Who was the first actor to ever be “killed” on screen?
The cinematic medium has had the power to shock audiences since its very conception, with the Lumière brothers allegedly scaring audiences through their 1895 short film L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat. At a time when the motion of images was still an unfamiliar thing for most people, a train hurtling towards them was probably enough to completely blow some people’s minds.
From the start, it was clear that cinema could conjure up fascinating reflections of reality that could be morphed to structure the viewing experience in different ways. When the first pioneers figured out that the medium had the potential to reflect life, it didn’t take them long to understand that it could also manipulate our mortal anxieties.
Throughout the years, there have been countless fascinating explorations of death and its infinite cultural connotations through movies. Whether it be the early horror films made during the silent era or more recent works such as Gaspar Noé’s psychedelic masterpiece Enter the Void, death has played a significant role in shaping the future of the art form.
When we think of its cinematic representations today, it’s easy to imagine the countless bullet-riddled bodies strewn around the set of a thriller or the huge chunks of the population being mashed into the ground by Godzilla. However, who were the first to sacrifice their fictional lives for art? Who was the first actor to be “killed” on screen?
According to the surviving records, the first instance of an actor dying in a film is a project that was put out by Thomas Edison’s production company. As one of the first pioneers of the art form, Edison was involved in numerous innovations that pushed the medium forward and brought it closer to what we recognise it as today. That’s exactly why it’s unsurprising the first on-screen death can be found in one of his company’s projects.
The first actor to die on screen
Designed for Edison’s Kinetoscope, the records suggest that the first on-screen death happened in an 1895 adaptation of George du Maurier’s Trilby. Although the catalogue does not contain the name of the cast, it is believed that David Henderson played the character of Svengali, who reportedly dies in an elaborate manner as his body slumps down on a table.
Of course, the ambiguity associated with the cast makes it difficult to pin down the first on-screen death to a particular performer. Fortunately, there’s a consensus among film historians that the first recognised actor to die in a film is Robert Thomae. Featuring in another 1895 Edison project, The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, Thomae plays the titular character whose beheading is skillfully handled by the editing, solidifying the emerging art’s reputation as a medium capable of magic.