Exhibition on Main Street:
Small-Town Moviegoing in Washington

In the late 1890s/early 1900s, the cities and towns in rural Washington weren’t always connected, let alone accessible. Division by geography was a common form of separation – there was east of the Cascades and west of the Cascades – but parts of the state were severely limited by transportation, economics and even culture. Many rural communities, for example, pegged their entire economy on the exploitation of a single natural resource, whether that be farming, fishing, mining or lumber. That wasn’t uncommon in the West, but it came with risks. With frequent boom and bust cycles, these areas were sometimes at the mercy of environmental conditions, business or regional/national economic trends. The population of a town might swell when conditions were good, only to drop like a stone when they abruptly reversed. And rising tides didn’t raise all boats. World War I production increases created jobs and boosted worker earnings around Puget Sound, but other areas of the state didn’t necessarily reap the same benefits – and, in fact, they were more likely to feel the impact of wartime shortages.^[1]

All these factors played into the experience of small-town movie exhibitors. When wheat prices dropped sharply in 1924, theatres in several eastern Washington farming communities were forced to closed for weeks – few in the community had the funds to spend on the movies. These situations were particularly acute in areas too small to support a full-time picture theatre. These part-time venues were sometimes the only local source of entertainment, and it was a real struggle to keep some of them open, even in the best of times. As an unnamed exhibitor from eastern Washington told Moving Picture World in 1916, “‘I had hopes, when I opened [my] theatre, that it would furnish spending money for my wife, but, instead, it threatens to take all MY spending money to keep it going.’”^[2]

Operating a rural theatre was a delicate balancing act. Depending on the exhibitor’s location, Film Row in Seattle, where business was typically conducted, could be far away and require a good deal of time and expense to visit. An increase in film rental or transportation fees had a bigger impact on rural exhibitors, since it ate into their (already small) bottom line. Often the most successful small-town exhibitors were the ones who were able to expand operations, either by operating other picture shows in nearby towns or by simply bringing films from one location to the next on a circuit, like a traveling exhibitor. Either way, this was no picnic. In the summer of 1926 exhibitor Lon Brown, who owned five houses in rural King and Snohomish Counties, decided to sell his holdings in Carnation, Duvall and Redmond. “Brown is widely known as a first-class showman,” Moving Picture World noted, “and it is safe to say that if he cannot get by [in these towns], there is no business to be had.”^[3] On top of this, much of the existing distribution system was gamed against the small-time operator. “…[A]s Hollywood consolidated and rationalized its business practices,” Jeffrey Klenotic noted, “unprofitable small theatres were increasingly regulated to ‘end of the line’ in film distribution, unable to get the best films early in their release, which…suppressed attendance and revenues.”^[4] While men in places like Seattle, Tacoma and Spokane became wealthy from movie exhibition, many small-town operators often had a tough time keeping the family business afloat.

A look at the rural movie business in Washington helps illuminate some of the challenges faced by small-town exhibitors, and how the film experience differed for the vast majority of the state’s moviegoers.

We can start that conversation in Elk, an unincorporated area about 30 miles north of Spokane. It’s home to around 14,000 people today, but that’s only because the modern roadway system gives residents the ability to drive to workplaces farther out. But in 1915, when Elk was a fraction of its current size, it had a part-time movie house called the Beaver Theatre, which was profiled in Moving Picture World by Spokane correspondent S. Clark Patchin.^[5]

The proprietor of this venue was Edward H. Beaver, and although he didn’t mention when his theatre opened, it was situated in a storefront in (what was then) a sawmill community of less than 200. The venue had no other employees and was only open on Thursday and Saturday nights, so Beaver operated it as a side business. Tickets to the Beaver Theatre cost 15 cents, but a child under 13 could get in for 10. Even so, because Elk was small and the audience pool limited, Edward Beaver had to be flexible. Most patrons paid their way in, but he let some in on credit, while others bartered for entry using bundles of fruit, vegetables or cordwood. That practice wasn’t widespread, but occasional horse trading in rural areas was necessary, particularly when the local economy was depressed; the Ruby Theatre in Chelan, for one, also ran this way from time to time.^[6]

As for the shows themselves, Beaver was having success with serial films, which anchored his Thursday night programs. At the time of Patchin’s article he was midway through The Perils of Pauline, having already shown The Adventures of Kathryn, The Master Key, The Trey O’ Hearts and Lucille Love: The Girl of Mystery. Moviegoers in Elk were so keen on these serial thrillers that the exhibitor sold “season passes” for each new engagement, allowing patrons to buy discounted tickets for the entire run, which unfolded episode by episode over a span of several weeks.

Serials occupied the Thursday bill, but Saturdays were given over to features, usually from Mutual, World, Universal, Pathé or Kleine. Pictures such as Antony and Cleopatra, The Last Days of Pompeii and Officer 666 were singled out as popular selections; Beaver was quite fond of the Kleine features, which he sometimes played at advanced prices.

Edward Beaver didn’t mention what it cost to run his venue, but in 1911 writer David Hulfish described the cost structure of a movie house that looks on par with the Beaver Theatre – a small “country” house offering two shows per week. In 1911 dollars, Hulfish determined that a venue of this type would have cost about $12 per week to run ($8 of which was spent on film service and rent), allowing the exhibitor to pull in about $15 to $20 in box office receipts.^[7] Beaver was charging a higher ticket price than Hulfish’s example, but he was also changing bills between the Thursday and Saturday shows. From that perspective, he may have had higher gross receipts but also higher rental expenses. One way that Beaver saved on costs, however, was with his advertising, since he had the advantage of being the only game in town. In addition to whatever promotional materials he got from the exchange, he typically printed flyers and hand-delivered them to people’s doorsteps, and ran the occasional contest to help generate business. In what appears to have been a one-off stunt, Beaver once hired a freelance cameraman to up from Spokane and film around Elk, offering patrons the unique experience of seeing themselves and their town onscreen.

Another way Edward Beaver promoted shows was to use glass slides during reel changes or between pictures, something he turned into a novelty feature. These were not the professional slides used in urban theatres – using clear glass, Beaver put his drawing talent to work by creating his own set of “coming attractions” by hand, and also drew caricatures of local citizens, gently poking fun at members of his own audience. One of his crowning achievements was a short cartoon series he created dramatizing a local event. In this case, the town was abuzz after a cow escaped from its enclosure and wandered into a nearby home, startling the female occupants, who fled shrieking as the animal roamed through the ground floor, damaging everything in its path. “‘I was able to increase my attendance that evening considerably just because people wondered what I would show on the screen about the event,’” the exhibitor beamed. “‘Other things have happened that gave chances for such advertising. In fact one has to mix the show business with the home, the mill and the church to get results.’”^[8]

It’s not clear how long Edward Beaver operated this theatre; small towns like Elk, wholly dependent on its lumber mill, were vulnerable to changes in business conditions. Because this was a side hustle (Beaver appears to have been a grocer by trade), he would have closed up in a heartbeat, temporarily or permanently, if times got rough.

