Bison 101

If the appeal of the cowboy owed much to Broncho Billy, the popularity of Indians in films was doubtless the result of their exotic appearance and the opportunity they provided for exciting scenes of battle.

A more direct cause of the frequency of Indians on the screen was that one company, the aptly named Bison, specialized in them. At first Bison had, like other companies, made its Westerns in the east. In 191 o, recognizing that authentic locations were becoming essential, Fred Balshofer, the chief director, decided to take the company west. He found an ideal spot at Santa Ynez canyon, near Santa Monica, California and the company took a long lease on a spread of eighteen thousand acres dotted with orange groves and vineyards.

By a happy chance at that time on a tour of the California beach resorts was the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West show. Based in Oklahoma, on a huge tract of land with its own rodeo arena, the 101 Ranch comprised dozens of real cowboys and Indians, herds of buffalo and cattle, stagecoaches, tepees and other paraphernalia invaluable in the production of Western films. Bison contracted with the Miller brothers for the use of the entire outfit, and overnight Bison 101, as it was renamed, found itself tooled up to become a manufacturer of Westerns on an industrial scale. The company built a permanent wooden fort, which can be seen in such pictures as At Old Fort Dearborn (191 3). Then, having laid in a stock of Indians, Bison went into the production of Indian pictures with a vengeance.

The investment paid off. In 1912 an English trade journal, The Bioscope, wrote: 'The latest 1 o 1 Bison is as good as any others which have gone before ... there are ... horses and oxen literally by the dozen, and a splendidly managed explosion, which is the result of something more than threepence-halfpenny worth of gunpowder - the limit of expenditure which so many producers appear to set themselves in arranging similar scenes. The Bison Company's Indians are always splendid fellows to behold and, what is more, they always look what they are supposed to be.'

At the same time as it acquired the 1 o 1 Ranch, Bison also hired a new director, Thomas Ince. Ince's real genius was as an organizer and supervisor. He also had a considerable talent for self-promotion, which led him to claim credit for the direction of others' films and for the original decision to contract with the 101 Ranch. But Ince's actual achievements were substantial enough. He initiated the practice of making a detailed shooting script which specified every item of decor and costume, every shot and movement. This kind of pre-planning, eventually to become standard industry practice, saved greatly on time and money and streamlined production at the Santa Ynez location, which soon became popularly known as Inceville.

Bison now not only had the best resources for making Westerns; it was also of all companies the best equipped to maximize its potential. But the Ince regime there was shortlived. The New York Motion Picture Company, the parent of Bison 101, was soon absorbed into Carl Laemmle's Universal. Laemmle moved production units into Inceville to make his own Westerns under the ioi-Bison brand name, while Ince built a new studio in Culver City. Inceville fell into disuse in the early 1920s, after Universal had consolidated production at their huge new studio built on the old Taylor Ranch five miles north of Hollywood. These new facilities were formally opened on 15 March 1915 in the presence of, among others, Buffalo Bill Cody. Universal City, like Inceville, boasted permanent Western sets, and to this day visitors to Hollywood who take the Universal Studio tour can see whole streets of standing sets for a Western township. Universal's level of investment in Western personnel and suitable real estate (it also owned a ranch in the San Fernando Valley) ensured that it remained the largest producer of Westerns throughout the 1920s