The Whartons Studio

The Whartons, Inc. was an early silent film production company operating in Ithaca, New York from 1914 to 1919. The Ithaca Studio was established by brothers Theodore and Leopold Wharton on the shores of Cayuga Lake, at the site of what is now Stewart Park. Currently, efforts are underway to create a silent movie museum in the former Wharton movie studio building in Stewart Park.

After filming a Cornell-Penn football game on the way to visit family in Ludlowville, New York, Theodore Wharton returned to Ithaca in 1913 with a cast and crew that included Francis X. Bushman and Beverly Bayne. A year later, his older brother Leopold joined him, and the two set up the Whartons Studio and begin making numerous films. In this period, the Wharton brothers were responsible for bringing many famous movie stars to Ithaca on the overnight train from New York City, making Ithaca the unofficial capital of the silent film industry. The movies were shot within elaborate studio sets and in natural sites around Ithaca that include the gorges on the Cornell University campus and in the woods near Beebe Lake.

In the early 1920s, the Wharton studio moved from Ithaca to Santa Cruz, California, as promoted by Santa Cruz mayor Fred Swanton. By then the majority of the film industry had settled in mostly Southern California and Hollywood because of the ability to shoot year-round. The studio was incorporated as Wharton Film Classics, Inc. although Leopold died in 1927 and Theodore in 1931, without ever making a movie in the city. Much of the evidence of the brothers' prolific cinematic career was lost in 1929, when hundreds of nitrate-based film reels belonging to the Wharton Brothers spontaneously combusted in the storage shed at the home of their lawyer.

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