| Salomy Jane | |
|---|---|
House Peters lifts Beatriz Michelena onto his horse |
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| Directed by | William Nigh Lucius Henderson |
| Produced by | Alexander E. Beyfuss |
| Written by | Paul Armstrong (play & screenplay) Bret Harte (original story) |
| Cinematography | Arthur A. Cadwell Arthur Powelson |
| Distributed by | Alco Film Corporation |
| Release date(s) | November 2, 1914 |
| Running time | approximately one hour (six reels) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent English intertitles |
Salomy Jane (1914) is a Western feature film based on Bret Harte's 1898 novella of the same name.[1] The film is the only known surviving complete work of Beatriz Michelena and the California Motion Picture Corporation.
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The story takes place in rough-and-tumble Gold Rush-era California and revolves around a woman (Salomy Jane) who is saved from a ruffian (Red Pete) by a heroic stranger (Jack Dart). In turn, Salomy Jane saves Jack Dart from being wrongly lynched for a crime he didn't commit.
The story was remade with the same title in 1923 by Famous Players-Lasky and released by Paramount Pictures,[2] and remade as Wild Girl in 1932 by Fox Film Corporation.[3]
Salomy Jane was the first feature by California Motion Picture Corporation and the first screen appearance by stage actress and singer Beatriz Michelena. George E. Middleton saw in his Latina wife a possible competitor to Mary Pickford as premier screen star. The couple began making films at Middleton's studio, each one intended to be a star vehicle for Michelena. Salomy Jane was a hit with viewers, but Alco Film, its national distributor, was unable to return a profit to the movie makers. Two concurrent and several subsequent film projects were not profitable as well, and Michelena had begun demanding star-treatment perquisites that were too expensive for the production company to sustain. Middleton and Michelena split from California Motion Picture to form their own film company, Beatriz Michelena Features, making Just Squaw in 1919 and The Flame of Hellgate in 1920. Middleton and Michelena divorced in the 1920s.[4]
Salomy Jane has been cited as Jack Holt's first film appearance but he had been taking bit parts during the preceding year.[5] In this movie he rides a horse to the edge of a very high, very steep embankment and jumps off of the horse to tumble more than a hundred feet into the Russian River. Volunteering for the stunt netted him a bit part as a saloon patron.
The film was thought lost in a 1931 studio fire in San Rafael, California caused by a child's firecracker prank that destroyed the vault containing all of California Motion Picture Corporation's and Beatrice Michelena Studio's films. A print was discovered in Australia in 1996, and was preserved by the Library of Congress. New 35mm prints began limited circulation in 2008 [6]. The restoration was released on DVD in 2011 by the National Film Preservation Foundation in an anthology titled Treasures 5: The West 1898–1938.