Pittsburgh has George Romero, Baltimore has John Waters, and Boulder has the memory of Stan Brakhage.

Portland has Gus Van Sant, Bill Plympton, Matt Groening, Mike Richardson, Jon Raymond, Aaron Katz, Chel White, Jacob & Arnold Pander, James Westby, Jim Blashfield, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestley, Matt McCormick, Rose Bond, Vanessa Renwick and Will Vinton.

Ever wonder why?

For cities wishing to replicate Portland’s densely populated cinematic scene, here’s a handy “how to” guide.

1.  Start early.

As soon as people were making films in New York and Fort Lee, they were making them in Portland. Portland’s first film studio, American Lifeograph, opened in 1910. That’s the same year movies came to Hollywood.

2. Have a show business friendly mayor.

During the 16 year tenure of theater-owner-turned-mayor George Baker, downtown Portland was wall to wall theaters. John Gilbert, Clark Gable, William Powell, Edward Everett Horton and Eugene Pallette are some of the actors who jumpstarted their acting careers on the Portland stage, some of them in Baker’s own stock company. It was Baker who renamed Seventh Avenue “Broadway”.

3. Support innovation.

Oregon’s oldest source of print media, The Oregonian, responded to the puzzling new medium of radio by setting up a station right in the Oregonian Tower. Radio later served as an Early Warning System to identify the talent of Portlanders Mel Blanc, Suzanne Burce (renamed Jane Powell by MGM) and Johnnie Ray.

4. Grow your own film processing lab.

After WWII, Portland inventor Frank Hood went to work for a brand new electronics firm named Tektronix. He set up his own home lab to process films he made for them, after losing patience with the delays of sending film to LA. Eventually, he went into business as Teknifilm Lab. For decades, independent filmmaking in Portland was supported by Hood’s lax attitude toward payment schedules.

5. Provide a home for an exiled Hollywood film scholar.

Andries Deinum came to Portland during the blacklist. His vision of film as a mode of social discourse laid the groundwork for PSU’s Center For The Moving Image, housed in Lincoln Hall. Jim Blashfield, Bill Plympton, and Matt Groening were among the faithful attendees of the Center’s influential screening series, run by the Portland State Film Committee.

6. Provide a day job for the guy who wants to mentor the guy who wants to revive the archaic art form of stop motion animation.

Homer Groening led a dual life – ad man by day and experimental filmmaker by night. He had a family, a home, and his own business doing what he loved – and he did it all without leaving Portland. Aspiring filmmaker Will Vinton paid attention, and followed suit. His career, like Groening’s, would encompass both television commercials and art house films, but on a much larger scale.

7. Work with, not against, a pair of cinema addled students who want to start a regional film center.

When the National Endowment for the Arts decided to seed regional filmmaking, they went looking for the right person to submit a grant for a film center in Portland. They were pointed to Brooke Jacobson and Bob Summers, members of the Portland State Film Committee. Brooke and Bob wrote the grant, Portland Art Museum acted as fiscal sponsor, and the Northwest Film Center went into business. This year marks its 40th anniversary.

8. Work with, not against, a visionary film preservationist who wants to create a moving image archive.

Lew Cook was trained as a newsreel photographer by the first generation of Portland filmmakers. His stop motion film, The Little Baker, made circa 1925, proved prophetic when it came to Portland’s future claim to cinema history. He and Thomas Vaughn conceived Oregon Historical Society’s moving image archive, and Cook personally trained the preservationist, Michele Kribs, who currently presides over it.

To re-cap: by the end of the 1970’s, Portland had a film program at Portland State University, a film archive at Oregon Historical Society, and a regional film festival (now the NWFF) located at Portland Art Museum. That nucleus of film creativity on the park blocks was balanced by a film processing lab, an emerging animation studio, and a warehouse waiting to be filled with  filmmakers’ offices over in northwest Portland. No one entity owned the scene – the infrastructure and the support system served all comers.

The following timeline concentrates on factors which contributed to a culture where independent filmmakers supported each other in Portland. It does not address the important role played by Hollywood productions shooting in Oregon. The symbiotic role of Hollywood and the Indies in Portland is embodied in the career of Gus Van Sant who slips and slides with ease between these two worlds.

