Earlier this year, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis announced a partnership to build a movie studio on the 60-acre site of the former Wingate Road municipal incinerator dump. The planned complex will feature full-service movie, television and streaming production studios, as well as 100,000 square feet of offices, indoor and outdoor film sets, a film school and a back lot.
We’ve come a long way, baby, since a famed film company arrived to stay at our first not-so-completed tourist hotel. The director was the first guest to sign the register at the Hotel Broward. His name: David Wark Griffith. Or as he was known in Hollywood (California that is) and beyond, D.W. Griffith.
As the late historian Stuart McIver told it, Griffith chose the New River area to shoot a film for which the palm-lined river perfectly conjured up the South Seas. The film, The Idol Dancer, was a romantic adventure story involving the daughter of a Frenchman and a Javanese mother.
The Hotel Broward staff told Griffith the venue was not yet ready for him and his troupe of 50 guests, including the star actors.
Not a problem, said Griffith. He volunteered his crew to help finish the job. They made curtains for the rooms, and aided in painting and other finishing touches. After all, how far was that from creating sets? When told the kitchen facilities weren’t done yet, Griffith said that his portable kitchen, with its own cooks and bottle-washers, would do just fine.
The hotel owners were not the only locals to benefit. Griffith employed Seminoles to play South Seas natives. Among them was a man whose name readers of this column should be familiar with, Tony Tommie. (A recent column noted Tommie was the first Seminole the Tribe allowed to enroll in a “white school.”)
In addition, a local deep-sea fisherman was hired to transport the troupe for different location shots along the river. Even local schoolgirls appeared as a bridal party in a wedding procession.
While D.W. Griffith was the first major director to film here, a smaller company came months before to shoot scenes for a serial called The Great Gamble about a hero and heroine nearly burned at the stake by a fearsome outlaw (played by Tony Tommie) and his bloodthirsty gang, only to be rescued at the last minute.
As decades went by, dozens of major films were shot here, culminating in the now legendary Where the Boys Are, starring Connie Francis, shot in and around the Elbo Room. It put Fort Lauderdale Beach on the teen angst map and kicked off the spring break phenomenon.
Some mistakenly think the Tarzan of the Apes series, first shot in 1936, was filmed here. There are likely two reasons. One is that some scenes of the film starring champion swimmer Johnny Weissmuller were shot in Florida, but those were done in Silver Springs near Ocala. And secondly, Weissmuller had major ties to our city.
After his last Tarzan film in 1949, Weissmuller embarked on other ventures and eventually came to live in Fort Lauderdale with his fourth wife, Maria. According to local history blogger Jane Feehan, they “lived at the sixth hole of the Coral Ridge Country Club Golf Course.”
The actor was seen about town in his Cadillac, visiting the popular Mai-Kai Restaurant where he was known to let out his distinctive jungle call. (For you film buffs, the original yell for the Tarzan series was created by a soundman. He recorded Weissmuller’s normal yell, then manipulated it and played it in reverse.)
But more importantly — and this is where Tarzan and our city were most prominently linked — he became founding chairman of the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Who better than “Tarzan,” who had five Olympic gold medals and 52 national championships in the sport?
Miami has had a larger share of the movie trade and Palm Beach County a lesser share. But even some of their biggest hits couldn’t do without some scenes shot in Broward. Scarface, starring Al Pacino, had an exterior shot in Davie along with scenes on Miami Beach’s Ocean Drive and The Fontainebleau. The steamy Body Heat with Kathleen Turner, largely shot in Palm Beach County, had a memorable scene shot at the Hollywood Bandshell.
When the new studio gets up and running, will we give Miami a run for it? We shall see.
