A rooster has always been the logo—or part of the logo—of the pioneering, persevering, powerhouse French film company formed in 1896 as ‘Pathé Frères’ and now simply known as ‘Pathé.’ That bird’s morning cry signals a new day has dawned, and that’s what the brothers Pathé did for North American film production when they opened a studio in New Jersey in 1904, and then in the Edendale neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1910. Pathé’s LA space launched one year later than (and was located one block south of) Selig-Polyscope, LA’s first permanent film studio.
Pathé headed to California in order to make more “authentic” Westerns, which is often considered the first narrative film genre and it was certainly the most popular at the time. In a busy four-year period, Pathé West Coast produced between 100 and 150 shorts, many of which have no surviving prints. The company stopped production in the US in 1914 to concentrate on film distribution as ‘Pathé Exchange.’ James Young Deer was the head of production and established the Edendale studio. Young Deer and his wife Princess Red Wing—whose given name was Lillian St. Cyr but who went by Red Wing—were veteran actors and technical advisors who, back east, had worked with D. W. Griffith, and co-starred in a host of short films for the Bison Film Company.
For Pathé, Young Deer wrote scenarios and directed, and Red Wing acted. In contrast to stereotypical storylines and characterizations more often seen elsewhere, in Pathé pictures, Native American characters were often protagonists. While Young Deer’s White Fawn’s Devotion (1910) is on the National Film Registry, his Red Deer Devotion (1911) is one of the many films lost to history.
Red Wing, who was from the Winnebago tribe of Nebraska, went on to star in a Cecil B. DeMille picture, but it was a movie with a title as offensive as its subject matter: The Squaw Man (1914). This is also thought to be the first feature film made in Los Angeles. Red Wing separated from Young Deer and continued acting until 1925. She lived until 1974. As for Young Deer, while his career is marked by stardom with Pathé, his story is not without scars. He claimed to be from the Winnebago tribe of Nebraska, though he was most likely African American and Delaware Nanticoke, which perhaps highlights the fact that there were more opportunities in the film industry for a Native American than an African American at that time. In a brutal turn of this story, in 1914 a 15-year-old girl accused Young Deer of the statuary rape. Young Deer left the country, moving to England and continuing to make films, but later returned to California. To return to Pathé, the production company continues to make movies in France today—about a dozen per year with a back catalog of more than 800 feature films. And, the address of its long-ago Los Angeles outpost is now on Glendale Boulevard, near an exit ramp off the 2 freeway, along a stretch of roadway perhaps best known for a large storage facility and a fast-food joint.