Pioneer Lois Weber used locations before Chaplin and Keaton

[John Bengtson]

Years before Chaplin, Keaton, and other men would film at classic Hollywood locations, Lois Weber filmed there first!

https://silentlocations.wordpress.com/2017/10/29/another-lois-weber-first-using-locations/





Cheers, John

[Richard M Roberts]

John, I'm afraid there are a few too many missing movies and/or just ones you may have not seen to be able to make a "first" claim for Lois Weber using these locations. I know I have seen the Colorado Street Bridge in Sennett Keystones and other studios films made before 1916, though it may take me some time to find one. With so much film production going on in the Los Angeles area, you can guarantee that someone was going out and utilizing any and every new location that appeared when it appeared.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Richard M Roberts]

Well actually, it didn't take me that long to find the Colorado Street Bridge being used in Keystone's LOVE, SPEED AND THRILLS (released January 18, 1915) a good year before Weber:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti27vQBe6Qc

look around the 12:43 mark.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[John Bengtson]

Well actually, it didn't take me that long to find the Colorado Street Bridge being used in Keystone's LOVE, SPEED AND THRILLS (released January 18, 1915) a good year before Weber:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti27vQBe6Qc

look around the 12:43 mark.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

Thank you sir. That was/is one scary bridge. I'm confident Weber was not absolutely first to use any location, but as described in the Re: line to this post, she was first relative to Chaplin and Keaton. I'd love to find earlier uses of that Hollywood alley (in 1916 it was practically the only alley in town). Gale Henry filmed The Dectrectress beside the same alley staircase in 1919.

[Richard M Roberts]

Well John, then perhaps the lines in your text should read, "Lois Weber shot at these locations before Chaplin and Keaton", not "Weber shot there first", it gives an impression that Weber has actually invented something, or had the brilliant idea to use these locations for the first time ever, which I do not think anyone can justify or prove to be true. I'm not even sure it would mean anything anyway, Chaplin or Keaton would have shot at those locations when they needed to, Keaton wasn't even working in Hollywood in 1916, and it is doubtful that any studio director in the teens would even be choosing, scouting, or arranging the use of locations that specifically anyway, that's the job of a subordinate or studio or production manager's (whatever they would have called them then) job. And again, I'm sure a number of other filmmakers or companies would have used those locations quite frequently, especially that alley.

RICHARD M ROBERTS