Hollywood South: Glamour, Gumbo, and Greed

By Linda Thurman

A studio insider reveals the dramatic story of politics, conspiracy, and crime behind Louisiana’s film industry boom.

From her work in Los Angeles to her role as an executive with Emerald Bayou Studios, Linda Thurman had a front-row seat to the tumultuous beginnings of Hollywood South. She knows first-hand how a conspiracy to manipulate the Louisiana film industry resulted in prison terms for film executive Malcolm Petal and state official Mark Smith.

In what reads like a modern-day crime novel, Thurman tells the full story—from the chairman’s office of a Hollywood studio to the corridors of the Louisiana legislature. Part memoir and part exposé, Hollywood South sheds light on the shadowy and convoluted relationship between politics and entertainment in both Hollywood and Louisiana.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781455622009

Book preview

HalfTitle

With tax incentives for the film industry running rampant in North America, there have been so many changes to the film industry that it’s become difficult to keep up. Linda’s in-depth discussion of Louisiana’s industry and her experiences provides a useful case study and a captivating read.

—Patrick Button, assistant professor of economics,

Tulane University

"In the beautifully detailed Hollywood South, Linda gives us a compelling insider’s look at its film industry. A thrilling tale of perseverance and determination in spite of Louisiana’s political corruption."

—Lawrence Leritz, Broadway producer

"Linda Thurman’s Hollywood South is a front-row seat to the many twisted tales of movies and moviemaking in New Orleans. She skillfully weaves her own experiences as an entrepreneur in the movie industry with the many bizarre stories that could only happen in Louisiana! Read it with gumbo!"

—Raymond P. Fisk, Texas State University

"Hollywood South is a must-read for anyone crazy enough to actually want work in film or TV but also anyone even crazier who has ever dreamed of changing Hollywood."

—Koji Steven Sakai, screenwriter/producer

The years of monolithic tax incentives may be over, but a strong community of artisans remains to design the future adventures of Hollywood South. There are important lessons to be learned within these pages.

—Catherine Clinch, television writer on

Hunter, Jake and the Fatman, Knight Rider, The Love Boat, Hart to Hart,

Foul Play, True Confessions, and Transformers: Rescue Bots

Like Alice in Wonderland, Linda Thurman fell into the alternate-reality world known as Hollywood with all its Mad Hatter executives, Humpty Dumpty creatives, and Cheshire Cat politicians.

—Brian Seth Hurst, chief storyteller,

executive producer, StoryTech® Immersive

In her distinctive and engaging Southern style, Linda Thurman weaves tales of her odd jobs and celebrity encounters with clearly articulated descriptions of the nuts and bolts of filmmaking and politics in Hollywood and Louisiana.

—Philip Lelyveld, Entertainment Technology Center,

USC School of Cinematic Arts

I had no idea of the depth of drama and politics going on behind the scenes. What I thought would be a detailed analysis of the rise and fall of the Louisiana film industry ended up reading more like a suspense novel. I couldn’t put the book down wondering about the outcome of the various shady political characters. I did learn more about the film industry and the backdoor politics, but instead of it being just a reference book that should be in every film classroom it is also a riveting book of drama and political intrigue that could end up soon as a great movie script.

—Terence Guardino, Hollywood astrologer and author of

The Seasons of Astrology and Your Perfect Match

FullTitlePELOGO.TIF

Pelican Publishing Company

Gretna 2017

Copyright © 2017

By Linda Thurman

All rights reserved

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The word Pelican and the depiction of a pelican

are trademarks of Pelican Publishing Company, Inc. and are

registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

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ISBN: 9781455621996

E-book ISBN: 9781455622009

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Printed in the United States of America

Published by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.