Edward Beaver was up against the biggest hurdle facing rural exhibitors: how to make the movies pay in a small community. He doesn’t appear to have figured that out in the long run, but others around Washington managed to negotiate that terrain. They may not have become dominant figures in the picture business, but they carved out enough success to support themselves and their families in the trade, some for decades.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] S.J. Anderson, “General Business Conditions in Washington State,” Moving Picture World, 23 February 1918, Page 1132.
[2] Unnamed exhibitor to S.J. Anderson, “Why Some Small Houses Fail,” Moving Picture World, 4 November 1916, Page 740.
[3] “Brown Closes Three in Washington State,” Moving Picture World, 3 July 1926, Page 30.
[4] Jeffrey Klenotic, “Space, Place, and the Female Exhibitor: The Transformation of Cinema in Small-Town New Hampshire during the 1910s,” in Julia Hallam and Les Roberts (editors), Locating the Moving Image: New Approaches to Film and Place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press – 2014), Page 68.
[5] See S. Clark Patchin, “In a Country Theater,” Moving Picture World, 13 November 1915, Page 1346.
[6] See Eric L. Flom, “Ruby Theatre (Chelan),” HistoryLink website (http://www.historylink.org/File/5169), accessed 6 January 2018.
[7] See David Hulfish, from Motion-Picture Work: A General Treatise on Picture Taking, Picture Making, Photo Plays, and Theatre Management and Operation (1911); excerpted in Gregory A. Waller, Moviegoing in America: A Sourcebook in the History of Film Exhibition (Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd. – 2002), Pages 58-59.
[8] As Edward Beaver demonstrates here, glass slides could be used in a variety of ways to enhance the show and/or promote the house. In a large urban theatre, slides were usually obtained through their exchange or purchased from an independent dealer, who could offer a variety of movie-related slides in addition to customized selections particular to the theatre or other local businesses. In rural settings, however, these slides didn’t have to be elaborate, and in some cases were downright crude. Obviously, Edward Beaver was creating slides using his drawing abilities, but other houses were also making their own versions. Will Walker, an operator at the Folly Theatre in Stanwood, wrote into Moving Picture World’s Projection Department column in early 1913 to explain his approach. At the Folly, Walker had a set of blank glass slides that could be easily prepared by applying a thin film of soap over the surface, then setting it aside and allowing it to dry. The dried soap residue provided a rough surface upon which to write, using a pencil, whatever he wanted to convey to the audience. Then, when Walker needed to make a new slide, all he had to do was wash the old one and repeat the process. (F.H. Richardson, “Announcement Slide Scheme,” Moving Picture World, 22 February 1913, Page 777.)

The northeast corner of Washington is now, and has always been, sparsely populated. Today the four counties making up this area (Okanogan, Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille) represent about 16% of the state’s land mass, but less than 2% of its population. Like so many other parts of Washington, the cities in this region were often founded on the extraction of natural resources. Entire towns like Ruby, in Okanogan County, came and went as economic conditions ebbed and flowed, and even in more established locations the health of any one business rested on the health of the entire community. Even by 1910 northeast Washington was largely undeveloped and crisscrossed by trails and makeshift roads, though a handful of railroad spurs went through the area and certain places like Northport (on the Columbia River) and Newport (on the Pend Oreille River) were hubs for water trade and transport.

Other factors made northeast Washington challenging. The weather, for example, was hot in the summertime but cold in the winter, with business owners knowing that their customer base was responsive to conditions outside. In 1924 Moving Picture World reported that almost 180 movie theatres across rural Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana shut their doors for the summer because the combination of hot weather and inadequate cooling systems made these venues unbearable to be in.^[1] Similarly, a cold snap in early 1927 forced a number of houses in rural eastern Washington to shut down and wait things out.^[2] The weather didn’t just impact attendance. The picture houses in northeastern Washington were about as far away from the Seattle exchanges as one could get, so poor conditions anywhere along the way could impact the delivery of film prints, advertising materials or equipment. Heavy winter storms in early 1923, for example, delayed train service and caused widespread power outages, impacting a variety of businesses around the state, moving pictures included.^[3]

It’s not that movie exhibition couldn’t be a viable business in certain areas, but there were challenges. Take the city of Okanogan. The county seat of Okanogan County, it was first settled in 1888 as Alma, then changed its name to Pogue in 1905 before becoming Okanogan in 1907, the year it finally incorporated. Mining was the area’s original draw, but by the time of incorporation farming and timber also supported the local economy. Still, it had less than 600 residents at the time and was a tad rough around the edges. “Most of the buildings I could see were of the box type and made of rough lumber,” remembered longtime banker Harry J. Kerr of his first visit. “The streets were but trails in the sage brush and rocks. The thought of starting a bank and trying to make a home in such surroundings looked rather discouraging.’”^[4]

It’s not known when Okanogan’s first movie show took place, but it was almost certainly given by a traveling exhibitor. By 1911, however, the city was big enough to make a local picture show possible, if only on an intermittent basis. That year Al Farquharson began showing films three times a week at Bureau Hall, in a space he dubbed the Lyric Theatre.^[5] Farquharson wasn’t new to the game – at the very least, he was also showing (or had shown) films in Oroville, near the Canadian border, as well as in Marcus, a town of about 500 in Stevens County.^[6] But his experiment in Okanogan didn’t last long, with Farquharson giving up on the market after only a few weeks. It’s possible he sold out, because a short while later, at the end of March, Frank Read stepped in and reopened the Lyric.^[7] How Read became interested in movies isn’t clear, but he may have attended some of Farquharson’s shows and felt he could do better. The theatre wasn’t Read’s main occupation, but he, too, didn’t stay in the exhibition business for long. After operating the Lyric for a few weeks, in June 1911 he leased his equipment to a pair of Okanogan businessmen, H.A. Armstrong and R.F. McCampbell. This duo moved the show to a new building, changing the name from the Lyric to the Dream. This brought their theatre closer to pair’s other businesses, a paint store and a licensed embalming practice. (The Armstrong/McCampbell business empire was diversified, to say the least.) They had ambitious plans for the Dream. When they opened for business the venue offered five bill changes per week, plus illustrated song slides and music provided by a pianist, drummer and vocalist.^[8]

That setup was a bit overzealous. The Dream doesn’t seem to have operated for long (and certainly not in that expensive format), though it’s not known when the partners ultimately threw in the towel. Whenever that occurred, the demise of the Dream allowed Frank Read to get back into the exhibition business, albeit two years later. Armed with new projection equipment, on March 7, 1913, he opened an entirely new picture show on Queen Street. This time Read took a slightly different approach. Armstrong and McCampbell pinned their hopes entirely on the Okanogan market, trying to replicate an urban-style nickelodeon in an area that was likely too small for that kind of show. Read, on the other hand, went back to the Al Farquharson model. He changed bills only once a week, but also took the show on the road so he could exhibit in neighboring communities. So, after playing a few nights in Okanogan, he packed up his equipment and went into smaller towns like Conconully (population 300), where he might play for only one evening, before moving to the next destination. Operating a traveling outfit took more work, but it was probably the only way an exhibitor in this region could support themselves by showing films. Most cities and towns in Okanogan County were too small for a permanent theatre, so developing a circuit of one- and two-night stands was the only way to make a living.

