Filmmaker D.W. Griffith and the Lauderdale Harbors land "purchase"

 

Griffith 1907/ Creative Commons

By Jane Feehan

This started out as a piece about famous filmmaker David Wark Griffith (1875-1948*) and his property purchase in Lauderdale Harbors in 1925. It evolved into something a bit different.

D.W. Griffith had directed scenes for a few movies in Fort Lauderdale from 1919-1923 (Idol Dancer, Love Flower, and The White Rose). He praised the area for its jungle-like unspoiled beauty in 1919. But on a return trip, Griffith became disenchanted with the new seawalls installed along the New River and moved some of his filmmaking to a studio in Hialeah, west of Miami. In 1920 Griffith told a reporter that he did not think he would move operations from California to Florida, though Florida had “inducements.” D.W. Griffith was not only a director of singular filmmaking talents but a polite and tactful man of his time.

So, I was surprised to see a story in the Fort Lauderdale Herald dated Nov. 30, 1925 that Griffith had purchased a block of lots in Lauderdale Harbors, a subdivision being developed and promoted by W.F. Morang and Son. The neighborhood sits on the west side of today’s Intracoastal, north of SE 15th Street. The sale to the film director was reportedly handled by C.P Weidling, described as co-founder of the city’s first law firm, first publisher of the Fort Lauderdale Herald and one-time representative in the Florida House of Representatives.

Griffith, wrote the reporter, had traveled to Tallahassee to have Weidling handle the transaction. Weidling hinted the filmmaker bought a block of lots to build a movie studio. Griffith, said Weidling, liked it here and was going to spend the winter in Fort Lauderdale. The article proffered that Griffith described the land next to the Las Olas Inn (today A1A and Las Olas) as “the most beautiful on the East Coast and the New River was the most beautiful [river] in the world.”

Griffith may or may not have said that. What was true was Fort Lauderdale was booming. Morang was developing and dredging canals in Rio Vista Isles, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, the Seven Bridges area off Las Olas Boulevard and other nearby sites. One report from the Morang sales office claimed daily average lots sales of $150,000 … with opening day kicking off with $750K in business. On Nov. 7, the developer reported a sale of one block of lots for $500k to a “syndicate of 10 men,” a record for a single land purchase in a subdivision.

But no sale involved Griffith. On Dec. 8 the director denied he purchased the Lauderdale Harbors land. In a telegram sent to The Miami Herald he said though he did not buy the Lauderdale Harbors property as reported by the Associated Press, he would tour Florida to “ascertain its possibilities for that purpose [a movie studio] as no one believes more than I in Florida’s tremendous possibilities.” I did not find denial of his land purchase in the Fort Lauderdale News.

The hurricane of 1926 halted real estate sales and destroyed hopes for developing Fort Lauderdale and South Florida. The Great Depression hit the United States a few years later but Fort Lauderdale and Florida bounced back in the late 1940s and 1950s. Today, Lauderdale Harbors claims its place as one of the city’s most desirable neighborhoods where homes now sell for $850,000 to $33 million.

The story about the land sale to D.W. Griffith ... was it a high hope or a sales promotion?

For more on Griffith, including his perilous sea adventure off Fort Lauderdale, see index.
______
*Griffith died financially destitute and is buried in Crestwood, Kentucky where his grave is cared for by an organization of fans.

Tags Fort Lauderdale in the 1920s, Fort Lauderdale communities, Fort Lauderdale neighborhoods,
D.W. Griffith, David Wark Griffith, Lauderdale Harbors, Fort Lauderdale history



Sources:

Miami Herald, Nov. 12, 1920
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, July 24, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Daily News July 30, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Nov. 7, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Dec. 1, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Daily News Nov. 30, 1925
Miami Herald, Dec. 8, 1925

South Florida filmmakers held high hopes for local studios in the 1920s

By Jane Feehan

The motion picture industry in the U.S. was launched in the early 1900s by D.W. Griffith and a few other filmmakers. Of acclaim was his controversial Birth of a Nation filmed in California in 1915. Four years later, Griffith came to Fort Lauderdale to make Idol Dancer*. By the early 1920s, a few industry hopefuls opened studios in Florida.

