Here's a thing: Paramount studios' 1927 map of which bits of California should be used as locations for which bits of the rest of the world in various films. Sherwood Forest is due north East of San Diego, and just north of South Africa. Wales is either a misplaced full stop, a blob in the ocean just South of Los Angeles, or Long Beach. Venice, presumably, is Venice Beach. Nevada is the Sudan.
Wales is Palos Verdes and Palos Verdes Estates:
http://goo.gl/maps/RWCBp
Not at all unreasonable. Venice is oddly enough Naples, CA (Venice Beach is between Wales and what the map shows as "Coast of Spain"):
http://goo.gl/maps/3bql6
Posted by: Brian | January 07, 2013 at 08:02 PM
The real question here is what Paramount might have set (or wanted to set) in Wales. Some of those locations clearly map to the studio's films before 1927, but I don't see a Welsh one.
Posted by: nick s | January 08, 2013 at 12:51 AM
The 1920s saw the brief boom in Welsh Romantic films (also known as "bach operas"), with Paramount and other studios churning out now-forgotten movies such as Guns of Ceredigion, They Rode to Llanelli, The Heroes of Abergavenny, Seven Men Against Lampeter, Death in Machynlleth and Merthyr Most Foul. Tragically, many of the reels were lost in the blaze which swept through the United Artists production complex in 1937 after lead screenwriter Daffyd ap Selznick died of spontaneous combustion.
Posted by: ajay | January 08, 2013 at 09:26 AM
I heard it was the talkies that killed Hollywood's burgeoning Welsh cinema production because, you know, talkies need vowels.
Posted by: Barry Freed | January 08, 2013 at 12:40 PM
Oh the drollery.
Posted by: Charlie W | January 08, 2013 at 01:04 PM
It was either sheep or vowels, Charlie; I work with what I'm given.
Posted by: Barry Freed | January 08, 2013 at 02:03 PM
I was rather proud of "Merthyr Most Foul", actually.
Posted by: ajay | January 08, 2013 at 02:14 PM
It may be written as "Wales" on the map, but really they just got it confused with Scotland.
Posted by: Simstim | January 08, 2013 at 02:27 PM
Actually the talkies were pretty bloody awful for minority languages everywhere, because, you know, talkies need distributing to places where they speak that language. I don't think there was a Welsh film industry to be throttled at birth, but if there had been it would have been. (And hasn't anyone taken on board that Welsh has *more* vowels than English?)
Posted by: Phil | January 08, 2013 at 07:39 PM
Hmm... Sherwood Forest seems to be somewhere around Riverside according to this map. Who knew that Sherwood Forest had so many orange groves?
Posted by: Matt_L | January 08, 2013 at 08:13 PM