The museum has an archive containing roughly 14,000 outdated movie prints, some from the Em Gee Movie Library in Los Angeles, others donated by the movie preservationist David Shepard and extra acquired by typically unusual means. (Worthwhile footage of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Worldwide Exposition’s opening ceremonies, for instance, was discovered beneath a home in Los Altos.) There may be an tools repair-and-restoration room, a film-research library, a darkroom and hulking projectors, like a 1912 Motiograph made by Chicago’s Enterprise Optical Manufacturing Co.
“Those seats right there are original to the 1913 theater,” says the docent, indicating a row of 4 chairs holding a bowler hat and bamboo cane. “We put stuff on there, so people don’t sit on them.”
The museum’s title derives from the Essanay Movie Manufacturing Firm, a Chicago-based operation run by Gilbert Anderson and George Spoor. Anderson’s obsession with Westerns led him to Niles, the place its sizzling, dusty climate and brown hills recalled an Previous West city. In 1912, the corporate started constructing studios, actors’ cottages and prop workshops and went on to make greater than 350 silent movies there. (The Niles studio shut down in 1916 and was razed by the Thirties.)
Most of the films chronicled the exploits of Broncho Billy, performed by Anderson, who was stated to be the primary Western film star. A variety of the movies have been shorts, corresponding to 1915’s “Versus Sledge Hammers,” which has an IMDb abstract that deserves mentioning: “The Count received word through a matrimonial agency that Sophie Clutts will inherit a million dollars and goes to her father’s hotel to win her hand. Mustang Pete, however, is in love with Sophie, and when he discovers the Count is making love to her, proceeds to insult him. The Count challenges Mustang to a duel. Being a blacksmith, he chooses sledge hammers as weapons.”