By David Kiehn
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| Miles Brothers still photograph of blasting at City Hall |
When David Silver first saw the can of film in the trunk of a car a few blocks from the Alemany Flea Market. Silver, a photographic historian and president of the International Photographic Historical Organization, was there to meet two old-time scavengers who thought he might be interested in their find. The metal film can was stamped with the name PATHE on the lid and base, and hand-written around the name on one side of the can was “S. F. Earthquake Pictures.” What were the odds of this being anything special?
One of the old-timers opened up the can and pulled out an olive-drab-painted metal reel with film wound around it. The film was flammable 35mm nitrate, and the guy held it close to his face to look at the visible images, all the while puffing on a lit cigarette. Silver snatched the film away so quickly a foot of it tore away. When Silver explained that the film could explode into flames, the guy stepped back and threw away the cigarette.
Looking at the film, Silver could see images of ruined buildings; whether unique or not, a 35mm nitrate film of footage after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake wasn’t something one sees every day. Silver negotiated a deal to buy it, then took it home and set it aside.
On January 18, 2017, Silver posted a photo of the film reel on Nick Wright’s San Francisco HistoryFacebook page. There was a lot of comment about it, much of it stating that it needed to be preserved, and asking what Silver was going to do. It didn’t appear Silver was in a position to preserve the film any time soon so Jason Wright, Nick’s brother and the owner of Silver Shadows Gallery, a dealer in daguerreotypes and other vintage photographs, offered to buy the film from Silver, and a deal was made.
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| The Pathé film can that held the newly-discovered 1906 footage |
Nick took on the next step of finding someone that could identify the film and hopefully get it preserved. My work in identifying the Miles Brothers as the producer of A Trip Down Market Street, shot four days before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, led him to me. He called and I agreed to look at the film.
When I looked at the newly-found footage on a pair of rewinds, I saw the old Edison square perforations, which made the print very old, probably before 1910. The film had shrunken so badly that someone long ago had tried to run it through a projector and had torn all of the perforations along one side. Fortunately, the images were still intact, with no nitrate deterioration, and the perforations on the other side were also good. This meant I could run it through my home-built optical printer; all I needed to do was modify the sprocket wheels for the shrunken film so no more damage would be done.
Instead of making a film to film transfer, I set up my digital camera to shoot high resolution copies of each frame so I could study the film and compare it to what was already out there to see. The optical printer was very slow, and I had to stand next to it making sure the film would run through smoothly without damage, so I only worked on it for an hour or two a day. Over the next few weeks and a total of 16 hours I copied the 561 feet of film, all 8656 frames of it. When I put the sequence of frames into Adobe Bridge to renumber it I was able to see the film in motion for the first time.
As I suspected, this was a film I hadn’t seen anywhere before, although I’d seen similar footage on the Internet Archive posted by the Prelinger Archives. There were brief glimpses of the same footage scattered about those posts, but there was nothing as I was seeing now, so complete without a break. I realized the camera was on a trolley car using the old cable car tracks, and could see the overhead wires that electrified the line to run the vehicle’s motor. There were ruins seen ahead, and as the car turned onto Market Street the full extent of the earthquake and fire damage was revealed. Other footage available online was taken on this route from a bouncing automobile, but because this rediscovered footage was on the cable car tracks the image was smooth and steady.
The first five minutes of the film recreate much of A Trip Down Market Street, but instead of the joyous attitude of the people seen in that film, the ruined City has a very different, somber impression of life after the devastation. The latter film was shot at the end of April, based upon the scaffolding seen in the film, just starting to rise around the Ferry Building, By May, the scaffold would be much higher up the damaged building. It’s amazing how much rubble was already cleared from the street, but there was still smoking ruins here and there. There’s no doubt from the images that San Franciscans were determined to immediately rebuild.
More of that determination can be seen in other footage from the film, with ruins being dynamited and torn down. In activity near the Ferry Building, wagons are lined up to travel across the bay, and at least one soldier can be seen with a bayonetted rifle standing by to keep order.
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| Ruins of the Miles Brothers studio at 1139 Market Street after the earthquake and fire. A makeshift sign directs people to their new office at 790 Turk Street. |
It became obvious to me that this was film shot by the Miles Brothers, San Francisco’s first movie company. Although the studio itself at 1139 Market Street had been destroyed by the fire following the quake, they were up and running again quickly in a house at 790 Turk Street. Scott Miles, great-grandson of Earle Miles, who ran the San Francisco office, still has a family photo album that shows the ruins at 1139 Market, and their new home. It also has over 100 photos of San Francisco in ruins, some shots taken at the very locations seen in the film. But the clincher to identifying the footage as a Miles Brothers product is a New York Clipper trade magazine advertisement on June 30, 1906. By then, two-hour Miles Brothers film programs of San Francisco before and after the earthquake had been playing in theaters around the country for almost two months and the company was selling off used films at 10 cents per foot. The company had shot at least 6,000 feet of film, and had broken it down into various scenes, each one described with its contents and footage. Film No. 351 has two parts, the second being “Fifth St. to Market, down to Ferry” just as seen in the first five minutes of this newly-discovered film. Film No. 346, at 180 ft., “Refugees Leaving City with their goods at Ferry Bldg.; (B) Blasting at City Hall” exactly describes another sequence, with footage to match. A third sequence may be Dynamiting Prager’s Department Store, part of a longer film. It can be seen on the nitrate print that all three major sequences have a different frameline. In those days, the frame in relation to the perforations was not standardized, and might be positioned at a perforation, halfway between perforations, or anywhere in between. It’s known that the Miles Brothers had at least three cameras, and it’s doubtful that any of the studios from the east that came to film the ruins would have brought as many as three cameras with them. All of these clues add up to a Miles Brothers production.
Although other companies had filmed in San Francisco since the 1890s, the Miles Brothers were the first to establish the City as their home base, beginning in 1902. In December of that year they shot a panorama of Ocean Beach to the Cliff House, when a telegraph cable was scheduled to be brought to land, connecting Hawaii to San Francisco. The sea was too rough that day, but it was still good weather to film, so Harry Miles, the senior partner, cranked their camera to record the occasion of San Franciscans gathered idly around and youngsters playing in the surf. The film was released by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, where the Miles Brothers had a second office in New York. This made the Miles Brothers the first bi-coastal movie company.
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| Harry Miles, employee James Sciaroni, and Herbert Miles in front of their 790 Turk Street office, 1906. They are preparing to ship a paper print version of the 42-round Gans-Nelson fight to the Library of Congress for copyright. |
Because of their uniquely-modified cameras, the Miles Brothers hit upon the idea of shooting longer films than their competitors. They were able to film the 12-minute ride in a gravity car down Mount Tamalpias in Mill Valley in one continuous take. Their second film, A Trip Down Market Street, was shot from a San Francisco cable car from Eighth Street to the Ferry Building on April 14th, 1906. Harry and Joe boarded an eastbound train for New York with their films and camera equipment on April 17th, the night before the earthquake. In route, they heard about the destruction and came back to San Francisco with their film stock and cameras, letting their Market Street film continue on to New York where Herbert Miles received it. In the following weeks, the Miles Brothers shot more than two hours of San Francisco street scenes.
Much of what was filmed by them after the earthquake has yet to be identified. Of the bits and pieces on the Internet Archive, it should be possible to match up clips to the June 1906 descriptions and finally give credit to this pioneering studio. I don’t think the world has heard the last of these Miles brothers.
About the Author
David Kiehn is the author of Broncho Billy and the Essanay Film Company, published in 2003. He is the historian and film programmer for the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, located at the historic Edison Theater in the Niles district of Fremont, California.
David Kiehn is the author of Broncho Billy and the Essanay Film Company, published in 2003. He is the historian and film programmer for the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, located at the historic Edison Theater in the Niles district of Fremont, California.
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