Solar Eclipse
- 1900
A cricket legend celebrates his half-century
This historic bit of film captures cricket legend WG Grace and others at Lord's on the occasion of Grace's 50th birthday, 18 July 1898. A special Gentlemen v Players match was arranged to mark the day. The film shows the two teams walk side by side towards and past the camera.
The parade consists of Grace, Shrewsbury, Stoddart, W. Gunn, Lilley, Woods, Abel, Wynyard, Tunnicliffe, Jackson, J.T. Hearne, MacGregor, Storer, Dixon, Lockwood, MacLaren, Brockwell, Townsend, Haigh, Alec Hearne, Mason, Rhodes and Kortright.
It was a lucky filmmaker who managed to be on hand to capture real 'hard news', as in the disastrous launch of HMS Albion. The second Boer War, the biggest international story of the late-Victorian era, lured several cameramen to South Africa. Others responded to audience demand for moving pictures of such events by dramatising them for the camera.