Ohio’s deep roots in American movies get their close-up on Friday, November 6, when the Greater Cleveland Film Commission hosts its ‘Behind the Camera: The Golden Age of Hollywood’ fundraiser at the Cleveland History Center, according to Cleveland Magazine.
The evening centers on a panel moderated by WKYC’s Betsy Kling with Northeast Ohio-native biographer Scott Eyman, tracing the state’s ties to the movies from the birth of Warner Bros. in Youngstown to stars like Clark Gable, Doris Day and Bob Hope, Cleveland Magazine reported. The panel begins at 8 p.m., after hours of after-hours museum access, hors d’oeuvres and a raffle at the History Center, 10825 East Boulevard in University Circle. Tickets start at $75.
The Warner Bros. thread is the hometown headline of the story. The Warner brothers built their early exhibition business in Youngstown before becoming one of the founding studios of Hollywood’s golden age — a reminder that the movie business was not born only in California, and that Ohio industrial cities helped finance and staff it from the start.
The star power runs the same way. Gable, the ‘King of Hollywood,’ was born in Cadiz in Harrison County. Doris Day came from Cincinnati and Bob Hope, though born in London, grew up in Cleveland and got his start on its stages. Eyman, the featured speaker, has built a career writing biographies of Hollywood’s golden-age figures, and the panel format puts those Ohio connections in front of a hometown audience, according to Cleveland Magazine.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on: We know the date, the venue, the 8 p.m. panel time, the moderator and the featured speaker, and the $75 starting ticket price, all as reported by Cleveland Magazine. What is still to come is the commission’s own accounting after the night — how much the fundraiser raises, and what productions the commission’s work helps land in Northeast Ohio next.
The fundraiser’s purpose reaches beyond nostalgia. Film commissions compete to bring productions — and the local jobs, hotel nights and vendor spending that come with them — to their regions, and benefit nights like this one fund that recruitment work while keeping the region’s screen community connected.
Cleveland’s University Circle, where the History Center sits, is in the middle of a busy cultural season. Related coverage: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s $135 million expansion opens to the public Nov. 22, and the Cleveland Museum of Art has opened a Jewish ceremonial art installation for America’s 250th.
The panel also lands the same week greater Cleveland turns its attention to the ballot box and the holiday calendar, giving arts supporters a Friday-night option that is equal parts history lesson and industry mixer.
For film lovers who cannot make it Friday, the History Center’s regular exhibits remain the standing way to trace the region’s past — but the one-night panel, with a biographer who has spent a career on golden-age Hollywood, is the draw the commission is counting on.
What happens next: the fundraiser takes place Friday, November 6, at the Cleveland History Center, with the ‘Behind the Camera’ panel at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $75, according to Cleveland Magazine.
The commission’s choice of subject is deliberate. A golden-age panel lets the region celebrate the Ohioans who helped invent the modern movie business while making the case, in front of donors and civic leaders, that Northeast Ohio’s screen story did not end with the Warner brothers — it is the foundation the commission now recruits new productions on top of.
The History Center setting adds its own layer: guests will hold the conversation inside the Western Reserve Historical Society’s University Circle campus, surrounded by the artifacts of the region’s industrial past — the same past that produced the theater owners, exhibitors and performers the panel will discuss, according to Cleveland Magazine’s preview.
Events like this also serve the region’s working film community — the crew members, location managers and vendors who staff productions when they come to town — by keeping the commission’s network in one room at the start of the holiday season.
Cleveland Magazine’s listing puts the night in a full week of local arts programming, from Playhouse Square productions to the Cavaliers at Rocket Arena — a reminder that the city’s cultural calendar, and the audiences and spending that come with it, is one of the assets the film commission sells when it pitches producers on shooting here.