Filmmaking pioneer Schlesinger was ahead of Hollywood

Long before Hollywood became Hollywood, a Jewish immigrant arrived in South Africa with no money and an extraordinary ability to see opportunity where others didn’t. Isidore William Schlesinger would go on to make some of South Africa’s earliest films, create enormous movie sets in Johannesburg, and produce epics with casts numbering in the thousands. 

“He came to South Africa from America in the late 1800s and had no money,” says author Ted Botha, whose book Hollywood on the Veld tells the story of the entertainment empire Schlesinger built. While many Jewish immigrants were arriving from Europe, Schlesinger came from America and initially made his money selling insurance. 

Within a remarkably short time, he was wealthy, but he had a bigger idea. “Everything they did in America, he was going to copy and do the same or do better in South Africa,” Botha says. Playing on the American expression, “Go west, young man”, Schlesinger’s version was “Go south, young man”. 

It was an extraordinary time to make that bet. In about 1910 and 1911, Hollywood itself was still farmland outside Los Angeles, its studios little more than shacks and barns. Yet Schlesinger decided South Africa could build its own version. By 1913, Johannesburg was booming and audiences were becoming fascinated by moving pictures. Schlesinger began buying struggling theatres and bringing them under his control. “He loved monopolies,” Botha says. But he wasn’t content simply to show other people’s movies. He wanted to make them. 

Schlesinger created a news team that travelled around South Africa filming events for what became African Mirror, one of the world’s longest-running newsreels. His cameramen even followed South African and British soldiers into German East Africa during World War I. 

“I find it incredibly visionary of him because news just wasn’t a thing in the movies back then,” Botha says. Schlesinger’s ambitions soon extended to a Killarney studio in Johannesburg, with editing rooms, costume rooms, and poster departments. 

He preferred shooting outdoors rather than relying on painted studio backgrounds, and when reality didn’t provide what he needed, he created it. For one enormous battle sequence, he bought two million gallons of water from Rand Water to create a river. For another film, when he couldn’t find the enormous staircase described in the story, he built one. His productions grew into epics using thousands of extras. “He was using 5 000 to 10 000,” at a time when American productions might use hundreds, Botha says. 

Schlesinger was different to American filmmakers in another significant way. He put black actors prominently on screen. “It was very unusual at the time,” Botha says. “Americans were still using blackface for any black person they needed on screen. And here comes Schlesinger. He’s got all these black people on the screen. Not only his extras, but his main actors.” One of these was Archibald Songo Goba, known simply as Goba, whom Botha describes as Schlesinger’s “most famous African actor”. He became a prominent performer in Schlesinger’s films and was praised in British newspapers. 

Schlesinger’s 1916 film De Voortrekkers, released in English as Winning a Continent, became a phenomenon, attracting people from across South Africa, some of whom had never seen a movie before. Ironically, the man behind these spectacles hated publicity. His Johannesburg office was reportedly hidden behind a maze of corridors ending at three unmarked doors, making him deliberately difficult to reach. 

Eventually, Schlesinger became frustrated with South Africans’ preference for foreign films. “South Africans don’t want to see South African movies,” Botha says of his realisation. “We still do this thing: South African stuff is second best.” 

Schlesinger increasingly turned his attention overseas, but his South African legacy had already been created. While Hollywood was still discovering what it could become, Schlesinger was in Johannesburg, building studios, recording newsreels, and creating cinematic spectacles. As Botha puts it, he was “incredibly visionary”.