Oregon Historical Society/Gene Stoeller Collection

SummaryThis collection consists of a short edited and intertitled 35 mm. film produced in 1916 by Metro Pictures. The topic is Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the end of Cape Cod. The town is described as remote, with an intertitle stating, "Narrow and Crooked streets lined with cottages, make this the quaintest and most un-American town in our country." Individuals are posed outside clapboard and shingled houses and at work. One man is characterized as a Portuguese fisherman. Activities depicted include the "town crier" with bell and text, a man herding cows on a main road, and details of a woman making bayberry candles. Elements of the artists' summer colony shown include a wide shot of artist Charles Webster Hawthorne and his painting students in a field, and a view of a woman painting at an easel in a town street. The print is scratched; however, the image shot lengths, exposures, and overall image quality are good.

Biographical/Historical NotesMetro Pictures Corporation was a motion picture production company founded in 1915 with New York headquarters until its move to Hollywood, California, in 1918. In 1916 the company made approximately 70 films, many of them multi-reel dramas. For their weekly newsreel, "...news footage was combined with local views," according to Motion Picture World. In 1920 the company became part of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM). The year 1916 was arguably a peak for Provincetown as an early twentieth century arts colony. In that year playwright Eugene O'Neill first wrote and performed for the Provincetown Players. Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872-1930), who is depicted teaching, opened the Cape Cod School of Art, said to be the first outdoor school for figure painting, in Provincetown in 1898. Hawthorne was born in Maine and was a founding member of the Provincetown Art Association in 1914. The Charles Webster and Marion Campbell Hawthorne papers, includes photographs and correspondence, Smithsonian Archives of American Art The film, donated to the Oregon Historical Society by Gene Stoeller, was transferred to Northeast Historic Film by exchange in 1998.

RepositoryNortheast Historic Film

AvailabilityThe Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Reproduction and UseAuthorization to reuse and/or reproduce must be obtained from Northeast Historic Film. See http://www.oldfilm.org/research for more information.