Studio janitor kills movie director

Oct. 27, 1911: Film director Francis Boggs, who set up Selig Polyscope Co.’s studios in Edendale, a neighborhood in what is now Echo Park and Silver Lake, was shot to death there as actors were getting ready to rehearse a movie tragedy, The Times said.

Frank Minnimatsu, the janitor who killed Boggs, also wounded William Selig, the Chicago company’s founder.

“He is thought to have nourished a trifling grudge against Boggs and to have shot Selig because the latter attempted to avert the tragedy,” the newspaper said.

Minnimatsu, the paper said, was known as “the gentleman janitor” because he was so polite, one employee told The Times. Five months earlier, he had become intoxicated and tried to shoot up the studio garage, but Boggs had told him he could keep his job if he behaved, the employee said.

The paper said Minnimatsu told police: “Boggs was a bad man. I had been waiting for six months for a chance to kill him.”