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MOVIE HISTORY CATALINA ISLAND STYLE
A long time ago, sometime around 1912, a director by the
name of D.W. Griffith packed up his filmmaking wares and took his crew,
including favored cinematographer Billy Bitzer and star Mae Marsh, across the
water to a relatively mysterious island off the Southern California coast to
shoot a short film.
During the silent era other more notable titles were filmed
either partially or entirely on the island, including Cecil B. DeMille’s Male and Female (1919) and The Ten Commandments (1923), Fred
Niblo’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
(1925), Old Ironsides (1926) starring
Charles Farrell and Wallace Beery, The
Black Pirate (1926) starring Douglas Fairbanks, and the earliest filmed
version of Treasure Island (1918).
But perhaps most important to a popular and prevailing
legend of the island’s history is the 1925 production of The Vanishing American, based upon a Zane Grey story of the history
of Native Americans and their struggle for acceptance after having their land
stolen from them by settlers and the United States government. The movie,
starring Richard Dix and Noah Beery, is frequently commemorated and mentioned
at various historical sites and outposts visible throughout Avalon, the
island’s main harbor town, for its unique contribution to the island’s
population, that of the 400 or so North American bison that can be found there.
The animals were shipped to the island to provide
verisimilitude for the outdoor production and then, once that production
wrapped, were left on the island to roam free; this is the official history.
But Jeannine Pedersen, curator of the Catalina Island Museum, tells of a
curious discovery. She got a look at The
Vanishing American recently and wrote that “in watching the film it appears
that it was not filmed on Catalina Island,” a revelation that must have come as
a bit of a shock. She speculates that perhaps the Catalina Island bison footage
was replaced with other footage shot on the mainland, and outside the influence
of alien transport this seems the most likely scenario. According to Pedersen
the bison have been roaming the hills of Catalina since December 1924, around
about the same time The Vanishing
American would have been filmed. (It was released in October 1925.)
Many movies, significant and otherwise, were shot on the
shores of this lovely island getaway during the last decade of the silent era.
But as the talkies approached, there was still no place where one could
actually go to see a movie on
Catalina Island. Enter chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, who bought
controlling interest of the island in 1919. Wrigley, who would also eventually
establish a spring training facility for his Chicago Cubs on Catalina Island
where the Catalina Country Club is now situated, built a dance hall on a site in
Avalon that had been originally cleared for the planned construction of the
Hotel St. Catherine. That hotel was eventually realized, but in nearby Descanso
Canyon instead, leaving room to build
Wrigley’s Sugarloaf Casino, which served not only as a ballroom and
gathering place for island residents and visitors but also as the town’s first
high school, until the population outgrew the school’s capacity. And in 1928
the original Sugarloaf Casino itself was razed in order to make room for a
newer, bigger, even more spectacular building, one that would fill the need for
celluloid dreams on the shores of Avalon.
In May of 1929, under Wrigley’s supervision and direction,
the Catalina Casino, designed by architects Sumner Spaulding and Walter Weber, was finished. The first completely circular
building of its time, the Casino, at an equivalent height of 12 stories, was
and is an Art Deco and Mediterranean Revival masterpiece consisting of three
levels—a museum dedicated to the island’s art and history which occupies the
lower level, a massive 20,000-square foot ballroom on the upper floor, and on
the central, ground-level floor, a beautiful movie theater capable of seating 1,154
people.
The Casino building dominated the landscape of Avalon,
easily visible on approach to the island by boat and from just about anywhere
else in the downtown Avalon area, and the theater inside it more than lived up
to the grandiose expectations the exterior set for it. But the Avalon Theater
was not only spacious, ornate and gorgeous to behold, instantly the hot spot on
the island for locals and visitors. It was also the very first movie theater
ever to be designed with acoustics tailored for the advent of sound motion
pictures, and as such was a favorite showcase for filmmakers like DeMille and
movie studio bigwigs like Louis B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn in which to
premiere their new films. There had literally never been anything like it in
the history of the movies.
The one thing the Catalina Casino is not and never has been,
however, is… a casino, at least as the term is currently understood. The
building’s name was given based on the meaning of the word in the original
Italian language, which simply connotes “a gathering place,” so it’s unlikely
there were ever any visitors decked out in top hats, tails and evening gowns
who arrived at its doors in 1929 expecting an evening of gaming and perhaps
slightly more decadent, alcoholically enhanced fun.
