Huntington’s Hollywood history

A LOOK BACK

The motion picture camera has captured on film, our foibles,

follies and events throughout the 20th century including those in our

town of Huntington Beach.

These films include those made by amateur movies with their

hand-held 8-mm cameras to the newsreel and studio cameras. Many a

Huntington Beach resident has tucked away in a closet or in a trunk

in the garage, old 8-mm films of our world-famous Fourth of July

parade shot more than 50 years ago.

Since the early days of Huntington Beach, the backdrop of our

coast has been seen in countless movie theaters across America, and

this week we are going to look at some of these films and the stars

who came to our city.

This column came about from a letter I received from Mrs. Clifford

Gritz of Huntington Beach.

In her letter she writes about reading Joe Teller’s book “When I’m

Dead All This Will Be Yours.”

In the book Teller says, “I was in San Mateo and seen Winnie

Lightner in Gold Dust Gertie, that’s the movie I seen her make down

in Huntington Beach about five months ago.”

I don’t expect many of you remember this 1931 movie that stared

Lightner as Gertie. There was also a pair of comics that would go on

to star in their own feature films Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson of

Hellzapoppin fame. The movie centers around two bathing-suit salesmen

(Olsen and Johnson) as they try to elude their mutual ex-wife

(Lightner) while keeping their present wives from finding out about

their ex-wife. In the end their wives do find out and throw their

husbands into the ocean. That ocean was filmed right here at our blue

Pacific door.

Back in the 1920s a young man named Kenneth Snyder attended

Central Elementary School here and went on to graduate from

Huntington High.

After graduation Snyder went to Hollywood to become a movie stunt

man. He changed his name to Jack Long and appeared with Clark Gable,

Harold Lloyd and Will Rogers. He doubled for hundreds of stars in the

1930s. A couple of his movies included “State Police,” “Extortion”

and “Professor Beware.” But his days as a stunt man were cut short

when, during a filming in which he was riding a motorcycle, he

collided with an automobile and he was badly injured. He passed away

from those injuries in August of 1938.

Sts. Simon and Jude Catholic Church on Orange Avenue and 10th

Street played host to several Hollywood stars here in 1939 at a steak

barbecue. Paramount stars that attended included Nancy Kelly, Robert

Shaw and Robert Paige.

Wallace Beery, another famous star, donated a radio as a prize at

this event. He purchased the radio at Helm Radio on Main Street.

Newsreels also played an important part in showcasing Huntington

Beach to the rest of the country.

In April 1928 Orange County sponsored a tour by bathing beauty

winner Ann Carter of several local towns and Huntington Beach was

included on that tour itinerary. Newsreel footage of that tour was

shown in hundreds of theaters and showed Carter being greeted by

Huntington Beach Mayor C.G. Boster and Chamber of Commerce Secretary

L.C. Denslow. It featured scenes of Main Street and Pacific Coast

Highway in the distance.

Huntington Beach resident Alice Parnakian remembers going over to

our oil fields near Edwards Hill and watching part of the movie Tulsa

being made in 1949.

During the filming Huntington Beach became Tulsa, Okla. and stared

Susan Hayward, Chill Wills, Robert Preston and Ed Begley. This movie

can still be found in video stores and if you look close at the

people’s faces in the background, who knows who you’ll recognize.

Commercials are another means in which film is used to advertise

Huntington Beach. I can remember watching a car commercial being

filmed on Main Street in the very early morning. It was fun to watch

as a crew member water Main Street in the 200 block so that the

reflections of the car would show in the finished product. They would

film one take after another until they got just what they wanted.

Main Street’s Andy Arnold said he was driving along Pacific Coast

Highway recently and in the middle of the sand was this large palm

tree. Upon closer inspection he found that a company was filming a

movie. There are, of course, many more times Huntington Beach has

been part of a movie -- as we all know, our pier is photogenic.

Thank you Mrs. Gritz for the letter that lead to this week’s

column. And as this columnist walks slowly into the sunset we say a

fond adieu to the land of tropical paradise.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington

Beach resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at

P.O. Box 7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.