Douglas Fairbanks filmed a picture at Expo in 1916

In December 1916 San Diegans came in droves to be cast as extras in Douglas Fairbanks’ silent film, “The Americano,” filmed in part in Balboa Park from a scenario written by Anita Loos. The movie was one of a dozen features — many long-lost — that were filmed here during the PanamaCalifornia Exposition.

In “The Americano,” Fairbanks, in his last Triangle-Fine Arts film, played the hero, Blaze Derringer, an American mining engineer working in Paragonia, a fictional Central American republic.

From The San Diego Union, Monday, Dec. 11, 1916:

THOUSANDS SEE FAIRBANKS MAKE MOVIES AT FAIR DARING LEAP FROM BALCONY AND WEDDING SCENE FEATURE FILMS MADE.

Lured by the fascinating prospect of seeing “movies” in the making, several thousand people passed the greater portion of yesterday at the Exposition watching Douglas Fairbanks and his company film scenes in a motion picture drama being produced by the Triangle company. The film, which will be entitled either “The Liberator” or “The Americano,” is being produced from a scenario written by Miss Anita Loos, a San Diego girl.

The scenes of the play, except the interior settings, have been laid in and around San Diego, some at La Jolla, some at the U.S. Grant Hotel, and the remainder at the Exposition. The interiors were made at Los Angeles.

The catapultic Fairbanks and his fellow actors and actresses, “supported,” as they say in theatrical parlance, by an army of 750 hardworking supers, labored from early morning until the sun had set. Fairbanks had been scheduled to speak at 4 o’clock, but so long a time was required to make the various scenes that the reception was abandoned. Instead, Fairbanks made a brief speech in the California quadrangle after the day’s work was done.

BOOSTS SAN DIEGO

The “movie” star told his hearers that he had found San Diegans unusually hospitable and that the atmosphere and climatic conditions here were ideal. “The pictures which we have taken in and around San Diego heretofore and have shown in our projecting rooms at Los Angeles are wonderfully beautiful,” he said.

“The ideal conditions to be found here are drawing the attention of big picture companies to San Diego, so don’t be surprised if you hear within the next six months an announcement that three or four big companies have decided to locate here. The moving picture companies pour thirty million dollars into Los Angeles every year. It would be pretty nice if we could get, say, half of that for San Diego, wouldn’t it?” The crowd cheered and readily agreed with Fairbanks.

The play is supposed to be laid in Central America, with a young American, the role played by Fairbanks, as the hero. The “Americano” fights several dozen heavy villains, tunnels into a dungeon to rescue the rightful president of the republic, who has been imprisoned by the usurper, and finally is rewarded with the hand of the presidents’ be-e-u-ti-ful daughter. The principal scene taken in the quadrangle shows the “Americano” with his bride coming out of the church (the California building), followed by his faithful ... servant and the bride’s father, while the “army,” with a multiplicity of gorgeously caparisoned officers, is scattered recklessly around the place. Many a youth in the crowd with his best girl, secretly wished he could make as fine a figure as did Fairbanks, standing on the church steps, his husky shoulders and shapely legs clad in the garments of a gorgeous uniform.