During the early days of silent films, the facilities at Santa Barbara’s Flying A Studio on West Mission Street were said to be as good or better than any in Los Angeles. By 1916, the studio was producing 242 films a year.
And it had stars, including a curly-haired teenager, Mary Miles Minter, who became what promoters envisioned as the new Mary Pickford. But MMM saw her career crash and burn after a sex scandal involving the unsolved murder of a director.
In the early days of cinema, fledgling filmmakers fled the East in favor of the West Coast, seeking better weather, Western locations for popular cowboy sagas, and to escape sheriffs seeking to enforce Edison’s patent on cameras and projectors, according to Stephen Lawton’s authoritative history of Flying A Studio.
The American Film Company of Chicago arrived here in 1912 and found everything they were looking for, including a wide variety of locations and sunlight at a time when filming outdoors was still technically dubious. We had the western flavor, mansions, mountains, sea and downtown locations. In July 1912, Flying A, named for its winged “A” logo, arrived and went to work manufacturing the popular Broncho Billy Western shorts.
Things were going so well, with the movie-crazed nation, that in 1913, Flying A announced plans for a massive studio complex on the first block of West Mission Street, between State and Chapala Streets. It was beautifully designed and included stables for the horses, dressing rooms and a splendid glass-enclosed studio for interior shots. “When this work was completed, Santa Barbara was, without a doubt, home to the best-equipped and most artistic studio in the country,” Lawton said.
This was before the Hollywood scandals of the 1920s, and Santa Barbara welcomed film crews and actors, who became local celebrities. According to Lawton, not only were locals finding work at the studio, but Flying A was also pumping significant dollars into the small town, with a population of around 15,000. In 1919, his weekly payroll was $19,000.
Lawton describes how a film crew was sent to film a cattle roundup in the Santa Ynez Valley, which involved a difficult trek over the San Marcos Pass. In 1915, a crew battled snow to film The Zaca Lake Mystery at the North County location. Another team went to Lompoc to create Intrusion at Lompoc, a stagecoach drama.
Flying A had everything except vision. In an industry that was changing at breakneck speed, trying to satisfy a national audience that showed greater sophistication after World War I, studio executives stuck to what they were producing. There was a belief among the industry public that they would not sit still watching movies for more than a few minutes, and even less so watching feature films. Flying A was doomed to failure because of its philosophy, along with growing distribution problems getting its films into theaters.
But during its heyday, Flying A was a huge success, attracting top directors, cinematographers and actors. It is not surprising that other studios thought about setting up shop here and founded a company financed with local money. But it soon failed.
Flying A had been overly cautious about making longer features, but were catching up and produced the five-reeler The Ghost of Rosy Taylor, starring Mary Miles Minter, then just 16 years old. Audiences had a yen for innocent-looking screen stars like Mary Pickford. Minter even rivaled America’s Sweetheart for a time, although she lacked Pickford’s acting skills.
Minter’s real name was Juliet Reilly. She was apparently very popular in the city and, according to Lawson, the Morning Press announced her arrival in 1916 as one of the “Prominent Beauties of (the) Profession… She is of the attractive type, the type that photo customers can’t get enough of.” Minter made 26 films for Flying A before leaving for Paramount in Los Angeles.
In 1919, Flying A was having serious distribution problems and its managers were heading to larger studios in Los Angeles, where the action was taking place. He died on July 7, 1920, at the age of eight.
Meanwhile, Minter had far from innocent desires, especially for the handsome director William Desmond Taylor, 30 years her senior. On the night of February 1, 1922, someone shot and killed him in his bungalow in Los Angeles. Her love letters were found in her place and she immediately became a suspect, along with another silent film star, Mabel Normand. They had both visited him that night, according to Kenneth Anger’s infamous book Hollywood Babylon. Another suspect was Mary’s gun-toting mother, who Anger said had been having an affair with Taylor along with her daughter and Normand.
The case was never solved, but it ended Minter’s career. Her last film was released in 1923. She died in 1984 and few of her films survived, but she is remembered with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.