The Headless Horseman (1922 film)

The Headless Horseman is a 1922 American horror film adaption of Washington Irvings The Legend of Sleepy Hollow starring Will Rogers, Lois Meredith in her last major onscreen appearance, and Ben Hendricks Jr. that was directed by Edward D. Venturini. It was the first panchromatic blackandwhite feature film.

The unlikable, stern schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, who at one point beats a student, was played by Rogers, a popular actor playing against his typical roles for which he received 19,583.20. For authenticity, filming took place in the Hudson River Valley around Tarrytown, New York, the setting of Washington Irvings story, with its Dutch farm houses and covered bridges. The Headless Horseman was the first blackandwhite feature film photographed entirely on panchromatic stock, which, while two to three times more expensive, did not have the tendency to turn blue eyes and skies white and lipstick as black like the commonly used orthochromatic film did. One effective special effect was the use of a double exposure to give the headless horseman a phantomlike appearance.

Source: Wikipedia