1000 Burmaster Street, Gretna, Louisiana 70053

For Skylar Grayce Jarreau

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

1 Movies Discover Louisiana

2 For the Love of Movies

3 Creative Soil

4 Louisiana Takes a Supporting Role

5 Telling Stories in Moving Images

6 Meanwhile, in Hollywood

7 Inside the Dream Machine

8 Black Belt Deal Making

9 Five Steps from Script to Screen 

10 United Artists 

11 Monday, Monday

12 It’s a Wrap and a New Beginning

13 Technology Makes the Scene

14 Momentum Builds Down South

15 Playing It Forward

16 Making Connections 

17 Caught Up In Historic Events

18 The Set-Up

19 A Party at the Capitol 

20 New Orleans Media Experience

21 Getting the Lay of the Land

22 A Time of Great Potential 

23 Asking Questions

24 The Findings

25 Location Expo

26 Getting Involved

27 Emerald Bayou Studios

28 Into the Halls of Power 

29 I Am Not a Lobbyist

30 Get a Group

31 Belle of the Ball 

32 Presenting a United Front

33 In-fighting, Stonewalling, and the Struggle for Control 

34 Sharing the Wealth

35 Incentive Insanity

36 Where’s My Job?

37 Home Grown Workforce Initiative

38 The Patronage Economy

39 Too Many Battles

40 A Culture of Corruption

41 Can the Phoenix Rise?

Epilogue

Appendix

Notes

Glossary

Where Are They Now?

Bibliography

Foreword

When I was a young boy in grammar school back in the early 1960s, I tried my hand at writing stories. I was hell-bent on being a writer. It seemed glamorous and exciting. I saw myself hanging out with Superman, a sort of more interesting Jimmy Olsen. Unfortunately, I had a difficult time with grammatical rules. My third grade teacher would constantly red line my essays with comments like incorrect tense or improper use of adjectives. I never understood why something couldn’t be explained as the biggest little lie I ever told.

I did, however, learn one rule that was both mathematical and grammatical at the same time. Two negatives make a positive.

Unfortunately, sometimes that rule also doesn’t apply.

And so was the case when Hollywood went looking for free money back in the ‘90s. You see, making a successful movie is difficult. And once the studio moguls were replaced by corporate bean counters, no one at the motion picture studios would know a good script if it bit them. The new studio bosses were well schooled in finance and business administration, they were MBAs or lawyers or worse yet, agents. And while they knew their way around spreadsheets, they had no idea what it took to make a commercially successful film. Of course, they would look to the usual directors and movie stars in the hopes that they would ensure success at the box office. Unfortunately, the old formula of having a major movie star like Schwarzenegger or Stallone didn’t guarantee anything except a very expensive film.

So what is a poor movie exec to do? The answer was simple. Use OPM. Other People’s Money. And so the craze for finding off balance sheet financing began. After all, Hollywood made a lot of money. Investors wanted to make a lot of money. Hollywood was about glamour and sex. Investors wanted to walk the red carpet and be sexy, too. And so financing schemes abounded. TV presales, sovereign nation funds, high net worth individuals, the newly wealthy, and the newly wealthy countries: Germany, Japan, Korea, the Mideast nations.

Eventually someone thought of the tax subsidy scheme. A situation where a state, a nation, or a province could offer rebates, tax credits, or subsidies to motion picture studios. It could create new industries in places like New Zealand, Canada, the UK. It could create new jobs where people would need to buy homes when they relocated. It could create a new tax base. It could create a New Hollywood.

In the mid to late ‘90s, states and territories and countries were lining up to line the pockets of the likes of Warner Brothers, Sony, Paramount, etc. It was corporate welfare. Governments were paying studios and producers to make movies, and they were doing so with vigor.

Now Louisiana, never a state to be outdone by other states, and a government that since the days of Huey P. Long was well-noted for its honesty and fair dealing, saw a great opportunity. An opportunity to have access to Hollywood with all its glitz and glamour. And so, Louisiana decided to launch a full frontal attack. Think of the locations! Think of the food! Think of the free money! Think of the opportunity to siphon off funds, to do underhanded deals to be. . .well. . .like Louisiana!

My friend Linda Thurman was caught in the middle of this madness, and in her book Hollywood South: Glamour, Gumbo, and Greed, she tells it like it was. She had a front row seat to the ensuing madness, and she lived to tell about it.

This fascinating book seems like a work of fiction, a mystery, a who dunnit, but it is indeed a work of non-fiction, beautifully told. Stranger than fiction.

