Your historical society is putting the final touches on a Mountain Movie Museum in the old theater building in Crestline. The theater has been recently purchased by the Crestline Community Church that has graciously given us the old refreshment-stand room at the front of the theater to use as a museum. It was decided that this room would be used to exhibit posters, pictures, and other ephemera about the many motion pictures that have been filmed all, or in part, in our local mountain area. Lee Cozad, author of “Those Magnificent Mountain Movies,” will provide a wide array of materials to grace the walls of this mini museum. From the time that Cecil B. DeMille discovered the beauty of our mountains in 1914 (later using the San Bernardinos as a backdrop in his controversial motion picture, “Birth of a Nation”), through the time when David Selznick used the Big Bear area to depict the Georgia woods in “Gone With the Wind,” our mountains have served as host to numerous motion picture companies.
Well chronicled in Lee’s book, you will now be able to step back in time and see the actual pictures and posters that drew the audiences of early film viewers to the theaters. This was the first time that many of the lesser fortunate saw the beauty of our mountains. Perhaps these motion pictures were, in part, some of the driving force that made people decide to join the “smart set” and come to rusticate in our scenic mountain beauty.
The ROWHS Mountain Movie museum is tentatively scheduled to be open to the public before Easter. Russ Keller and Jim and Doe Huff are building and painting this facility to ready it for Lee’s displays. Drop by when you are in Crestline and say hello.