Celebrities in Santa Barbara?!

Ben and J-Lo will be married in Santa Barbara

I already suspect that the location in the article is not the actual location, and no, I'm not trying to pass on the latest gossip - just trying to make a point of interest. For celebrities, Santa Barbara is a very popular spot. I have lived here for almost eight years, and I'm still realizing that. But there's more to Santa Barbara than many realize. You see, back in 1910, Santa Barbara was considered to be the future of the film-making industry - the film capital of the world! Only around 1920 did the motion picture industry move to Hollywood. Of particular interest is the Flying A Studio, California's first major studio, which was opened in Santa Barbara by the American Film Company around 1910. Believe it or not, more than 1200 films, mostly Westerns, were made during the studio's 10 years of existence.

Santa Barbara is nestled between mountains and the sea, and so naturally, for more than a few of Flying A's films, the local vistas doubled for the most exotic of locales. Our local mountains were once doubled as the Swiss Alps, and the Channel Islands of the Santa Barbara Channel were once doubled as South Sea islands.

So why did the film industry move? Well, it was soon realized that Santa Barbara offered little room for development and expansion of the industry. A true blessing in disguise... :)