Page 5 - carey-bunse_habs_ca2712

HARRY CAREY RANCH
(Clougherty Ranch)
HABS No. CA-2712 (Page 5)

The arrival of the Broncho Billy's Essenay studio in California points to another obvious
reason the film industry was drawn to the region. The mild climate and diverse landscape
of the state made it possible to film a variety of outside scenes, all within proximity to the
)
controlled indoor stages ( which would later be called sound stages). The California
scenery could not only be made to approximate a wide variety of different motion picture
) locales, it was especially well-suited to the Western film genre because its western
location resembled other western regions. Broncho Billy's move to Niles was an early
use of the California landscape as a Western film set, a practice quickly emulated by
others, especially the larger studios in Los Angeles.

The first Los Angeles-area film studio was the Nestor Film Company, which built a small
studio in 1911 in the emerging community of Hollywood, west of Los Angeles. This
began a long trend of motion picture studios being established, not only in California, but
specifically in the Los Angeles subdivision of Hollywood, or Hollywoodland, as it was
called originally. By 1912, there were fifteen film companies operating in the area. By
1915, many of the major studio names associated with Hollywood- Universal,
Paramount, and others -had been founded and ensured that the West Coast arm of the
6
film business, if not the entire industry, would be in the Los Angeles area.

Westerns were staple products of this early film industry and all of the studios produced
them. Even the emerging star producers, such as D. W. Griffith, directed Western films,
in his case both on the East Coast and later in Hollywood. Griffith made his first film in
1908 and would contribute immensely to the structure, art, and industry of filmmaking.
Before the release of his classic, Birth of a Nation, in 1915, Griffith, like most _directors in
the emerging industry, made hundreds of one-reel films. The industry produced a
prodigious number of products throughout the early 1910s. Griffith made films in every
genre, including Westerns. Marty other directors and actors would similarly bounce from
7
genre to genre.

In time, the Western emerged as a specific genre that attracted actors and directors who
specialized in it, often to the exclusion of any other genre. Whereas Griffith rarely made
Western films after 1915, other emerging directors like John Ford would focus chiefly
8
upon that genre. Western actors were even more genre-specifi_c in their work than
Western directors. By the 1910s and 1920s, Hollywood could boast a large cadre of
Western film stars, including Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, William S. Hart, and Harry Carey,
Sr. Most of these Western stars were well established before the introduction of sound in

Chaplin, who was signed to the studio in 1914 and 1915. Several of his best-known films, including "The Tramp,"
were filmed at Niles.
6
Dirks, "Film History By Decade."
7
Michael Kaminsky, "Biography for D. W. Griffith," www.us.imdb.com (as of November 13, 2000); Dirks, "Film
History By Decade."
8
John Ford had only a few films to his credit prior to 1917, few of them Westerns. Between 1917 and 1921,
however, Ford made only a few films that did not star Harry Carey, Sr. Similarly, most of Carey's films were
directed by John Ford during this period. To a large extent, John Ford's illustrious career as a director of Western
films dates to this four-year involvement with Harry Carey.