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In the first decade of the twentieth century, American motion picture production was concentrated in Chicago and on the East Coast, with busy companies swarming over New York, Philadelphia, and, particularly, Fort Lee, New Jersey. By the mid-teens, this concentration had shifted to California, a place which attracted producers with its mild climate and endless variety of landscapes.
But this westward migration did not happen all at once. Distribution of the era demanded a new one-reel film from every company each week. To keep up, producers had to churn out movies like sausages, despite the vagaries of weather or location. It was common for the major studios to send companies to "winter headquarters" for months at a time, which allowed filming to continue unabated and offered audiences novel settings for stories. By 1910, Biograph, Selig, Essanay, Kalem, Lubin, and Pathe had sent troupes to Los Angeles, Bison had a branch in Colorado, and Revier worked out of Salt Lake City.
The Manhattan-based Méliès Star Films Company headed south to the colorful, beautiful, and historic Texas city San Antonio. For one year the stock company of actors, technicians, and "real Cowboys, Indians and Mexicans" made one-reel Western comedies and adventures in "a varied and attractive landscape that makes a beautiful background for such dramas as may be enacted in the West," according to The New York Dramatic Mirror, (19 April 1911).
Georges Méliès was one of the cinema's founding fathers. His marvelously imaginative films, such as A Trip to the Moon (1902), not only had a profound influence on generations of filmmakers, but were also enormously popular with the public. However, Méliès's success bred problems. In America, where copyright laws were lax, Méliès films were widely copied and pirated by unscrupulous distributors (Lubin among them).
Georges's older brother Gaston managed the London branch of the Méliès family's boot making business. When the branch closed, Gaston joined Star Films as business manager. In 1902, he went to New York to oversee the distribution of his brother's films and to keep an eagle eye on those who would unfairly profit from them. In the first American Star Films catalog, Gaston printed a stern warning:
A great number of French, English and American manufacturers of films who are searching...