And finally, I’ve come to realize that all grammatical and mathematical rules are not absolute. In this case when the unscrupulous Louisiana politicians and business people tried to woo the even more underhanded Hollywood powers, two negatives do not make a positive.

They make a mess.

Scott Ross

Acknowledgments

And I’d like to thank . . .

Life is a complex tapestry. The threads that came together to create this story are human lives. A heartfelt thank you to each life who touched mine and lent another color to this tale.

Telling this story has brought to life some friends and colleagues who have taken their leave. The ghosts of Tom Taylor, Susan Levin, Jerry Weintraub, and Stephanie Knauer were welcome guests for a brief time. Miss Velmarae Dunn was my spectral writing coach.

It has been my privilege and honor to have the love and support of strong women, beginning with my mother LaNelle Rushing Thurman, grandmother Ida Jeannette Lofton Rushing, sisters Stephanie Harper and Donna Adams, and my cousin Sandra McEuen who has become a sister.

Two remarkable women—Marquetta Cheeks and Sandra Thompson Herman—were with me on the last decade of this journey. They have my respect, admiration, gratitude, and love.

Conflict is the essence of drama. To everyone who threw an obstacle in the path that led here, thank you for making the story more interesting—and for making me stronger.

Finally, a more recent addition to this pantheon of supporters, my editor, Mark Mathes. Without your guidance and encouragement, this story might never have been written and remained a campfire tale for a dark night in the swamp.

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Vitascope Hall (1896) at 623 Canal Street, New Orleans, was the first motion picture theater in the United States. (From the Poole Collection. Used with permission.)

HS-004-VitascopeAd-NowShowing-623Canal-7-26-1896.jpg

A 1896 newspaper ad for Vitascope Hall announcing move from West End Park to the first motion picture theater in the US. (From the Poole Collection. Used with permission.)

1

Movies Discover Louisiana

If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up somewhere else.

—Yogi Berra

Louisiana dethroned California as film capital of the world in 2013. It’s a fact. The Los Angeles film office said so. The numbers confirm it.

Major studios released 108 productions that year. California and Canada tied for second with fifteen each. Louisiana led with eighteen films substantially shot in the bayou state.

They include Oscar-winners 12 Years a Slave and Dallas Buyers Club, and box office hits G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, and Now You See Me.

But like in any great film, there’s a backstory.¹

It made headlines when the Louisiana legislators created the film incentive program in the early 2000s.

The affair began over a century earlier. Film exhibition was a popular diversion in the city of New Orleans beginning in 1895. Brief clips, 10- to 30-seconds, of waves, moving trains, and strolling people were projected in West End Park, drawing primitive electric power from the streetcar line. It was a glorious love affair from the moment the first glittering image appeared on a stretched canvas screen.

The flamboyant Gilded Age was fading, making way for the Gay Nineties. By 1896 Americans were cakewalking to A Hot Time in The Old Town and marching to Stars & Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa.

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Magazine ad for an early Mutoscope Moving Picture Machine (1899). (From the Poole Collection. Used with permission.)

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Madame Alice Guy-Blaché, Director (circa 1898). (From the Poole Collection. Used with permission.)

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Original poster for Tarzan of the Apes (1918), the first film shot in Louisiana to make a million dollars. (From the Poole Collection. Used with permission.)

The national spotlight focused on New Orleans that summer for the Supreme Court ruling on Plessy v. Ferguson. The landmark case upheld Louisiana’s separate but equal law and perpetuated segregation until 1954 when Brown v. Board of Education changed the national policy.

A corrupt local government was voted out of office and replaced by reformers—a move that would become a tradition in New Orleans. The new city council traveled to Holland and Germany in 1896 to study red-light districts with the aim of controlling prostitution. They debuted Storyville, the birthplace of Dixieland and jazz, the following year. The ousted politicians moved on to the governor’s mansion in the next election.

The women of New Orleans celebrated the leap year of 1896 by forming Les Mystérieueses, the first all-women Mardi Gras krewe and the precedent for Venus, Iris and Muses. Local suffragettes were busy, too, founding the Era (Equal Rights Association) Club which successfully lobbied for the right of women to vote on taxation.

