The Big Show
Movies take us on journeys, sometimes to places far away from our own experiences, sometimes through emotions that feel safer to experience through the medium of film. Interestingly, movies can let us experience a place we know well in a different way. Texas has been the location and subject of numerous films and has captivated audiences in different ways from The Immortal Alamo (1911), leading the way for dozens of Alamo films, to The Searchers (1956), taking actor John Wayne to the pinnacle of his career, to Urban Cowboy (1980), where the image of rural Texas gives way to industrial urban growth. Movies have propagated and promoted a unique image and mystique about this state, and the American West more generally, to people around the world.
“The power of film is indisputable,” writes philosopher Colin McGinn in his book The Power of Movies. “Since the beginning of movies, a little over a hundred years ago, they have captivated audiences. We want, badly, to watch. And this power seems uniquetofilm.”McGinngoesontoexplain,“Allacrosstheworldpeople flock to the movies, and it is amazing how easy it is for a movie from one county to cross boundaries into another . . . I once watched a Clint Eastwood cowboy film in Paris in which the tough gunslinger intoned the words ‘Fermez la porte’ in an impeccable French accent.” Just as movies have been exporting Texas culture around the globe, movies have also been bringing big money into Texas through the film industry.
According to historian John H. Slate, in an article for the Texas State Historical Association, “The first motion pictures made in Texas did not tell stories, but documented events and simple activities. The earliest documented moving film shot in Texas is of the aftermath of the Galveston hurricane of 1900. Cameraman G.W. Bitzer of the New York-based Biograph Company arrived at Texas City on September 13, and in the following days shot eight scenes of the destruction. Other short scenes made in Texas at that time, probably by Bitzer, include a passing train and oil wells at Beaumont.”
In this earliest period of the film industry it wasn’t clear if (silent) moving pictures could find a profitable market and what type of content would be most in demand. The first problem was a need for a distribution system and for “projection” locations. Likely the earliest motion picture company established in Texas was the J.D. Wheelan Film Company, with locations in Dallas and San Antonio, founded in 1908. The company was established primarily to distribute the films of the Motion Picture Patents Company and other national film companies. Wheelan had limited success but didn’t follow the trend of the time, producing and distributing large quantities of its own films. The company slowly faded into obscurity.
Before Hollywood became Hollywood, San Antonio looked as if it might possibly become the center of this new industry. The city and surrounding region had the kind of weather the early filmmakers needed, access to an inexpensive labor market and vast, open vistas. Film historian Frank Thompson detailed San Antonio’s extensive film industry history in his 2002 book, Texas Hollywood: Filmmaking in San Antonio Since 1910. Beginning with the Star Film Ranch, a film studio opened in San Antonio in 1910 by Gaston Mélies, the brother of famed early French filmmaker Georges Mélies, the new industry immediately looked to Texas history for content. The studio’s first major film, The Immortal Alamo (a 1911 silent movie), filmed some scenes in the actual Alamo and cast students from Peacock Military Academy, a San Antonio private preparatory boarding and day school for young men, as soldiers for the battle scenes. Star Films went on to produce at least 70 short silent films in San Antonio over a two-year period; unfortunately, most of these films were eventually lost. The Star Film Company soon moved to southern California to be close to the growing film industry there. At least eight film companies operated in Texas between 1910 and 1930, but none of them could compete against the studios on the East and West Coasts.
Students from Peacock Military Academy in 1911 as soldiers in The Immortal Alamo.
With the film industry growing rapidly, primarily in California, Texas was relegated to serving the major film studios for “location shoots.” One of the first efforts to draw film production back to Texas was advertising by the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce in Motion Picture News (November 1918), touting “More sunny days than California or Florida, and far less fog or rain. Sunlight of unusual actinic power, giving a greater number of working hours and greatly cheapening the cost of producing pictures. Motion picture work is new in San Antonio; the city officials, the Chamber of Commerce and all the citizens are willing to cooperate. Locations can be secured without cost, service can be had at reasonable prices — no gouging will be permitted. San Antonio is the site of the greatest military camps in America. It has 12 separate and distinct establishments, representing every branch of the service. It has the largest aviation field, and the greatest balloon schools in the Army.”The appeal seems to have had some success in getting the attention of the film industry.
