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Images of America: California
Silent-Era Filmmaking in Santa Barbara
Between 1910 and 1921, the American Film Company was one of the fledgling movie industrys most successful studios, with production facilities in Santa Barbara and business offices in Chicago. Nicknamed for its distinctive winged A logo, the Flying A produced nearly 1,200 films, starring such favorites of the day as Mary Miles Minter, J. Warren Kerrigan, Wallace Reid, and King Baggot. The companys rather patriotic motto invited patrons to See Americans first. The studios films also documented the picturesque and developing Pacific seaside community of Santa Barbara and served as a training ground for some of Hollywoods greatest directors, including Allan Dwan, Henry King, Victor Fleming, Frank Borzage, George Marshall, William Desmond Taylor, and Marshall Neilan.
- GenresFilm
128 pages, Paperback
First published July 2, 2007
About the author
Robert S. Birchard
8 books54 followersRobert S. Birchard is an award-winning film editor who brings an insider’s perspective and a great affection for the people who work in the picture business to his chronicles of the movies. He is the author of Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood, Early Universal City, Silent-era Filmmaking in Santa Barbara, and King Cowboy: Tom Mix and the Movies and a contributing writer to the omnibus volumes M-G-M When the Lion Roars, Don Miller’s Hollywood Corral, The Encyclopedia of Early Film and Hollywood: The Movie Factory. His articles on Hollywood filmmakers have appeared in American Cinematographer, Statement, Film History, The Moving Image, Griffithiana, Daily Variety and Los Angeles Times Calendar. He is a past president and current board member of the preservation organization Hollywood Heritage, Inc. and is current president of the Cinecon Classic Film Festival which presents the annual Cinecon Classic Film Festival and contributes to film preservation projects.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 15, 2008
Released in a series of picture books devoted to local history, this book is a really nice history of the Flying A company, jam-packed with facts, names, and dates in its relatively brief text, and the pictures are great, if rather small (to fit the series format). A filmography or list of extant films would have been nice, but again, the constraint was probably the series format (and a film list can be found online at http://www.filmandmedia.ucsb.edu/flyi...)
March 19, 2017
Liked this more than I expected, despite my near-zero interest in old silent films. The local-history and local-color angles won me over. Good book!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews