Actor Captain E.H. Calvert leans forward at the steering wheel of an early roadster as he appears to simulate motion for a silent film produced on Signal Mountain in the early 1900s.The Chattanooga Southeast Tennessee Film Commission is trying to secure its share of the motion-picture pie for the Scenic City today, but nearly a century ago a national studio produced a number of silent films around the area from an office on Signal Mountain.
Signal Mountain resident Dale Smith, while thumbing through a scrapbook he bought at a recent estate sale in Brainerd, found photographs that apparently portray some of the actors, actresses and action that took place in and around the filming.
“I had no knowledge of a studio up there,” he said.
The studio, a division of Essanay Film Manufacturing Co., began making films here in 1914 and apparently continued for several years.
“Chattanooga has been an Essanay town for the last four months,” according to the Aug. 13, 1914, edition of the Philadelphia Evening Ledger. “Since the arrival of Captain E.H. Calvert, with 20 players from the Chicago studio of the Essanay Company, to produce pictures in Chattanooga and particularly in the mountains near here, the people of Chattanooga have treated the visitors royally.