HollyWHAT? When Jacksonville Filmed the Movies

 Before Hollywood, California, was a gleam in any film producer's eye, Jacksonville was the queen city of film.  Beginning in 1908, film companies from the north, mostly headquartered in New York, sought a better climate, literally, for making movies.  First to arrive was Kalem Studios in 1908, and by 1914, they had been joined by Fox, Metro, Edison, Gaumont, and others.  Jacksonville had many advantages for the filmmakers: it was a major railhead, connecting with nearly every major city in the United States at the time.  It had a variety of locations available, including wild lands, city streets, the St. Johns River, industrial areas, seaport facilities, and miles of beaches.  Labor there was not as expensive as in the north.  While winter in the north was plagued by grey days and awful weather, Jacksonville was sunny and perfect for filmmaking.  

The many touring troupes that visited the city could be enticed into acting in films during they stay, providing a rotating stock of white and black actors and actresses, giving them bonus work to add to their self-support.  Kalem profited, as well, making some eighteen films during the winter of 1908-1909.  

Notables of the later film industry gained early experience in Jacksonville.  Film director D. W. Griffith, who would later gain his place in film history with The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance made films in Jacksonville.  Oliver Hardy came down from his home in Milledgeville, Georgia, to begin his film career in Jacksonville.  Lionel Barrymore made a film in Jacksonville.  From 1909 to 1917, some 330 films were shot in Jacksonville.  In an experiment that proved difficult and costly, the very first Technicolor film, a pale beginning to the gorgeously colorful process we now know, was filmed in Jacksonville.

One studio that, in one form or another, maintained a presence in Jacksonville and still does today, was Norman Studios, founded in 1916 as Eagle Film City.  Richard Norman purchased the then-bankrupted Eagle Film City in 1920 and set up his own studio. Richard Norman, a white man, became known for producing films with all-black casts, with the actors and actresses portraying people, not caricatures or stereotypes, and often cast in heroic roles. The facility, in the Arlington neighborhood of Jacksonville, remained in the family and later in the 20th Century, became the Gloria Norman School of the Dance. 

A preservation movement, to restore the property as Norman Studios, was seeded in 2002 by the purchase of four of the five existing buildings on the property by the City of Jacksonville.  The movement truly began in 2011, sparked by a research project by film students at the University of North Florida, located in Jacksonville.  These students' project involved investigation into the history of Norman Studios as an early filmmaking entity in Jacksonville.  The students were impressed by this history, not only as it relates to the history of film, but also to the history of Jacksonville and to black history.  Preservation of that multifaceted history became a goal for the group.  The property has been and is being preserved.  

References:

Bean, Shawn C., The First Hollywood: Florida and the Golden Age of Silent Filmmaking.  (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008.)

"Norman Studios: Preserving Jacksonville's Silent Film Legacy."  http://normanstudios.org. (Accessed 30 January 2025).