In Part 1 of this series, I provided an overview of how and why Jacksonville was the Winter Film Capitol of the World and was a precursor to Hollywood. The first film company to discover Jacksonville and set up shop here was Kalem Company. The studio was founded in New York and named after its founders George Kleine, Samuel Long, and Frank J. Marion. Cold winters, poor weather, and dangerous indoor lighting of the era meant that filming could only occur regularly during certain months of the year.
Kalem’s scout was sent south to search for a winter studio where they could film year round. They stopped in our bustling City in 1907 and quickly wrote back home that they should look no further for a winter film location. Kalem Company immediately set out to open a studio in Jacksonville, making them the first film producer to open a permanent set location outside of the Northeast.
Soon after Kalem ventured south, other producers also began to leave behind cold winters for sunshine and varied landscape. In these early years, most of those companies came south just to film in the winter months. Our first snowbirds! Kalem’s company is notable for being the first motion picture company to remain in Jacksonville throughout the year.
Kalem set up shop in the three story Roseland Hotel which was located on three riverfront acres around the current location of the abandoned Ford Factory (Tallyrand and Clarkson Streets). The Roseland Hotel was one of the first regular tourist hotels in Jacksonville after the Great Fire of 1901. The advertised the ability to accommodate 100 people, had private rooms with hot and cold water, electric lights and call bells. There was a tennis court, croquet grounds, a river dock, and a bowling alley on site.
Kalem moved a whole company to the location. The team included Director Sidney Olcott, Cinematographer George Hollister, Scenic Artist Allen Farnham, and property man Arthur Clough. Kalem’s star actress was Gene Gauntier. She made strides for women in the film industry by also becoming their most productive screenwriter. She also chose locations, supervised sets, and even co-directed many of the films. Gauntier was part of a small group of actors that played different roles in the films made here. Some of the other actors included Jack J. Clark, who was married to Gene Gauntier for a spell, Robert Vignola who played the bad guy, J.P. McGowan, Alice Hollister, and Ethel Eastcourt.
I found this old silent film documentary by Kalem entitled “The Diver” which focuses on a shipwreck being blown up with dynamite on the St. Johns River. It is pretty cool because you get to see an authentic diver getting outfitted in period gear and then submerging into the water to set up the dynamite under the shipwreck. It makes you wonder how many shipwrecks they had in our beautiful river back in the day because they look like they knew what they were doing!
It didn’t take long for Kalem to outgrow the boarding house. He constructed a huge studio nearby where he installed a $20,000 lighting system, a glass ceiling, an indoor stage and a 54’x40’ outdoor stage where they would film two movies a week.
In 1908, Kalem produced eighteen 1-reelers called “The Sunny South Series.” The first film was A Florida Feud (aka Love in the Everglades) about a couple in love but dealing with a feud between their families. It was an instant national success, yet, locals were angered by the negative depiction of southerners within Kalem’s first films. It sort of reminds me of Florida Man jokes. It seems it has always been easy to make fun of the south.
Kalem’s third winter in Jacksonville was also the 50th anniversary of the Civil War. Veterans throughout the country were organizing reunions and raising more Civil War monuments than any other time in history. Filmmakers took advantage of the anniversary hubbub and began shooting a ton of Civil War flicks. Kalem even purchased cannons and stored them at the Roseland Hotel for use on their historic-themed films.
A few of Kalem’s Civil War movies can be found online, and if you decide to watch them you will notice that the cards are written in Dutch. This is interesting to me because it shows the international distribution of American films produced in Jacksonville. If curious, check out By a Woman's Wit, The Girl Spy Before Vicksburg and Darling of the C.S.A. Oh, and The Confederate Ironclad which stars Miriam Cooper who would end up landing a staring role in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (a movie I was forced to watch in my college film class). Cooper wrote a memoir where she told stories about her baby pet alligator that she adopted while living in Jacksonville, which is just so DUVAL to me.
Kalem was sold to Vitagraph Studios in 1917 and by that time they had moved much of their productions to California. I have too many other stories to tell before I talk about the downfall of the film industry in Jacksonville. Stay tuned for the next installment, which will focus on all of the film studies located at Dixieland Amusement Park, one of which had 160 trained animals they used in films, including elephants, tigers, and camels, oh my!