Louis Le Prince: The Story of the Man Who Made History's First Movie and then Vanished without a Trace in 1890. Did his own Family make him Disappear?

 It is a movie that is aptly titled Roundhay Garden Scene because that is exactly what it is.  That is exactly ALL that it is--simply a movie of people walking in a garden that lasts for a whopping three seconds.  But what makes this mundane few seconds of grainy black and white footage of an English garden so remarkable is that Roundhay Garden Scene is believed to be the very first motion picture--the very first recorded moving images of human beings ever captured on film--in the history of the world.

Roundhay Garden Scene was produced, filmed and directed by French born inventor and artist Louis Le Prince nearly one-hundred and forty years ago, at the height of the Victorian Era, on October 14, 1888 in Leeds, Yorkshire England at about the exact same time in history that the infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper was terrorizing the slums and working class neighborhoods of London.

This three second film of formally dressed Victorian Era folk frolicking in an aristocratic garden starred Annie Hartley, Joseph and Sarah Whitley (who were the owners of the Roundhay Garden and the manor home seen in the film) and Louis Le Prince’s own son Adolphe who in 1888 was only sixteen years of age, but who would go on to have a successful career as, perhaps, the world’s first film actor before tragically taking his own life in New York at the young age of only twenty-nine in the summer of 1901 due to what many said was despair over the mysterious disappearance of his father and the tragedy that haunted the Le Prince family after the creation of history’s first motion picture.

Roundhay Garden Scene was a three second movie that was kept all in the family.  Everyone involved was related to one another by birth or through marriage.  It was filmed at the Oakwood Estate in Yorkshire England, seat of the Whitley family home that would remain standing until the family fell into poverty and it was demolished in 1972.

Despite not actually appearing in history’s first film the most remarkable character, with the most mysterious and checkered life story is the creator of Roundhay Garden Scene and the man who was behind the camera that day in October 1888--artist and inventor Louis Le Prince.

Louis Le Prince ca. 1888

Le Prince, today, is credited by many with being the first man to shoot a motion picture using a single lens camera and a strip of paper film, which was as a matter of fact even in 1888, manufactured by the Eastman Kodak Company.  Some people call Louis Le Prince “The Father of Cinematography” though, in an ironic twist of fate, Le Prince never made a dime from the world’s first motion picture--his innovative single lens camera was a commercial flop--and today he is more well known for his contentious relationship with fellow inventor Thomas Edison and for his mysterious disappearance than for having created history’s first motion picture.

Louis Le Prince, who by all accounts was a gifted artist and inventor,  had moved from his native France to England at the age of twenty-five in 1866 on an invitation from his friend John Whitley--who invited Le Prince to work for him as an inventor in Leeds, England, at his brass foundry.  While working at Whitley’s foundry Le Prince would meet and marry John Whitley’s sister Sarah Elizabeth who, in her own right, was by all accounts a talented artist and leading feminist intellectual of the time.  The young couple honeymooned in Paris shortly after their marriage in 1869 where Le Prince was said to have visited a magic show where he became fascinated by a magician’s illusion that reportedly showed dancing skeletons on a wall using reflections from dozens of illuminated mirrors.  It was at this time, after seeing the dancing images in that illusion,  that Louis Le Prince first became obsessed with the idea of creating a motion picture camera that could record moving footage preserved on film that could be replayed over and over again.

He moved to the United States with his wife Sarah Elizabeth who attended art school in New York, while he served as a teacher to French expatriates in America and experimented with various types of camera technology.  In 1881 he patented his first invention, which in itself, was a very primitive sort of motion picture camera that utilized sixteen different lenses, each of which took a separate photograph in succession, and produced an effect not unlike the rapid flipping of pages in hand drawn animation.  This sixteen lens camera, though as could be imagined, proved terribly unwieldy and was incapable of producing a clear moving image.

Le Prince did create a film in late 1886 or early 1887 using his sixteen lens camera in New York City called Man Walking Around a Corner, two seconds of which survive to this day but film historians debate whether this can in fact, be considered history’s first motion picture, or some advanced form of stop motion animation.

Le Price's First Invention a Sixteen Lens Camera

It should be noted that during the 1880’s Le Prince was not the only individual by any means attempting to create the world’s first motion picture camera.  Perhaps most notably two of his competitors were the Lumiere Brothers--Auguste and Louis-- fellow Frenchman in Paris who had been inspired by the same magician’s illusion that Le Prince had seen on his honeymoon and were, throughout the decade, feverishly at work inventing their own device that could both record and project moving images captured on film onto a screen.

