“Broncho Billy” in Real Life (1912) 🇺🇸

A big smile, a hearty grip, a flannel shirt open at the throat, corduroy trousers, a Stetson and a villainous looking gun and you have G. M. Anderson himself.

by Mabel Condon

If you are in the act of shaking hands with him, however, he has you and you know it. You don’t care, though: you’re willing to stay around a week, if he will let you, out at that wonderful studio at Niles, California, and watch the Anderson method of taking and making motion pictures. And while you are there, Mr. Anderson will give you of the best that Niles and his bungalow afford.

He doesn’t get so very much time to spend at that cozy little bungalow, himself, though, as his oft repeated “Start your action,” seems to have become his slogan, and if there’s any one thing Mr. Anderson believes in living up to, it is slogans. That is why he keeps the name “Essanay” so prominently within everybody’s vision; he put the “ay” in that name and feels its responsibility so keenly that no western films but the best are worthy of its decoration.

While you are on the subject of names — there are many, doubtless, who know that Mr. Anderson’s first name is Gilbert, but those who know that the “M” stands for Max, are comparatively few. You see, his first and last names are so lengthy that the “Max” is rather lost in there between them, and whenever the owner is mentioned it is something like “G’m Anderson” and people forget to wonder what the “M” does stand for, anyway. A rather modest little name for such a big, all-present man!

Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was where Anderson started life with three noisy whoops and some jolly sisters and brothers, whose favorite game was “play acting.” When the lusty Gilbert Max appeared upon the scene, he started out to show ‘em and now he is doing it to the tune of two westerns a week, out there in the land of sunshine and big hearts.

And the people like it. When “Broncho Billy” makes the whole film smile his quiet, attentive audiences smile also and when he swings down the main street at Niles. wearing his citizen’s clothes and straw hat. maybe, the children patter up to him with the proud query. “Y’re Broncho Billy — ain’t y’?” Even the dogs, at Niles, follow “Broncho Billy.”

But when he is busy, and he is that mostly, he jumps into his big white car and his chauffeur does not have to be told to speed up: he knows Mr. Anderson’s slogan.

From writing a scenario to producing it and sending it to Chicago, is but a few days’ work for the genial G. M. And never has a film produced by Anderson been put on the shelf. The eastern office does not have to wonder if it is going to be good, for every film that comes out of the west and Mr. Anderson’s directorship, is predestined to popularity.

“Looks like a man who’d be nice to work for,” is one of the many thoughtful remarks made about Mr. Anderson; and everybody who ever had anything to do with him, can and does vouch for it.

In addition to writing all the Broncho Billy stories. Mr. Anderson was also the originator of the Alkali Ike series and has written all the stories in which that humorous character figures.

It has been little more that two years since Mr. Anderson adopted the West as his work-shop. His boyhood days were spent in East St. Louis, Ill. He had always been interested in dramatics and earned his way through various dramatic schools in the East and West. While on the legitimate stage, he was a familiar figure on the Rialto in New York.

Then a temporary engagement, when he posed in the first lengthy motion picture “The Great Train Robbery,” gave him the idea that he could stage a longer and just as interesting a picture; so he produced “Raffles, the Cracksman.” It was successful and Mr. Anderson was conceded to be a bona fide producer. Later, coming to Chicago, Mr. Anderson met George K. Spoor and the result was the formation of the Essanay company. For a while Mr. Anderson remained in Chicago writing and producing scenarios, but conceived the idea of taking a company to the land of cowboys and romance, and he has never been sorry.

‘Tis said Mr. Anderson can claim to be the originator of motion pictures of western drama; a big claim and a creditable one. And out there, in the realm of big things and broad ideas, up early and to bed late, Mr. Anderson fills “the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.”

And that’s G. M. Anderson!

Essanay’s “Broncho Billy and the Outlaw’s Mother,” with G. M. Anderson [Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson].

Collection: Motography Magazine, December 1912