bjgreen
(Image: Motion Picture News, September 27, 1919)
By Betsy J. Green
CB on Santa Cruz Island
No, it wasn’t Citizen’s Band Radio. This CB was none other than Cecil B. DeMille of the Lasky Motion Picture Company. He was making the movie “Male and Female” starring Gloria Swanson on Santa Cruz Island. The movie involves a wealthy woman who is shipwrecked on an island with her butler and the rest of the help. Out of their former social milieu, the woman and her butler start to, ahem, appreciate each other’s gender.
According to the local paper, “The beach at Fry’s Harbor, one of the most beautiful of the miniature harbors of Santa Cruz Island, is now being transformed into a tropical beach … Palm trees, bamboo, luxurious vegetation of all kinds, has been brought there and is being transplanted to give the beach every appearance of a cannibal isle … Cecil de Mille’s company will spend three weeks at the harbor.”
Betsy’s Way Back When book — 1918 — is now available in local bookstores and at Amazon.com. This is the fifth book in her series of the history of Santa Barbara, one year at a time. Learn more at
