Made in 1900 Leap Frog is one of several early films held by the YFA made by the Bamforth Company of Holmfirth.  Others from this period include Women’s Rights and Kiss in the Tunnel, from 1899, and Boys Sliding and Playing in Snow, also from 1900 – copies of the original nitrate films are all held in the YFA.   James Bamforth was one of a small group of early British filmmakers – along with Cecil Hepworth, George Albert Smith, and Robert Paul – and the first to take the music hall tradition...

Made in 1900 Leap Frog is one of several early films held by the YFA made by the Bamforth Company of Holmfirth.  Others from this period include Women’s Rights and Kiss in the Tunnel, from 1899, and Boys Sliding and Playing in Snow, also from 1900 – copies of the original nitrate films are all held in the YFA.   James Bamforth was one of a small group of early British filmmakers – along with Cecil Hepworth, George Albert Smith, and Robert Paul – and the first to take the music hall tradition into film.

Bamforth started in business in 1870 as a studio photographer and began the production of magic lantern slides around 1883, photographed at its studio at Station Road, Holmfirth. At first a small-scale enterprise, Bamforth's production of photographic lantern slides was so successful that by 1898 a factory extension to the studio in Holmfirth was built, enabling production on a larger scale. At first, the company specialised in 'life model' slide sequences in which simple narratives, usually conveying moral, temperance, and religious themes, were photographed in front of a backcloth, painted by James Bamforth himself.

The expertise gained in this led the Riley Brothers of Bradford, who had been involved with moving picture technology since 1896 and had already begun to make films of their own, to commission Bamforth in 1898 to produce further films, known as 'RAB' films.  The first series of films are from 1899 to 1900.  Several films were made featuring children playing; this may be because these were easy to make and entertaining. 

The title of Leap Frog is something of a misnomer, as although the film starts with leap frog, the main game shown is a variant which has many names, possibly the most common being ‘chip, pie and crust’ and ‘Jimmy Knacker’ (certainly in London).  This game was popular at the time in the area, and it was filmed in a local school in Holmfirth.  The game has many alternative names in different places – for example, ‘Mountikitty’, and in the Rotherham area it was know as ‘Finger, thumb and dumb (or rusty bum)’.  The first full description of it in English is in The Boy’s Own Book, 1829, although references go as far back as the early seventeenth century, and elsewhere in Europe references go back to the early sixteenth century (for a full account and list of names see Opie in References).

After 1903 the Company concentrated on picture postcards, and then returned to films between 1913 and 1915 (see too the entry for Kiss in the Tunnel, also on YFA Online).

References

John Barnes, The Beginnings of the Cinema in England, vol. 4: 1899 (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1996)
Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan, Who's Who of Victorian Cinema (London: BFI Publishing, 1996).
David Robinson, Stephen Herbert and Richard Crangle (eds), Encyclopaedia of the Magic Lantern, The Magic Lantern Society, London, 2001.
Sutherland, Allan T., 'The Yorkshire Pioneers', Sight and Sound, Winter 1976-7, pp. 48-51 Issue 187 - Vol 46 No. 1 1977
Racheal Lowe, History of British Film, 1949/79
Peter and Iona Opie, Children’s Games in Street and Playground, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969.
Bamforth & Co.
The screen online entry on Bamforth and Co