Not so in 2015, however, at least occasionally. Despite
clear declarations in just about any literature you can obtain about the
building, either online or on the island, pertaining to its function and
purpose, there are still island revelers who sidle up to the dark wood doors of
the entryway on a weekend evening, in their beachwear finery of tank tops,
sunglasses and flip-flops, and are disappointed when the employee at the
entrance informs them that, no, there are no slot machines or black jack tables
waiting inside. The look on the faces of the couple who approached the Catalina
Casino just ahead of me, my wife and my daughters last Saturday night after
being informed of this fact—well, think of a child who’d just been told that
there was no Santa Claus, or of a slightly older child who’d just been told
that, no, Santa Claus would not be dealing poker for them after all and that
they would have to make the half-mile walk back into town to the karaoke bar
for any real action.
The Casino building itself stands as majestic and beautiful
now as it ever did, perhaps even more so, its cavernous movie auditorium and
lush ballroom interiors having been recently restored to their original
glories. It’s a place that has always called to me whenever I look at pictures
of Avalon Harbor, and it certainly did upon my one previous visit to Catalina
Island around 21 years ago. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to set foot
inside of it during that trip. But when my family and I ventured the short boat
ride across the sea to get there last weekend, I was determined to make a movie
at the Avalon Theater the crown jewel of our brief visit.
We started our walk from the downtown district Saturday
night just a little early, acting on a tip from one of the guides on the zip
line adventure I went on earlier in the day (That’s another story!) that on
Friday and Saturday nights the movie is preceded by an hour-long concert
performed by one of the only musicians, on the island or anywhere, with the
ability to play the theater’s massive pipe organ. So we made sure to get there
in plenty of time for the musical prelude. Arriving just before 6:30 pm, and after
listening to the employee at the door explain the meaning of the word “casino”
to the disappointed folks ahead of us, we handed over our tickets and went
inside, heads immediately tilting upward to take in the beautiful walnut wood
paneling that enriches the ambiance of the theater’s lobby.
But it’s the auditorium itself which is designed, as all
great movie palaces are, to take your breath away, and that it did. We entered
through the center doors and began the walk toward our seats gazing upward, as
everyone surely does, at the beautiful Art Deco murals created by artist John Gabriel Beckman that grace the domed walls, including a figure surfing
dual waves (presumably off the Catalina coast) on the stage curtain and a
reproduction of Botticelli’s Venus residing
on the apex of the proscenium arch just above the screen.
My first thought was that, with its lack of curtained walls
or any of the familiar trappings of an acoustically designed space that we’ve
become used to seeing in modern theaters, the Avalon may look beautiful, but
the sound coming from the movie, much less the organ, is probably going to reverberate
like a nightmare in an echo chamber.
Wrong. According to the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy,
because the theater was the first to be constructed with an ear toward the
oncoming sound era of motion picture production, great care was taken to make
sure that not only was the sound optimal inside the huge auditorium, but also
that the theater and the ballroom be exceedingly insulated from each other so
that moviegoers were not distracted by the sound of the band or the potential
3,000 dancers that could be in the ballroom above.
In fact, the acoustics
provided by the circular domed ceiling have been studied by acoustical
designers from all over the country because of the high quality transference
made possible by the auditorium’s design. The conservancy claims that a speaker
on the theater stage can speak in a normal voice without a microphone and can
be clearly heard by everyone seated inside, and after experimenting a bit with
this before the organ concert began I can attest that it seems to be true. Yet
when the performance was under way on stage, any talking by audience members
didn’t seem to be loud enough to distract from that performance, unless the
rude chattering was taking place directly next to me (which it was,
occasionally).
And speaking of the pre-show entertainment, let’s just say
that arriving early was one of the best ideas we had all weekend. The giant
Page pipe organ, one of only two currently in operation in the United States,
may have seen better days, but it’s still magnificent to behold and even more
magnificent to hear, its massive gathering of sound gliding along the curves of
the auditorium and enveloping the listener in a way that has effectively been
lost to modern moviegoing audiences. The Avalon’s Page has been in operation
since the theater opened. Though the theater was designed for the exhibition of
sound movies, the era of talkies was yet to get full in swing by May of 1929,
so this wondrous instrument was used frequently as accompaniment for the silent
pictures that would still play there.