Miami Studios, Inc. was built in Hialeah, eight miles from downtown Miami in 1921. Its two buildings contained two studios each with stages configured 125 by 60 feet for interior shots. Construction progressed “just as though a permanent building is being erected except using plaster board instead of plaster and it was being painted more carefully than a hotel,” reported the Miami Daily Metropolis  (Jul. 28, 1921).

The first movie out of the studio was  Outlaws of the Sea (1923). It was based on Filigree Flask, a story about rum runners written by Miami area resident EH Lebel (Prohibition had been underway since 1920). John Brunton produced the action film shot on Miami’s streets and waterfront. Jack Okey, who went on to have a long career in the film industry, directed the project starring Marguerite Courtot, Pierre Gendron, Gordon Standing and HH Patlee. 

Another movie released the same year was Where the Pavement Ends based on a novel by John Russell. It was directed by Rex Ingram and starred Edward Connelly, Alice Terry and Ramon Navarro. A desert scene was filmed on the beach near today’s Fontainebleau Hotel. Part of the movie was also shot in Cuba. Unfortunately, the film is lost.

Studio principals also hoped to produce a movie about Thomas A Edison’s life to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of his invention of the incandescent light bulb. It’s doubtful this came to pass; no record exists of such a film produced by the company. No other films are mentioned in news of those years about the studio, the “largest motion picture plant in the South, where the greatest personages of filmdom have operated.” D.W. Griffith shot White Roses in Florida and Louisiana but it wasn't a production of Miami Studios. Newspapers of 1923 show attempts to sell lots owned by the company. By that time, Hollywood was the place to be in the film industry and Florida’s chances as a movie production center were all but a dream. Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

 Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

*For DW Griffith and other early filmmakers in Florida, use search box or index

Additional Sources

Miami Daily Metropolis, Feb. 2, 1923

Miami Daily Metropolis, Mar. 5, 1923

Miami Daily Metropolis, July 8, 1922

Tags: Miami history, film industry history in Miami, film industry history South Florida, 

DW Griffith, movies made in Miami, Miami movie studio,  Hialeah movie studio, film studios in Miami, 

Hugh T. Birch and the property he didn't donate to Fort Lauderdale

Birch State Park from the Intracoastal

By Jane Feehan   

Hugh Taylor Birch (1848-1943), a Chicago attorney and former counsel for Standard Oil, was sailing a small boat from Hobe Sound in the 1890s when a storm drove him near Fort Lauderdale's harbor.  Rescued, he was brought to Stranahan’s camp along the New River. Boat mishap aside, there was something about Fort Lauderdale that brought Birch back to buy property – more than three miles of it - along the ocean.

Aerial view of Birch property1928
Florida State Archives

At that time, most early settlers looked toward the Everglades for opportunity. But Birch made the $500 purchase ($1 dollar per acre) because it was where he wanted to live a few months each year. Some  say motion picture producer D.W. Griffith offered him $250,000 in 1920 for a portion of the land, but Birch refused to sell. (D.W. Griffith stories about land purchases in Fort Lauderdale seemed to fuel a lot of interest but ring akin to Capone stories of the time: unsubstantiated.)                    

Birch property 1900 Florida State Archives

                    On December 6, 1941, Birch hosted Senator Spessard Holland at his Fort Lauderdale estate to find out about deeding his property to the state’s park system, because, he told the senator, “he had had some friction with the city and county …”  Birch liked what he heard and moved forward to make arrangements with the state to donate 180 acres and nearly one mile along the Intracoastal waterway. He lived on the estate until his death in 1943.

