The Humpty Dumpty Circus is an animated short film made in 1898 by director and producer J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith, the Anglo-American founders of Vitagraph Studios. The short was the first American film to use the stop-motion technique, and featured a circus with acrobats and animals in motion. According to Smith, they used his daughter's set of small circus dolls, which had jointed limbs so they could be balanced in place.