“Broncho Billy and the Schoolmistress”,1912, is one of the first silent Western films, an early but a very popular movie. Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson (March 21, 1880 – January 20, 1971) was an American actor, writer, film director, and film producer, who is best known as the first star of the Western film genre. Anderson played three roles in Porter's early motion picture The Great Train Robbery (1903). Seeing the film for the first time at a vaudeville theater and being overwhelmed by the audience's reaction, he decided to work in the film industry exclusively. He began to write, direct, and act in his own westerns under the name Gilbert M. Anderson. In 1907, Anderson and George Kirke Spoor founded Essanay Studios ("S and A" for Spoor and Anderson), one of the major early movie studios. Anderson acted in over 300 short films. He played a wide variety of characters, but he gained enormous popularity from a series of 148 silent western shorts and was the first film cowboy star, "Broncho Billy." Spoor stayed in Chicago running the company like a factory, while Anderson traveled the western United States by train with a film crew shooting movies. Many of these were shot in Niles, a small town in Alameda County, California, south-east of San Francisco, where the nearby Western Pacific Railroad route through Niles Canyon proved to be a very suitable location for the filming of Westerns. Writing, acting, and directing most of these movies, Anderson also found time to direct a series of "Alkali Ike" comedy westerns starring Augustus Carney. In 1916, Anderson sold his ownership in Essanay and retired from acting. He returned to New York, bought the Longacre Theatre and produced plays, but without permanent success. He then made a brief comeback as a producer with a series of shorts with Stan Laurel, including his first work with Oliver Hardy in A Lucky Dog (filmed in 1919, released in 1921). Conflicts with the studio, Metro, led him to retire again after 1920. Anderson sued Paramount Pictures for naming a character "Bronco Billy" in Star Spangled Rhythm (1943) and for depicting the character as a "washed-up and broken-down actor," which he felt reflected badly on him. He asked for $900,000, but the outcome of the suit is unknown. Anderson resumed producing movies, as owner of Progressive Pictures, into the 1950s, then retired again. In 1958, he received an Honorary Academy Award as a "motion picture pioneer" for his "contributions to the development of motion pictures as entertainment." At age 85, Anderson came out of retirement for a cameo role in The Bounty Killer (1965). For the last years of his life, he lived at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. He was survived by his wife, Mollie Louise (Schabbleman) Anderson, and their daughter, Maxine. He was cremated and his ashes placed in a vault at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. A Chicago Park District park, not far from the site of the Chicago Essanay Studio lot, was named Broncho Billy Park in his honor. Jess Robbins was born on April 30, 1886 in Dayton, Ohio, USA as Jesse Jerome Robbins. He was a director and writer, known for The Lucky Dog (1921), Should Sailors Marry? (1925) and The Polo Kid (1925). He died on March 11, 1973 in Los Angeles, California, USA. Started as a cameraman with Essanay in 1908, eventually becoming general manager. After leaving the company, he worked for a while as stage manager for the Longacre Theatre in New York, before returning to films as writer-director for L-KO, Fox and Vitagraph. During the 1920's, he was scenario writer for Universal and Educational and also had a brief, rather acrimonious, spell with Hal Roach. In 1928, he went to England to direct and co-write the script for "Skirts", starring Syd Chaplin. Robbins left the industry with the advent of sound pictures. Broncho Billy ..................... Gilbert M. Anderson Filming Locations: San Rafael, California, USA Production Co: Essanay Film Manufacturing Company Directed by: Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson Cinematography by Jess Robbins Ressources: Wikipedia.org, imdb.com Soundtrack and dubbing: CinemaHistoryChannel The soundtrack is a derivative work of Pensylvania Rose, Americana, Nerves, Machinations, Exciting Trailer, Evil March, Rumination by Kevin MacLeod (http://www.incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/ ), licensed under CC BY 3.0 licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. No changes were made to the original music.

• published: 11 Oct 2014
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