In Okanogan, Frank Read’s show got off to a great start. Opening night at the Queen Street location was standing room only, so he arranged for a second show to be given the following evening.^[9] Thus began a series of weekly shows in Okanogan and other nearby cities, even though, as before, Read’s tenure as an exhibitor was a brief one. Despite cracking the exhibition code in Okanogan County, he nonetheless chose to sell out before getting firmly established. The buyer was Herbert (“Hub”) Carlton, who eventually took the local picture business to the next level, becoming Okanagan’s most noted early exhibitor. It was the career he never saw coming.

Carlton was born in 1881, the son of Eben Carlton, a Civil War veteran from Maine who was slowly making his way across the country in various farming jobs. In 1886 Hub’s mother died in childbirth, after which the family (including Hub and four siblings) moved from Oregon to Ritzville, Washington. But Eben Carlton couldn’t keep things afloat so, in 1890, according to family lore, he struck a deal to trade all five of his children, ages five to 16, to a Prussian farmer in Okanogan (then called Alma) named W.R. Kahlow, getting 17 horses in return.^[10] Eben then disappeared, leaving his children to grow up as farmhands for a man who was strict to the point of cruelty. The story is as bleak as it sounds; on more than one occasion Hub’s pre-teen brother ran away from the Kahlow farm, since life alone, in the middle of nowhere, was the preferred option.

By 1907, at age 26, Carlton was living by himself and part-owner of a harness shop in Okanogan. He was also a pillar of the community, serving as a city marshal in 1908. But Carlton’s harness shop was destroyed by fire the following year, so he sold the property and left for Wenatchee, where went to work for another harness business. After a few years he left Wenatchee for Hartline, in Grant County.

Unfortunately, Hub Carlton, just in his early thirties, was plagued by lifelong health issues, including a knee abscess so acute he required treatment in Spokane. Eventually he needed work that put less stress on his body, and he found that in movie exhibition. In the spring of 1913, after moving from Hartline back to Okanogan, he purchased Frank Read’s projection equipment and set up shop on his own. Carlton moved the show from its Queen Street location to a new one on Second Avenue, into a space he called Hub’s Theatre, and gave two film performances a week for 10 and 15 cents per person. “Being incapacitated for heavy work because of his crippled knee,” explained the Okanogan Independent, “Mr. Carlton has undertaken the show business and deserves good support.”^[11] The residents of Okanogan rose to the call; over the July 4^th holiday that year, Carlton manned the projector for two full shows, “entertaining hundreds of people and annexing a liberal supply of coin [from] the realm.”^[12]

Thankfully, Hub Carlton was the beneficiary of good timing. By mid-1913 Okanogan and other nearby communities were getting large enough that they could support a part-time moving picture show a couple of nights per week. On top of this, improved transportation and distribution (in Okanogan County and within the larger film business) allowed Carlton to have an easier go of things than some of his predecessors.

Still, Hub Carlton’s health was a recurring problem. Eventually his knee flared up again, a July 1913 advertisement in the Okanogan Independent imploring the locals to “[c]ome and enjoy a good show and help Hub while is in the hospital.”^[13] Carlton briefly turned the business over to J.A. Gard and went to Spokane, where he expected to have his leg amputated. That wasn’t necessary, but his medical bills were such that Hub’s Theatre began holding regular fundraisers on his behalf.

When Hub Carlton returned, he put additional emphasis on traveling the local circuit, with standing engagements in a number of the area’s nearby cities, while also showing films at fairs or other public gatherings. A typical week found him moving from rented hall to rented hall, eventually returning to Okanogan for a few days at home. Riverside was a regular stop, for example, and he gave a pair of shows in Brewster on February 7, 1914, showing his pictures early in the day so as not to conflict with a basketball game scheduled for the same building later that evening.^[14]

When Carlton’s health turned again, he left the business in the care of his brother-in-law, Frank Cotter, and was away for several weeks. Carlton’s eventual return brought changes to Hub’s Theatre, including a renovated façade and some fire safety improvements. In 1915 he replaced the existing floor with a sloping one, had a pair of electric fans installed to help cool the venue, upgraded the interior and laid a concrete sidewalk out front. Interestingly, one of the 1915 upgrades was to hire an artist to create a 120-foot-long mural on one of the auditorium walls, painted on canvas. Over a century later, in 2022, when the building (which has remained standing in Okanogan) was undergoing renovations, the current owners discovered that this canvas mural had been walled over during prior remodels.^[15] The mural has since been removed and restored.

In addition to improving the exhibition space, Hub Carlton was also diversifying his bills, engaging the occasional live act (mostly likely local performers). This was part of Carlton’s attempt to broaden his business reach. Not only was he operating Hub’s Theatre three times a week, but he outsourced management of his traveling shows and had become the local agent for Columbia Records, selling equipment and sheet music at locations in Okanogan, Omak and Riverside.^[16] Representing Columbia had a dual benefit, since Carlton installed a Columbia Grafanola at Hub’s Theatre, which he used not only for demonstration purposes but also to entertain audiences between films and during reel changes.

Over a relatively short span, Hub Carlton made film exhibition a modestly profitable business in Okanogan County. But poor health finally caught up with him in late 1916, when he was in such bad shape that Carlton left for specialist care in Seattle. He never returned; at age 35, Hub Carlton passed within hours of his arrival and was taken back to Okanogan for burial. Frank Cotter stepped in to keep Hub’s Theatre operating, but the venue was eventually sold to J.F. Schmid, who in turn sold it to Clarence Scates. It was Scates who ushered in the next era of film exhibition in Okanogan County.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 28 June 1924, Page 796.
[2] “Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 12 February 1927, Page 503.
[3] “Bad Storms in Northwest; Showmen Visit Legislature,” Moving Picture World, 10 March 1923, Page 150.
[4] Harry J. Kerr in A History of Okanogan, quoted in Jim Kershner, “Okanogan – Thumbnail History,” HistoryLink website (https://www.historylink.org/File/9592), accessed 15 August 2021.
[5] “Moving Pictures,” Okanogan Independent, 17 February 1911, Page 4; see also “Among the Exhibitors,” Moving Picture World, 11 May 1912, Page 560.
[6] See “Moving Pictures,” Okanogan Independent, 17 February 1911, Page 4.
[7] “Local Happenings,” Okanogan Independent, 24 March 1911, Page 3.
[8] See Dream Theatre advertisements, Okanogan Independent, 23 June and 30 June 1911, Page 4.
[9] See “Local Affairs,” Okanogan Independent, 28 February 1913, Page 4; “Local Affairs,” Okanogan Independent, 7 March 1913, Page 3; and “Local Affairs,” Okanogan Independent, 14 March 1913, Page 3.
[10] Information on Hub Carlton comes from Jessica Sylvanus, “Hub Carlton: Okanogan Movie Mogul,” Okanogan County Heritage, Fall 2005, Pages 2-5. Much of the information Sylvanus collected for her article came from an interview she conducted with Lane Carlton, the son of George Carlton, Hub’s younger brother. This interview was supplemented with material taken (but not cited) from the Okanogan Independent between 1907 and 1916.
[11] “Moving Pictures,” Okanogan Independent, 25 April 1913, Page 1.
[12] “Local Affairs,” Okanogan Independent, 11 July 1913, Page 3.
[13] See Hub’s Theatre advertisement, Okanogan Independent, 18 July 1913, Page 4.
[14] “Moving Pictures,” Brewster Herald, 6 February 1914, Page 3.
[15] See “Uncovering Our Past: From Harness Shop to Theater,” Okanogan County Heritage, Spring 2022, Page 2.
[16] See undated advertisement for Hub’s Theatre, reprinted in Sylvanus, Page 4.

