LIVING “HISTORY
Someday the stirring parable of the Picture City
drama may be told again, with all its wildest hopes
and harrowing falls — in the frames of a fabulous film.”
seemed the perfect publicity
stunt to make land sales hit the
stratosphere. All they had to
do was dress up the old project
with a new, exciting name:
Picture City.
News of the glitzy joint
venture was huge, and upbeat.
Back then, Florida newspapers
couldn’t stand the slightest hint
of negativity. It was practically a
journalistic sin to print anything
that might slow the onrush
of progress. So, if you needed
to know the truth behind the
happy propaganda, you had to
wait for reality to run you over.
One of the crushing unreported
facts about the Picture City
deal was this: Selznick needed
the Olympia project’s backers
worse than they needed him. In
spite of his dazzling persona,
Selznick’s power in the movie
industry was fading fast. The
prominence he still retained was
all a big show. In real life, the
man was losing a movie distribution
30
war to powerhouses like
Adolph Zukor of Paramount. In
fact, his motion picture company
was already bankrupt. His
much-publicized expedition to
Florida was a desperate attempt
to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and
for a splendid moment it looked
as if his trick might be working.
LAND BUY
Over-trusting Martin County
thought it had hit the big time.
On Aug, 25, 1925, the South
Florida Developer, one of Stuart’s
two newspapers, reported that
interests operating on behalf of
the mighty Lewis J. Selznick had
purchased a vast conglomerate
of land made up of Olympia and
a tract called the Gomez Grant.
On the property, they would
establish a “mammoth” motion
picture studio and call it Picture
— WM F. Crary II
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WM F. CRARY II
Some of Picture City’s unwired light poles still loom today as disregarded landmarks of a grand illusion.