Hooray for… Ithaca?
Harry Isaacs, dressed as an Aztec chieftain, teetered on the cliff edge, staring down at Triphammer Falls. The cascading waters filled a pool 50 feet below, creating clouds of vapor. The compact man of 70 bent his knees, clapped his hands together over his head, and executed a flawless dive. The Shanghai Man, a film being produced by Leopold and Theodore Wharton, centered around Aztecs, but the nearest Indians to Ithaca, New York, the producers could find were on the Onondaga reservation, Harry’s home, near Syracuse. In July 1914, 40 men and ten women from the reservation traveled 60 miles by special train to the Wharton studios in Ithaca where, their ranks augmented by a few rouged Cornell boys, they played angry Mesoamericans.
Harry’s gambit paled next to another stunt staged that summer for The Prince of India, originally titled Kiss of Blood. This time, the Wharton crew jettisoned a trolley car off Ithaca’s Stewart Avenue bridge. The rig plunged 100 feet before smashing against the rocks of Fall Creek gorge. Nearly 1,000 onlookers watched in delighted horror. The dive and the crash illustrate why the Wharton brothers came to Ithaca to make movies. Rife with stunning topography—dozens of gorges and hundreds of waterfalls, cascades, and cataracts—Ithaca lent itself to the “cliffhanger” genre popular at the time. Ted and Leo wove a glamorous tapestry around the town of 16,000 residents.
FROM “FOOTBALL DAYS AT CORNELL” SPROUTED AN UNLIKELY UPSTATE OUTPOST OF CLIFFHANGER CINEMA MADE POSSIBLE
