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Early Movie Making
by Mike Cox | |
Tourists
coming to San Antonio for the first
time may see the Alamo, the
other old Spanish missions, Fort
Sam Houston's quadrangle and the Buckhorn Saloon and think every venerable
landmark in this historic city has been preserved for posterity.
But they
would be wrong.
Off South Prensa Street on the edge of the city
is a piece of private property where visitors are not welcome. If fact, a caretaker
with dogs is on the premises not to answer questions in a friendly way, but to
keep people off the place.
What the caretaker is guarding are the ruins
of the old Hot Wells Hotel, a place that early in the 20th century was
one of the Alamo City's prime resort spots. |
San
Antonio, Texas, Hot Wells
1907 Postcard courtesy www.rootsweb.com/ %7Etxpstcrd/
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Hot
Wells Hotel, San Antonio, Texas
1908 Postcard courtesy www.rootsweb.com/ %7Etxpstcrd/
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Hot
Wells, San Antonio, Texas
Postcard courtesy www.rootsweb.com/ %7Etxpstcrd/
|
People
seeking restored health or just an enjoyable soak in hot water came from across
the country to the Hot Well bathhouse and hotel. Among the visitors were Teddy
Roosevelt, Will Rogers, Rudolph Valentino, Tom Mix, Cecil B. De Mille and many
others.
The hotel was built in 1886. It was an elegant four-story Victorian
structure occupying 21 acres along the San Antonio River. The frame hotel was
destroyed by fire (in fact, it burned three times), but the remnants of the old
bath house, a round building, are still there.
During the hotel’s hey day,
hot sulfur water from several springs was piped to various swimming pools and
bath areas. While the resort’s long gone, the springs still flow intermittently.
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Back
in 1996 screenwriter Frank Thompson set the scene at Hot Wells at the beginning
of his interesting book, “The Star Film Ranch: Texas' First Picture Show.”
The
Star Film Company was the first movie company to do any substantial business in
Texas. Owned by French producer Gaston Melies, the company came to San
Antonio in January 1910 from Brooklyn. |
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The movie industry
was in its infancy, but the American appetite for film already was hearty. Feature
films ran only about 15 minutes -- or 1,000 feet of film -- and long runs in theaters
were unheard of. As Thompson explains in his book, people did not go to see a
particular film, they "went to the movies." They expected to see a mixed bag of
entertainment, drama, comedy, news, travel, and come back soon for something new.
This demand necessitated year-round shooting, but since almost all shots
had to be made outside during these early years, movie companies based in the
Northeast had to find places with weather more suitable for winter filming. Most
companies went to California, and a couple of companies filmed in Colorado and
Utah. But Melies chose San Antonio,
where he set up shop adjacent to the Hot Wells Hotel. |
Hot
Wells, San Antonio, Texas
Postcard courtesy www.rootsweb.com/ %7Etxpstcrd/
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From
early 1910 to April 11 that year, he did some 80 movies -- mostly Westerns --
in San Antonio, including a minor
classic, "The Immortal Alamo." The film featured future director John Ford's older
brother, Francis Ford, as Navarre, the villain. Being producer, Melies award himself
the role of a padre. Students from Peacock Military Academy played Santa Anna's
soldiers.
Unfortunately, because of the nitrate used in early film, only
a few of these made-in-San Antonio
films have survived. Aside from these scratchy one-reelers, all we have are a
collection of movie still shots, movie summaries from trade publications, and
a smattering of later-day recollections from earlier interviews of some of the
people who were there.
The people connected to Texas' first brush with
the film industry are all gone, too. Thompson found no survivors of the era, none
connected with the film industry and none in San
Antonio, during his research for his book.
Given the cultural and
historical importance of old movies, as Thompson wrote, it is "a melancholy task,
trying to recapture a lost era" when so little evidence of it has survived.
©
Mike Cox
"Texas Tales" April
11 , 2009 column
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