Like Hub Carlton, Clarence P. Scates got into the movie business after leaving an entirely different career. Scates was a former journalist who had worked at papers in, among other places, Conconully, Riverside and Omak.^[1] But he ditched the profession in the mid-teens and went into picture exhibition, taking over Hub’s Theatre in Okanogan; by 1918, with only two years under his belt, Scates was already expanding. That year he acquired a lot on Second Avenue between the First National Bank and the Okanogan Department Store and began working on a new theatre to replace Hub’s. Part of the financing for this venue involved a land swap – Scates was to take ownership of the Second Avenue property while the Okanogan Loan and Investment Company would take over the original Hub’s Theatre location.^[2]

Ultimately Scates didn’t build a brand-new venue, as envisioned, and instead made the more cost-effective decision to cancel the land swap and renovate the old Hub’s Theatre space. The interior was retrofitted with a metal interior frame, a concrete façade was added to the front, and a new 30-foot addition went up in the back. The canvas mural that Hub Carlton installed in 1915 was walled over, then plastered and painted with Scates’ logo for his new venue, which he intended to call the Paramount. (During the 2022 renovation on the old Hub’s/Paramount space, workers also uncovered Scates’ plaster wall coverings, still emblazoned with his Paramount logo.^[3]) “C.P. Scates is preparing to erect a new motion picture theatre at Okanogan,” Motion Picture News reported that spring, “which will be of hollow tile and one story high, with a second story at the front end of the building large enough to furnish two offices. The structure will be modern throughout and will have a seating capacity between 350 and 400. Mr. Scates is giving the people of Okanogan the best the market affords in the picture line and has met with fine patronage since he took charge of [Hub’s Theatre] several months ago.”^[4]

Clean and handsome on the outside, Scates chose interior colors of old rose and silver gray. Formal air conditioning wasn’t yet available, but he installed a special ventilation system that promised a complete change of air every 3½ minutes, pulling it out so the air could be “washed and cooled” before being recirculated. Small lights illuminated the interior side walls, while a pair of electric fans on each side of the auditorium provided a slight but comfortable breeze, despite the noise distraction. A single aisle ran down the center of the space, dividing the seats equally on each side. Trade paper accounts ballooned the venue’s seating capacity to 600 (half of Okanogan’s population), though local accounts put that number at a more reasonable 306.^[5] Paramount, Goldwyn and Artcraft films were the order of the day.

Clarence Scates’ new Paramount Theatre debuted on the evening of May 18, 1918, with a pair of films – the Artcraft feature Wolves of the Rail, starring William S. Hart, and the comedy short Out West starring Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. The bill also included a Pathé newsreel and musical selections from Steiner’s Orchestra (an orchestra in name only, since the Paramount couldn’t hold many musicians).^[6] It was hailed as a triumph. “Although there are many playhouses in this part of the state that can boast of a larger seating capacity than the Paramount,” noted the Okanogan Independent, “…there are none in North Central Washington, not even excepting Wenatchee, that compares with Okanogan’s new theatre in the matter of interior decorations, ventilation, safety and all around comfort and enjoyment to the patrons of the house.”^[7]

This may not have been on the scale of theatre openings in Seattle or Spokane, but Scates assumed command and quickly settled into a programming schedule of three bill changes per week, in what was Okanogan’s first legitimate full-time theatre. He was working against time. The venue was supposed to open weeks earlier, but construction delays (due, in part, to a wartime shortage of men and materials) not only pushed the date out but increased his costs. That had Clarence Scates opening the Paramount in mid-May, on the cusp of the hot summer months, which would then be followed by harvest season, so he didn’t have a lot of time to get established.

Then, of course, there was that Chautauqua.

Chautauquas were a mainstay of rural America for nearly 50 years – summer shows featuring educational, political and religious speakers interspersed with music, theatre and scientific demonstrations, which at one point would have included motion picture technology. The first was held on the shores of Lake Chautauqua, New York, in 1874; within a few years, permanent locations were cropping up all along the East Coast. But touring versions became popular in the early 20^th century – traveling tent shows that brought the Chautauqua experience to rural America by moving from town-to-town throughout the spring and summer. Because small towns didn’t always get to see or experience what was going on in the rest of the world, Chautauquas (together with regional fairs and expositions) provided a direct link to the issues and ideas engaging the country.

Chautauquas had an important social and educational function in rural America, but they were an absolute nightmare for small-town movie exhibitors. Their arrival was a huge event, but when your business depended on ticket sales, in communities where people had limited resources, a Chautauqua tended to suck the oxygen out of the room. For the proprietors of rural movie houses, the typical response was to capitulate. That’s exactly what H.D. Williams, an exhibitor in Stevens County, did when a circuit Chautauqua settled near Colville in the summer of 1924. Rather than fight a losing battle for patronage, Williams instead shuttered his house for three weeks, figuring he’d lose less money. This was also the approach Bill Farrell took at his American Theatre in Sunnyside the previous year. When a Chautauqua arrived in his area, Farrell made the sensible decision to lock up and go on vacation.^[8] This was an annual scourge for rural motion picture men, as Abraham Nelson reported to Moving Picture World in 1917, when detailing the situation in Oregon. “During the past few weeks every mail to the exchanges in Portland’s film row has brought letters from exhibitors asking that service be discontinued until the [local] Chautauqua is over,” Nelson wrote. “It is impossible, the exhibitors say, to compete with the open air lyceums. Fortunately, they do not hold session for much more than two weeks in any one place in Oregon.”^[9]

Not everyone collapsed like a house of cards. Exhibitor John McGill of Port Orchard, for example, didn’t get mad – he got even. McGill had been the victim of Chautauquas and circus outfits a number of times, so in the winter of 1923 he spent several weeks lobbying the city for increased fees on these types of traveling shows. He was successful, and the measure (which taxed shows $5 per day) proved a healthy deterrent keeping them from setting up shop near his Port Orchard location.^[10] Meanwhile, the city of Port Angeles already had an existing license fee on the books ($5 for the first day of an engagement, then $2.50 each subsequent day), but it wasn’t enough to dissuade the Baird Tent Show from parking outside city limits for nearly two months in the summer of 1923. Port Angeles had two large movie theatres at the time, the Mack and Lincoln Theatres, and exhibitor Mack Davis spent that winter convincing city officials to revise their fee structure, arguing that the economic damage to local businesses outweighed the public benefit of these shows. He won the day; when the Baird outfit returned in 1924, they encountered a more aggressive licensing structure – $50 for the first day and $25 for each additional day. This time they only stayed a week, leading Mack Davis to brag to the motion picture trade papers that the increased fees caused the Baird show to “fold [their] tent like the Arab and silently steal away…”^[11]

Of course, another option was to go head-to-head with a Chautauqua, which is exactly what Clarence Scates chose to do when one arrived in Okanogan about a month after he opened his new Paramount Theatre. Scates may have been relatively new to the moving picture field, but he was already a shrewd manager. The Okanagan Chautauqua had been in the works for months, so the event wasn’t exactly a secret, but construction delays pushed the Paramount opening right up against the big gathering. Worse, Scates’ problem was amplified by location. Unlike most Chautauquas, this one wasn’t going up on the outskirts of town but was instead situated on a vacant lot in the middle of Okanogan, just blocks from the Paramount.

