Battle of Pottsburg Bridge is a lost 1912 silent motion picture set during the American Civil War. Released in February that year by the Kalem Company of New York City, the drama was filmed in northeastern Florida at the company's "winter studio", which was located on the outskirts of Jacksonville. It starred Guy Coombs, Anna Q. Nilsson, and Miriam Cooper.
No footage of this "photoplay" is listed among the holdings of major film repositories, studio archives, or in known private collections in North America or Europe. This Kalem release is therefore presumed to be lost. A small number of production stills used as illustrations in promotions of the film survive in 1912 trade publications.
Plot
A plot summary of this Civil War drama is provided in the January 27, 1912 issue of the New York trade publication The Moving Picture World:
Cast
Guy Coombs as Bartlow
Anna Q. Nilsson as Bartlow's "sweetheart" Miriam Cooper as Bartlow's sister Jessie Henry Hallam as Confederate General J. E. B. Stuart Hal Clements as a Confederate officer Helen Lindroth as Bartlow and Jessie’s mother George B. Hoyt as a Federal soldier Extras hired from the Jacksonville area to perform as Confederate and Federal soldiers in "spectacular battle scenes"
Production
This film was part of a series of films that Kalem released in the United States between 1911 and 1915 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil War. In 1912 alone Kalem produced and Kenean Buel directed at least a dozen additional dramas set during that conflict: The Bugler of Battery B, The Siege of Petersburg, A Spartan Mother, The Tide of Battle, The Darling of the C.S.A., War's Havoc, 'Fighting Dan' McCool, Under a Flag of Truce, The Soldier Brothers of Susanna, Saved From Court Martial, The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg, and The Confederate Ironclad.
Although Kalem in 1912 was headquartered in New York City on West 24th Street in Manhattan, the company in its Civil War films routinely presented Southern civilians and soldiers as daring, sympathetic heroes fighting against and defeating their Northern foes, recurring themes that later prompted actress Miriam Cooper to write in her 1973 memoir Dark Lady of the Silents, "In picture after picture we won the war for the Confederates fifty years after the war was over."
Filming in Florida
All of Kalem's previously noted Civil War dramas, as well as Battle of Pottsburg Bridge, were filmed in northeastern Florida at the company's "winter studio", which was located next to the St. Johns River "about fifteen minutes by trolley" from downtown Jacksonville. There, since the autumn of 1908, Kalem had leased spaces in an old three-story hotel to serve as the company's production headquarters in Florida. The hotel, "Roseland", was situated on three acres that also accommodated a large home, several cabins, and other outbuildings. Nearby, at the river, were a "big wharf" and "boats of all kinds", some of which served as props in screenplays and others to transport Director Buel, his camera operators, principal cast members, and any locally hired extras around the "territory rich in locations" for filming. Among other motion picture props assembled and stored on the Roseland properties for staging the Battle of Pottsburg Bridge and other war-related productions were supplies of Confederate and Federal uniforms, assorted military accoutrements, and various weapons, including several 1860s field cannons with their caissons for hauling ammunition.