Why Sacramento-based filmmakers need look no farther than their own hometown to find one of Hollywood's best-kept secrets

PART ONE: For many, Sacramento represents little more than a cow town; for others, the river city is the political hub for California; but for a select few in Hollywood and beyond, Sacramento has been a treasure trove of locations to use as backdrops for practically any place... or any time.

Just a simple trip through my local video store, some twenty years ago, began what was to become a profound change in the way I now see my hometown. Upon returning a video, Steamboat Bill, Jr., the clerk gave me one of those ominous statements of film trivia: "Did you know that some of this film was shot here in Sacramento?" I did not. But it intrigued me enough to rent the film again, watching this time with closer scrutiny.

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) is a silent Buster Keaton feature-length classic. Its many sight gags are some of the most widely known and talked about by film buffs and historians alike. The stunts are so complex that most filmmakers of the day wouldn't even attempt them, and certainly not without the use of stuntmen. Keaton was different. He insisted on doing his own stunts, feats that would keep even today's sophisticated audiences on the edge of their seats.



To tell his river boat story, Keaton built a Southern Mississippi town in Sacramento on the banks of the Sacramento River. In his biography, Keaton said, "We went up there and built that street front, three blocks of it, and built the piers and so on. We found the riverboats right there in Sacramento; one was brand new, and we were able to age the other one up to make it look as though it was falling apart." Could one of these boats been our own Delta King? Closer examination will reveal the answer to those interested enough to stream this video for themselves.

When I got home, I immediately popped the tape into my VCR and watched it with new fervor. Steamboat Bill Jr. begins simply enough, with a slow pan across a majestic river. This time, though, I watch with knowing amusement and saw Sacramento's river banks as they looked almost sixty years earlier, over 40 years before I was born. It was a panoramic view of a place perhaps three miles from where I live. These scenes gave me a new appreciation of my town's history as I transported myself back the the '20s, the era not only of Keaton, but of Charlie Chaplin, Mak Sennett, Fatty Arbuckle and Harold Lloyd.

But Sacramento's film history reaches back even farther than Buster Keaton to a Sacramento businessman who played a key part in film history as the man behind what is now considered the first movie ever made.

... to be continued.