               

Hugh Taylor Birch State Park was opened and dedicated January 27, 1951. The park’s entrance is on Sunrise near A1A. Its natural habitat provides a venue for hikers, bicyclists, canoeists and picnickers to enjoy the outdoors.  

Canoes at Birch State Park 1950
Florida State Archives

__________

Sources: 

Genealogical Society of Broward County

Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia (2004).

Weidling, Philip J., Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Florida State parks, Hugh T. Birch, Florida history, 
Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, history of Fort Lauderdale, Hugh Taylor Birch shipwreck

Fort Lauderdale's Hotel Broward, first tourist hotel

Opened in 1919
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

 

By Jane Feehan

Fort Lauderdale experienced rapid growth after World War I and needed a hotel.  When approached about it, George E. Henry, from Massachusetts, decided to help the fledgling town. He owned suitable property on Andrews Avenue and Las Olas Boulevard. In moving forward with the project, Henry had an architect draw up plans and then put out bids for construction.

When the total price reached $140,000, $40,000 more than Henry agreed to pay, he suggested citizens raise cash for the overage. A citizens committee raised $23,000, but was still thousands short. City Council President  Frank Stranahan stepped in and deeded Stranahan Park for $1 to someone who could sell it to Fort Lauderdale (as council president, Stranahan couldn’t sell land to the city). Fort Lauderdale paid $6,000 for the park and that money was turned over to the hotel building fund.

Lobby Circa 1930
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Still short of the $140,000, Henry went ahead and built the four floor, 100-room Hotel Broward in Fort Lauderdale, the county’s first tourist hotel. It opened for the season in 1919 and counted among its first visitors actress Lillian Gish, filmmaker D. W. Griffith and his troupe of actors in Fort Lauderdale to make the movie, Idol Dancer.

Political will and community spirit merged to bring about the first hotel catering to tourists; it was far from the beach, though a causeway via Las Olas to the beach opened in 1917. A 1919 advertisement for Hotel Broward displays a menu and a $1.50 cover charge for their New Year’s Eve festivities. More highlights from that ad (capitalization of letters theirs):

• Located on the Dixie Highway mid-way between Palm Beach and Miami
• More for Your Money than Any Hotel in the South
• A Place of Elegance yet reasonable
• New Golf Course where Special rates are made to Tourists
• The Last Word in Fishing and Ocean Bathing
• John W. Needham, Leasee and Manager

The hotel deteriorated over the decades; much of it was rented out in later years as office space. A wrecking ball razed the "grand old lady of downtown  Fort Lauderdale" in 1974. 

__________

Sources:    

  

Miami News, Dec. 30, 1919

Fort Lauderdale Herald, Dec. 30, 1919

Fort Lauderdale News, May , 1974

Weidling, Philip J., and Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).

Tags: History of Fort Lauderdale, Broward County history, Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale hotels, Fort Lauderdale historic hotels

Governors Club opens in 1937 setting Fort Lauderdale hospitality standards and legal precedent

 

Governors Club circa 1940 Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

The Governors Club, located on Las Olas Boulevard, was built by Robert Hayes Gore, Sr., owner of the Fort Lauderdale News. For decades after its 1937 opening, the hotel was a Fort Lauderdale landmark and gathering place for politicians, socialites and national notables.  

Gore (RHG) bought the Wilmar Hotel, an unfinished eight-floor steel skeleton in 1936 for $20,000. The original owner, William H. Marshall, first mayor of Fort Lauderdale, stopped work on the building during the 1920s when he ran out of money. Gore hired an architect and construction firm to resume the project and opened it as the Governor’s Club in December, 1937. (Gore was once governor of Puerto Rico.) 

A Fort Lauderdale News story lauded its "eight floors of sheer beauty and convenience." Furnishings of the building afforded guests "facilities on par with any in the United States." Charles Haight of Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. in Chicago planned the interior of the hotel. Its lobby was decorated in soft blue and Van Gogh yellow with modern paintings and blue leather furniture. Each floor presented a different color scheme.

