by James Roman
Back in Owens Valley, the raw deal would not go away. Mulholland was right. Los Angeles needed the land controlled by Fred Eaton in order to build a suitably sized storage dam. By the 1920s, LA’s population was approaching one million residents; the city was desperate again for more water. On behalf of Los Angeles, Mulholland returned to Owens Valley, seeking to purchase additional water rights. Instead, the local bankers met him with opposition, sparking a bitter feud that lasted for years. In May 1924, 30 boxes of dynamite were set off, destroying one of the ditches that supplied water to LA’s aqueduct. Mulholland was warned that if he returned, he’d be lynched.
Map of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, its route and facilities, report from the City of Los Angeles, 1971
Next, the bankers and 70 armed supporters took control of the aqueduct. They staged a sit-in occupation for four days during which Los Angeles received no water, as they challenged LA to buy the entire irrigation district or get out of the valley. When Los Angeles agreed that it was time to buy up the remaining properties, a war ensued with the last holdouts. The city sent a trainload of World War I veterans to protect the aqueduct, but that wasn’t enough; it was still blown up 14 times. Mulholland’s inferior storage dam, built on weak bedrock formations, collapsed in 1928, a disaster that killed nearly 500 people when a 75-foot wave crashed its way to the sea, miles away. Unsuspecting residents were buried alive in mud. Mulholland was forced to resign in disgrace.
Two men find dynamite and wire during sabotage incidents of Owens Valley Aqueduct, CA, c. 1924
The bankers who led the opposition were indicted for embezzlement when their bank failed; they were convicted and sent to San Quentin. The Great Depression took care of the rest. Eaton’s finances collapsed. Along with the Owens Valley farmers and ranchers, he faced the inevitable: Los Angeles must assume full control of their properties and the Owens River. They taunted with words, buying full-page ads in the LA newspapers stating, “We, the farming community of Owens Valley, being about to die, salute you.” With that final volley, the Los Angeles electorate voted $12 million in bonds in 1930 to buy up what was left of the Owens Valley properties at pre-Depression prices, and the war was over. Towns were demolished to create the Owens River Gorge Dam that opened in 1941, still in service today. Eaton didn’t live to see it. LA’s 24th mayor died, a broken man, in 1934. Mulholland died one year later.
Today, William Mulholland’s name is commemorated by the beautiful winding drive that spans the crest of the mountains. Some of LA’s priciest real estate, it separates the San Fernando Valley from the west side of Los Angeles, home to movie stars, industry titans and many swimming pools. Eaton Street is a dead end in Eagle Rock, on LA’s east side.
The City of Los Angeles built a second aqueduct from the Owens River in the 1940s. Together, these aqueducts deliver almost 40 percent of today’s water supply in Los Angeles. Nobody even thinks about drinking the water from the river that was named for the Queen of the Angels.
IN THE MOVIES:
Chinatown (1974), Waterworld (1995)
CHAPTER 9.
HOLLYWOOD PIONEERS
MOVIE MAKERS REMAKE LOS ANGELES
1914—1928
In 1895, arts and sciences merged. The movie camera was invented by the Lumiére brothers. A French physicist gave birth to an art form.
Soon, inventors on both sides of the Atlantic were experimenting with the new medium—and on both sides of the camera. Scientists improved the technology while artists explored new forms of expression. Horizons were broad for a lucky generation of artists and scientists early in the twentieth century. Their imaginations gave birth to an industry that completely redefined the meaning of entertainment.
At the same time, Los Angeles had boosters traveling America to attract new settlers and new businesses. When filmmakers discovered the ease of filming in LA’s 300 days of sunshine, a match was made. LA’s wide, open spaces were ideal for an industry that needed to sprawl. The film industry remains one of America’s largest and most lucrative exports.
Here’s the chronicle of how the movie business got its start, told through the start-up tales of some film industry pioneers.
THE FIRST COMEDIES: SENNETT AND CHAPLIN
In Hollywood’s earliest days, filmmakers wore many hats. That suited Mack Sennett.
