Mystery History -- Solved!

The winner this week is Terrie with her 4:10 p.m. Tuesday guess "Fenyes Mansion with Tom Nix" (sic). 

In the 1918 photo above, a scene from the silent movie "Western Blood" starring Tom Mix and Victoria Forde is filmed at the Fenyes Mansion in Pasadena. Other scenes were shot in wide open spaces near Santa Clarita.

Mix and Forde had starred together in several Fox Film Corporation short films; this was their first full-length Fox feature. They got married shortly after the film's release. 

Tom Mix was an honest to goodness cowboy who had been a U.S. Marshal in Oklahoma and a Texas Ranger. He was the first Hollywood superstar, popularly known as King of the Movie Cowboys and starring in 283 films from 1909 to 1940. 

He also had a traveling circus and wild west show. 

Here is the same side of the Fenyes Mansion today that is in the top photo:

Eva Scott Fenyes was the first person in Pasadena to allow film production on private property; the first movie filmed at the Fenyes Mansion was D.W. Griffith's "When Kings Were the Law" in 1912.

The most recent film with scenes shot there was "The Social Network" in 2010. Scenes were also shot at the Pasadena Masonic Temple and one of the fraternity houses at Caltech. (Thanks to Bellis for the clarification.)

You can see a more complete list of films shot at the Fenyes Mansion here.

One final photo: The Tom Mix Circus and Wild West Show came to Pasadena in March 1936. I'm not sure which neighborhood this was. Anybody?

A lot of filming takes place in Pasadena. Is your property ready for a starring role? Click here for more information and to register. 


Many thanks to Pasadena Museum of History, Pieces of Our Past, Circus World, Silent Hall of Fame and Big Old Houses.

Mystery History -- Solved!

Liz came closest with her 10:40 a.m. Tuesday guess "Putting up the atrium armature for Dr Albert Fenyes mansion on Orange Grove."

In the photo above, a crane delivers the new metal structure for the solarium skylight at the Fenyes Mansion on the grounds of the Pasadena Museum of History in the 1980s.

The original skylight had suffered damage over the years and was replaced with a stronger framework of structural steel.

Here's the solarium in more recent times. Note a portion of the skylight at the top:

Now the mansion, built in 1906, is closed for renovations again, It will reopen this fall.

There are stockpiles of historical information inside the mansion as well as in the PMH archives. I'll let you explore online info at your leisure.

One fact that some people aren't aware of is that Eva Schott Fenyes was a talented painter who studied art in New York, Europe and Egypt. Learn more about that in this article in the spring 2012 edition of the Society of California Archivists newsletter. 

Her good friend Charles Lummis encouraged her to visit and paint all of the California missions, fearing they might disappear over time. She did just that. Here's her watercolor painting of the San Diego Mission de Alcala, painted in 1907.

And many people don't know that Dr. Adalbert Fenyes, in addition to being a Hungarian nobleman and practicing physician, was a renowned entomologist who traveled the world collecting beetle specimens. His important beetle collection is housed at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Here's a rare photo of Dr. Fenyes in his "insectorium" in the gardens at the mansion:

And here are Adalbert and Eva on their wedding day in Budapest in 1896.

I posted a related Mystery History on my Pasadena PIO blog in January 2010.

And now we're back on track with Mystery History on the Ann Erdman blog! Keep checking back...

Many thanks to the Pasadena Museum of History.