Miami the movie capital of the world? See what happened

Movie crews and photographers have rolled along the streets of Miami in search of the perfect setting or backdrop for as long as the city has existed. The Miami Studios, one of the earliest attempts to replace Hollywood, California, as the film capital of the world, was also one of the city’s biggest failures.

E.G. Sewell, the six-time Miami Chamber of Commerce president and mayor of Miami until his death in 1940, was the prime force behind the development of a local film industry in Miami’s infancy. The movie business seemed to be a perfect investment. It combined a commitment to local progress with the potential for profits.

In 1917, Sewell persuaded the film personality Cissy Fitzgerald and several Miami entrepreneurs to incorporate the Cissy Fitzgerald Film Co., but the company soon folded.

Sewell continued to believe in Miami’s movie potential.

In the early 1920s, he convinced the aviation pioneer Glenn H. Curtiss, Miami Herald owner Frank B. Shutts, and five other prominent businessmen (who described themselves in promotional advertising as “Personnel with Personality and Pep and Punch and Pluck”) that his cinematic venture would be profitable.

The Miami Studios Inc. was formed, with Curtiss as president, Shutts as director and Sewell secretary and treasurer.

A barn-like 250- by 90-foot studio and laboratory was built on a 40-acre site in Hialeah at West Ninth Street and Second Avenue. The construction was supervised by Ted Bevis, an established studio designer and director, who also agreed to serve on the studio’s board of directors. In order to subsidize construction and provide working capital, Miami Studios issued $300,000 worth of mortgage bonds that were offered for public sale under a series of newspapers ads.

The gala studio opening in March 1922 was attended by 1,500 guests. Less than a month later, the independent Syracuse Moving Pictures Co. rolled into town to shoot The Isle of Doubt, a sea adventure flick.

The company, which became the first to shoot a film at Miami Studios, had to deal with technicians who were inexperienced about movie productions. The studio’s owners decided to bring in a professional studio manager to help overcome such problems. John Brunton, born in Britain and well known for his management of Brunton Studios in Los Angeles, was hired.

Brunton obtained agreements from 30 leading businessmen and financiers from around the state to form the National Motion Picture Finance Corp. with $500,000 in capital stock. With a corporation to finance film production under contract with Brunton, Miami Studios effectively became an independent producer as well as a supplier of studio rental space.

Rex Ingram, a film director who had become famous after the release of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in 1921, accepted an invitation from Brunton to shoot “Where the Pavement Ends,” starring the silent film great Ramon Navarro, in Miami. Brunton predicted it was “the beginning of a general exodus of the moving picture companies from the Pacific slope to Miami.”

At first, Brunton appeared to be onto something. In 1922 and 1923, 35 Florida-made movies were released. Although the number was an all-time high for the state, it accounted for only 4% of the total number of films made in the United States in 1922. Regardless, even that was enough for the Miami Studios to survive.

Unfortunately, weather delays, unprofessionalism and inefficiency on the part of the novice local technicians made for a rough shoot for Ingram. He immediately left Miami as soon as he finished work on the picture and began publicly criticizing the Miami Studios.

Meanwhile, Ernest H. Lebrel, writer of Brunton’s first in-house production, The Filigree Flask, commented that it was a wonder the film had ever been made at all, considering the incompetence of everyone involved with Miami Studios.

Brunton was forced to leave the studio under public pressure. His plans for developing a local financial base subsequently failed. Later attempts to revitalize Miami Studios failed, and the facility was only used sporadically through the middle and late 1920s.

Later it served as a hurricane shelter, a dance hall and a roller skating rink. In August of 1960, it was demolished to make way for an extension of the city’s water plant.