A timeline:

American Lifeograph founded 1910

Lewis Moomaw makes The Chechacos 1924

Lew Cook makes The Little Baker c1925

PGE makes It Can Be Done c1936

Tektronix founded 1946

Frank Hood founds Teknifilm Lab, early 1950’s

Andries Deinum arrives 1957

Homer Groening starts his own ad agency 1958

Center For The Moving Image founded 1965

Bob Summers and Brooke Jacobson found Northwest Film Center 197o

Tim Smith and Matt Groening make Drugs: Killers or Dillers 1972

Brooke Jacobson founds Northwest Media Project 1974

Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner make Closed Mondays 1974

Don Zavin makes Fast Break 1977

Penny Allen makes Property 1979

Rose Bond makes Gaia’s Dream 1982

Gus Van Sant makes Mala Noche 1985

Bill Plympton makes Your Face 1987

Matt Groening makes The Simpsons 1987

Jim Blashfield makes Leave Me Alone 1988

Joan Gratz makes Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase 1992

Gus Van Sant makes Good Will Hunting 1997.

Miranda July makes The Amateurist 1998

Chris Eyre makes Smoke Signals 1998

Will Vinton makes The PJ’s 1999

Travis Knight makes Coraline 2009

Jon Raymond writes & Neil Kopp produces Meek’s Cutoff 2010, one of five Oregon films at Sundance in 2011.

This post is dedicated to Portland filmmaker/film writer David Walker, who inspired it by raising the question “how rare is regional filmmaking, anyway?”

American Film Institute’s Greatest American Screen Legends list contains actors selected by more than 1,800 AFI members.

Here are the stars on that list who appeared in Oregon films.

Listed in order of their rank (on that particular list):

#3. Jimmy Stewart, in Bend In the River and Shenandoah.

#7 Clark Gable, who apprenticed on the Portland stage before hitting Hollywood.

#12 Gregory Peck, in MacKenna’s Gold.

#13 John Wayne, in The Big Trail, Stagecoach, and Rooster Cogburn.

#17 Kirk Douglas, in Indian Fighter and The Way West.

#21 Buster Keaton, in The General.

#22 Sidney Poitier, in All The Young Men.

#23 Robert Mitchum in Rachel and the Stranger, The Lusty Men and The Way West.

#25 William Holden, in Rachel and the Stranger.

#9. Marlene Dietrich (on AFI’s separate list for top female stars) , in Golden Earrings.

The most recent film on the above list, Rooster Cogburn, was made in 1975.

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.

Seven years later, her sound man, Gus Van Sant, made Mala Noche, and Oregon film history no longer was confined to showcasing our strengths as the world’s largest and most scenic sound stage.

Strange but true: A River Runs Through It, the Montana family saga/fly fishing tale, is an Oregon film. Director Robert Redford shot the fishing scenes on the Rogue River.

Thanks, and a tip of the hat to Grant McOmie for mentioning this particular chapter of Oregon film history  in the course of profiling Wolf Creek Inn, Oregon’s little known getaway to the stars.

Other Hollywood luminaries who loved Wolf Creek Inn were Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who came for the duck hunting, and Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who came for the privacy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But that’s not the only Oregon connection. One of the co-producers of A River Runs Through It is from Oregon: William Kittredge.

I spoke on the phone with William Kittredge to confirm my suspicion that he attended high school in Klamath Falls. He said yes, and that it was his English teacher there who inspired him to dream of becoming a writer.

William Kittredge, Marc Davis, James Ivory, and Chris Eyre all graduated from Klamath Union High School, a track record unmatched by any other Oregon high school, including Lincoln High School (Ernest Haycox, Mel Blanc, Matt Groening), the oldest high school in the state; Catlin Gabel (Gus Van Sant, Eric Edwards, Margaux Hemingway), the richest high school  in the state; or Ashland High School (David Fincher), the high school voted most likely to succeed in producing show business oriented graduates.

I hereby claim A River Runs Through It as an Oregon film on the basis of  the location shooting on the Rogue, and on the basis of William Kittredge’s contribution as co-producer. Go Pelicans!

Lillypadders are artists who make use of a limited stay to Oregon to push forward their careers. Miranda July is a classic lillypadder, as was Clark Gable, Callie Khouri and Eric Bogosian. John Varley and Chuck Palahniuk made the most of long stays in Oregon, but since they now live elsewhere, they fall within the lillypadder classification.

Edward Everett Horton (above) left Columbia University to pursue an acting career, which quest brought him to Portland, where he performed with the Baker Stock Company. He leapt from the Portland to Hollywood (this was during the silent era) and the rest, as they say, is history.

Portland continued to have a strong fan base for Horton. In the 1940’s he was invited to serve as Grand Marshal for the Rose Festival Parade.

