Health & Fitness
Selig Polychrome Studio and Mack Sennett Studio in Edendale (A Blog History Lesson)
Silent film comedy in Southern California began on what is now Glendale Boulevard. We can still see the vestiges of two of the studios.
If you stand on the rise of the bit of Allesandro Street that comes off Berkeley, you can look into the Edendale glen and see what was the main building of the Keystone Studio (1912) – called Mack Sennett Studio after 1917 -- wedged between two modern additions. Today, the three structures comprise most of Public Storage. A fence encloses Public Storage, and on one side is a recycler; behind it is a wall. Someone has left old furniture on the back street.
From that vantage point on Allesandro you can imagine how the remaining Sennett dark stage once dominated the glen.
On the western side of the street another part of the Keystone, later the Mack Sennett, remains as Thriftee Storage. The brick building with a tiny store called “La Tiendita” opening to the street (1916) was part of the studio.
Now gone, but once on the corner of old Allesandro (now Glendale Boulevard)and Effie, was the cyclorama -- a big drum with painted scenery that a worker cranked from slow to fast speeds and the actors walked or ran or pretended to drive along a platform. The camera didn’t move: it was stuck on top of a tripod.
You can see the cyclorama and the three houses across the street (1645 N. Alvarado (1906) 1628 N. Alvarado (1907), 1642 N. Alvarado (1905) in a film clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IieDCgvrVlA.
Some years ago, a “concrete” obelisk -- the obelisk actually was made of chicken wire, 2x2s and plaster -- showed a plaque indicating the spot was where silent film history in Southern California began. Ralph Edwards Productions installed the obelisk after the Mack Sennett "This Is Your Life" episode was aired in 1954.
The marker stood at a corner of where the Selig Polychrome studio (The large partially empty lot at the exit of the 2 freeway (near Duane) and Glendale Boulevard. It stood, according to historian Bob Birchard, in the wrong place (Email correspondence on 7/20/2011 with Robert S. Birchard, Editor AFI Catalog of Feature Films, author of King Cowboy: Tom Mix and the Movies). It should have been placed where the Sennett studio stood.
Francis Boggs and William Selig moved to the Edendale district in October 1908 and set up the first film studio in Edendale in a rented bungalow on part of what had been a horse ranch. “Bungalow” means a one-story structure but this one looked like a shed with windows.
They -- by then the Selig-Polychrome Company -- built the new studio exterior to look like a Spanish mission and used real adobe. The corner of the lot is empty (“Selig Lot A” Edendale Tract).
Hollywood Heritage hopes to one day install the plaque in the remaining Sennett dark stage.
