72 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JANUARY 2022
BAY SHORE HOLLYWOOD EAST
BY ANNIE WILKINSON
In the early 1900s, rapt audiences sat in
darkened theaters, mesmerized by the
fl ickering dyed or tinted images projected
onto a screen. The fi lms had no sound
track; movies were silent in those days,
before the invention of synchronized
dialogue. To mask the whirring of the
fi lm projector, a musician sitting at a
piano by the screen would improvise
music scores to match the battle, carchase,
melodrama, or slapstick scenes.
Such was the scene in New York and
across the country, especially in Nassau
and Suffolk counties. But Long
Island went beyond showing shorts
and feature-length movies: It took the
action to the next level when it became
location central for fi lm production,
not suspecting that aft er a few short
years Hollywood would become the
world capital of the commercial movie
industry.
As Vicki Berger of the Suff olk County
Historical Society Museum told News12,
“Long Island was the original Tinseltown.
We were Hollywood East before
the industry moved to the West Coast.”
SOUTH SHORE LIGHT
It all came about because American
Vitagraph Company, a Brooklyn-based
fi lm studio, opened a location in Bay
Shore in January 1916. That year, Vitagraph
produced 26 silent movies. Before
that, Vitagraph had established itself in
1897 in Lower Manhattan to compete
with the projecting kinetoscope, the
forerunner of the fi lm projector created
in 1896 by Thomas Edison.
Vitagraph’s initial Lower Manhattan
silents consisted of fi lm shorts
and newsreels about the 1898 Spanish
American War. Many of them did
not include news footage: They were
actually reenactments that would
later become known as propaganda.
But the paying public was hungry
for entertainment and the studio
thrived, feeding them a steady diet of
its productions. By 1907, Vitagraph was
known as the most prolifi c American
fi lm production company, producing
hundreds of newsreels and famous
silent fi lms.
In 1916, the normally peaceful hamlet
became the go-to place for masters of
comic timing and others who wanted
to be seen on the scene. Film directors,
producers, costumers, makeup artists,
and all the creative talent of the
silent-movie machine descended on
the place known as “Slapstick City” to
churn out silent fi lms full of sight gags.
The New York Times described how “the
fi lm technicians behind primitive movie
cameras found that the South Shore,
with its southern exposure, off ered
perfect conditions for fi lming.”
The busy studio enticed such legends
as beloved writer-producer-director
Charlie Chaplin, known for portraying
his character The Tramp in fi lms that
folded “pathos neatly into the slapstick,”
as The Guardian wrote. Chaplin was
so impressed with the surroundings
that he bought an East Islip mansion off
Suff olk Avenue with a hand-set bowling
alley in the basement. Oliver Hardy, half
of the famed comedy duo Laurel and
Hardy, owned a home on Maple Avenue
in Bay Shore, and stars like Mae West,
queen of the off -color one-liners, rented
summer cottages there. Another fi lm
star glimpsed around town was Fatty
Arbuckle, who appeared in the popular
Keystone Cops series produced by Vitagraph.
Arbuckle’s claim to fame, according
to History.com, was his talent for
“comedic pratfalls and pie-throwing.”
POLICE PRATFALLS
The bustling hamlet’s Main Street was
full of the horns of automobiles and the
clip-clop of horse-drawn carriages, a
charming respite from New York City
for the many affl uent vacationers who
fl ocked there. Vitagraph’s offi ces were
located in the Vitagraph building at 94
Fourth Ave., formerly General Keystone
Appliance Repair. The building was
also used as the fi ctional policemen’s
headquarters.
The bumbling, inept peacekeepers of
the Keystone Cops fi lms (also spelled
“Kops”) were created by producer/director
Mack Sennett, dubbed “The King of
Comedy” by Turner Classic Movies, “a
ringmaster for a motley crew of comedic
talent that included Charlie Chaplin,
Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand and
the Keystone Kops, who slid, slipped
and slapped their way across American
movie screens.”
Bay Shore locals got in the act, earning
about $5 per day as extras. Some observers
have said that the fi lm directors
invited the real Suff olk policemen to
act as extras as well. Others said that the
ideas for the early fi lms were created by
local Suff olk County scriptwriters aft er
observing the local police force at work.
The farces about the ineff ectual, inept
cops were popular from 1912 to the
early 1920s; the golden age of the silents
thrived until 1927, fading away with the
release of the fi rst feature-length fi lms
with synchronized dialogue, known
as talking pictures (“talkies”). With
that invention, the genre of movies
without a sound track went quiet —
for good. Aft er the cameras stopped
rolling, Vitagraph closed up shop, and
the Vitagraph building was converted
into apartments.
REAR VIEW
Keystone Cops
“Long Island was the
original Tinseltown,”
says Vicki Berger.
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
/History.com