Francis Boggs
Francis W. Boggs (1870 - October 27, 1911) was a stage actor and important pioneer silent film director and one of the first to work in Hollywood.
Born in Santa Rosa, California, while in his teens he began acting with the Alcazar stock company in San Francisco and toured the American southwest. In 1900, he moved to Los Angeles but in 1903 went to Chicago where he continued to work in theatre. There, he met William N. Selig and in 1907 Boggs became involved with the making of motion pictures at Selig's Polyscope studios in Chicago. With camerman and jack of all trades, Thomas Persons, Boggs began making his first film, The Count of Monte Cristo. He completed the interior shots at the Chicago studio but wanting authenticity he filmed the remainder at locations in Colorado and Los Angeles.
In 1908, he returned to the West coast where he filmed In the Sultan’s Power. It would be the first motion picture completely made in Los Angeles. That same year, in Chicago he made The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays which had its writer, L. Frank Baum present a slide show and films as a live travelogue presentation of his OZ story plus he hired Fatty Arbuckle and did three short films with him. That same year, Boggs returned to Los Angeles and rented a small bungalow as a permanent base from which he operated a quasi satellite studio for Selig. Other East coast studios soon began filming on the west coast to take advantage of its moderate climate.
Working out of his Los Angeles location, Francis Boggs took his small crew to a ranch in Oklahoma where he filmed Ranch Life in the Great South West. The film included future superstar cawboy Tom Mix in a bit part and consumer interest in frontier type films led to the creation of the highly successful Western film genre. In 1910, Boggs directed Pride of the Range, a film that included Tom Mix but also marked the first screen performance for another future cowboy star, Hoot Gibson.
By 1911, David Horsley had set up his Nestor Studios in Hollywood and within two years more than a dozen film companys would follow Boggs' example and establish facilities in and around Los Angeles.
Uunforunately for the pioneering Francis Boggs, who had made upwards of one hundred films by the fall of 1911, his career and life ended when he was shot and killed by an apparently deranged employee.
Many of his first films starred Hobart Bosworth who would go on to take his place as a Selig director. As Hollywood and the film industry underwent an explosive period of growth, over the years Frank Boggs significant contribution to the establishing of what would become the Hollywood film industry was all but forgotten.