The Saint Paul Globe

Prize Fight Pictures a Failure
Man Who Took the Kinetoscope Views at Carson Says They Are a Fizzle.

NEW YORK, April 4.-If the statements made by E. J. Rector are true there is a dark future, or rather no future, ahead for the kinetoscope views of the recent fistic encounter in Carson, Nev. Rector avers that he is not worried about the prospect of legislation that will cripple the business of giving peep-hole exhibitions of the prize fight. It is the knowledge that the views taken at the ring side are dismal failures that is giving him nightmares.

It was this Rector who secured the exclusive kinetoscope privileges of that memorable battle between Corbett and Fitzsimmons. He had visions of millions from the photographic reproduction of the encounter. He spared no expense to get a picture of every move by the fistic kings. When Corbett gave up the ghost in the fourteenth round there was no end of hustling among the men who were aiming the big lenses at the gory combatants. All the agony depicted in the features of the fallen prize fighter was studiously wrought out in the plate. So Rector believed.

But now, Rector says, the whole lot of snap shots look like the first efforts of a novice. When the plates were developed every defect known to photography made its unwelcome appearance. The negatives were sent to the Edison laboratory, in Orange, N. J., to be developed. Frank Gammon, of Rabb & Gammon, managers of the vitascope, under whose direction the negatives were being developed, confirms Rector's statement. He says they are not panning out.

Rector says bids for the right to make kinetoscope views of the fight were received from England, France, Australia, South Africa and the Sandwich islands, but that the defective plates have set aside all thought of making such contracts.