Before Hollywood: Some of the first movie Westerns were filmed 80 miles from Austin

AUSTIN, Texas — A popular series of action-adventure movies that captured stories about the good guys and the outlaws from the old West were made over 100 years ago in San Antonio and the Hill Country.

Star Film Ranch would produce as many as three 15-minute movies a week in 1911. They were some of the earliest Westerns made, and audiences back then loved them, eagerly paying a nickel to watch the newest films in small theaters, including several that had opened for business along Austin’s Congress Avenue.

We owe the existence of these early cowboy movies to a French film producer in New York City, Gaston Melies. Since westerns shot in New York weren’t very convincing and hard to shoot in winter, Melies headed south to Texas.

“Star Film Ranch was based south of San Antonio down along the Mission Trail,” Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, a University of Texas at Austin media studies professor, said. “The films capture the Central Texas landscape so well, the rolling hills of the Hill Country, the wide open spaces.

Fuller-Seeley has co-authored a book about Star Film Ranch movies titled “The First Movie Studio in Texas.” She said the films captured a lot of what made Westerns popular in later years.

“It’s landscapes. It’s the delightful cowboys. It’s the action. And it’s the fabulous performances of the leading cowgirl and lead cowboy that Gaston had hired.”

The Star Ranch films created some early movie stars. Francis Ford, whose younger brother, John Ford, later became a legendary Hollywood film director, starred in the film with teenager Edith Storey.

“Edith was only 17. She was born in New York City and raised there, but was quite a tomgirl,” Fuller-Seeley said. “She’s a delightful comedian, also very good in dramatic films, and she’s just got an excellent way with the camera, and she’s a horsewoman like you wouldn’t believe.”

Only four of the Star Ranch movies have been found, and film historians like Fuller-Seeley hope there are more still out there.

“It’s great fun,” Fuller-Seeley. “It’s all from 115 years ago, but sometimes the films look as fresh as if they were shot yesterday.”