What was the first movie with closing credits?
Throughout the last half-century of cinema history, we’ve become accustomed to grabbing our coats and heading for the door as ten minutes of end credits roll up a black screen at the end of any movie – sorry, 4th Assistant Prop Repositioner. We have other things to do than read your name as it whizzes out of sight.
Before we go, we might just catch the beginning of a classic soundtrack closer or a new pop single being promoted via the credit sequence, perhaps being sung or rapped by an actor of dubious musical ability. Or, we’ve decided to stick around after all, we could have the pleasure of a post-credits sequence. What would Ferris Bueller’s Day Off have been without Matthew Broderick in his dressing gown, telling us all to go home?
Yet, in bygone eras of film history, this phenomenon wasn’t always the case. Until the 1970s, it was common to see only those seen as providing the highest value to a picture—typically big-name actors in the lead roles, directors, producers, writers and composers—credited at all. These credits would come at the beginning of a movie, not the end.
Now, recent film history has given us directors who go out of their way to include spectacular title sequences with extensive credits at the start of their pictures. Still, even these movies finish with a roll call of end credits, as pretty much every film does. But when did this practice start, and why?
That’s all, folks!
It’s generally thought that the first major movie to have its credits at the end rather than at the beginning was Michael Anderson’s 1956 adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days starring David Niven. This assumption stems from the film’s seven-minute end credits sequence, which is particularly memorable, with animated text accompanying a graphical recap of its plot.
In fact, another legendary film adopted the practice long before Anderson’s picture. First-time director Orson Welles adopted a revolutionary approach to introducing his 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane. The movie opens with a single credit reading: “A Mercury Production by Orson Welles” before its title appears briefly without a soundtrack, and then the first camera shot fades in.
At the end of the film, Welles includes extensive credits for the entire cast, the composer of the film’s score, the special effects supervisor, the art director, the associate art director, the editor, sound recorders, the costume designer, screenwriters, cinematographer, the director and producer, the production studio and the distributor. This was the first time such a full list of credits had been placed at the end of a major motion picture.
Still, Citizen Kane wasn’t the first movie, or even the first significant movie, to have end credits. Two years prior to Welles’ film, The Wizard of Oz featured a full cast list in its final frame, even including Toto the dog.
The practice had also been adopted by Warner Bros for a brief period during 1932 for movies such as the Howard Hawks-directed Tiger Shark and the Oscar-nominated I Am a Fugitive on a Chain Gang. It’s likely we’ll never know which one of the studio’s 1932 films was the very first to have end credits, as many of these pictures are now lost.
In any case, they haven’t stood the test of time nearly as well as The Wizard of Oz or Citizen Kane. It’s clear that Welles fundamentally transformed the presentation of films for good with his formal innovations, which are just one aspect of Citizen Kane’s transformative effect on cinema.
