Finds And Updates

Finds and Updates

Balboa Films at Various Archives

Recent Finds:

  1. Balboa Movie Poster: 77 inches wide x 80 inches long:  Neal of the Navy, found in Maine
  2. Thierry Lemoine, a French researcher, has written a biography on Henry King who started at Balboa in July 1913, leaving the studio in April 1917. Lemoine has generously permitted to make his filmography available online, Balboa Films: A Filmography. Lemoine’s exhaustive research was conducted at the following archives, his catalogue divided into four sections: 1) by title (237 titles, including 4 serials and 3 series); 2) by U.S. exchanges; 3) by actors (304 actors); 4) by directors (27 directors):
    • Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal (Paris)
    • British Film Institute Library (London)
    • Free Library (Philadelphia)
    • Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.)
    • Long Beach Public Library (Long Beach)
    • Margaret Herrick Library (Beverly Hills)
    • New York Public Performing Arts Library (New York)

Unfinished Research:

  1. Elwood Horkheimer, secretary/treasurer of Balboa Studios, donated his private library to Warner Bros. in the 1930s, and that collection was then transferred to the Burbank Public Library still in boxes and finally returned in the 1990s to the USC Warner Bros. Archives. USC Archivists have only identified books with Horkheimer’s name inscribed in them, but this collection requires more research to piece together. Did this donation include Balboa films, screenplays, and studio documents from the secretary and treasurer of the studios?
  2. UCLA has been preserving the 12 episodes and re-tinting some of Balboa’s Who Pays? with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
  3. In the 1920s, a fire destroyed Fox Archives and much evidence of the now forgotten but formerly close working relationship between Balboa and William Fox.