The Okanogan Chautauqua ran from June 14-19, 1918, and represented months of hard work by local citizens. Just getting it to stop there was a significant expense, costing $1,500 up front and obligating organizers to sell a specified number of six-day passes at $2.50 apiece, which was not a small sum in such a rural community. A large tent was erected at the corner of Third and Queen in downtown Okanogan that could hold up to 1,000 – or, literally, almost every resident. “The object of the Chautauqua is to furnish a week of elevating and instructive entertainment which the entire family may enjoy. It is not expected that any money will be made and the business men who have guaranteed the expense of the [C]hautauqua will be well pleased if they come out even on the expense.”^[12]

The Okanogan Chautauqua had three sessions per day for adults, plus a special “Mother Goose” Chautauqua in the afternoon with children’s programming. The events varied by day, but typically involved concerts interspersed with lectures and presentations on various subjects. One of the days, for example, included musical numbers from a Hawaiian quartet, followed by a lecture called “Worlds in the Making.” A second lecture was the day’s featured attraction – this talk, called “What America Means to Me,” was given by Arthur Walwyn Evans, a Welsh orator and popular Chautauqua speaker. Evans’ appearance was timely, given that war was raging in Europe and, as well, he just happened to be the nephew of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

So how did Clarence Scates go head-to-head with the biggest event in Okanogan’s history, unfolding mere blocks from his theatre? He went straight for the jugular, going out and booking the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation for a special three-day engagement, in what may have been its first run anywhere in Okanogan County. Even in 1918 this would have been a costly rental for a small-town exhibitor, but Scates gambled it was the only way for him to compete. Audiences would come from all around northeast Washington to attend the Chautauqua, so he made sure to book a film that was every bit that event’s equal. Scates plastered the Paramount with poster advertising and secured additional signage around town, so everyone was aware of the engagement. And he had a natural hook: not only could audiences see the biggest, most popular film of the era, but they could see it for a mere 25 cents (35 cents for evening performances), or roughly half the cost of a daily Chautauqua ticket.

For the rah-rah motion picture trade press, Clarence Scates’ gambit carried the day. Although actual newspaper announcements for The Birth of a Nation encouraged patrons to also attend the Chautauqua, Scates was clearly piggy-backing on the hoopla, and instead of suffering a dismal week at the box office, as one might expect, the Paramount instead did its best business to date.^[13] The Paramount showed Birth for two days, June 15^th and 16^th, after which Scates pulled the film and took it to Twisp on the 17^th for a special set of screenings.

Okanogan’s Paramount Theatre was an immediate hit, and by 1919 Clarence Scates was looking to expand his business holdings.^[14] Within a year of opening the Paramount in Okanogan, Scates added the Liberty in Oroville and the American Theatre in Molson to his roster of venues, with an eye toward establishing a regional chain. “Manager Scates has associates who are show men in the outside cities in co-operation with whom the new Okanogan county circuit is to be operated,” noted the Molson Leader, “and this new plan, it is argued, enables the better class of smaller towns to have the same run of popular and more costly films shown in the [larger] cities.”^[15]

Clarence Scates was thriving by the early 1920s. By 1923 he had outgrown the old Hub’s Theatre space and took a lease on the Masonic Temple Building in Okanogan, remodeling part of it into a new and improved version of the Paramount, then renting the additional space for dances and community events. This new Paramount Theatre opened in August of that year, and although it was yet another business triumph, Scates’ time in Okanogan was close to an end.^[16] Within months he left northeast Washington for good, coming on board with the Greater Theatres Company out of Seattle, who installed him as the new manager of the Rialto Theatre in Bremerton. There, in the spring of 1924, Scates supervised a complete remodel of the venue, which was offering two film and vaudeville bills each week.^[17] Then, in 1927, he left Washington altogether to manage the American Theatre in Butte, another house in the Greater Theatres orbit. Clarence Scates continued in the movie business for the remainder of his career, spending his last working years associated with the Fox theatre chain in Utah.^[18]

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] See “Local Affairs,” Okanogan Independent, 14 January 1910, Page 3; and “Chronicle Founder, Clarence P. Scates, Dies in Utah,” Omak Chronicle, 21 July 1977, Page 4.
[2] While Clarence Scates took over the old Hub’s Theatre space and turned it into the Paramount, a new version of Hub’s moved from its original location to the Okanogan Auditorium, a large dance hall and event space. The Auditorium, unfortunately, burned down just a few months after the move, an event that appears to have drawn a curtain on Okanogan’s pioneer movie house.
[3] See “Handsome New Play House Opens Saturday” and “Fletcher Buys Old Theater for Store,” Okanogan Independent, reprinted in Okanogan County Heritage, Spring 2022, Pages 6-8.
[4] “Washington,” Motion Picture News, 16 March 1918, Page 1635.
[5] See “Washington,” Motion Picture News, 23 February 1918, Page 1207; S.J. Anderson, “Seattle News Letter,” Moving Picture World, 20 April 1918, Page 428; “Handsome New Play House Opens Saturday, Okanogan Independent, 14 May 1918, Page 1; and “Washington,” Motography, 29 June 1918, Page 1229.
[6] Paramount Theatre advertisement, Okanogan Independent, 14 May 1918, Page 4.
[7] “Handsome New Play House Opens Saturday,” Okanogan Independent, 14 May 1918, Page 1.
[8] See “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 4 August 1923, Page 366; and “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 21 June 1924, Page 717.
[9] Abraham Nelson, “Chautauqua Crop Plentiful in Oregon,” Moving Picture World, 18 August 1917, Page 1111.
[10] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 21 June 1924, Page 717.
[11] See “Prohibitive License Charged Tent Shows in Port Angeles,” Moving Picture World, 24 May 1924, Page 379; and “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 31 May 1924, Page 2689.
[12] See “Chautauqua Coming to Okanogan in June,” Okanogan Independent, 21 May 1918, Page 1; and Okanogan Chautauqua advertisement, clipping from the Okanogan Independent, 11 June 1918. One angle played up in trade paper coverage was the idea that Clarence Scates lobbied Okanogan officials to have the Chautauqua placed near his venue, so confident was he in his ability to compete. That’s possible, given that he intended to siphon off audiences to attend his screenings of The Birth of a Nation, but it’s also true that the trade papers loved to frame stories around the “hero exhibitor” who fearlessly overcame all obstacles.
[13] S.J. Anderson, “Features Secured Chautauqua’s Patronage,” Moving Picture World, 20 July 1918, Page 428.
[14] See S.J. Anderson, “Small Town Exhibitors Hard Hit,” The Moving Picture World, 1 February 1919, Page 655; and “Changes at Washington Theatres,” The Moving Picture World, 12 April 1919, Page 255.
[15] “Scates Buys at Molson,” Okanogan Independent, 28 June 1919, Page 1. This was a reprint of an article that previously appeared in the Molson Leader.
[16] See “Paramount Theatre Seeks Larger Home,” Okanogan Independent, 29 May 1923, Page 1; and Paramount Theatre advertisement, Okanogan Independent, 7 August 1923, Page 3.
[17] See “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 3 May 1924, Page 2022; and “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 3 October 1925, Page 388.
[18] “Chronicle Founder, Clarence P. Scates, Dies in Utah,” Omak Chronicle, 21 July 1977, Page 4.

