It was just after the turn of the 20th Century when the streets of New York became crowded with small film crews using the city’s people and places as background settings for their one and two reel films. There were two main contributing factors that shaped producers and directors thinking toward the great outdoors and the west. Rain, snow and cloudy weather was one, the other was man's own greed. The Motion Picture Patents Company was a monopoly and referred to as The Trust. This organization controlled production by holding onto Thomas Edison's Patents. (Edison invented the American version of the motion picture camera.) These few people, the monopoly, either owned or had control of film theatres, and nickelodeons. Their scheme was to limit the size of a picture to one reel. They wanted quick turnover, get the nickel and dime customer in and out in a hurry, then do it again. Quality didn't mean a thing. These little films consisted of travel scenes, chases of one kind or another, fights, fires or a damsel in distress. Those Trust people were about as short sighted as your current corner porno house operator. Men with true vision wanted to tell the big story, expand theatre to the great outdoors, widen the horizon with scope, color and background. That monopoly was the dilemma facing every company wanting to do the longer format, feature film.

The year was 1913 when Sam Goldwyn, Cecil B. De Mille, Jesse L. Lasky and Arthur Friend under the banner of Lasky's Feature Play Company set out to make an end run around the big guns of the Trust and make a feature film. They chose to base their film on the Broadway hit titled "The Squaw Man." The decision was made to do this western out among the cactus in it's natural setting. This selection had the added bonus of getting far away from the Trust and their harassment minded goons. Well, they put a group of five key people together with baggage, camera, and Cecil B. De Mille with his fancy title of director-general heading the group. Dustin Farnum, a good actor and Broadway star, would be the picture’s leading man. Oscar Apfel, a well-established film director, would do the directing with DeMille looking over his shoulder, and learning some of the techniques that would eventually make him famous. Alfred Gandolfi cameraman and Fred Kley, Farnum's dresser, rounded out the group whose destination was Flagstaff, Arizona. Flagstaff situated just south of the Grand Canyon seemed like the ideal location.

Filled with excitement this little band of would be moviemakers boarded a westbound train, prepared to make film history. It would be a routine trip with the regular transfer in Chicago, then came the sights of farms and crops of wheat and green corn giving way to shades of brown as the wide expanse of dry plains stretched as far as the eye could see. Small dusty towns, train-watering stops, peopled with folks of different skin from sun-dried tans to reds. Indian moccasins, rings, trinkets and blankets for barter or for sale. Splashes of color filled the frame. It's not just a painting now. Cecil B. DeMille is seeing the real thing, cowboys, Indians, bankers and merchants of the west. It's another world with a different way to walk, talk and dress. Stories, characters and camera angles were mixed with the true pictures spinning in his inventive mind. No time to be wasted.

DeMille and Oscar Apfel were working hard at writing their scenario, the basic blueprint for The Squaw Man. (To be continued)

Writers corner: Check the archives for my Quick Fix for Writers Block. Once you get set to go to work and look at the blank screen or clean empty page and need a nudge you might call on these two famous men’s admonitions to move you into action. Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. Will Rogers What you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Goethe