And in America, just across the Hudson River from Le Prince in New York City in 1881, was the workshop of America’s most famed inventor Thomas Edison, who just as Le Prince was patenting his first sixteen lens motion picture camera had in his employ funded by Edison’s own personal and lucrative bankroll that he had amassed as the purported “Father of Electricity and inventor of the phonograph” an American born inventor from Virginia named William Kennedy Dickson.  William Kennedy Dickson had been hired by Thomas Edison to work at his Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory and machine shop in the 1880’s to, in Edison's own words, “Create a device that would do for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear.”

The race to create the world’s first motion picture camera during the 1880s was on--and the stakes both financially and personally were high to say the least!

In May of 1887 Louis Le Prince, still hard at work on creating the world’s first motion picture camera returned to England with Sarah Elizabeth and settled at her family home at the Oakwood Estate in Leeds upon completion of her education.

Back in England Le Prince teamed up with an assistant more skilled in carpentry and metal working than himself  (a very important aspect of early camera technology since all parts had to be finely crafted from wood, glass or metal) named Frederic Mason.  It would be Mason, years later after his employer’s disappearance, who would cement Le Prince’s claim to being the world’s first filmmaker and keep his legacy as an inventor alive even at a time when most Americans were celebrating the memory of Edison and the Lumiere Brothers as creators of history’s first motion picture.

The Lumiere Brothers of Paris

In a recorded interview near the end of his own life in 1931 Mason had this to say of his long since vanished boss, “I would like to say that Mr. Le Prince was indeed a most extraordinary man, apart from his inventive genius, which was most undoubtedly great…he was most gentle and considerate and an inventor of a placid disposition which nothing seemed to ruffle.”

Back in England, with his apprentice Mason under his wing, Le Prince’s inventive genius definitely did take off!  He perfected many of the aspects of his older sixteen lens camera and using Frederic Mason’s woodworking skill, he was able to craft a single lens motion picture camera and projector that could capture moving images on a single strip of film.  

Le Prince and Mason submitted their single lens motion picture camera for patent in London England on the 10th of January 1888, and it was accepted by the British Patent Office as, “Improvements in the method of, and apparatus for Producing Animated Photographic Pictures,” on November 16, 1888 beating both the Edison Laboratory and the Lumiere Brothers to the punch when it came to inventing the world’s first motion picture camera.  It was this camera that was used to film Roundhay Garden Scene.  Almost immediately, after perfecting their device and creating Roundhay Garden Scene, Le Prince and Mason created the first ever live action, or documentary film, called Pedestrians Crossing Leeds Bridge which also survives to this very day.

It was actually the “nonfiction” film  Pedestrians Crossing at Leeds Bridge that brought Le Prince a certain degree of notoriety in Great Britain during the years 1888-89.  His film was screened around the country and lauded as a great success in England.

A Scene from Pedestrians Crossing Leeds Bridge

In September of 1890 Louis Le Prince determined to sail once again across the Atlantic to both visit his wife’s family and to attempt to promote and sell his brand new single lens motion picture camera to commercial interests in the United States.  Before departing for America though, Le Prince decided to once again return to France where he boarded a train from Paris to the city of Dijon to visit his own family members still residing in his native city.

He reached Dijon and visited briefly with friends and family but on the 16th of September 1890, after boarding a train for a return trip to Paris and then to America, Louis Le Prince the inventor of the world’s first motion picture camera and creator of history’s first movie, vanished without a trace and was never seen or heard from by anyone ever again.  He never got off the train in Paris where dozens of friends were waiting at the station to greet him and none of his luggage or personal effects were found aboard the train despite the fact that dozens witnessed him board the same train only hours before in Dijon.

For seven years Le Prince’s family led by his grieving widow Sarah Elizabeth in New York launched extensive searches in conjunction with French Police, Scotland Yard investigators in England and private investigators in the United States to try and find any trace whatsoever of Louis Le Price, but none was ever found, and after seven years of searching Louis Le Prince--the Father of Cinematography--was pronounced officially dead in 1897.  No body has ever been found.

Le Prince’s son Adolphe, as previously mentioned, was so grief stricken by his father’s disappearance that in 1901 he was found dead via a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at his family’s vacation home on Fire Island, New York.  His mother and Louis Le Prince’s grieving widow Sarah Elizabeth went into seclusion after her husband was declared dead and her grief put an end to her promising art career.

