Lewis Moomaw (1889 – 1980) was born in Bend, Oregon. With four other filmmakers, he founded American Lifeograph Company in Portland in 1910. Their production facility in SE Portland was Oregon’s first film studio. Moomaw made newsreels, industrials, and feature length films, including The Chechahcos (1924) and Flames (1926).
On October 31, 1919, Lewis Moomaw and his wife traveled with Danish actor Jean Hersholt and his wife at the Crown Point Chalet in Corbett, Oregon. You can see Moomaw’s guest book signature, along with those of dozens of other silent era movie figures, on the wonderfully researched Crown Point Chalet website. ( Anne’s editorial note: Sadly, this website is no longer in existence. I trust that the guest book is still safe and sound somewhere, though!)
A wide range of Hollywood guests came to enjoy the views from the new Columbia Gorge highway – everyone from Ronald Colman to Theda Bara to Ilya Tolstoy (the filmmaking son of Count Leo, who knew?).
2 responses so far ↓
1 Eckhoff & Kaltwasser Defend The City | Oregon Movies, A to Z // Mar 3, 2010 at 2:06 pm
[...] can’t quit making movies. As soon as we had cameras, we were telling stories with them. After sound came in, we dropped our feature filmmaking habit. We picked it up again in the [...]
2 Scorecard: The Big Shots | Oregon Movies, A to Z // Nov 18, 2010 at 10:00 pm
[...] Three years after that, Penny Allen shot Property, using CETA funds to pay her crew. She may or may not have sensed she was launching a renaissance of Portland based independent filmmaking. [...]
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