Motion Picture Magazine (Feb-Jul 1925)

A corner of Inyo County which, tho it really isn't at all wild, seems to be the only part of California that still looks like the Wild West Where trie Atmosphere Is At Harry Carr tells you about the troubles of tbe much-maligned location director, who has to make things look like what they ain't I GOTTA find Egypt and the River Nile and a lot of pyramids," said the director looking in at the front door, "and it's got to be somewhere around Hollywood because I'm behind the schedule." And the next director who pokes his head in at the door wants Scotland ; another one demands the Canadian Northwest ; and still another one insists that they've got to find for him a Massachusetts country town, and it's got to look exactly like New England and it's got to be in California. These are among the reasons why the location director acquires gray hair and nervous dyspepsia. Nevertheless he finds them. He finds a Scotland that looks more like Scotland — than Scotland, and a place that looks the way the South Seas ought to look, even if they dont. Tn all probability, when you see the Canadian Northwest A in the movies, you are in reality looking at Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains, about sixty miles from Los Angeles. One of the champion locations of California is another lake resort very near Big Bear. On its shores is a summer hotel, built in the manner of a French Norman village. Often you will see two companies working there at the same time. Probably the cameras will be standing near together. One will be pointed north by north-northeast at a village in France, where the actors are talking with their shrugging shoulders and saying La-la-la, and the other camera is pointed two points off to starboard at a Maine lake where the gallant, sad-eyed hero, with an honest heart and an empty pocketbook, is getting ready to rescue the millionaire's daughter from a canoe accident. When you see a picture laid in rural New England, the (T\ chances are ten to one it was made in Pleasanton, Cali P20 1A0S fornia. When the director tells the location man to find him that Massachusetts town — oh, that's almost too easy. Pleasanton was made to order for him. This is a curious old town near San Francisco. It was settled by Massachusetts and Connecticut folks back in the fifties. They brought their familiar architecture with them — even to the old country hotel with the piazza and the country church with the belfry. It looks more like the traditional New England towns than the real ones do now. P"or the New England farm country, they often use a town in Northern California, called Jamestown. There is one solitary strip of road about twenty miles out from Los Angeles, near Glendora, that looks exactly like Rhode Island— stone walls and all. No doubt it happened to be settled by someone from that section. "Derhaps the champion location town in the whole world, ■*■ however, is Sonora, in central California. It is the scene of most of the pictures supposed to be laid in the days of '49 — the Bret Harte stuff. Griffith's Scarlet Days and dozens of other big pictures were made there. It is a curious old place, hoary with tradition. Mark Twain used to live there in his younger newspaper days. The old-timers snort with scorn, however, when you try to get Mark Twain stories out of them. They cant see why anybody would bother to read any of the writings of that lazy Sam Clemens. He just wrote a lot of foolishness. Now there was a feller who lived there oncst and edited the local paper who could write grand pieces. Now he was a real writer ! Sam Clemens ! Huh ! There's an old graveyard in Sonora which stands as a monument to piety and idealism. In the days of the gold excitement, they discovered that the bodies of the dead were laid in gold ore ; that the whole graveyard was a