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Film history is littered with contradictory accounts of momentous events.   Almost any incident of note will be recorded differently by those who were involved (and sometimes a good many who were not) until the truth becomes surrounded by myth and conjecture.   One such incident is the decision by Frank Marion, the president of the Kalem Company, to send a film crew overseas to become the first American company to make a film on location abroad.

The account given in A Million and One Nights, Terry Ramsaye’s famous – but highly romanticised – version of the history of American cinema (written before the advent of sound) has Marion calling director Sidney Olcott to his office in the Kodak Building on West 23^rd Street, New York, in the spring of 1910 and, showing him a map of the world on his desk, inviting him to choose the location he would most like to visit to shoot films.  Without hesitating Olcott, whose mother was born in Dublin, chose Ireland.   According to Gene Gauntier, the screenwriter and leading lady of the crew that travelled to the Emerald Isle, in her book Blazing A Trail, it was she, after a visit to Europe, who repeatedly suggested to Marion that the company should film in Ireland – a suggestion, she wrote, which was ‘usually greeted with smiles if not open laughter.’   She also claims it was she who was summoned to Marion’s office and asked when she and Olcott could sail for Ireland.

Whichever way the decision came about, its outcome is certain – in August 1910, Olcott, Gauntier, leading man Robert Vignola and cameraman George Hollister arrived in Queenstown (now Cobh) and stayed for a short while at the Victoria Hotel in Cork.   Gauntier had written the script for the first film, The Lad from Old Ireland, while crossing the Atlantic, and scenes for the film were shot on the voyage with the assistance of the ship’s officers.   In Cork, the crew bought their costumes from an old clothes market then moved to the Glebe Hotel in Killarney.   From there they travelled approximately seven miles to the isolated County Kerry village of Beaufort in a jaunting car – a horse-drawn carriage with side seats – for location shooting.    Dissatisfied with Killarney because of what he felt was an inappropriate eagerness on the part of the locals to separate the party of Americans from their money, Olcott subsequently decided to relocate to the quaint village languishing in the shadow of the McGillicuddy Reeks and the company stayed in the home of Patrick O’Sullivan.   A wooden platform they built in a field behind O’Sullivan’s house served as a makeshift studio.

The villagers, who having never seen a moving picture still gained most of their entertainment from magic lantern slide shows, were happy to help Olcott and his crew in their endeavours and a warm relationship developed between them.   In addition to The Lad from Old Ireland, Olcott also filmed local beauty spots, including Glengariffe, Blarney Castle, and the Lakes of Killarney, all of which were edited together and released as a one-reel film under the title of The Irish Honeymoon.

Filming of The Lad from Ireland was not completed once the shoot had wrapped in Ireland, however – additional scenes were filmed in New York.   The film, advertised as ‘the first drama ever made on two continents,’ was released in the States on 23^rd November 1910.   The Moving Picture World of 3^rd December 1910 described the film as ‘the story of an Irish boy who comes to America to seek his fortune, finds it and returns to Ireland in time to save his sweetheart from eviction. Its chief interest lies in the scenery. Probably most audiences will enjoy it, and of course the Irish lad will make the Irish portion of any audience hilarious.’

The trip was considered so successful that Kalem crews made further voyages to Ireland in 1911 and 1912.

Sources: Blazing a Trail by Gene Gauntier

Aspects of American Film History Prior to 1920. Contributors: Anthony Slide - author. Publisher: Scarecrow Press. Place of Publication: Metuchen, NJ. Publication Year: 1978. Page Number: 87-88.

The Cinema and Ireland. Contributors: Anthony Slide - author. Publisher: McFarland. Place of Publication: Jefferson, NC. Publication Year: 1988. Page Number: 40-41

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