I am fascinated by lillypadders. Please alert me when you learn of one.

From Louis Kaufman’s autobiography:

One Sunday morning, Max called unexpectedly. “Louis, are you free today?” “Yes, Max.” “Come right over with your violin. I have some themes to submit to Selznick for Gone With The Wind. He wants to hear them. Its not very interesting with just the piano.”

The second Portland connection to Gone With The Wind is, of course, Clark Gable. The King Of Hollywood’s career took off when he won an Oscar for It Happened One Night (1934), but students of Oregon Movies, A to Z know that it began with a  transformative year in Oregon

Strange but true: the Oregonian greeted Edward Everett Horton in 1923 as “Portland’s favorite movie idol”. We have found no evidence that Gable, who, like Horton, did time here as an apprentice actor, ever received that designation.

I hereby claim Gone With The Wind as an Oregon film on the basis of Portlander Louis Kaufman’s contribution as first violinist.

Portland also was a pit stop for Hollywood superstars John Gilbert and Clark Gable, although they appeared with other theater companies, not Baker’s.

A list of more recent stars who used Portland as a lilypad from which to leapfrog to fame would include Eric Bogosian and Miranda July. Any others?

Portland has never been as remote – geographically, socially and spiritually – from the rest of the country, as it would like to believe.

In 1923, a young Ernest Haycox was living in Greenwich Village, writing his first western.

In 1923, a young George Olsen was appearing on Broadway in Kid Boots, with Eddie Cantor.

In 1923, a young Mayo Methot was appearing The Song & Dance Man on Broadway, opposite George M. Cohan.

In 1923, a young Lee Morse was startling audiences with her deep bluesy voice in the Artists & Models, a musical review on Broadway.

In 1923, a young Mark Rothko moved to the Upper West Side to study painting, after being upstaged in a Portland acting class by the future King of Hollywood.

I have no idea if Mark Rothko liked jazz.

If he did, whenever he felt homesick he could have taken a quick stroll down Broadway to see his fellow Portlanders George Olsen, Lee Morse, and Meyo Methot performing onstage.

During the winter of 1923, Mark Rothko came back home to Portland from the East Coast, after dropping out of Yale. While here, he studied acting with a local acting company, The Red Lantern Players. William Clark Gable (above) was in his class.

Josephine Dillon, their teacher, was a trained actress with a college education (Stanford, ‘08). She took an interest in Gable, and guided him toward his first roles in Hollywood.

No record of her opinion of Rothko’s acting talent.

Also studying with Dillon at this time: Portland born and raised James Beard.

Josephine Dillon became Mrs. Clark Gable in 1924. She was 37. He was 23. In 1930, they divorced.

Clark Gable became King Of Hollywood, which position he held from 1934 (It Happened One Night) to 1961 (The Misfits).

Mark Rothko shook the acting dust from his shoes, returned to New York, and began seriously studying painting.

James Beard took a brief theatrical tour of Europe, then moved to New York where he supported himself as a caterer, which career path eventually led to writing, teaching, and changing the way America eats.

One acting class, three mega stars. The rest is history.

“I hate and distrust all art historians, experts, and critics. Their work not only is useless, it is misleading. They can say nothing worth listening to about art or the artist, aside from personal gossip, which I grant you can sometimes be interesting.” Mark Rothko

I honor Rothko as the greatest artist Oregon has produced. His abstract paintings, while mystifying to others, are instantly recognizable to all Portlanders as detailed portraits of the various mood states induced by our city’s sunless winters. I honor his epigrams ““Silence is so accurate”” and “Pictures must be miraculous.” I honor his reputation for being a contrarian of first rank, for deliberately creating paintings for his Four Seasons restaurant commission which he hoped would cause patrons to lose their appetites. But most of all, I honor him because I cannot find one instance in the recent biography by James E. B. Breslin of Mark Rothko ever going to see a movie.

Perhaps he did, and we just don’t know about it.

He did study acting. He did this briefly, here in Portland, just before he began painting. He studied under Josephine Dillon, who would have paid more attention to him but she was busy falling in love with Clark Gable.

This is what Oregon Movies, A to Z is all about. Here it will all come down to movies. Let other people discuss the impact of Mark Rothko’’s Portland childhood on his adult paintings.  Let other people puzzle over the significance of the automatic drawings reputed to lie under his mysterious blocks of color. While everyone else gets the important stuff covered, I am going straight for the dessert. I am going to talk about Mark Rothko in terms of Clark Gable. At least I can do so knowing I have his gossipy blessing.