Edendale is a historical name for a district in Los Angeles, California, northwest of downtown Los Angeles, in what is known today as Echo Park, Los Feliz and Silver Lake. In the opening decades of the 20th century, in the era of silent movies, Edendale was known as the home of most major movie studios on the West Coast. Among its many claims, it was home to the Keystone Cops, and the site of many movie firsts, including Charlie Chaplin's first movie,Making a Living (Mack Sennett / Keystone, 1914). It was at the Sennett Studios in Edendale that Chaplin's "Tramp" character was first invented. the first feature-length comedy,Tillie's Punctured Romance (Mack Senett / Keystone, 1914), starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, and Charles Chaplin.
and one of the first pies-in-the-face.In A Noise From The Deep (1913), Mabel Normand tossed a pie into the face of Fatty Arbuckle. The movie was filmed on the Keystone Comedy lot in Edendale. The Edendale movie studios were mostly concentrated in a four-block stretch of Allesandro Street, between Berkeley Avenue and Duane Street. Allesandro Street was later renamed Glendale Boulevard (and a smaller nearby street took on the name Allesandro).
Edendale's hilly streets and nearby lake lent themselves to many silent movie gags. The district's heyday as the center of the motion picture industry was in the 1910s. By the 1920s, the studios had moved elsewhere, mostly to Hollywood, which would come to supplant it as the "movie capital of the world".
In the years prior to World War II, Edendale had a large artist community and a large communist community. Many of its residents were transplants from the Eastern United States or the Soviet Union.
Edendale was known as such at least until 1940, as the Pacific Electric Railway operated an Edendale Line of its "red cars" that ran the course between Downtown Los Angeles and the top of Edendale. The red car ran down the median of Allesandro Avenue (Glendale Blvd.), which was double-tracked, and even triple-tracked between Sunset and Effie, as the tracks were also used by the interurban Glendale-Burbank Line. After 1940, the Edendale Line as such ceased, though service continued in the form of local service on the Glendale-Burbank Line. Rail service on that line ended completely in 1955, and the tracks have been abandoned.See Electric Railway Historical Association on the Edendale Line. Soon after, the region was cut in two by the construction of the Glendale Freeway.
The name Edendale is no longer used as a place name, and is little known today. A few remnants of the name are the local post office (officially called Edendale Station), a public library branch, an urban farm called Edendale Farm and a restaurant called Edendale. Although many of the structures from the 1910s remain and can be identified by careful comparison with old photos, this district today is located in an unremarkable commercial zone called the "Glendale Boulevard Corridor," which is known mostly for its function as a commuter thoroughfare between the southern end of the Glendale Freeway and downtown Los Angeles. (See vintage and modern site photos.)
Motion picture industry in Edendale In its July 1911 issue, movie trade publication "Motography" described Edendale thus: "Edendale...is a very beautiful suburb of Los Angeles. It is the motion picture center of the Pacific Coast. With clear air and sunshine three hundred days out of the year, conditions are ideal for perfect picture making. The scenic advantages of the location, too, are unique. From [Edendale] can be seen the Pacific Ocean, twenty-two miles to the west, and the broad panorama of Southern California, with its fruit and stock ranches, its snowcapped mountains and its tropical vegetation, to the east, north and south. Within a short distance of Edendale may be found every known variety of national scenery, seemingly arranged by a master producer expressly for the motion picture camera."Motography, July 1911.
Selig-Polyscope studio
In 1909, the Selig-Polyscope Company established the first permanent Los Angeles motion picture studio at the northeast corner of Clifford and Allesandro in Edendale. The company was founded by Colonel William Selig in Chicago, and it was his associate, Francis Boggs who first established the Los Angeles studio in Edendale. Within a few years, Selig had shifted most of his operations to Los Angeles. Cowboy movie star Tom Mix made his first movies with Selig-Polyscope out of their Edendale studio. The studio was originally completed in 1910, and featured a mission-style façade on the front entrance patterned after the bells at Mission San Gabriel. This mission-style entrance set a style that was echoed by other Edendale studios.
In 1913, Selig acquired of land in Lincoln Heights and began shifting operations to the new location. By 1917, he had leased his Edendale location to William Fox.
Bison studio In 1909, Selig-Polyscope was followed into Edendale by the New York Motion Picture Company, making mostly one-reel westerns under the brand name Bison Pictures. The original studio was located at 1719 Allesandro Street, a "tract of land graced only by a four-room bungalow and a barn."G.P. von Harleman, from article in The Moving Picture World, March 10, 1917. Originally under the management of Fred J. Balshofer, the directorial reins were taken over a couple years later by motion picture innovator Thomas H. Ince. Ince made only two or three one-reelers at the Edendale studio. Shortly after arriving in California, Ince acquired a lease on of land in Santa Ynez Canyon, above Santa Monica. He shifted the operations of Bison Pictures to that location, later known as "Inceville".
