Across the Burning Trestle 1914 Silent Movie
The heroine faints
Early on, prominent theatrical and entertainment personalities came to the Tryon colony, so it’s no surprise Western North Carolina’s most technically-ambitious silent film of the pioneer era was made there. Richard Ridgely, director of Thomas Edison’s film production company in New Jersey, brought his best actors and crew down in spring, 1914.
Mabel Trunnelle the heroine
Motion Picture Story magazine
February 1914
Their film was to dramatize a sensational short-story by Francis Lynde, leading novelist at that time who had written “In Christmas Canyon” set in the American West. This was to be the first of Lynde’s adventures made into a movie. The first automobile highway from Tryon to run up through Pacolet River gorge was just being finished, offering access into mountain scenery. Southern Railway was “playing nice” for a change, to improve their relationships with communities and influencers. They provided a locomotive for filming, access to Tryon’s depot (and even its rooftop) and, in return, the script depicted Railway personnel in a favorable way.
Herbert Prior and Yale Benner
in Across the Burning Trestle
Popular film stars Mabel Trunnelle and Herbert Prior played the lead roles. Wife and husband in real life, Mabel was heroine Doris while her husband played villain Jake Mills. The part of Doris’s husband Tom was performed by Yale Benner. The plot requires the heroine to resist aggressive amorous advances of the villain, so for audiences “in the know” this gave the movie a fun theatrical twist. Villainous Jake learns the railroad’s Superintendent is about to arrive by rail and decides to set fire to the trestle across which his arriving train will come.
Quick-witted Doris discovers the arson and Tom detains the villain at gunpoint while she heroically rushes over the blazing timbers of the trestle, to flag the arriving locomotive in the nick of time. Meanwhile delicate Tom, recently released from a health sanitarium, is nearly overcome by strong Jake, when rescuers reach Tryon Depot just in time to rescue the hero from the villain’s clutches.
Richard Ridgely, film director
Bigelow Cooper
played The Superintendent.
Yale Benner played husband Tom, who holds villain Jake at the point of his revolver.
courtesy Myinwood.net
A faux trestle was constructed for filming in Pacolet gorge. Across the Burning Trestle was decided for titling the one-reel movie. However, dramatic motion pictures were then so novel and so “real” that media reporting suppressed such sensational filming had been accomplished at Tryon. The logic must surely have been that, in fact, the Southern Railway main line passed over the spectacular Vaughn Creek Trestle arriving at Tryon from nearby South Carolina.
Passenger train steams across long Vaughn Creek trestle.
courtesy Polk county Historical Assn. 1999.688
That high trestle, built entirely of wood, was built-up later with banked earth during the 1940s, and so is no longer a prominent landscape feature. But in 1914, after going through the deep and dark Rock Cut at the state line, rail passengers were treated to an impressive panorama of Blue Ridge peaks as they crossed the long Vaughn Creek Trestle. It wouldn’t have been good for business, if passengers crossing it were to imagine that same trestle had been set afire for Edison’s exciting movie!
Thomas Edison’s 1914 film publicity featured Prior when he came to North Carolina.
Born in Oxford, England,
the famed actor died in Los Angeles.
A few publicity stills from the landmark production exist, but no film reel of Across the Burning Trestle survives. This is the situation with most movies of the silent era. Unfortunately the script isn’t extant either, just a plot synopsis for publicity. It’s known the roof of Tryon Depot was used for a dramatic encounter, but exactly how this scene fits into the film can only be inferred. Edison Films released the movie in July 1914. The New York distributor sent reels to theatres around the nation, and perhaps abroad.
Edison theater film projector 1914
Thomas Edison himself didn’t come down, but he must have enjoyed seeing the theatrics of the film from his R&D laboratory in New Jersey. He knew Polk County from his personal visits for product development in electro-mechanics. Edison’s most advanced film-projection equipment came to market in 1914, but his engineering was soon leap-frogged by competitors. Not long after his laboratory suffered a catastrophic fire and Edison’s movie-making division ceased operating in 1918.
Across the Burning Trestle wasn’t the first movie-making at Tryon. In 1911 pioneer Chicago entrepreneur Watterson Rothacker’s company Industrial Moving Picture Co. filmed documentary footage at Tryon, presumably including exciting railroad imagery. In 1916, the Tryon colony’s famous theatrical personality William Gillette agreed to be filmed performing in his long-running stage play Sherlock Holmes.
In 1921 another Francis Lynde adventure Bucking the Line was filmed, this time out West by Fox, starring glamourous Maurice “Lefty” Flynn, who later settled in Tryon and became prominent in its cultural life. Perhaps it’s fitting that Tryon Theatre continues to present fresh movies weekly in its vintage venue. The place is beautifully renovated, sound is modern and projection now digital, but they exhibit posters from its old days and rare antique projection gear is conserved for history’s sake.
Michael McCue
April 2023
courtesy Tryon Theatre 2023
