By Hunter Fuentes and Jon Stordahl
Lights, Camera, Action
May is Heritage Month in Laguna. A kick-off event was organized by the city’s Heritage Committee and held at the beautiful Rivian South Coast Theater. Committee chairman James Henry served as the emcee. Each committee member shared insights into the theater’s history and rehabilitation. The evening’s program focused on the long-established ties between Laguna and the film industry.
Heritage Month kick-off at Rivian. James Henry wraps up the evening with a thoughtful speech.
We often mention how many different types of sources we draw on in our research of the architectural history of Laguna. One of our favorite sources has been Jane Janz. Jane has spent a lifetime in the city and has chronicled our history and generously shared her knowledge. We had come across an article from the Feb. 26, 1923, edition of the Santa Ana Daily Register that mentioned a film that had been shown at the local theater at a city incorporation meeting. The movie was sponsored by the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce and filmed by the studio of prominent Santa Ana photographer, Edward W. Cochems. We wondered if Jane had ever heard of the movie or knew what became of it. She walked over to a drawer in her South Laguna home and pulled out the long-forgotten footage. She generously loaned us this treasure and we had it digitized. The original film was over eighteen minutes long. Our good friend, Todd Sautner, edited the movie down to just over seven minutes, restored the intertitle cards, and added music.
Close enough to a Broadway debut… (Get it?)
At the Friday night kick-off, I was honored to make the introduction to possibly the first public screening of the film since 1923. In my comments, I noted that the Greek muse of history is Cleo. She is often depicted in art as a woman peering back over her shoulder to what lay behind her. I love that symbolism. This movie was our opportunity to look back at the past. In his editing of the movie, Todd created a coherent story. The opening intertitle card reads, “Laguna Beach – The beach that is different.” For over a century, the residents of this city have embraced not only the natural beauty of this place but also our libertarian spirit. That segues to views down the Canyon Road. Paved in 1917, this was still the most common way to reach the city; Coast Highway would not be completed until 1926. This is followed by scenes of the coast, buildings, downtown streets and locals going about their daily lives. It is the latter that elicited the greatest response from the audience and calls to mind the words of the legendary Swedish film director, Ingmar Bergman, “For me, the human face is the most important subject of the cinema.”
The highlight of this long-forgotten film is a series of montages of leading members of the local artist’s colony. Moving images bring a subject to life. Conway Griffith, Edgar Payne, William Wendt, Frank Cuprien, Emily and Nona White, Karl Yens and Roi Clarkson Colman are each shown standing at easels, Plein Air, brush in one hand palette in the other, applying paint to canvas. Colman stands on a piece of rocky coastline, so familiar to residents of our town, and paints his impression of his nude model who dances exuberantly, both artist and subject alive again if only for a moment.
The movie ends with a reference inspired by Lord Byron’s “Isles of Greece.” Notorious in his own time, the Romantic poet would have loved our “different” beach. In “Isles” he wrote, “The mountains look on Marathon, and Marathon looks on the sea.” The final intertitle card of the movie reads, “The hills look down on Laguna, and Laguna looks out on the sea.” To paraphrase Byron’s following stanza, I’ll add, “And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed Laguna might always be.”
