Francis Boggs

Francis Winter Boggs (March 1870 – October 27, 1911) was an American stage actor and pioneer silent film director. He was one of the first to direct a film in Hollywood.

Early life He was born in Santa Rosa, California, the second of five children.

Career While still a teenager, he began acting with the Alcazar stock company in San Francisco and toured the American Southwest. In 1900, he moved to Los Angeles, but in 1902, he moved to Chicago, He completed the interior shots at the Chicago studio but shot the scenes of Edmond Dantès emerging from the sea at the beach near Los Angeles. It was the first film filmed in Southern California.

In 1908, he made The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, which had its writer, L. Frank Baum, present a slide show and films as a live travelogue presentation of his Oz story.

Boggs then set up a makeshift stage on a vacant lot in Downtown Los Angeles and produced In the Sultan's Power (1909) and The Heart of a Race Tout (1909), the first films made entirely in California. He often worked acting gigs with his wife, who went by the stage name of May Hosmer.

Boggs was shot to death by Frank Minnimatsu on October 27, 1911, aged 38 years old. Minnimatsu had previously been an employee of Boggs—compensated half the wages of the lowest-paid white person—and physically abused by Boggs. Minnimatsu opened fire with a revolver at Boggs while he was holding a business conference for the production of a new pantomime play.

Legacy His film The Sergeant was part of a group of seventy-five early American films found in New Zealand in 2010; the film was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.