FILMMAKER LIT UP FOREST WITH GAS
The B.C. film business has exploded, contributing a record $2.9 billion to the economy last year.
The current boom started in the 1980s, when American producers starting filming TV series like MacGyver, Wiseguy and 21 Jump Street in Vancouver.
But the roots of the B.C. film business go back much further, to the 1920s. According to the reelingback.com website, the first major production filmed in B.C. was The Conflict, starring Priscilla Dean.
An article in the Aug. 6, 1921 Vancouver World said the movie’s producers built a dam out of logs on the Bull River, near Cranbrook in the Kootenays. Then they blew it up with dynamite, filming Dean as she tried to escape the torrent of logs unleashed down the river.
In 1922, legendary producer Louis B. Mayer sent crews to the Kootenays to film Hearts Aflame, “the first super-picture filmed in British Columbia.”
It came to the Allen Theatre at Granville and Georgia on March 24, 1923, amid some classic Hollywood hype. “A whole mountainside blown up to stave off THE MOST GIGANTIC FOREST FIRE EVER SCREENED,” screamed the ad.
“Positively the most daring photo play ever staged for the entertainment of any people. The great forest fires in this play (are) a wonder scene such as you see but once in a lifetime.”
Over-the-top promotion was par for the course in 1923. Later that week, the World had an ad for the adventure Robin Hood, starring the swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks.
“The greatest film show on earth,” said the Robin Hood ad. “The next biggest thing is an earthquake.”
Hearts Aflame is forgotten today, along with its stars Anna Q. Nilsson and Frank Keenan. It was based on a novel called Timber by Howard Titus, and sounds like a hokey melodrama.
The plot revolved around a beautiful young woman (Nilsson) who owned a beautiful forest that a “crabbed old millionaire” (Keenan) wanted to chop down. Keenan sent his handsome young son (played by Craig Ward) to negotiate with Nilsson, and they fall in love.
It’s a classic B.C. tale — Nilsson’s into reforestation, Keenan into clear-cutting. At some point a forest fire threatens Nilsson’s land, and she and Ward drive a locomotive through the flames to reach a “powder magazine” that can blast a hillside and stop the fire from spreading.
Director Reginald Barker apparently set up 20 cameras to film the forest fire, which was a real blaze — a story in the Kingston (N.Y.) Daily Freeman said the filmmakers doused a hillside with 100,000 gallons of gas, then set it aflame.
“Suddenly in the midst of the conflagration a cameraman was startled to see a huge timber wolf plunge headlong into a pool and start a mad effort to reach the shore where the camera was placed.
“Without a minute’s hesitation the cameraman started to grind and for 10 minutes ensured one of the wildest scenes ever shot. Following the first wolf there plunged in two wild cats and a small buck, then a doe and three more wolves.
“Suddenly a huge brown bear plunged in with his coat smoking. With a swift rush he reached the camera and with a big paw smashed the camera to the ground.”
It’s unclear where the forest fire was filmed. But at least part of it was shot at Pacoima Canyon near San Fernando, Calif.
It made headlines around North America, because Nilsson was “burned severely” filming the scene where she drives a locomotive through the flames.
“It was reported that she was burned around the neck, face and shoulders and that a large portion of her hair, not confined by an army campaign hat, was burned from her head,” said a story in the Aug. 31, 1922 Abilene Daily Reflector.
Nilsson spent a week recuperating from her burns, but they don’t seem to have had any effect on her career — she appeared in nine movies in 1923, and 10 in 1924. She appeared as herself in the film classic Sunset Boulevard in 1950, playing cards with the faded star Norma Desmond (played by Gloria Swanson).