One of the first big-budget Hollywood movies to be filmed in San Antonio, Fox Film Corporation’s The Warrens of Virginia (1924), was shot at Brackenridge Park, representing the Appomattox battlefield where Generals Lee and Grant met to end the Civil War. Two of the biggest movies of the silent film era were filmed in San Antonio by Paramount, The Rough Riders (1927) and Wings (1927). Both films took advantage of the military assets in the area. The U.S. Army’s Camp Bullis was used as Cuba’s San Juan Hill for The Rough Riders. Wings used Camp Stanley to recreate the trench warfare battlefields of World War I Europe. The world premiere of Wings was held at San Antonio’s Texas Theater. At the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, Wings was awarded the first Best Picture prize. The film remains the only silent film to receive the Academy’s top award, because the next year The Broadway Melody, a sound film, won the award, and the silent film era came to an end.
Movie poster for Wings, filmed in San Antonio.
The film industry in the 1930s and 1940s was dominated by Hollywood “studio film” productions, and fewer notable films were made in Texas. One Texas film worth citing from this period is The Big Show (1936), starring Gene Autry. The movie was filmed at Fair Park in Dallas during the Texas Centennial Exposition.
The 1950s saw a growth in Texas location shoots with the blockbuster hits Giant (1956), filmed in Marfa, and The Alamo, starring John Wayne (1959), filmed north of Brackettville. These two films did much to canonize Texas mystique and export it to the world.
The Texas film industry from the 1960s through the 1980s was dominated by film adapta- tions of Larry McMurtry novels, beginning with Hud (a 1962 film based on the novel Horseman, Pass By), starring Paul Newman and Patricia Neal; director Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971); and James L. Brooks’ Terms of Endearment (1983), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Lonesome Dove (1989), a hugely popular television miniseries starring Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall, was filmed at the Alamo Village sets north of Brackettville. “This six-hour miniseries,” the New York Times wrote, “revitalized both the miniseries and Western genres, both of which had been considered dead for several years.” Lonesome Dove went on to win seven Emmy Awards.
On the set of the television miniseries Lonesome Dove.
Another attempt at Texas becoming a major player in the film industry was creation of the Studios at Las Colinas, in Irving, opening in 1982 as “one of the largest complete sound stage facilities between the coasts.”The studio was used to produce Silkwood (1983), Robocop (1987), JFK (1991), the television series Walker, Texas Ranger (1993-2001) and the popular children’s series Barney & Friends (1992-2009). The Irving studio has gone through a number of owners and name changes but continues as a production facility. Since 2013 it has been home to Mercury Radio Arts, the parent company of TheBlaze, conservative television commentator Glenn Beck’s news, opinion and entertainment network.
In 1985 Richard Linklater founded the Austin Film Society and started an upward trend in the local film industry that continues today. San Antonio continues to find success in attracting film productions.
In 1971 the Texas Film Commission was created by Gov. Preston Smith to promote and boost the state’s film industry as an economic development initiative. The governor’s executive order stated that it was “in the social, economic and educational interest of Texas to encourage the development of the film-communication industry.” The TFC has had success in helping to grow the industry and to spread the message that Texas welcomed filmmakers. In 2007 the Texas Legislature established the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program, allowing the TFC to “administer grants to films, television programs, commercials, and video games that are produced in Texas.” The bill also established the Texas Film Commission’s Workforce Training Program and the Texas Moving Image Archive Program. That same year the TFC began the Film Friendly Texas Program, providing information to communities on how to effectively handle and promote on-location filming, and in 2016 the program. certified its 100th “Film Friendly Community” through the program.
Funding for the incentive program has varied over the past decade, and funding was almost completely cut from the state’s budget in the most recent legislative session. In an April 2017 editorial advocating for funding for the program in the Austin American-Statesman, Paul Stekler, chair of the Radio-Television-Film Department at the University of Texas, wrote, “Four years ago, the Legislature put $95 million into the incentive program for 2014-15 — and $442 million was spent on production during those two years. During the next session, the incentives for 2016- 17 were cut by two-thirds, to $32 million, and production for those two years was estimated to be just above $120 million, a drop of more than $300 million.” Stekler added, “This is a fabulous state in which to make films. It’s the home of great film and screenwriting festivals and wonderful directors. It’s one of the few places outside of Los Angeles and New York where there are experienced crews to work on a major film set.” In the end the legislature appropriated $22 million for the program, down from its peak of $95 million.
It’s not only at the state level that the film industry is being supported and developed. According to the TFC, Texas currently has 11 regional film commissions: in Amarillo, Austin, Brownsville Border, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, Northeast Texas Regional, Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio. One thing is for sure: the movie industry has had a major impact on Texas.
