Few realize there was a time nearly a century ago when the San
Francisco Bay Area almost become a second Hollywood. Then, the Bay
Area's best hope in rivaling the film colony only just developing in
Southern California lay a small number of local, independent studios opening around the Bay Area. They included, notably, the Gerson Studio, the Pacific Studios in San Mateo, and California Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC), based in San Rafael.
 |
The California Motion Picture Corporation in San Rafael
Image courtesy James Zeruk, Jr. - Entwistle Family Archive |
In the coming week, Bay Area movie goers will have the rare
opportunity to see a film
widely considered one of the most emblematic of the Bay Area's
long-forgotten movie-making past.
On Saturday, September 22 the
Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum
in Fremont will screen
Salomy Jane (1914), the first, most acclaimed,
and only surviving production of the California Motion Picture
Corporation.
Salomy Jane will
also be shown on Sunday, September 30 at the
Rafael Film Center
in San Rafael. The two screenings mark only the second time the film
has been shown in the Bay Area in the nearly 100 years since it was
made.
 |
| Image courtesy James Zeruk, Jr. - Entwistle Family Archive |
Set during the California Gold Rush and based on the famous 1889 story ("Salomy Jane's Kiss") by San Francisco writer Bret Harte, Salomy Jane
tells a melodramatic story of love, murder, and mistaken identity --
all of which whirls about its feisty female heroine. In the film, Salomy Jane is saved from a ruffian named Red Pete by a heroic stranger known as Jack Dart. In turn, Salomy Jane saves Jack Dart from being wrongly lynched for a crime he didn't commit. The film's
screenplay was penned by Paul Armstrong, who also authored a popular
stage adaptation of Harte's story in 1907. (That play was being performed in San Francisco not long before the film went into production.)
Along with its Western-themed story, Salomy Jane offers viewers images of Marin
and northern California as it looked in 1914. Scenes in the film were
took place along the coast as far north as the Russian River near Monte
Rio - for the leaps into the water and the final chase, and as far south
as the San Lorenzo River near Santa Cruz - for the stage robbery.
Closer to the CMPC studio in San Rafael was the Lagunitas Creek location
for the final kiss under an arching tree, which frames Mount Tamalpais.
California's giant Redwoods and other local landmarks are also
pictured.
Also of note is the film's cast and crew. The title role is played by
Beatriz Michelena, a San Francisco singer and star of the musical
theater who began her film career with this local production. Michelena,
a local celebrity and local columnist described as "California's most beautiful actress,"
was married to George E. Middleton, a prominent San Francisco auto
dealer who founded the CMPC in 1912 for the purpose of shooting
promotional footage of the cars he was selling.
Determined that his wife would succeed in the movies, Middleton
starred Michelena in 11 features for the San Rafael studio between 1914
and 1917. The actress achieved a certain degree of national renown, even
appearing on the covers of national magazines, but never became a major
star like her contemporaries Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford. In
2002, Michelena's role as a pioneering Latina actress was nevertheless
recognized in a proclamation made by President George W. Bush during
National Hispanic Heritage Month.
Besides Michelena, Salomy Jane co-starred matinee-idol House
Peters as Jack Dart, "The Man." This English-born stage actor was
popular in his day, and he was referred to as "the actor with a thousand
emotions." His career before the camera lasted until 1961. Salomy Jane featured other veterans of the stage, including
Harold Entwistle in the role of Larabee. He was the uncle of doomed
actress Peg Entwistle. Also appearing in the film, in an uncredited part
as a cowboy playing solitaire in a saloon, is future Western star Jack
Holt.
 |
Actor Harold Entwistle in a scene from Salomy Jane
Image courtesy James Zeruk, Jr. - Entwistle Family Archive |
San Francisco-born cinematographer Hal Mohr, only 20 years old at the
time, shot the film. Mohr went on to a distinguished career and two
Academy Awards. His films include the The Jazz Singer (1927), widely regarded as the first "talkie," the Errol Flynn swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Phantom of the Opera (1943), and The Wild One (1953), with Marlon Brando.
Salomy Jane, which reportedly took six months to make and
cost more than $200,000, was big news in the Bay Area. The film was
first shown at an invitation-only, gala event on October 8, 1914 at the
St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Attended by leading members of
society, the San Francisco Chronicle likened the event to opening night at the opera.
Salomy Jane debuted to the public on October 25, when it
opened for a week's run at San Francisco's Portola theater. The Portola
secured the honor by having invested in the production. Newspapers
reports from the time stated crowds were so great that hundreds were
unable to secure admission. At the beginning of November, motion picture
houses in 26 other cities presented the film simultaneously across the
United States and Canada.
The second city to show the film was Oakland, where it played at the Broadway theater for a full week. The Oakland Tribune
reported, "In order that every seat may be available, as advance orders
indicate another record-breaking attendance next week, the Broadway
management has moved the picture screen back 35 feet on the stage and
placed it in a huge shadow box, so that even the first rows of orchestra
seats affords a splendid view."
 |
| Oakland Tribune newspaper advertisement |
Moving Picture World, one of the leading film journals of
the time, praised the film's "exceptionally fine photography" as well as
"the love story that becomes more and more interesting toward the
close." Variety stated, "The scenario is a model of clarity, despite its emphasis upon swift and frequent incident." The New York Dramatic Mirror
summarized the film this way: "Unless nature betters her handiwork in
the forests of California, it is difficult to see how producers are
going to improve upon the scenic beauty of Salomy Jane."
More recently, UC Davis film historian Scott Simmon noted, "The visual beauty and directorial sophistication of Salomy Jane upend assumptions of what a first feature by an untried regional company ought to look like."
Salomy Jane, its star Beatriz Michelena, and the California
Motion Picture Corporation (which ceased operations around 1920) all
deserve to be better known. The reason they're not is because in 1931
all of the prints and negatives of the CMPC went-up in flames at the
studio's then abandoned Marin County home. The studio, its stars and
films faded into oblivion.
In 1996, a sole surviving print of
Salomy Jane was found in
Australia. That print was repatriated to the United States, where it was
preserved by the Library of Congress. In 2011, the restored print, with
recreated tints, was released on DVD by the
National Film Preservation Foundation as part of an exceptional anthology titled
Treasures 5: The West 1898-1938. A tinted 35mm print will be screened in Niles and Marin.
Each of the Bay Area screenings of this historic work are
co-sponsored by the
Marin County Free Library, and each will be
accompanied by Berkeley musician Bruce Loeb on the piano. Additionally,
preceding the Rafael screening, there will be an introductory talk by
film historian David Kiehn and librarian Laurie Thompson.
