First western was shot in Blackburn, claims researcher [archived newspaper article]

The Times

By Valnetine Low

October 13, 2019

The majestic landscape of Monument Valley. The rugged mountain scenery of the Sierra Nevada. The railroads, the ranches, the bars and the brothels of a thousand frontier towns. Westerns have been filmed in all manners of locations but the world’s first western, it has been claimed, was shot on the outskirts of Blackburn.

Until this week it was commonly held that the genre’s first film was “The Great Train Robbery”, which was filmed in the US in 1903. Research, however, has suggested that a pair of filmmakers from Blackburn made the first western in 1899.

Shot in fields near the Lancashire town, “Kidnapping by Indians” shows native Americans — local actors with headdresses and tomahawks — attempting to take a baby girl from a woman before two cowboys appear, shoot the attackers dead and save the family. It lasts one minute.

Jamie Holman, a cinephile, made the connection to Lancashire in a study of records by the British Film Institute (BFI). Mr. Holman said the information, which showed a filming location close to Blackburn, was “hiding in plain sight”.

The movie, which is owned by a private collector, was produced by the prolific filmmakers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon.

Mr. Holman, a lecturer at Blackburn College who has researched links between the cotton industry and film history, told the BBC: “Blackburn had links to the Wild West. Cotton workers had worked in the U.S.A. and they told stories of the wild frontier.

“Mitchell and Kenyon would have been aware of the appetite for the Wild West at the time. Many of the stereotypes are there: the headdress; the tomahawks. The Mitchell and Kenyon film was in plain sight on the BFI website. I just put it in context.”

Bryony Dixon, of the BFI, said: “It is a very short drama — all films were short at that time. It was filmed on scrubby moorland using whoever happened to be at hand, I would imagine, and what costumes they could rustle up on the spot.

“It is a scene in which a white woman and a baby are outside their cabin on the Wild West frontier when some slightly dubious-looking Indians hove into view and snatch the baby. Then some cowboys come up — and you know they are cowboys because they have guns, and bandanas. A fight ensues and it is all very exciting. Then the baby is rescued.

“It encapsulates the idea of a western frontier-type story. It has cowboys and it has Indians, and it has a typical western theme.”

Ms. Dixon said that Mitchell and Kenyon would have been familiar with the typical themes of the western, from books, the illustrated press and live shows including Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, which toured Europe in the 1880s and 1890s.

“The Great Train Robbery”, which was written, produced and directed by Edwin S Porter, lasts 12 minutes and used unconventional techniques such as crosscutting. It was one of the most popular films of the silent era until the release of “The Birth of a Nation” in 1915.

You Tube link: 1899 - Kidnapping by Indians - Sagar Mitchell & James Kenyon (two different versions)