The motion picture trade papers had a natural bias toward covering the larger, big city theatres; this wasn’t uncommon in the picture business, where bigger was almost always better. Not only were urban theatres more profitable, but they were innovators in style and showmanship, particularly when it came to advertising their screen offerings. For theatres in a major metropolitan area, there were all kinds of stunts, contests and tie-ups that could be used to promote their feature films, and the trades loved to trumpet marketing campaigns that were both innovative and effective. By contrast, small-town exhibitors often didn’t have the time or money for that kind of extravagance, and even the most creative promotions had to be scaled back to modest proportions. When it came to promoting moving pictures in a small town, it was usually practical over pomp and circumstance.

Take newspapers, a critical element of movie advertising in urban areas, but less so in rural ones. Some small communities didn’t have a newspaper, and if they did, it was a weekly instead of a daily. On top of this, readership in some areas wasn’t very high – the communities were either too isolated or the populace worked in jobs that didn’t leave them time to read the paper on a regular basis. The situation with postering, another oft-used advertising method, was similar. Film posters were common in urban areas, and theatres sometimes battled for control of prime locations throughout the city. Posters were aimed squarely at pedestrians and vehicles, but small towns didn’t have the kind of traffic that metropolitan areas had. They were still used in rural settings but were sometimes put up only at the theatre itself, or perhaps within a few blocks of the venue. There was no need to “paper” the town, particularly in locations with only one movie theatre – the reward didn’t justify the effort.

In small towns promotion work was usually devised and implemented by the manager himself. From time-to-time, however, a film exchange might step in to help, offering the kind of organizational and material support that these houses sometimes lacked. Joe Blasche of the Wapato Theatre, for example, teamed with the Seattle Universal exchange to run a special “double postcard” campaign in the summer of 1924.^[1] Realistically, however, Blasche had little to do with this promotion other than execute. The entire effort was conceived, organized and paid for by the exchange – they shipped pre-printed postcards to the Wapato, provided Blasche with a clear set of instructions, and all the manager had to do was set everything in motion.

For the most part, however, when it came to advertising it was up to the small-town exhibitor to make his own magic. But sometimes a little creativity compensated for a lack of funds. In 1916, at the Orpheum Theatre in Snohomish, manager I.L. Williams was having success with a four-page printed program that laid out an entire month’s worth of upcoming films. Once these were received from the printer, he had his staff attach a string to each program and, because Snohomish was fairly walkable, dispatched an employee to hang them on doorknobs throughout the city. E.H. Haubrook also used printed flyers for his tiny theatre in Everson, near Lynden in Whatcom County, but his distribution method was entirely different. Everson was a dairy community of less than 300 people, most of whom were spread out over large farms that couldn’t be canvassed. Running ads in the local newspaper also wasn’t an option, as readership was low. What Everson did have, however, was a condensery, where farmers delivered raw milk in metal cannisters, dropping them off and picking up empty ones to take back home. So instead of having his staff go door to door, Haubrook instead dispatched his people to the condensery, where they strung advertisements to the empty milk cans. Thus, when farmers came to drop off their goods, they went home with a new set of cans – and Haubrook’s promotional flyers.^[2]

With certain exceptions many promotions at urban movie theatres could be replicated at smaller houses, when scaled to size. Instead of printing simple flyers, for example, some larger theatres produced their own in-house newspaper, which would be given away at the venue itself or, if they had the budget, sent to patrons on the house mailing list. The Liberty in Seattle, for example, published a paper called Screenland in the 1920s that not only contained the Liberty’s upcoming schedule but ran short publicity pieces on various stars or films. The effort wasn’t cheap, but the Liberty offset print costs by selling advertising space to nearby downtown businesses. But this same model also worked on a reduced scale. In 1916 the Theatorium in Pullman was producing an eight-page weekly publication called The Photograme, which they distributed for free at the venue. To say this was smaller version of what others were doing was somewhat of an understatement. Yes, The Photograme was eight pages long, but it was also printed on two-by-four inch paper. Once it detailed the upcoming film schedule and ran an advertisement or two from nearby businesses, there wasn’t much space left to fill.^[3] Manager E.C. Smith of the American Theatre in Dayton, in Columbia County, also mimicked the big city exhibitor with a promotional gimmick he employed that same year, in 1916. In Seattle, Tacoma or Spokane it wasn’t unusual to see canvas banners spanning the width of a downtown street, advertising a venue’s latest movie engagement. But manager Smith pulled off the same feat when he booked The Great Divide for Dayton, population 2,500, creating a nine by 40-foot banner that ran all the way across the city’s main thoroughfare, something that set him back $12. That was a substantial outlay for a small-town theatre, but Smith figured the banner could be repainted at least 10 times before wearing out, allowing him to spread the cost over multiple picture engagements, not just one.^[4]

Innovative managers like Williams, Haubrook and Smith used creativity in their promotional efforts to get more from less. But perhaps no manager epitomized the spirit and ingenuity of the small-town exhibitor better than Roy Czerny, who somehow managed to accomplish more than some of his big-city contemporaries.

The son of immigrants, Roy Czerny was born in Chicago on Valentine’s Day, 1901, to father Joseph (from Austria) and mother Klotilda (from Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic). The couple already had one child, a boy named Joe Jr., who was three years older than Roy. In 1906 the Czerny family relocated from Chicago to Kent, in south King County, where Joseph Czerny eventually became a soft drink distributor. That’s where Roy Czerny got his first practical business experience, working as a salesman for his father’s company. It’s not clear how Czerny got into the movies, but by 1921 he was managing the Kent Theatre, and doing so at the mere age of 20.

It was the formal launch of a career; Roy Czerny continued to work in and around the movie business for the rest of his life. But in the early 1920s, there was arguably no one in Washington who better epitomized the idea of the “live wire” exhibitor – the type of engaging, innovative manager working at the top of his game. Part of that stemmed from his age; young and new to the picture business, Czerny’s energy and outsized personality were a big part of his reputation. He often did things simply because no one told him he couldn’t. Just a year into operating the Kent Theatre, he was already offering five bill changes per week, something that required an enormous amount of planning and promotion, particularly for a theatre that served a community of 2,300 residents. But Roy Czerny was ambitious, with an audacity that made him fun to watch. “He is a friend of all the all the young folks in Kent,” Moving Picture World observed, “and his fans have learned to look for his latest exploitation stunt, which keeps them coming.”^[5] Trade papers were prone to exaggeration, but perhaps not in this case. Roy Czerny turned his youth and inexperience into an asset, allowing him to devise promotional schemes that few others dared to attempt. Not only was he more innovative than most small-town managers, but he sometimes created advertising that was on par with the bigger houses in nearby Seattle or Tacoma, which had far more money and resources.