Universal Studio Edendale 1912 On June 8, 1912, the New York Motion Picture Company agreed on merger with the Universal Film Company. In exchange for money and shares of the new company, the owners of the New York Motion Picture Company turned over all of the company's properties to the newly formed Universal Film Company. They also agreed to release the Bison 101 films through the Universal Program. Charles O. Baumann was elected the first president of Universal Film Manufacturing Company, though he was soon replaced by Carl Laemmle after a lawsuit was filed. In 1912 the Universal Film Manufacturing Company founded its first studio in Edendale, called the Universal Edendale plant. During a legal battle between Balshofer and Carl Laemmle, Balshofer refused to supply Bison 101 productions to the Universal Program in spite of the contract. At the end of the Bison lawsuit, Universal won the use of the Bison name. The Universal/Bison Plant was returned to the New York Motion Picture Company at the end of the litigation.Moving Picture World 1912 Litigation and published Studio trade ads
In late 1912, Bison's Edendale lot was bought by Mack Sennett.
Mack Sennett and Keystone Studios
After a rough start in New Jersey, movie maker Mack Sennett and his Keystone Comedies arrived in Edendale in September, 1912, and took up the studio lot that had been left by Bison Pictures when they decamped to Inceville. Though he started in Edendale with a run-down and mostly vacant lot, he soon achieved great success, and took up on both sides of the street within a few years. Between 1913 and 1917, comedy was synonymous with Keystone. There, Mack Sennett was the first important producer and director of screen farce, where speed, irreverence, exaggeration, sight gags, and bam-bam-bam delivery defined comedy. "You had to understand comic motion," Sennett once told an interviewer, whereupon he pushed the interviewer into a swimming pool. "That is comic motion." Sennett was famous for his Keystone Cops, who bumbled all around Echo Park, and his Sennett Bathing Beauties, who included Gloria Swanson and Carole Lombard. Fatty Arbuckle made many movies at Keystone, and Charlie Chaplin was discovered there. His great female lead was Mabel Normand, his sometime girlfriend (who inspired the 1974 Broadway musical Mack & Mabel).
Coy Watson, Jr., who grew up in Edendale in its heyday, recalls: Life in Edendale was exciting. Sennett needed to produce a 12 to 15 minute long two-reel comedy every week. These were the original slapstick, belly-laugh-a-minute flickers. They made the world laugh as the dignified were made to look ridiculous. The best-dressed folks got hit in the face with the biggest pies. Fat ladies sat down on break-away chairs or fell on the funniest, littlest guy on the set.
Kids watched them shoot the first fast-moving chases with horses and wagons, automobiles, fire engines, bicycles and baby buggies running wild all over Edendale and into Echo Park Lake. The Keystone Cops rode in their police patrol wagon skidding on the soaped streets. Dressed in ill-fitting New York policemen's uniforms, they hit fruit stands, popcorn wagons, telephone poles and chicken coops. They took pratfalls and lifted their knees high as they ran and took corners on one foot, waving their billy clubs over their heads. They were always called to restore law and order to some impossible, funny scene hurriedly created by the wit of Hollywood's comedy gagmen. The director had the story line in mind, but the gags came from everywhere as the shooting progressed. When the crew learned the themes of the story, each one was encouraged to come up with a funny thought or idea that might suggest an additional gag to help the picture get another laugh. Each idea gave birth to another. Those early comedy idea men set the formula for the way movies, radio and television comedy would be written for many years. Edendale became one great big background set for comedy. Early film makers didn't build street sets. To save money, they used the actual stores, shop buildings and neighborhood homes.From The Keystone Kid: Tales of Early Hollywood, by Coy Watson, Jr. (Santa Monica Press: 2001).
A 1917 article in The Moving Picture World described the Keystone Edendale studio thus:
When Keystone got going its rise was rapid. Today the open air stages of the Keystone Film Company cover . In addition to this are buildings of wood, brick and concrete, housing all the industries to be found in the average city of several thousand population, including a five-story planing mill and restaurant.
Another feature of the Mack Sennett Keystone studios is the big open air plunge, which is electrically heated. When not in use for pictures it is at the disposal of the actors, who may bathe in as they desire. A modern cafeteria is conducted by the company. Here everybody employed at the plant may obtain the best of food at prices considerably lower than are demanded downtown.
In the planing mill is made everything from patrol wagons to the various sections of Swiss-chalet bungalows and skyscrapers. The painters supply the realistic touches, which are given finish by wall paper and designers' department. All kinds of mechanical devices are made in the machine shops, and in the garage the scores of autos used in the Keystone's activities are housed and maintained. Many touches of humor are added to the comedies by the sign painters' staff. The plumbing department provided water and sewerage connections.
Separate buildings are maintained for the general offices, scenario and publicity departments and for other activities allied with the manufacture of motion pictures.
The studios comprise a city within a city, giving employment to more than 1,000 people.from an article written by G. P. von Harleman, originally appeared in the March 10, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World online text
Another feature of the Keystone Studios was the "cyclorama", where a background scene was painted onto a huge rotating cylinder that rotated while actors ran in place, creating the illusion of moving across the landscape.
Fox Studios