In early January 1925, an energetic silent movie director named Donald O. Newland walked into the offices of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and announced that he was so smitten with the city and its citizens that he and his “well-known Hollywood company,” Consolidated Film Producers, wanted to make a movie here.

Newland promised that he would use only Richmond talent and locations, while prominently featuring the inner workings of newspaper production, from beat reporting to editing, typesetting, and press production … if the paper would foot the bill. The resulting film would not only expose the mystery of then-new filmmaking to the locals, but it also would be an advertisement for the city and its daily newspaper.

The Times-Dispatch jumped at the opportunity to finance the first movie ever made in Richmond. They hired a “movie editor” and about a week later, an ad appeared inviting “good-looking girls” to apply for the role of leading lady.  “A young woman of Richmond will have the opportunity to appear in the leading role of a picture to be taken here by experts, under the supervision of the Times-Dispatch,” stated an article in the Jan. 11 RTD. “It will be a two-reel comedy, entitled ‘Richmond’s Hero,’ and this vehicle may be the means of elevating some Richmond beauty to world-wide fame and fortune in the films.”

The response was unprecedented. Within days, the movie editor had hundreds of applications and photographs of women vying for the leading role of “Baby Ethel.”

“I had always heard that Richmond was famed for its beautiful girls,” Newland told a reporter at the time, “and I now know that it hasn’t been given one-half the credit due.”

But all this was standard, ego-massaging boilerplate for Newland, who was in fact an itinerant filmmaker from Battle Creek, Michigan in his third year making these “hero” movies. He and his company made dozens of these films between 1923 and 1934 in different towns up and down the East Coast, all using the same basic script, as well as local talent – and all financed by star-struck local newspapers.

Newland wasn’t exactly a con artist, but he was a great salesman –and he did exactly what he said he would do.

“A horizon of expectations”

Itinerant filmmaking started before 1920 with a few directors working for shoestring companies such as Interstate Films. Armed with production personnel, a camera, banks of Klieg lights, and especially over-inflated resumes, these filmmakers traveled from town to town, grinding out yet another 24-minute two-reeler that would pay the bills and produce enough profit to allow them to move along to the next one.

Unlike the notoriously “closed” filmmaking methods used by large Hollywood studios, itinerants sold themselves as talent scouts, PR men, fundraisers, and educators. They were charming, fast-talking, and eager to involve the locals in the magic of filmmaking, using them as actors and inviting the entire town out to watch the movie being made. Historian Hans Robert Jauss called their methods a “horizon of expectations,” in that they transformed how small-town audiences saw and reacted to movies and what exactly they expected from them.

By the mid-1920s, Hollywood had become synonymous with moviemaking. Starry-eyed, small-town hopefuls equated the words “movie” and “director” with Hollywood—even though itinerants such as Newland usually were based out of New York, Chicago, or Battle Creek, and had little or no actual Hollywood connections.

This inconvenient fact did not stop many of the directors and their personnel from grasping the coattails of famous names in the movie business, regardless of how tenuous or even non-existent those ties really were. Newland claimed on his credentials that he started in the business in the 1910s, working various jobs and cranking out one-reelers (12-minute shorts) for the Vitagraph Company, starring Mary Pickford, John Bunny, and Flora Finch. He also claimed he directed comedies for Mack Sennett. Two of his cameramen, Robert Williams and Russell Parham, allegedly worked at Universal City for the renowned Eric von Stroheim and Western film star Hoot Gibson.

In all the excitement, no one thought to check Newland or his company’s credentials, or ask around to other cities if they had experience with the door-to-door filmmaker. Other than cinematographer Charles Fetty, who worked on the 1920 Reelcraft comedy “Lunatics in Politics,” none of his other personnel’s names appear in any film credits, directories, movie histories, or databases. They are merely slick-talking ghosts outside the Hollywood system.

Producing Richmond’s “Hero”

Newland’s films were pared down to their most straightforward basics. Through dozens of projects, he used the identical script as well as the same title cards and character names. These included Baby Ethel, Mr. and Mrs. Henpeck, Billy Brown (the hero), a newspaper reporter always called “The Rival,” and also, Katrinka, a “flapper from the country.” Newland’s projects also called for dozens of extras, including hundreds of local children for the concluding orphanage shot.

On Jan. 19, Newland made the big announcements: Baby Ethel was to be played by Elizabeth Wall; Mrs. J.K. Bowman was selected to play Mrs. Henpeck, and G. Peter Jones to be her husband. The character of Billy Brown was to be played by J.E. Dunford. A local musician, Horace K. “Saxie” Dowell, was chosen for the role of reporter.

While the single print of “Richmond’s Hero” appears to be long lost, the film followed the standard Newland template according to descriptions breathlessly published daily in the Times-Dispatch.