The Governors (the apostrophe was deleted) Club operated from Thanksgiving until Easter each year until 1947 when it was opened year round.  In its early days, the hotel hosted singer Kate Smith, broadcaster Lowell Thomas, film maker D.W. Griffith and other celebrities who enjoyed its privacy. The Governors Club also became a popular spot for holiday dining, special occasions, and as refuge during hurricanes. State politicians often chose it as a site from where their key speeches were delivered.

The hotel faded over the years as competition for rooms shifted to the beach.  For more than a decade, the Governors Club lay vacant until it was demolished in 1995. A bid to preserve the hotel as a historical landmark failed.

Of legal note about the Governors Club is a Florida law holding builders responsible for their work. RHG successfully sued builder Fred Howland, Inc., shortly after construction began on the hotel, for shoddy workmanship (leaking windows and joints during storms), providing precedent for a Florida law. Copyright © 2011, 2020 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

License  1938-1939 (apostrophe removed ...)

Sources:
Burghard, August and Weidling, Philip A. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966

Fort Lauderdale News, June 30, 1937

Broward County Historical Commission

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale hotel history, Robert H. Gore, Sr.

Kalem Company films Miami: "Paradise of the eastern south, the California that is right at home"

Kalem actors circa 1915
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Miami attracted a series of filmmakers in its early days (see labels for additional posts on the subject), including D.W Griffith in 1919. 

One of the most prolific in the business was the Kalem Company, which filmed daily life in Miami as early as 1913. 

Kalem's filmmaker, L.A. Darling, came to Miami in March of that year and his activities made front page news of the local newspaper.

He produced 14 films in a matter of days capturing shots of tourists at the Royal Palm hotel, millionaire yachtsmen returning from a day of fishing, the Great Commoner William Jennings Bryan—a new resident of Coconut Grove—and pioneer and large land holder Mary Brickell. He also filmed six Seminoles in traditional dress. It was reported that the “film was to advertise to the continent the Paradise of the eastern south, the California that is right at home.”

Darling’s mission was to film an accurate representation of life in the sub-tropics, including its ocean waters, palm trees and coconuts. One film, aimed at the “lady suffragettes,” showed Mary Brickell “bossing the job” or directing a man as he gathered coconuts. Another shows one of Seminoles at “Indian headquarters, Girtman’s Cash grocery,” who, only after much cajoling, moved around for the camera. The Seminoles were convinced Darling didn’t know what he was doing; they assumed the only pictures were still shots.   

Public Domain, Wikipedia

Political celebrity William Jennings Bryan, who served as congressman for Nebraska, ran for U.S. president three times and later argued for the state in the Scopes trial, came to Coconut Grove to build a home in 1913. Darling caught him on film with his sleeves rolled up directing construction workers on the site.The filmmaker regretted he hadn’t stopped by three weeks earlier when he could have found Bryan hoeing in his radish patch.

Darling also captured shots of a grapefruit packing house, residential neighborhoods and traffic in business areas. His work took a matter of weeks, including the making of negatives to sell to local movie houses. Theater owners needed lots of product to change up programs on a weekly or even daily basis.

Established in New York City in 1907 and operating from 131 West 24th Street, Kalem Company filmed on location throughout the U.S and Ireland. They opened studios in California and Jacksonville and in doing so, became the first company to film year-round. The company made the first Ben-Hur and the first adaptation of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. Its legacy includes more than 1,200 films including several about Florida: The Seminole’s Vengeance, A Florida Feud: or, Love in the Everglades, In Old Florida, St. Augustine, Florida, the Celery Industry in Florida, and Cypress Logging in Florida. 

Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Kalem was purchased in 1917 by Vitagraph Studios.