Take Czerny’s experiment with postering, one of the oldest and simplest ways to promote a film. Poster advertising was available from the exchange; in big cities they were everywhere, but even in small towns they could be used to good effect. Typically, however, they were one element of a larger promotional effort, not a campaign unto itself. Yet in 1923 Czerny chose to ignore conventional wisdom when he booked the Universal serial Around the World in 18 Days. Here he negotiated for an inordinate number of free posters, bypassing all other advertising collateral – no flyers, lobby cards, photographs or the like. Czerny didn’t even take out newspaper ads to support the engagement. But overnight, downtown Kent was wallpapered top to bottom, with movie posters going up in every available space and, sometimes, in unavailable ones as well. That wrinkled a few noses, but Roy Czerny’s experiment was unlike anything that had been done in Kent and it proved successful, bringing in large crowds for a fraction of his usual advertising budget.^[6] (Though the effort doesn’t appear to have been so successful that he made it a regular practice.)

To promote another Universal serial, 1922’s The Radio King, Czerny arranged to give away some short-wave radio sets, a promotion well ahead of its time given that the radio was only just becoming a popular.^[7] He didn’t stop there, either. Just two years after The Radio King promotion, Czerny was experimenting with actual radio advertising. This was a highly unusual move for a small-town theatre, but a friend, C.R. Clark, owned the only broadcasting station between Seattle and Tacoma, which gave Czerny the unique opportunity to reach directly into the homes of residents in the White River Valley. “…Czerny is in a position to have every [new film] broadcasted to all the radio fans within a wide radius of his territory,” Moving Picture World noted approvingly. “All the boys in Kent and vicinity have their own sets, mostly with a short-wave length. That they get the theatre news and are impressed thereby was proven by this enterprising exhibitor, who put on one picture totally without his usual advertising campaign and did a larger business than usual. He checked up and found the radio responsible. Now [Czerny is] thoroughly sold on radio advertising.”^[8] Roy Czerny didn’t stop utilizing his radio connections, either. Later that year, he and Clark broadcast a two-hour musical program featuring the Kent Theatre’s musicians, although this “concert” took place at the station as opposed to being broadcast from the theatre itself. Roy Czerny wasn’t breaking any new ground with that 1924 promotion, but it was highly unusual for such a small, rural venue to be pulling off the type of event normally reserved for larger venues in larger cities.^[9]

Even when he wasn’t breaking barriers, Roy Czerny just had a knack for making things interesting. To promote a 1924 Jack Dempsey film, Czerny orchestrated a tie-up by walking down the street to visit a local electrician. Between the two of them, they hatched a plan: prior to the film’s arrival, and for most of its stay, the display window of the electrician’s store was decorated with a large stack of faux gold coins, something that figured prominently in the movie plot. The electrician then lighted this display so the coins gleamed for passers-by, an effect that looked doubly impressive at night. Then, after this mysterious window display created a buzz around town, Czerny began running newspaper advertisements for the Dempsey film and announcing that the first 100 boys to purchase tickets would be entitled to one of those coins at the end of the run. “About 270 boys stormed the portals and a knockout business resulted during the entire showing.”^[10]

Other times Roy Czerny was more resourceful than colorful. When the Kent Theatre’s boiler went out in January 1925, in the middle of a cold snap, the young manager wasted little time turning his misfortune into free publicity. In this case, he walked into the offices of a local heating company and talked them into bringing six electric heating stoves into the Kent Theatre, placing them throughout the foyer and auditorium. In return, Czerny not only promoted their generosity to patrons but took out a large, front-page advertisement in the local paper thanking the firm for their gallant “ride to the rescue.”^[11] At other times Czerny was merely supporting the community. In early 1924 he joined forces with a local club to raise funds for the beautification of a local park. For this Czerny organized a one-night fundraising event, then ran special advertising to promote it. The screening was packed, and at the end of the evening Czerny made a production out of handing all the box office receipts over to the fundraising drive.^[12]

It’s that type of goodwill that allowed Roy Czerny to organize, on occasion, the type of promotion that might not normally be possible. In 1926, to celebrate the Kent Theatre’s fifth anniversary, he hit just about every promotional button he could think of. Czerny printed more than 2,000 special “movie heralds,” which were distributed throughout Kent – roughly one newspaper insert for every resident. Then also hooked up with local Boy Scouts to promote their membership drive, commissioning special glass slides that he showed between screenings to support the effort. He also talked officials at the local high school into organizing a special assembly, where Czerny spoke to students on behalf of Boy Scouts while also promoting his current attraction, yet another radio-themed serial called The Radio Detective. All of this led up to a special Sunday matinee to honor the theatre’s anniversary, with festivities that included a Czerny-inspired donation from a local company that purchased ice cream bars for everyone in attendance.^[13]

And yet, none of this “live wire” activity held a candle to Roy Czerny’s most audacious plan, where he took theatre decorating to the next level. When he booked The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1925, Czerny knew he had a big feature and went all-out to make the engagement pay, employing ideas that may have been suggested, in part, by the studio/exchange. This started by dressing up the Kent Theatre in elaborate fashion, which could be expected of almost any house booking the Lon Chaney feature. But he didn’t stop there. Czerny then met with administrators from the local high school, making the case that Victor Hugo’s story was as educational as it was entertaining. He was so convincing, in fact, that he got them to buy into a grand idea. Not only would he transform the exterior of the Kent Theatre with an elaborate Notre Dame-themed display, but he would do same thing for the front of the high school, a display anchored by an extra-large delivery of film posters and photographic stills from the Seattle exchange. And if that didn’t get every student’s attention, Czerny also bargained for real estate on every blackboard in every classroom, on which was placed a special Hunchback-themed poster extolling the historical and educational value of the film. “Every school child in town saw the picture,” Moving Picture World reported, “with the sanction and urging of the teachers and principal.”^[14]

Roy Czerny made for great copy, so it’s not hard to see why the trade papers turned him into a local media darling. And he enjoyed the attention. Given the White River’s propensity for seasonal flooding, Czerny once corralled the local Moving Picture World correspondent to detail his plan for installing boat slips at the Kent Theatre so Mother Nature wouldn’t interrupt his screenings. Even his automobile was larger than life. Nearly as (in)famous as Czerny himself was his beat-up Model T, nicknamed “King Tut” – the vehicle was his calling card. Whereas big-city exhibitors drove plush sedans commensurate with their stature, King Tut was rough and tumble, loud and brash – perfectly aligned with Czerny’s personality. And King Tut wasn’t just a fixture of Kent; because he was only about 20 miles from the Seattle exchanges, Czerny and his car were a frequent sight along Film Row. All of which made the following passage in the October 18, 1924, issue of Moving Picture World a somber one: “‘King Tut’ has passed on,” the paper reported. “Obsequies were held on Film Row this week, when a portion of the pavement was removed to make a mausoleum for Roy Czerny’s venerable Ford which, having fought the good fight for innumerable years, [finally] gave up the struggle. Roy has had to buy him[self] a new Lizzie…”^[15]

Roy Czerny remained a local fixture until the 1930s, when he relocated to San Francisco and continued in the movie business. Czerny later settled in nearby San Raphael, where he worked as a theatre manager while also dabbling in California real estate. He and his second wife eventually moved to Sun City, Arizona, where Roy Czerny passed away in 1984.^[16]

