The Humpty Dumpty Circus is a lost short stop-motion trick film directed by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith, the Anglo-American founders of Vitagraph Studios.
Albert E. Smith claimed in his 1952 book Two reels and a crank: "I used my little daughter's set of wooden circus performers and animals, whose movable joints enabled us to place them in balanced positions.
18 reviewed the short in October 1908: "It opens with a crowd of children leaving school and marching through the streets to the "Humpty Dumpty Circus."
The magazine continued to describe the costly process and economic circumstances: "The figures are posed in front of the camera, one picture exposed, then they are moved slightly and an other picture exposed, and so on, the photographer being careful not to move the figures or their limbs too far at one time or else a jerky movement is presented.
When we consider that there are twelve pictures to a foot of film and that there are 885 feet in the "Humpty Dumpty" subject we begin to realize the magnitude of the task.