Sources:

Miami Metropolis, March 12, 1913

Miami Metropolis, March 13, 1913

Mast, Gerald. A Short History of the Movies. New York: Pegasus, 1971

Wikipedia

IMDB.org

Florida Memories

Tags: early filmmakers in Florida, Fort Lauderdale historian, Miami historian, Florida movie studios, Kalem Company,Jane Feehan film researcher, Miami history

Early filmmakers embrace Fort Lauderdale

 

(L to R) Fairbanks, Pickford, Chaplin, Griffith
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairbanks_-_Pickford_-_Chaplin_-_Griffith.jpg

By Jane Feehan

Long before the movie Where the Boys Are (1960) elevated Fort Lauderdale to a spring break mecca, filmmakers found something special about the city.

French-born Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968), one of the first women to write, direct and produce a film, brought a crew from her New Jersey studio to Fort Lauderdale in 1917 to make Spring of the Year. She chose the city for its tropical, swampy environment. Many of her works have not survived the years. Guy-Blaché is considered by some to be first in the industry to develop narrative films. She was among the first to work with color and with synchronized sound in film before 1910. (Others claim Edwin R. Porter, maker of the Great Train Robbery in 1903 as first to create narrative.)

Alice Guy-Blache
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alice_Guy

Also interested in Fort Lauderdale for its tropical look was iconic director D.W. Griffith (1878-1948) who came to the city in 1919 to film Idol Dancer, a story set in the South Pacific. It was the first of two back-to-back films set in the Pacific. He chose the New River area as backdrop for the first, but filmed only parts of the second, White Roses, in Fort Lauderdale. He didn’t like the new seawalls on New River; he thought they spoiled its natural beauty. 

Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

For more history of movies in South Florida, use search box or index.

Sources:

Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia (2004).

Mast, Gerald. A Short History of the Movies. Indianapolis: Pegasus (1971).

www.suite101.com

www.imdb.org

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GriffithDW.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairbanks_-_Pickford_-_Chaplin_-_Griffith.jpg

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, New River, Florida film industry research

D.W. Griffith comes to Fort Lauderdale in 1919; nearly lost at sea

Billy Bitzer & D.W. Griffith 1919
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

 

By Jane Feehan

Famed film director David Llewelyn Wark “D.W.” Griffith traveled to rustic, tropical Fort Lauderdale to film The Idol Dancer in 1919. During that project, he decided to take a boat to Nassau with his company of actors and friends to shoot additional scenes. It turned out to be a dramatic – and dangerous - voyage.

On December 8, the group set out in rough seas from Miami on the 60-foot yacht Grey Duck. Typically the trip would take 12 hours. The boat did not arrive that day or the next, setting off a highly publicized search. The nascent film industry had already generated its celebrities, Griffith being one of them. The search garnered front-page news in the New York Tribune. A reporter wrote that Fort Lauderdale Mayor Will J. Read, “a wealthy real estate operator and his 16-year-old daughter, Marion” were aboard the vessel as well as “A. Reid and 10 men of the crew.”  

The Tribune reported a search party comprised of a “flying boat, a coast guard cutter and a submarine” returned without news of the lost Grey Duck.  A few years before, during war loan drives, Griffith had befriended former Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo. McAdoo got involved in the search for Griffith and requested then Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels to ask “navy officials to redouble efforts.”

On December 15, it was reported by the Tribune that a “wireless message had been received from Hotel Lucerne in Nassau” sent by Griffith. It had been a perilous voyage, he wired New York - three days without food and little water. Two people had been swept off the Grey Duck but were rescued. The boat drifted and nearly capsized, though the seas were “only 30 feet.” The pilot was injured but they eventually made it into the Northwest Channel.  A few members of the party were bedridden due to exhaustion. 

Despite the unpleasant adventure, Griffith returned to Fort Lauderdale in 1923 to shoot The White Rose. By that time, the little town lost some of its primitive appearance to development, which included canal sea walls; he completed the film elsewhere. 

Sources:

New York Tribune, Dec. 19, 1919.

Tags: DW Griffith, Fort Lauderdale history, Mayor Will Read, Florida film researcher,  historical researcher