His First Ride (1907) User Reviews

An Amusing Miniature

[Snow Leopard · 27 January 2005]

This an amusing mini-feature that, while based on one very simple story idea, uses some good detail and creativity to make it worth watching. It also required some real dedication on the part of the performer who played the character taking "His First Ride" on the bicycle, since he had to pay the price for the creative ideas of the film-makers.

The various predicaments show a pretty good range of ideas, and most of them - at least to those who enjoy some good old-fashioned slapstick - are pretty funny as well. The settings also show good variety, and since they are all outdoors, it must have taken a good amount of effort to do all of the filming for such a short feature.

And, as short as it is, it builds up rather well, as each scene gets a little wilder than the previous one. Its liveliness and energy make it a pretty entertaining little piece of film.

His First Ride review

[JoeytheBrit · 4/10 · 10 May 2020]

Broncho Billy Anderson directs this slapstick comedy which consists entirely of a tramp falling off his stolen bike or running into angry pedestrians. It's amusing for about a minute-and-a-Half, after which it becomes something of a chore.

Go see a trick-cyclist.

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 8/10 · 17 May 2008]

I saw an incomplete print of this film in the UCLA Film & Television Archive. 'His First Ride' was one of the many films produced early in the career of Bronco Billy Anderson at his studio in Colorado. Most of those films were cowboy shoot-'em-ups: this one (judging from the available footage) is clearly a stunt comedy.

The synopsis on IMDb's webpage is not quite correct: the rider is not 'clearly new at it'. Although 'His First Ride' supposedly depicts the efforts of an inexperienced cyclist to avert disaster, it's very obvious that we're watching a stunt performer who knows precisely what he's doing. He expertly manipulates his velocipede along a wooden sidewalk, zipping within a hair's breadth of outraged ladies in floor-length skirts. As the surviving footage ends -- at a point which doesn't seem to be the end of the movie -- he seems to be on the brink of doing either a handstand or a handspring over his handlebars.

An archivist at UCLA told me that the unbilled bicyclist was a circus performer whom Anderson filmed when his troupe were 'passing through town'; no other information is available. Which circus, then? My own research has established that the Sells-Flotos Circus were touring Colorado in 1907, but I'm unable to establish whether the company included a trick-cyclist.

'His First Ride' is clearly meant as a comedy, but the daredevil bicycle antics here are more thrilling than funny. A few years later, Al St John and Joe Jackson would (separately) perform their comedy bicycle routines in western vaudeville. St John was both a talented comedian AND a brilliant stunt cyclist who could manoeuvre his bicycle expertly while SEEMING to be incompetent. The cyclist in 'His First Ride' impressed me with his abilities but failed to convince me that he didn't know what he was doing. (Is it possible that this cyclist is Joe Jackson, who later appeared in Mack Sennett's 'A Modern Enoch Arden'? There's a definite resemblance!)

The films produced by Anderson's Colorado unit were distributed by Colonel Selig. According to IMDb, seven years after this movie was made, Selig released another film also titled 'His First Ride'. I wonder if that was a remake of this 1907 epic, as opposed to an unrelated movie with the identical title. The cyclist in this '07 movie looks young and healthy enough to still be doing the same routine seven years later! (Maybe the 1914 release was a reissue of this same movie.) I normally don't rate incomplete movies, but what I've seen of this 1907 'His First Ride' is thrilling enough that I'll rate it 8 out of 10.