They also flocked to the new movie theater. Vitascope Hall, the first indoor movie theater with audience seating in the United States, opened on Canal Street in July, 1896.²

Not content to watch movies, New Orleans soon earned a reputation as a popular film location and a powerful lure for filmmakers from all over the world. In February 1898, Biograph Pictures sent producer/cameraman F. S. Armitage and his crew to shoot realistic films in New Orleans—travelogues and news stories about the Spanish American War.

Biograph released New Orleans City Hall in 1898. Armitage eventually amassed a catalog of 400 films, and Biograph released over 3,000 shorts and a dozen features between 1895 and 1917.³

The first Hollywood film was released by Biograph in 1910—D.W. Griffith’s In Old California.

The Biograph Company

American Mutoscope and Biograph Company was founded in 1895 by William K. L. Dickson with three American partners in New Jersey. The English Dickson had invented an early, possibly the first, successful motion picture camera and projector while working for Thomas Edison.

Mutoscope projectors ranged from a personal-sized peepshow viewer to an Imax-style 68mm film, almost double the standard 35mm film.

Biograph Pictures made in Louisiana before 1900:

New Orleans City Hall (1898)

Loading a Mississippi Steamboat (1898)

Torpedo Boat Dupont (1898)

Scenes of Steamship Olivette (1898)

Mardi Gras Carnival Part I (1899)

Mardi Gras Carnival Part II (1899)

Way Down South (undated)

Source: Louisiana Film History: A Comprehensive Overview Beginning in 1896 by Susan and Ed Poole; Anthony Slide, The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry.

The novelty of realistic films was wearing thing with audiences when three innovative filmmakers changed the course of the industry. Although none of them made movies in Louisiana, they advanced the art of telling stories on film and gave birth to Hollywood South. George Méliès is well-known for introducing trick shots and special effects in A Trip the Moon (1902).

More obscure but just as important, in 1898 Madame Alice Guy-Blaché directed La Fee aux Choux [The Cabbage Fairy] believed to be the first film based on a fictional story. Finally, George S. Porter wrote, directed, and produced The Great Train Robbery (1903), widely cited as the first western based on a script that proved film could be a commercially-viable medium.⁴

By 1909 studios from northern states were looking for a better climate with more sunny days for shooting, and Louisiana began entertaining prospects. The first recorded foray was by William Selig from Chicago. Selig’s Polyscope Company arrived by rail like a circus of the era with boxcars of scenery, performers, equipment for filming and special effects—and a ringmaster in writer/director Francis Boggs.

The troupe made Mephisto and the Maiden (1909), the first film based on a story produced in Louisiana. Their second project was a realistic picture called With Taft in Panama (1909) about President William H. Taft’s visit to the Panama Canal and his return to New Orleans.

Boggs returned to his California home reportedly because his severe racial prejudice made the city too uncomfortable. William Selig remained in New Orleans to produce Mr. Mix Goes at the Mardi Gras (1910) starring Tom Mix, before he became a legendary cowboy star, and Shriners Pilgrimage to New Orleans (1910), the first national convention footage.

Despite press reports that Selig was interested in building a studio in New Orleans, he joined Boggs in setting up the first permanent studio in Los Angeles in 1909-1910. The studio was north of downtown in Edendale, now called Echo Park and Silver Lake. Boggs was murdered there by a Japanese gardener in 1911.⁵

Maybe he should have encouraged Selig to build the studio in Louisiana.

The first studio in Hollywood itself is believed to be a space in the former Blondeau Tavern on Sunset Boulevard at Gower—rented by the Nestor Film Company of New Jersey in 1911. Louisiana was still a popular filming location and vying for film capital of the world



Meanwhile in New Orleans, 1911 saw the Kalem Company set up a studio near Bayou St. John and make seven films. A dispute with the director ended the run, and Kalem moved on to sister studios in Florida and California in 1912.

Other ventures came and went in Louisiana over the next few years before Hollywood was firmly established as the movie capital of the world. A few were the Coquille Film Company, Nola Film, and the Diamond Film Company—and the Times-Picayune Motion Picture Department.

