William Nicholas Selig, often called “Colonel” Selig, was an early film pioneer known for his combination of technological, entrepreneurial, and storytelling prowess.
Born in 1864 in Chicago, Selig worked as a magician and minstrel show producer. Three decades later, he saw Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope in action and set about engineering something similar—and avoiding paying a patent fee. In 1896, still in Chicago, he founded the Selig Polyscope Company, one of the nation’s first film studios.
By 1909, Selig produced a hit short, Big Game Hunting in Africa (1909). Co-starring a lion, this was a thinly veiled take on former President Theodore Roosevelt’s safari. Selig wound up owning a small menagerie of former circus animals; this presaged a whole new direction for the entrepreneur.
Selig headed west as early as 1909, setting up makeshift, temporary film sets. In 1910, he opened Los Angeles’s first permanent studio, Selig-Polyscope, in the city’s Edendale neighborhood—present day Silver Lake. The studio was less than an acre, and Selig quickly outgrew the location. In 1911, he bought approximately 33 acres of land from trolley car baron and land developer Henry Huntington, on Mission Road in the Eastlake Park section of LA.
This became the site of his studio, as well as the Selig Wild Animal Farm, later Selig Zoo. The zoo opened in 1915 with, according to the Los Angeles Times, “four elephants, two camels, two sacred cows, ten tigers, ten leopards, seven lions, eight trick ponies, one boxing kangaroo, and one trick mule.” Also, giraffes named Lena and Fritz.
The zoo would grow to include some 700 animals, imported from around the globe. Open to the public and easily accessible by trolley, an estimated 150,000 visitors came through during the first six months the zoo was open—30 percent of the city’s entire population. Fifteen large stone-cast statues of elephants and lions by sculptor Carlo Romanelli greeted visitors. There was also a long pergola on the landscaped grounds as well as a totem pole, roller rink, and picnic area—all on the zoo side of the property. On the studio side were sets for the jungle, caves, and Central American and New England villages.
One sharp-witted commentator later noted that the animals were “essentially contract players” for Selig’s films, which included many so-called “jungle pictures” such as Kings of the Forest (1912) and Wamba, a Child of the Jungle (1913). The original Tarzan of the Apes (1918) was in part filmed here, as was an early serial The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913–1914), and Selig’s hit feature The Spoilers (1914).
Entertainment industry success can be fleeting, and the zoo had a lot of mouths to feed. By 1918, Louis B. Mayer Productions took over the studio space; five years later, Selig Zoo closed and was rechristened Luna Park. Within a decade, Luna Park shuttered and some of the animals went off to the Los Angeles Zoo, which was much smaller back then. Decades later, a few of the stone lion statues were rediscovered, restored, and installed at the LA Zoo. On Mission Road, there is little to remind a visitor of what once was; just parking lots, a convenience store, and the like—no big cats in sight.