But Catalina Island historians, and the
residents who are still around to remember firsthand, also loved the organ for
the special concerts given before the screening of movies, or sometimes in a
separate program during those comparatively lazy island afternoons. (These free
afternoon concerts were an Avalon Theater tradition that, except for a break
during World War II, extended well into the 1950s.) Much care and refurbishment
of the organ has taken place in the years since, including a major overhaul
done to coincide with the theater’s 50th anniversary in 1979, and it
still feels and sounds like an instrument that enjoys the benefits of a lot of
TLC, to say nothing of the tender talents of those who play it.
The name of the man at the keys of the Page before the movie
last Saturday night was never made available, either in advertising or at the
theater that night, and it’s a notch against me for not pursuing the
information. But my zip line tour guide assured me earlier in the day that he
was the only one on the island with the ability to coax the sort of music out
of it that it was meant to create, and when we finally saw him at the bench,
his informal, friendly manner did nothing to diminish the grandeur of his
playing. Whether cruising through a medley built around “Blue Moon,” summoning
the mystery and romance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” or
cranking out a jaunty melody that made me feel like I’d suddenly been
transported inside the world’s largest mock-up of the insides of David Lynch’s
radiator, the man’s performance was nothing less than mesmerizing.
At one point I made my way up to the front row of seats
directly behind so that I could better see how it was than one person could
wring so much out of such a complicated construct. I sat and listened there for
at least two tunes, when suddenly, in between numbers, he turned to acknowledge
the audience’s applause, saw me sitting there and said “Hello.” In breach of
all acceptable audience protocol, I jumped up and took advantage of the
opportunity to tell him how much I was enjoying the performance. And then I
asked him, seemingly out of nowhere, if he’d ever seen the Vincent Price
classic The Abominable Dr. Phibes, hurriedly
including, lest my inquiry seem dangerously random, that the movie opens with
Phibes at another majestic pipe organ, playing an otherworldly and terrifying
arrangement of Mendelssohn’s “War March of the Priests,” and that I was hoping,
by some happy chance, he knew how to play it. (Yes, I made… a request.)
To my surprise, his face lit up. “I love that movie!” he
replied. “And that music!” For a
brief moment I held out hope that I might actually get to hear him peel off Dr.
Phibes’ greatest hit in this awesome venue. But it was not meant to be. He said
he’d always wanted to learn it but has yet to take the plunge. “But I love that movie!” he offered, before
thanking me for my interest and returning to the Page for his grand finale.
After that, it hardly mattered what movie was playing, which
was fortunate because the main feature was Terminator:
Genisys, a picture my kids had a loudly professed desire not to see. (They might have actually
rather have seen D. W. Griffith’s Man’s
Genesis instead!) But what could we do? We were on an island, the ultimate
captive audience to the only show in town, and we let the high of the Page pipe
organ performance carry us through the latest thoroughly unnecessary
installment in this apparently unkillable franchise. The movie’s alternate
universe/time travel narrative becomes so abstractly convoluted that it loses
all urgency, not a good development for an ostensibly high-octane summer
blockbuster. But I didn’t much care. I spent much of the movie’s two-hour
running time amusing myself by noticing how much the slab of beef cast to
replace Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese reminded me of Chico Marx after a summer
workout regimen at World’s Gym.
Soon it was over, the world had once again (for the time
being) been saved, and by the time we hit the pathway along the harbor on our
way back to our hotel I’d almost forgotten the movie entirely. But somewhere I
could still hear the distant chimes and mellifluous waves of chords building to
monumental crescendos and then subsiding inside my head and I thought, what a
wonderful way to end a family vacation on Catalina Island, a place where so
much movie history was born and continues to flourish. I looked at my wife and
the faces of my kids as they bopped down past the moored boats toward the
bustling nightlife of Avalon and I could see that they undoubtedly would have agreed.
And then I remembered, as I would frequently that night
before I went to sleep, that tonight I met a master of the Page pipe organ at
the Avalon Theater who turned out to be a Dr. Phibes geek. Top that, Walley
World.
SOURCES:
Catalina Casino Wikipedia page
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