Sennett was the most productive filmmaker in a fledgling industry. At his Keystone Studios, he served as an actor, director, screenwriter, cinematographer and producer. His rise to fame also launched the careers of silent film stars and filmmakers for decades.
On a visit to New York in 1913, Sennett saw a British touring company on Broadway. He howled at the physical comedy of a 24-year-old actor named Charles Chaplin, and offered the young actor triple his salary to make movies in Hollywood. Untested and unknown, Charlie Chaplin signed a one-year contract at $125 a week (that’s about $3,000 today), and then boarded the Transcontinental Railroad bound for California. Chaplin was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors from the day he arrived.
The problem: In front of his first movie camera, Chaplin wasn’t funny. In a long coat and droopy mustache, he looked downright villainous in his first comedy, Making A Living. Sennett, a master of slapstick, explored movie comedy with the young stage actor, as they both learned to tell their tales without sound.
Charlie Chaplin in 1916 at the age of 27
Movie making was anything but silent. Most filming at Keystone took place outdoors on twoand-a-half acres of today’s Glendale Boulevard, or in its barnlike structure. Directors talked to their actors as they filmed; everyone worked without a script because the plot was always the same. As Sennett plainly put it, “Comedy is an excuse for a chase.” Action had to be fast, like his Keystone Kops, climbing on streetcars and falling off piers, or like Fatty Arbuckle, the studio’s biggest star, being frequently slammed in the face with a pie.
From left: Keystone Studios, c. 1917; Charlie Chaplin with the founders of the Triangle Film Corporation, Thomas H. Ince, Mack Sennett and D. W. Griffith, c. 1915
Chaplin played a reporter in his next film, Mabel’s Strange Predicament, but he wasn’t thrilled with the costume. At rehearsal, he tried on the trousers of the rotund Fatty Arbuckle, who laughed at the site of Chaplin in baggy pants. He put on Charlie Avery’s jacket, which was far too small, some giant shoes and a derby hat. To add some age to his character, Chaplin applied a tiny mustache. Then grabbing a bamboo cane, he stepped into the light and tried some tricks with the cane, hooking it on things, tipping his hat with it.
Sennett laughed out loud. He announced, “There are kid’s auto races down in Venice. Keep that outfit on and go with the guys.”
When Chaplin asked for a hint about the plot of this movie, “Just make something up,” was Sennett’s reply, defining the entire spontaneous, unregulated movie business of 1914.
The Little Tramp made his first appearance in Kid Auto Races At Venice, a short, improvised film in which Chaplin’s character wrangles with a cameraman while go-carts whiz past in an actual race. With the cane as his prop, the Little Tramp shuffled out of the crowd of real spectators and into the hearts of millions.
From left: Making A Living, 1914; Kid Auto Races at Venice, 1914
Recognizing the potential for the Little Tramp to become a recurring character at Keystone, Chaplin begged Sennett for the chance to write and direct for himself. As he reports in his autobiography, when Sennett asked, “Who’s gonna pay for the film if we can’t release it?” Chaplin posted a bond of $1,500 for Sennett to keep if the film was not releasable.
Of course, the film was released, and many more followed. Demand was so great that Chaplin’s films set records for the number of prints in circulation. He set the standard for improvisation on screen, devising physical gags on the fly while cameras rolled. Unlike Sennett’s frantically edited chase movies, Chaplin devoted hundreds of feet of film to a single sequence, imbuing his character with depth that all other comedies lacked.
And he kept t
hose one-reel movies coming, practically one every week. Scenery changed but the character didn’t. In 1914, Chaplin made 35 movies at Keystone. He later reminisced, “I had confidence in my ideas, and I can thank Sennett for that.”
Though Chaplin was a contract player earning a handsome weekly salary (and fame), it was Sennett who reaped unfathomable rewards. Chaplin’s film Mabel at the Wheel, for example, cost $1,800 to make; it earned $130,000 in its first year. As their contract’s one-year expiration approached, Chaplin told Sennett that he wanted $1000 a week in the next contract. Sennett balked, unconvinced that the 25-year-old could milk many more years from the Little Tramp. He wouldn’t pay. Another upstart called Essanay (for Spoor and Anderson) offered 10 times his salary: $1,250 a week (about $30,000 today) to make longer movies of the Little Tramp at their studio instead. It was the end of a chapter. Sennett and Chaplin had set the precedents for comedy on film, the iconic Little Tramp was born, and a friendship ended. The Little Tramp appeared in 41 more films.
