Westward Expansion
Due to Chicago's seasonal weather patterns and the popularity of westerns, Gilbert Anderson took part of the company to California, moving from Northern to Southern California and back on a regular basis. This included locations in San Rafael and Santa Barbara. They opened the Essanay-West studio in Niles, California, in 1908, at the foot of Niles Canyon, where many Broncho Billy westerns were shot, along with The Tramp featuring Charlie Chaplin. Eventually the studio moved all operations to Los Angeles.
The Chicago studio, as well as the new Niles studio, continued to produce films for another five years, reaching a total of well over 1,400 Essanay titles during its ten-year history. The Chicago studio produced many of Essanay's famous movies, including the very first American Sherlock Holmes (1916), the first American A Christmas Carol (1908) and the first Jesse James movie, The James Boys of Missouri (1908). Essanay also produced some of the world's very first cartoons (Dreamy Dud was the most popular character).
Read more about this topic: Essanay Studios
Famous quotes containing the words westward and/or expansion:
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation’s press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)