Over the years dozens of conspiracy theories, most of which have been put forth by French film historians, regarding Le Prince’s disappearance have been proposed and almost from the moment that Le Prince failed to get off the train at the Paris station, many have speculated that, perhaps, the inventor of the motion picture camera took his own life out of despair and then sought to cover it up and make it look like a disappearance so that his family could somehow claim various life insurance policies that he had.  But, by all accounts, Le Prince was always a happy man and not troubled by money, given the fact that his wife’s family did have some considerable wealth at the time.  It was due to speculation over Le Prince’s possible suicide, and to dispel any rumors regarding death at his own hand, that his personal assistant Frederic Mason originally agreed to give  the interview that was quoted earlier in this article in which he reaffirmed the cheery and unflappable disposition of his former employer.

However, because Louis Le Prince just seemingly vanished off of the face of the earth, film historians and conspiracy theorists have continued to speculate about his disappearance for the past one-hundred and thirty five years.

As recently as 2003, when researchers working on a totally unrelated historical subject at the Paris police archives, found a picture from 1890 of an unnamed drowned man that had been pulled from the Seine--many insisted that this was a heretofore unidentified photograph of Louis Le Prince’s dead body.  After the discovery of this long lost photo from 1890 speculation about Le Prince’s possible suicide began to circulate once again with many asserting that Le Prince had drowned himself in the Seine as a result of financial failures and despair over his single lens motion picture not being the commercial success that he had expected.

This is possible and it would be remarkable if the disappearance of Louis Le Prince was a cold case from 1890 that had finally been solved by new evidence discovered by historians in a Paris police archive that had not come to light until 2003.  But, there are some holes in this theory.  For one thing--Le Prince would have had to depart the train somewhere either in Paris, or before he got to Paris on his way from Dijon, and then drowned himself in the Seine River without anyone taking note.  Additionally, researchers claim that despite having a resemblance to Le Prince, the drowned body in the 1890 photograph is clearly too short to have been that of Louis Le Prince.  Also, the discovery of nameless drowned bodies in the Seine was an all too common occurrence for Paris police in the 1890’s and there are hundreds of old photographs of drowned Frenchman in police archives that could possibly be Louis Le Prince or anyone else for that matter.

Some historians claim that Le Prince was most likely murdered.  They point out that many parties involved, from the Lumiere Brothers (who coincidentally worked and lived in Paris) to Thomas Edison’s well connected laboratory had both the motive and cause to have Le Prince murdered before he arrived in the United States to try and sell his innovative single lens camera to wealthy investors in America.  Those who believe that Le Prince was murdered also point that if he was suicidal, why didn’t his own brother who had just spent many weeks with him in Dijon tell anyone or intervene when Louis Le Prince attempted to travel alone?  It should be noted though that no concrete evidence for foul play in Louis Le Prince’s disappearance has ever been uncovered.

Louis Le Prince's Single Lens Camera of 1888

Probably, among all the theories about the Father of Cinematography’s disappearance the most unique one is that which was  proposed in 1967 in a work entitled The Comparative History of Cinema where French historian Jacques Deslandes asserted that Le Prince’s disappearance was ordered by his own family because he was homosexual and the aristocratic family he had married into didn’t want such a scandal to bring shame upon them if Le Prince’s sexual preferences were ever to come to light.

Ten years after the publication of Deslandes’ work in 1977 French journalist Leo Sauvage asserted that he had been shown a handwritten note to Le Prince’s family in Dijon from 1898 which asserted that Louis Le Prince had died in Chicago that year after having lived the past eight years under an assumed name.  Sauvage’s article goes on to reinforce many of the claims about Le Prince’s supposed homosexuality and how the family of Sarah Elizabeth, the wealthy and aristocratic Whitley family of Leeds, England, forced him to disappear to avoid scandal and shame.

It should be noted that other than this speculation, and a handwritten note by somebody living in Chicago in 1898 to Le Prince’s family in France, there is no concrete evidence that Louis Le Prince was anything but a loyal and devoted husband and family man.  There is no evidence that the Whitley family had any misgivings about Le Prince’s sexuality or that they had anything whatsoever to do with his disappearance.  In fact, quite to the contrary it was Le Prince’s wife Sarah Elizabeth Whitley who worked so hard to try and find her husband in France, England and the United States before French authorities finally pronounced Louis Le Prince dead after no new evidence of his whereabouts had come to light for seven years in 1897.

Roundhay Garden Scene, a short three second film, the first motion picture in world history, gave birth to a mystery that has lasted for nearly a century and a half.  What really happened to Louis Le Prince, the Father of Cinematography, is likely to remain a mystery for a long time to come or until some enterprising researcher stumbles once again upon some long forgotten evidence from this Victorian Era cold case.