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THE MOTION PICTURES PATENTS COMPANY 79
Los Angeles had one advantage that out-weighed all others for the outlaws fleeing from subpoena servers and camera smashers. They investigated Selig's operations, and unhesitatingly settled in and near Los Angeles because it was close to the Mexican border. With a tight board fence around the lot on which a simple platform stage was built, and with a sentinel or two on guard at the corners, the movie maker could proceed in comfort with his labors. If suspicious strangers appeared down the road, a signal from the lookout was enough to cause the troupers to suspend work, hustle the precious cameras into a motor car (another new device which just at that time was proving to be useful and reliable), and dash across the border into Mexico, where Uncle Sam's marshals had no power.
Within a year or so, Los Angeles buzzed and sizzled with film folk and their contraptions. Motor cars rushed up to bungalows and stately dwellings, and discharged their loads of heroes, heroines, villains, trained nurses, policemen, and society gentlemen and ladies — all with faces painted a ghastly white save for lips as bright as slices of ripe water-melon — and a man in leather puttees and with a large megaphone to amplify a voice that seemed to require no amplification, began to shout orders.
Perhaps these film folk were defying Uncle Sam's solemn laws; perhaps they were bootleggers of the purest ray serene — General Film called them names much more violent than these — Puritan Los Angeles was not the least bit disturbed. The movie makers were fascinating to tourists and residents alike, and business men observed that they were bringing a lot of new money into the town. Los Angeles found them interesting, amusing, and profitable, and local public sentiment concerned itself not at all with the laws or the equities involved in the trust's battle.
Thus fortuitously was the fate of Los Angeles decided. In movie theaters everywhere people began to catch glimpses of streets filled with quaint little houses, of flower-filled patios, of palms and pepper trees, and eucalyptus. Stories were circulated of the everlasting summer, of the "bungalows" that could be rented so cheaply, of the romantic movie business that was a