoeuvre his bicycle expertly while SEEMING to be incompetent. The cyclist in 'His First Ride' impressed me with his abilities but failed to convince me that he didn't know what he was doing. (Is it possible that this cyclist is Joe Jackson, who later appeared in Mack Sennett's 'A Modern Enoch Arden'? There's a definite resemblance!)

The films produced by Anderson's Colorado unit were distributed by Colonel Selig. According to IMDb, seven years after this movie was made, Selig released another film also titled 'His First Ride'. I wonder if that was a remake of this 1907 epic, as opposed to an unrelated movie with the identical title. The cyclist in this '07 movie looks young and healthy enough to still be doing the same routine seven years later! (Maybe the 1914 release was a reissue of this same movie.) I normally don't rate incomplete movies, but what I've seen of this 1907 'His First Ride' is thrilling enough that I'll rate it 8 out of 10.