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THE MOTION PICTURES PATENTS COMPANY 77
Los Angeles proved to be the haven for which harassed moviemakers were seeking and, likewise, the most difficult obstacle the trust had yet encountered. The glory of having discovered Los Angeles belongs to William Selig, who, in his traveling minstrel days, had become well acquainted with the west. When Edison lawyers — prior to the patents company — were pursuing all outlaw film-makers, Selig and Spoor, located in Chicago, were among the last to be attacked. When Edison litigation reached out for him, Selig's thoughts turned to the west, where he might produce pictures in places so remote that subpoena-servers and confiscators of cameras would have trouble in finding his troupes.
Then, too, just about this time, the outdoor film was becoming very popular, the earliest cowboy pictures having been instantaneous, smashing successes, sweeping over America and across the seven seas in whirlwind triumph. The foreign enthusiasm for American "westerns" was so great that two or three generations must pass before the Old World can be disabused of the belief that the common wearing-apparel of millions of Uncle Sam's sons is fringed buckskins, leather or sheepskin chaps, tengallon sombreros, repeating rifles and .45 calibre six-shooters.
The first westerns were made in the east and yielded quick harvests; several producers promptly bought stock-saddles, lariats, stage coaches and other properties necessary to the manufacture of the lurid little melodramas, which they filmed in the suburbs of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Soon it became apparent that the nickelodeons would absorb all the westerns that could be manufactured, and when Edison pressure became severe, Selig journeyed west to refresh his memory of the country that he and others were immortalizing in film, the idea being that perhaps westerns could be made in the west as well as in the east.
He decided to try southern California, and there he found a mild climate, all the year round, and reliable, clear sunshine that assisted materially in obtaining a superior quality of photography. The genial climate reduced studio investment to a minimum —