Miss Jerry

Miss Jerry is an 1894 American feature-length black-and-white silent pre-film "Picture Play" written and produced by Alexander Black and starring Blanche Bayliss. Miss Jerry was not a film, but a series of posed magic lantern slides projected onto a screen with a dissolving stereopticon, accompanied by narration and music, making it the first example of a feature-length dramatic fiction on screen. Miss Jerry debuted on October 9, 1894 at the Carbon Studio in New York City. It has been described as "the first picture play" and while other early film and peep-show animations produced at this time were short documentaries, Miss Jerry sought to develop what is arguably the first feature of moving pictures. This photoplay attempts to create an impression of movement with the slides changing once every 15 seconds.