LA Weekly: CinemAbility a “Bright Core of Real Emotion”
0Among the hundreds of stories of Thomas Edison's monumental douchebaggery--publicly electrocuting an elephant, stealing Voyage dans la Lune from Georges Méliès--one little-known example is his silent film The Fake Beggar, which concerned a man who pretended to be crippled and preyed on the sympathy of kindly people. It was possibly the first filmed portrayal of disabled people. Released in 1897, it spread and cemented a terrible stereotype about the disabled that endured for decades.