The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight

For more information and to download this film, please visit https://www.loc.gov/item/mbrs00064432/

Independently produced motion picture recordings of famous boxing contests were a leading factor in establishing the commercial success of movies in the late 19th century. Championship boxing matches were the most widely popular sporting contests in America in that era, even though the sport was banned in many states in the 1890s. Soon after Nevada legalized boxing in 1897, the Corbett-Fitzsimmons title fight was held in that state in Carson City on St. Patrick's Day of that year. The film recorded the introductions of famous personalities in attendance and all 14 of the fight's three-minute rounds, plus the one-minute breaks between rounds. With a running time of approximately 100 minutes, "The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight" was the longest movie produced at that time; only the fragment presented here survives. Films of championship matches before 1897 had been unsuccessful because they ended too quickly with knockouts, leaving movie audiences unwilling to pay high-ticket prices to see such short films. "Corbett-Fitzsimmons" was a tremendous commercial success for the producers and contestants James J. Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons (the victor), generating an estimated $750,000 in income during the several years that it remained in distribution. This film also is deserving of a footnote in the technical history of motion pictures. Producers of early boxing films protected their films from piracy by engineering film printers and projectors that could only accept film stock of a proprietary size. The film prints of the fight were manufactured in a unique 63mm format that could only be run on a special projector advertised as "The Veriscope." Named to the National Film Registry in 2012.