At the FBO Ranch

"Born to Battle" 1926, filmed at FBO Ranch

Heading west on Sunset Boulevard towards the East Pacific Coast Highway in California, one might guess that the modern developed land was once a popular location where movie production companies filmed in the great outdoors. The guess is of course correct, upon observing the view of the ocean, the Santa Ynez Canyon and beach, which was once raw land home to a number of filming sets four miles north of Santa Monica. At the entrance of the Santa Ynez Canyon is where the Robertson-Cole Ranch once stood: production sets and facilities for westerns, including stables for horses. This ranch encompassed the beach, part of the ocean, a river, mountain, plains, and a hamlet. Perhaps not surprisingly, this beautiful landscape was used by previous Hollywood film production companies, long before it was known as the FBO Ranch where Tom Tyler would travel each filming day to mount his horse and work for the cameras.

Historically, this same piece of land was used for silent film exteriors by director Thomas Ince of the New York Motion Picture Company. Ince bought the 460 acres of land in 1912 that makes up Santa Ynez Canyon, then leased an additional 18,000 acres into the Santa Monica Mountains, or seven miles of land, just for filming movies on. Due to the topography, the land became suitable for all types of film genres, including westerns and dramas which called for an exotic locale like “Kismet” (1920). Appropriately named Inceville, all types of buildings and stages were assembled. Restaurants, a commissary, office buildings, wardrobe, and enough dressing rooms for the 500 plus people who worked and filmed here.

In 1917, Ince sold the original 460 acres to western star William S. Hart, who named it Hartville. By 1920, Robertson-Cole bought the land from Hart and named it the Robertson-Cole Ranch. An article on the purchase of the ranch property is described in detail in The Moving Picture World, June 26, 1920. Harry R. Hough was in charge of the ranch, and in 1922, Robertson-Cole reorganized as Film Booking Offices with Joseph P. Kennedy as President of the company. Tom Tyler must have enjoyed filming in the location, the land reminding him of the hamlet in upstate New York where he was born, Port Henry, by Lake Champlain. It is not wrong to say that Tom filmed while in the Pacific Ocean, strong swimmer that he was, capable of escaping a ship off land once he finished fighting a group of bandits, as he did in “Born to Battle” (1926). In this silent film, Tom swims to the beach and lands in front of a building designed to resemble a school – in the story, a girl’s school, where a bevy of beauties see him emerge from the ocean like a merman, all dripping wet. The cliff and river on the FBO ranch provided the setting for “The Wyoming Wildcat” (1925) and “The Cowboy Musketeer” (1925), and once again the beach in “Wild to Go” (1926).

A view of Inceville, from Movie Pictorial, September 1915

Nowadays, the very town where Tom Tyler filmed his earliest silent films for FBO is called Inceville, and the neighborhood to its immediate south, Pacific Palisades, and to the northwest, Palisades Highlands. Largely an affluential region where many actors and musicians live, the once glorious film production sets that thrived here are now long gone.