Chicago-born French-American director Rene Plaisetty returned to the US to escape World War I in Europe. He relocated to New Orleans to make films for Pathé Freres of Paris, still a major film distributor in the 21st century. The Moving Picture World said a Pathé vice president believes that New Orleans, with its quaint old-world backgrounds, with its romantic history and its marvelous light facilities, is especially adapted for the production of good subjects either taken from the great past or the picturesque present.⁶

Although Plaisetty claimed credit in interviews, J. F. Carter built a light-filled glass studio for Coquille Film Company in 1914. The Studio Dandy was released May 18, 1915 the first local production by a locally-owned studio. Wealthy New Orleans attorney-screenwriter-actor William Morgan Hannon took over and renamed the studio Nola Film in 1915. Despite all his efforts, the company failed.

In September 1917, the Diamond Film Company, financed by a Louisiana oil baron, took over the Nola studio and continued making films for Pathe to distribute until 1919.



In February 1916 the Times-Picayune Motion Picture Department ran two contests: one for a story to be filmed, and the other for an actress from each of its fifteen readership districts to appear in the movie. Cupid and Contraband was released along with a two-reel comedy for regional distribution.

Although no major studios took up residence in Louisiana, filming continued almost unabated.⁷

By 2016, the New Orleans Times Picayune, now home-delivered only three days a week, is betting big on videos for its nola.com. The newspaper itself is printed in Mobile, Alabama and trucked into the Crescent City.

Archivists and film historians Ed and Susan Poole have documented more than 2,500 films made in Louisiana between 1898 and 2016.⁸

Many of the films themselves have been lost to history. Through extensive research in newspapers, movie magazines, legal records, and especially the paper artifacts generated by movies, the Pooles are reconstructing the forgotten history of film.

Ed and Susan Poole

Archivists and Film Historians

About forty years ago, a young couple strolling through the French Quarter came across a vendor selling movie posters he had salvaged from theater lobbies. For the grand sum of ten dollars, Ed Poole bought his soon-to-be wife Susan an original Gidget poster. The 1959 movie starred Sandra Dee and James Darren as Moondoggie, Susan’s favorite character. The gesture ignited their passion for collecting and research that has grown ever since.

Ed and Susan Poole are authorities on documenting, recording and preserving film accessories (press books, movie stills, movie posters, general press materials, etc.). They have progressed from casual collectors to retail and wholesale dealers to full time researchers with over 20 reference books to their credit. Museums, auction houses, and the FBI depend on their expertise.

They have published over twenty books beginning with the first reference book on movie posters, Collecting Movie Posters (1997). Recent books have focused on Louisiana’s rich film history.

Louisiana Film History: A Comprehensive Overview Beginning 1896

Crescent City Cinema Movie Posters

Heroine to Hussy: Women in Louisiana Films

Louisiana Plantations: Real to Reel

Learn About Movie Posters

Learn About International Movie Posters

Movie Still Identification Book

Legality of U.S. Movie Posters

Movie Trailer Identification Codes

National Screen Service Accessory Codes

Production Code Basics

The Silent Studio Directory

Web:

HollywoodOnTheBayou.com

LearnAboutMoviePosters.com

MoviePosterDataBase.com

MovieStillID.com

Their latest book is America’s First Movie Theater: Louisiana’s Vitascope Hall. The Pooles have actively campaigned for a marker at the site of the first cinema in the United States which opened on Canal Street in New Orleans in 1896, making Louisiana the birthplace of the American movie theater.

Louisiana lost out to Hollywood in the initial competition to be the film capital of the world, but the war—and the love affair between Louisiana and movies, continued.

Like Selig’s circus train style arrival in 1913, studios would send everyone and everything needed for a film to stay in Louisiana for a few weeks or months, and return to California.

Most films made in the state were about the Deep South, often set in New Orleans or Louisiana itself—or required locations and scenery found in the state. Tarzan of the Apes (1918) found California too barren after a few days of shooting. The crew relocated to the Atchafalaya Basin where Tarzan could swing through the lush jungle—otherwise known as a swamp. Posters