Posted By BillHeise on February 26, 2009

Believe it or not, there are several people with the name William Heise.

The most famous William Heise is, of course, the William Heise who worked with Thomas Edison to produce some of the first motion pictures. I post an example here:

All I can say to that is “Yuck!”

Other examples of William Heise’s work include a lot of stuff on the Old West (I suppose that it was not all that old at the time, but it’s still spectacularly offensive):

(click on the links to view):

• The Cowboy’s Lament. (Excuse me, Mr. Walden. I want to know what a “ceramic sweet potato” is.)
• Ghost Dance of the Sioux Nation
• Buffalo Dance
• Legendary cow-girl Annie Oakley shows her dead aim
• Old-time hockey
• The Death of Mary Queen of Scots (long before Monty Python’s sketch of the same name, but not nearly as funny)
• Monkeyshine No. 1

Alas, Monkeyshine No. 1 is nowhere to be found on the Internet. I can only assume that it is even more offensive than the dancing natives. Please let me know if you own a copy.

More later.

Categories: Personal, Stupid Stuff
Tags: bio, biography, filmmaker, old films, Thomas Edison, William Heise