In 1938, Mack Sennett was presented with a special Academy Award “for his lasting contribution to the comedy technique,” and in 1972, Chaplin accepted one “for the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century.”
The Keystone Studio building still stands, now a storage facility, at 1712 Glendale Boulevard, near Effie Street.
ON THE WALK OF FAME:
Charles Chaplin: 6751 Hollywood Boulevard
Mack Sennett 6710 Hollywood Boulevard
Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Edison and Mary Pickford on the set of The Gold Rush, directed by Charlie Chaplin, 1925
THE FIRST FEATURE: INTRODUCING CECIL B. DEMILLE
Samuel Goldfish was driven. As Shmuel Gelbfisz, he walked across Poland at age 16 to get to England, and eventually made his way to America. By 1910, he’d anglicized his name, landed a job as a salesman in the glove business, learned to think in English and married Blanche Lasky.
In his travels, he’d seen some of the earliest films ever made. Now, completely bedazzled, he was convinced that it was a business opportunity like no other. Blanche’s brother was Jesse L. Lasky, Mae West’s producer on Broadway. He listened to the persistent Goldfish and eventually agreed to take a risk: They’d pool their money to gamble on this popular new attraction called Movies.
But they needed another opinion. They turned to a young actor on Broadway named Cecil B. DeMille, who now worked for Lasky. DeMille confessed that he, too, knew nothing about making movies, but it sounded like a great idea. With that, the three novices went into business as the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. For Goldfish, the gamble was literal; he wagered his life savings. Combined with Lasky, they had $15,000 to invest in making a movie and promoting it.
They were determined to stand out from the pack; there’d be none of those 10-minute lowbrow comedies from their company. They wanted to compete with Broadway, exploiting the theatrical potential of the new medium. DeMille suggested that they acquire the rights to a popular play called The Squaw Man. It had been revived on Broadway recently with handsome Dustin Farnum as the lead. DeMille knew that this tragic love story between an Indian girl and an Englishman in the American West would be popular with both men and women. And, since most of its action takes place outdoors, they could keep costs low. They simply had to go film it out West somewhere.
From left: Cecil B DeMille (far left) and The Squaw Man cast. Dustin Farnum in white shirt; Cecil B. DeMille shooting The Squaw Man in 1913 at Lasky-DeMille Barn
The Squaw Man, 1914
For $4,000, they acquired the rights from the playwright, and convinced Dustin Farnum to reprise his stage role in their movie. Thirty-three-year-old DeMille would direct. But where? Lasky had been all the way to Flagstaff, Arizona, once. He instructed DeMille to transport the New York actors by train to Flagstaff to shoot their movie. Goldfish stayed in New York, selling gloves to remain solvent, while Lasky stayed in the East to hustle up his next theatrical venture, in case movies were a passing fad like everybody said.
Flagstaff wasn’t what DeMille envisioned. He couldn’t film there. He telegraphed Lasky and Goldfish: He wanted to relocate the production all the way west to Los Angeles, where he could “rent barn in place called Hollywood for $75 a month.”
The first feature film was already a runaway production. Goldfish agonized, for he realized that the cost was now beyond their company’s assets. When Lasky gave DeMille the green light to proceed, Goldfish launched a scheme to keep the business afloat. He bought newspaper ads that touted their company’s long roster of upcoming feature-length films, pledging that their first film, The Squaw Man, was such a breakthrough that theater owners could charge a full 25 cents a ticket instead of the mere nickels and dimes collected at other movies.
An advertisement for The Squaw Man in a trade magazine, selling distribution rights
Goldfish had another brilliant idea. As the promotions caught on, he sold “state’s rights” in advance, letting distributors buy up territories where they could play the film exclusively. What the distributors didn’t know was that the money they were anteing up was desperately needed to finish the film!
