This 1926 silent film, shot in Ensley and prominently featuring the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad’s Ensley Works, is another one of the earliest known examples of a feature film being produced in Jefferson County. Based on a 1924 short story by Ralph G. Kirk entitled “United States Flavor,” and starring Milton Sills, Doris Kenyon and May Allison, the movie tells the sordid tale of a runaway fugitive on the lam for a murder he did not commit (Sills), and caught in an incestuous love triangle with two sisters (Kenyon and Allison), who don’t know they are sisters, at a steel mill owned by their father. Sound crazy? In a further plot twist, Sills is ultimately exonerated by his accuser, a man who tries to kill him with hot molten steel before confessing to be the actual murderer himself. Sounds like a Magic City plot pretzel to us! What’s not to love?
Although the film had its official debut in New York City, it had a local premiere at the Franklin Theatre here in Ensley, followed by a run at the Lyric Theatre that reportedly saw sold out crowds eager to see their hometown on the big screen. Although no copies of the film remain in circulation, posters and various other artifacts from the era hint at the movie’s industrial-sized tale of lust and hard labor, and all set in one of Birmingham’s most recognizable workforce landmarks of the era. According to local historian A. J. Wright in a 2013 post on Birmingham History Center, the New York Times remarked that “all the stupendous paraphernalia of a steel plant has been used, with the happy result of making that fascinating industry vivid without sacrificing narrative in the picture.”
FUN FACT: Lead stars Milton Sills and Doris Kenyon were actually married in real life, and Sills personally wrote the screenplay adaptation for the movie, which led to both of them being featured in the film.