Movies Way Back When: Special Effects on the Cheap

By Betsy J. Green

One hundred years ago, movie studios had neither budget nor equipment for special effects, so they leapt into action to film disasters such as shipwrecks and use them in a film.

In 1915, the Norwegian ship “Aggi” ran aground on Santa Rosa Island.

The Universal Film Company of Universal City paid $4,000 for the rights to film on the wreck and produced a film aptly titled “The Toll of the Sea.”