Production took four, strenuous 12-hour days. Using his best PR instincts, Newland chose locations that would be most recognizable to audiences and endear them to the production. He set up several interior sets on the stage of the National Theater, so a paying audience could sit and watch the filmmaking process unfold in front of them. This was a shrewd move to associate this local movie with the glamour of Hollywood, and again directly involve the populace in the magic of the movies. Other interior scenes were shot on location inside the Times-Dispatch news and press rooms, and at the glitzy 1925 Confederate Ball in the former Richmond Hotel at Ninth and Grace Streets. Exterior scenes were shot at Byrd Park, Broad Street Station, Ninth and Clay Streets, and downtown at Eleventh Street.

While filming the interior scenes on stage at the National, Newland consummately performed his own role of the dashing Hollywood director. Wearing a vest, riding boots, a director’s beret, and wielding a megaphone, he “dodged in and out of the scenes,” shouting: “Action!” “Spot!” and “Cut!” to the absolute delight of the packed crowd.

“Mrs. Bowman’s ‘debut’ as a movie star disclosed acting talents that obviously surprised Director Newland, who is congratulating himself on a remarkably lucky ‘find,’” stated a fawning article in the Jan. 20 (1925) edition of the Times-Dispatch.

The highlight of this, and every “Hero” movie, was the staging of a car crash at a pivotal point in the plot. Unlike a magician who refused to divulge how a trick was performed, Newland brilliantly explained he could stage a serious accident without damaging the cars or injuring any participants. And he would happily allow locals to watch the trick unfold at Eleventh and Broad Streets in front of City Hall.

The 5,000 “men, women and children, office workers, factory hands, cake-eaters and flappers” who gathered to watch the crash likely found the simulation anti-climactic. Newland had two cars park bumper-to-bumper, with a driver in each. Next, he set off a smoke bomb between them, then ordered the cars to quickly back away in reverse. In development and editing, he merely reversed and sped up the film, so it would seem the cars were traveling forward, then crash in a ball of smoke. When the smoke cleared, two wrecked cars brought from a junkyard had substituted the others, with the actors staggering around in ripped clothes and made-up in bruises.

In real life, it was a yawn, but on the screen, the accident looked sensational and brought the house down.

On the last day of filming, several mothers objected to their children being portrayed in a closing scene as orphans. “It’s ridiculous! They don’t look a bit like orphans!” one mom complained. But “Director Newland stood patiently by and watched the storm blow over.”

Smitten by the acting bug, some of the principals admitted to desiring to pursue a career in the movies. “The only thing I regret about it all is that Richmond is going to lose me,” declared bank teller G. Peter Jones, who played Mr. Henpeck. “I’m going straight to Hollywood.”

However, it appears that no actors from any of Newland’s films went on to fame and fortune in Hollywood.

Here today, gone tomorrow

Filming on “Richmond’s Hero” concluded on Jan. 24, and that night Newland carried the negatives to a lab in Washington D.C. for developing, titling and cutting. “Mr. Newland and his staff put in an intensive week of the most strenuous work on the making of this comedy,” the Times-Dispatch reported. “The members of the cast were not only conscientiously ‘on the job,’ but played on a plane superior to the happiest expectations. They may properly rest on their laurels.”

The film premiered on Tuesday, Jan. 27 at the National, with two late-evening shows.

“It was pointed out that the most remarkable thing about the comedy is the clever acting ability of those taking part,” stated a brief in the Jan. 29 Times-Dispatch. “The success of ‘Richmond’s Hero’ was assured from the opening performance … and the large crowds it attracted during the first half of the week stamped it as a real hit.”

Newland was not at the premiere—he had already traveled south to Danville to start “Danville’s Hero,” which premiered only two weeks later, on Feb. 9. His daughter, Helen Newland, reported in a 2005 Staunton News-Leader interview that the constant need to keep making movies was exhausting and that she, her father, and her mother Opal Newland never really had a home or any money. “At one point, we were so broke that my father went to a gas station, got gas for the car, then handed the attendant a handful of pencils for payment.”

Newland switched to sound films sometime after 1930, the brutal schedule, financial pressures, and constant travel forced him (around 1934) to give up the life of an itinerant filmmaker and pursue other careers, including construction. He had made hero movies in several Virginia cities, including Staunton, Danville, Charlottesville, and possibly Harrisonburg and Clifton Forge. He also made films in Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida, and several other states.

“Richmond’s Hero” played two shows a day for about a week to a full house before—like most all of Newland’s films—it simply vanished. The rare survivors include “Janesville’s Hero” (1926), “Quincy’s Hero” (1929), and “Huntington’s Hero” (1934). Only “Belvidere’s Hero” (1926) is available on YouTube.

On May 1, 1951, Newland suffered spinal cord injuries in a car accident in Tampa, Florida. He died of those injuries on May 7. He was only 54 years of age.