February 17, 1914 was the film’s opening night at the Longacre Theater in New York (on West 48th Street, now a Broadway landmark). The film broke six times, but it didn’t matter. The invited audience knew they were the first to witness a new form of artistry: This 74-minute movie proved the viability of a feature length narrative.
Sight unseen, Louis B. Mayer offered $4,000 to distribute the movie in his chain of theaters. Prospective distributors surrounded Sam Goldfish, all seeking to show The Squaw Man in their movie chains, too. In the spring, Lasky, Goldfish and DeMille caught their breath. Their little movie company had grossed almost a quarter of a million dollars!
The company eventually became Paramount Pictures. Goldfish changed his name to Goldwyn and teamed with Louis B. Mayer to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, today’s MGM (Goldwyn had no role in management or production there). Goldwyn produced eight films that were nominated for Best Picture Academy Awards, none of them released by MGM.
The Squaw Man put Hollywood, California, into the imaginations of filmmakers everywhere. Today, Jesse L. Lasky’s barn is a National Landmark and a delightful museum. It was moved and restored on North Highland Avenue, across from the Hollywood Bowl, and is open daily.
Members of the Famous Players–Lasky Corporation. From left, Jesse L. Lasky, Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldwyn, Cecil B. DeMille, and Al Kaufman, 1916
ON THE WALK OF FAME:
Jesse L. Lasky 6433 Hollywood Boulevard
Samuel Goldwyn 1631 Vine Street
Cecil B. DeMille 1725 Vine Street (for film)
6240 Hollywood Boulevard (for radio)
THE FIRST COSMETICIAN: MAX FACTOR
Rags-to-riches tales have been a Hollywood staple for generations, but few fictional screenplays can top the real life adventures of make-up man Max Factor.
As one of 10 children born to peasants in Eastern Europe, there was no money for education. Max was put to work at age eight at the local apothecary. At age 14, he was hired by the Russian Grand Opera to make wigs and apply make-up on opera divas. They were like wicked stepsisters who frequently vented their rage on Max, their convenient whipping boy. However, his artistry so beguiled the Czar and his family that young Factor was commanded to work for the royal family instead. At age 22, the peasant boy found himself living in storybook castles, kowtowing to Russian nobility.
“I was like a slave,” he recalled later. “I had no life. A dozen people were always watching me.” Every seventh day he was permitted to leave the palace, but always escorted by guards. With his make-up kit in hand, he’d visit a house in Moscow, supposedly on business, while guards waited in the carriage. In actuality, these visits were romantic trysts with Esther Rosa, whom he soon married with a rabbi’s blessing, but without a marriage license that might attract suspicion. The one-daya-week arrangement con
tinued for nearly nine years. Mrs. Factor gave birth to three children while her husband toiled in the palace.
He had to escape. Russia was a land of famine, pogroms and social unrest. He didn’t want his children to grow up without a father, so Factor devised an elaborate scheme. By applying make-up that gave him a sickly pallor, he gained two weeks of ordered rest in Carlsbad. He never got there. Instead, Max, his wife, two daughters and a son trekked by foot through woods and hills to a seaport, where they boarded an ocean liner bound for America. No passports were required. In all his years of labor, with no chance to step out and spend his wages, young Factor had amassed a savings of $40,000.
Max Factor applying makeup to Jean Harlow, 1930
Max Factor moved his shop to the theatre district at 362 South Hill Street, 1919
He’d heard about “motion pictures.” Maybe he could sell his wigs to moviemakers. Arriving in LA in 1908, he opened a shop at 1204 South Central Avenue, near the edge of downtown, offering wigs made from real human hair. Still barely able to read or write, Factor devoted long hours in his lab behind the shop, where he experimented with new forms of make-up for the movies. That’s where he met Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton and other one-reel comics who couldn’t get enough of Factor’s special concoction, “flexible greasepaint.” Unlike thick stage make-up that created a mask, Factor’s thin product was pliant, enabling these comics to give full facial expressions in close-up photography. There was nothing like it. When director Cecil B. DeMille discovered Factor’s flexible greasepaint in a desperate moment, it would lead to Max Factor becoming one of Hollywood’s first multimillionaires.