Trick Photography Delivered Fake News of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

In the final years of the 19^th century, audiences first discovered the thrill of seeing the latest news stories presented in the form of moving pictures.

All they had to do was visit a Kinetoscope parlour and peep through the eyepiece of a state-of-the-art viewing machine. By 1905, the commercial deployment of movie projectors meant they could pay five cents for a seat in a one of the nickelodeon theatres that were springing up across America.

Thanks to the explosive popularity of these new-fangled movie theatres, audiences were soon being enticed with dramatic films, comedies, cartoons and more. Yet newsreels continued to thrive. In 1929, Fox-Hearst Corporation converted the Embassy in New York into the first theatre dedicated solely to newsreel presentation.

“Newsreelers” would go to any length to get the latest scoop, risking life and limb to get their cameras on the scene. Being first to break the story was more than just a matter of prestige. The financial rewards were high, too. In 1906, George Van Guysling, manager of the Biograph Company, sold his newsreel of the catastrophic San Francisco earthquake for around $35,000, equivalent to roughly one million dollars today.

Biograph’s earthquake newsreel featured dramatic scenes of devastation, with buildings toppled and fires raging across the city. Audiences gasped at the spectacle, and wondered how Van Guysling’s had managed to capture such jaw-dropping footage.

The trouble was, he hadn’t. The footage wasn’t real. It was created through the artful use of trick photography, better known today as visual effects.

Here’s what happened. When first alerted to the disaster, Van Guysling hotfooted it to a part of San Francisco affected by the earthquake. There he captured scenes of damaged buildings and debris-filled streets. However, he was unhappy with the overall effect. So he decided to spice things up a bit.

On a mission to wow his audience, Van Guysling turned to producer Frank Marion, who brought in scenic artist Joe Harrington and cinematographer F.A. Dobson to build a miniature of San Francisco using cardboard shoe boxes, based on panoramic photographs provided by Van Guysling:

“[The miniature] was built on a large table. From the panoramas, they made the city and land contour as complete as possible, and then set fire to it. As the great San Francisco burned — on the table top — the cameras recorded it.”

Earl Thiesen, International Photographer, September 1933

Just four days after the earthquake, the Biograph newsreel hit the screens. The miniature scenes were realistic enough to convince the then-mayor of San Francisco, Eugene Schmitt, of their veracity. Rival newsreeler Harry Miles presented authentic footage of the disaster shortly afterwards, but he was too late. Biograph already had the scoop.

George Van Guysling never claimed his footage of the stricken city was authentic. Nor did he admit it was faked.

But he did take the money.