Joaquin Miller Poses for Moving Pictures
San Francisco Call (12 June 1912)
Joaquin Miller, the “poet of the Sierras,” consented to being filmed in and around his home 100 years ago yesterday. Though at least one film had been made based on his work (Selig’s 1911 The Danites) the poet claimed that the movies “were almost entirely strange to him.”
He told a reporter for the San Francisco Call that “I want to be photographed here among the Monterey cypresses which I have planted, in order that the pictures may show that I have done something. And I want them to show too, the stone walls that I built here myself.” [click here for full article]
I could find no reference on Margaret Guilford-Kardell’s authoritative bibliographic site. However, I did find this stereoscopic image of Mr. Miller from the Keystone-Mast collection at UC Riverside. I wonder if this was the photo shoot in question. Perhaps there never was a film, and the “moving picture” in question was a stereoscopic view? (???)
Stereoscopic Image of Joaquin Miller from the Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California at Riverside.
His desire to be photographed near things he had done and built reminds me of a story I’ve been told about Wallace Stevens. He was being interviewed in his office–Stevens was an insurance executive in Hartford–and he didn’t want to talk so much about his poetry as he was eager to point out the various Hartford buildings and concerns his company had insured.