Star Film Ranch (Méliès Star Film Company, Texas unit)

In late December 1909, Gaston Méliès sent a film troupe from New York to Texas for four months of production. Gaston was the older brother of the French film pioneer Georges Méliès and ran the American branch of the Star Film Company in Manhattan. On December 29, a group of ten led by company manager Carl Anderson boarded the Mallory steamer Brazos in New York; they landed at Galveston on January 5, 1910. Director Wallace McCutcheon and Gaston's son Paul Méliès, the assistant manager, had reached San Antonio on January 2. Gaston stayed in New York to run print duplication and sales.

The company rented a house known as the Green House and 20 acres across the San Antonio River from the Hot Wells Resort, near Missions San José and San Juan. Interior scenes were shot outdoors on a wooden stage in front of the ranch house, with canvas walls. Cold weather and construction delayed the start of filming until mid-January. The economics were tight. Gaston wanted 2,000 feet of film a week, the company's contract with Thomas Edison's patents trust required a 1,000-foot reel every Friday, and the trip cost about $2,000 a week. Actors signed four-month contracts at $100 a week. McCutcheon left for New York in February, and by April the census listed Hector Dion as manager of the 'film factory.' The Seal of the Church, the company's fourth finished film, was released on April 28, 1910.

The troupe included camera operator William Paley, scenic artist Horace Siller and actors Francis Ford and the 17-year-old Edith Storey. The University of Texas Press says Ford learned film directing on the job in San Antonio and later mentored his younger brother, John Ford. The company aimed for 'authentic' Westerns and used real cowboys. Its films were about half comedies and half melodramas, often with women characters riding to the rescue. Texas Film Commission records list dozens of San Antonio titles from 1910 and 1911, from A Texas Joke and Cyclone Pete's Matrimony to How Mary Met the Cowpunchers. The best-remembered is The Immortal Alamo (1911), the earliest screen depiction of the battle. UT historian Kathryn Fuller-Seeley notes it was a 15-minute film in which one actor played several historic figures.

The company filmed in Texas for a little over a year and made more than 70 single-reel films before the studio dissolved. Most of the films were lost, and the operation was largely forgotten. Fuller-Seeley and film historian Frank Thompson pieced it back together from reviews, scrapbooks and an unpublished autobiography for their 2026 book, The First Movie Studio in Texas.