Hollywood on the veld, when movie mayhem gripped the City of Gold

IN 1913, an American millionaire living on the top floor of Johannesburg’s Carlton Hotel had an extraordinary idea: to make films in Johannesburg.

- SARENE KLOREN

And not just any films, but the biggest in the world, grand spectacles with elaborate sets, thousands of extras, and epic storylines.

Isidore Schlesinger arrived in South Africa with almost nothing. He set out to make his fortune selling American goods, telling his parents he'd return either a millionaire or a pauper.

Known as “IW”, Schlesinger built a film studio on a farm called Killarney, with the ambitious goal of rivalling a place that was itself only just emerging - Hollywood, which at the time was still farmland outside Los Angeles, dotted with shacks and barns.