Baseball and Bloomers

Baseball and Bloomers, also known as Baseball in Bloomers, is a 1911 American silent short sports film produced by the Thanhouser Company. The film stars William Garwood and is the debut of Marguerite Snow. The film focuses on a female seminary which organizes a baseball club and challenges another school to a game. The boys accept to the game with amusement and find that the women are not good at baseball. Two Harvard University baseball stars join the ranks of the girls in disguise and defeat the boys team. The script may have been written by Lloyd Lonergan and the film may have been directed by Barry ONeil or Lucius J. Henderson. The film was released on January 6, 1911 and it received positive reviews. The film is presumed lost.

The writer of the scenario was most likely Lloyd Lonergan. He was an experienced newspaperman employed by The New York Evening World while writing scripts for the Thanhouser productions. The film director may have been Barry ONeil or Lucius J. Henderson. The role of the cameraman was uncredited in 1910 productions though cameramen employed by the company during this era included Blair Smith, Alfred H. Moses, Jr. and Carl Louis Gregory. The other cast credits are unknown, but many Thanhouser productions are fragmentary. In late 1910, the Thanhouser company released a list of the important personalities in their films. The list includes G.W. Abbe, Justus D. Barnes, Frank H. Crane, Irene Crane, Marie Eline, Violet Heming, Martin J. Faust, Thomas Fortune, George Middleton, Grace Moore, John W. Noble, Anna Rosemond, and Mrs. George Walters.This film is important for being the debut of Marguerite Snow, who would become one of the most important actresses for the company. In an interview by Johnson Briscoe, Snow said that her career as an actress was an accidental one. A girl friend of hers suggested she come to the studio to see how motion pictures are made. There at the studio, Edwin Thanhouser asked her if she wanted to be in the film. Snow accepted and she took part in the production until the director asked them to go outside to shoot another scene. Snow then protested about going outside in such a costume and in winter and proceeded home. A week later she received a phone call and ended up working for six more months before temporarily returning to the stage. Another baseball related film would be released later that year by the Thanhouser Company, The Baseball Bug. ........

Source: Wikipedia