1911-1948 - A wonderful scrapbook documenting the career of pioneering filmmaker, Robert C. Bruce

Various, 1948. Album. Very good. This heavy album measures approximately 11" x 14" x 2". It was likely compiled by Robert C. Bruce, Jr. to preserve the memory of his father. It contains over 115 pages loaded with around 150 photographs (ranging in size from 3½" x 5" to 10" x 13", theater programs, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, movie advertisements and more. In nice shape with a sound binding and amateurish repairs at the head of the spine covering. Some of the newspaper articles are toned and torn where they cover two adjacent pages.

Robert Cameron Bruce may well be the most important little-remembered pioneering filmmaker, perfecting the art of outdoor cinematography. Originally from Vermont, Bruce moved to the west coast to open a commercial apple orchard in White Salmon, Washington in 1910. While there, he became a 'camera fiend," inspired by the dramatic scenery that surrounded him. After a crop failure in 1914, Bruce hired a budding cinematographer, who knew a little more about motion pictures than he did and began producing local newsreels and industrial shorts. He also began work on a travelog or scenic as they were known at the time. His When the Mountains Call was a paean to the Columbia River Valley and the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, and in an unusual twist that audiences had never before seen, Bruce turned the film into a hiking adventure. His hikers personalized the viewers' visual experience, while offering scale by digging through dirt and ice deposits, peering into deep crevices, entering an ice tunnel, and exploring glacial ice pinnacles before returning safely to their lodge.

Bruce found a ready distributor, Katherine F. Carter, a New York promoter operating as the Educational Films Corporation of America, and Mountains became a resounding critical and popular success; Bruce was dubbed "the D. W. Griffith of scenics." Carter subsequently commissioned a series of scenics, which were as refreshingly innovative as Mountains. He did not merely show a famous place or geographic feature. Instead, he explored them from fascinating angles and never-before-used perspectives while incorporating personal stories that were often touching or humorous. One example, Tis Tough to be Tender, follows the journey of a city slicker who decides to take a pack mule vacation "through the glorious redwoods and past dizzy crags and precipices [until] at last [he] is safely perched on an overhanging Rock, 3,200 feet above the Yosemite Valley." Then, having achieved his goal, he realizes that "journeying on a jouncing jackass in quest of Nature" is not his cup of tea, as he dreams of "quiet and peaceful city streets."

Also, documented in this album is his pioneering work for Paramount Studios in the brand-new world of talkies with a series of three outdoor musical shorts (Cow Camp Ballads featuring cowboys, Traveling Alone a hobo story, and Pining Pioneers a gold rush tale) as well as a miner-and-his-dog drama, Ghost City Whispers.

Bruce made an early transition to outdoor color with a documentary about a Kentucky foxhunt which was part of his Technicolor Musical Melodies series featuring outdoor instrumental performances that accompany luscious scenic shorts filmed in Mexico, the Mediterranean, and the garden of a California monastery.

By the mid-1930s, Bruce's outdoor expertise was being used in feature films, like Trail of the Lonesome Pine and beautiful location work on Waikiki Wedding with stars like Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda, Bing Crosby, Martha Raye, Anthony Quinn, and Gary Cooper.

Tragically, Bruce died from pneumonia at the age of 61 in 1948, the same day and in the same Los Angeles hospital his one-day old daughter passed away from child-birth complications. This album was then most likely assembled by his son, Robert C. Bruce, Jr. who although uncredited achieved inside-Hollywood fame as the narrator for scores of Loony Tunes, Merry Melodies, Walter Lanz, and Bob Clampet cartoons.

. Strange as it seems, far more has been written about Rober Junior, the cartoon narrator, than his father, Robert Sr. an important and innovative pioneer filmmaker. In fact, there is very little recorded information about Robert Sr. at all: other news updates in contemporary trade publications short paragraphs at IMDB and Wikipedia and a one-page essay about one of his films at the National Film Preservation Foundation website.

Unique. An important and historically valuable overview of his innovative and now largely forgotten impact on the American film industry.

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