What was one of the biggest ways to cash in when it came to the motion picture industry? Simple answer: steal the popularity of other attractions, one of the best things the Edison Co. was good at. This is not at all to say that the great inventor was a crook who would do anything to get money (although some people who believe he actually did electrocute that elephant would say that) but it is true that during the company's earliest years in the filmmaking business, he would often hire athletes and performers who were huge hits at the time to come down to the Black Maria studio in New Jersey and do their routine for film. For the sake of protecting the man, I'd vouch it was not a way to steal away the glory of the performer but probably more for the sake of those who never had a chance to view the act for themselves. In this way, Edison would not really be taking all the fame for himself but instead advertising the sensation through the new motion picture system.
"Boxing Cats" is a good example of such a film. In this case, Edison hired Henry Welton (a professor of sorts, though I don't know of what) to come down to his studio in order to have his boxing cats act be filmed. Shown in medium closeup, the comical match (that is, comical to everyone except PETA members) is a twenty-second clip showing the cats going at it, while Welton stands in the background acting as the referee. Furthermore, because of the utter hilarity of the little gloves on the cats and the way they swipe at each-other, some consider this to be the first LOLcat video ever made and thus the oldest 'cat video' on the internet. From my own research this is certainly debatable, however; after all, Etienne-Jules Marey had created "Falling Cat" the same year with his chronophotographic gun, which could also be given the title despite the fact I know no dates to prove which came first. Clearly whoever started such a rumor has been little educated about this point in history or merely doesn't consider Marey's film a LOLcat video.
However, the most interesting point of "Boxing Cats" comes not from the historical interest surrounding it or the fact it shows a once-popular act of the day, but from the way it combines two different genres used previously in Edison company shorts to create a different variation. As I mentioned before, filming dancers, athletes or any sort of performers would help bring publicity to the sensation's act. This genre, the performance-for-camera genre, is the first one combined. On top of that, another big genre, which I treat differently from the performances, was boxing. Edison loved filming boxing and must have made a whole series of boxing shorts featuring known boxers performing a championship match within the Black Maria. Films such as "Corbett and Courtney Before the Kinetograph", "The Leonard-Cushing Fight", "The Hornbacker-Murphy Fight", even the camera tests "Men Boxing" (1891) and "Boxing" (1892) all fall within the genre. Thus, by putting both together, you have a unique little performance which was no doubt a real hit when shown in the Kinetoscope parlors. On a side note, this wasn't the first time the company had done a variation on the boxing genre; the idea of having a comedic boxing contest between animals had occurred as early as "Monkey and Another, Boxing" (camera test, 1891).