Of course, while Roy Czerny occupied one end of the “live wire” spectrum, there were other exhibitors who, apparently, could barely muster any enthusiasm. If life in small-town America was slow and uneventful, there were plenty of rural movie houses that fell right into that mold. In 1917 W.S. Brewster was a Northwest representative for Sherman and Elliott, a state rights distribution firm marketing The Birth of a Nation, among other titles. Following a lengthy road trip that year, Brewster returned to Seattle and complained to journalist S.J. Anderson that too many small-town exhibitors did so little to promote their films that they were leaving money on the table. He had reason to be angry – at the time Brewster was out on the road with the 10-reel feature Ramona, based on Helen Hunt Jackson’s popular novel, and made money through a percentage of the box-office take. This was a big film of a well-known story and had been promoted extensively during engagements in Washington’s larger cities. But when Brewster arrived for an engagement in Pullman, he found the exhibitor there had done absolutely nothing to promote Ramona. Well, almost nothing. Despite being provided with plenty of advance material, including posters, flyers and decorative booklets for distribution in local schools, Brewster arrived for the actual engagement to find all of that sitting in the corner of the manager’s office. He hadn’t created any sandwich boards to put out front of the venue, didn’t distribute the flyers and was still holding onto every one of those educational booklets. He didn’t even take out newspaper advertisements. For this exhibitor, promoting a new bill meant walking out onto the sidewalk in front of his venue and hanging a new poster. W.S Brewster was livid but felt it symptomatic of a larger problem. This wasn’t the first time he had seen stacks promotional materials (his own or another exchange’s) languishing in someone’s office, unused and collecting dust.^[17]

Not everyone was a Roy Czerny. As with any profession, the spoils went to those who were willing to work for it. Or they went to those who were at least willing to do more than change out a poster.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 21 June 1924, Page 717.
[2] See “‘Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 20 May 1916, Page 1176; and “‘Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 27 May 1916, Page 1211.
[3] “‘Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 20 May 1916, Page 1174.
[4] “A Big Canvas Ad,” Motography, 22 July 1916, Page 190.
[5] “Tacoma Exhibitor is Robbed of $1,600 at Point of Gun,” Moving Picture World, 4 November 1922, Page 44.
[6] “Reports from Seattle Show Exhibitors Do Good Business,” Moving Picture World, 11 August 1923, Page 469.
[7] “Clemmer a Fast Traveler; Hill Sells Oregon Houses,” Moving Picture World, 11 November 1922, Page 152.
[8] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 17 May 1924, Page 284.
[9] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 4 October 1924, Page 388. Later, in 1925, Moving Picture World would note that at least eight of Seattle’s first-run movie theatres were involved in promotional radio broadcasts, either showcasing the full house orchestra or select musicians on air, and sometimes broadcasting directly from the venue itself. (See “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 28 March 1925, Page 1343; and “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 2 May 1925, Page 1968.)
[10] See “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 23 August 1924, Page 620; and “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 4 October 1923, Page 388.
[11] “Seattle Exhibitor Supplants Steam Heat with Electricity,” Moving Picture World, 24 January 1925, Page 357.
[12] “Seattle Kids Love McGill; Why? There’s Reason Enough,” Moving Picture World, 23 February 1924, Page 649.
[13] “More Big Theatres Rumored in Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 15 May 1926, Page 254.
[14] “Contest Judges Named by Seattle Showman,” Moving Picture World, 7 November 1925, Page 37.
[15] See “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 2 June 1923, Page 386; and “The Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 18 October 1924, Page 581.
[16] “Roy Clarence Czerny,” Find a Grave website (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/176529651/roy-clarence-czerny), accessed 3 February 2018.
[17] S.J. Anderson, “Why Don’t They Use the Publicity Paper?,” Moving Picture World, 23 June 1917, Page 1982.

If there was one thing that brought an end to many an early theatre, it was fire. To a degree it came with the territory. Movie theatres relied on electrical power in an era when service quality varied widely. Motion pictures were distributed on nitrate film, which was highly flammable even under good conditions. Some theatres were built to a careful set of community standards and equipped with the latest fire safety features. But building and fire codes varied from location to location, as did required construction materials and the means to inspect conditions. Even in a large city like Seattle, there were venues that may have passed code but were still viewed as potential problems. This situation was amplified in the state’s rural areas, where building inspections were sometimes rare, and perhaps even nonexistent.

Most fires occurred in operating rooms, which made the house projectionist everyone’s first line of defense. In early storefront nickelodeons, especially, cramped operating rooms often prevailed. According to James Leo Cahill, as film moved through the projector “in dry conditions its nitrate base could gather static electricity, setting off sparks and combusting…The combination of highly flammable nitrate-based film stocks and hot projector lamps fueled by volatile mixtures such as compressed oxygen and ether held great potential for conflagration…The very conditions necessary for the public presentation of filmic images were often the source of its most dangerous failure.”^[1] It didn’t take much for a fire to start, but when they did, it was unrealistic to expect operators to control each and every one of them.

Fires occurred in theatres large and small, urban, suburban and rural. They could begin suddenly and, in some cases, inexplicably, as demonstrated in June 1911 at the Star Theatre in downtown Seattle. As the house manager and projectionist were having a discussion in the operating room, a reel of nearby film suddenly burst into flames. Neither man could explain what happened – it just ignited even though the projector wasn’t even running. The fire was minor and extinguished quickly, but it briefly took motion pictures off the bill until things were repaired.^[2]

The Star Theatre was fortunate, because accidents of the sort could be much worse, as with the scary incident that took place on March 20, 1904, at Seattle’s Gem Theatre. The Gem was a family-style vaudeville house on First Avenue, so films weren’t the main draw. But, on that day, an audience of primarily women and children were watching the picture unfurl when one of the reels caught on fire while the machine was running. But before it could be extinguished (the operator seems to have stepped away), there was a sudden explosion that rocked the projection room. The sound was frightening enough, but in this case fireballs erupted from the portal windows, shooting directly over the heads of the audience. Mass panic ensued; the crowd screamed and bolted for a pair of exits up front, near the screen. Several vaudeville performers came out from the wings and attempted to calm the audience, but patrons just yelled, pushed and punched their way safety, gathering in the street as fire officials rushed in. The inexplicable part of this incident was the fact that the Gem got away virtually unscathed. The audience was frightened, but otherwise unhurt; the projector was damaged, but repairable; and neither the projection room nor auditorium caught fire. The film was a total loss, but all things considered, it was an accident with few consequences. The Daily Times, in fact, noted that once fire officials were satisfied with their inspection, audiences filed right back into the Gem as if nothing had happened.^[3]

That wasn’t always possible. When an acetylene lamp in the projection booth started a fire at a Spokane nickelodeon in 1908, the operator recognized immediately that he couldn’t extinguish the blaze, so he abandoned his post and alerted patrons, hustling them to safety. “No fatalities,” Moving Picture World noted of his heroism, “only a building demolished.”^[4] Property damage, of course, wasn’t the worst outcome; in 1927 an unnamed projectionist at the Long Beach Theatre nearly became a statistic. That spring, when a fire broke out in the operating room, he battled the flames until overcome by smoke and fumes, passing out on the floor as the fire continued to rage. The booth was locked, but manager W.E. Strauhal broke down the door, shut off the electrical current and pulled the man to safety. Strauhal saved the operator’s life, but the Long Beach Theatre was a little worse for the wear – before firefighters got it under control, the blaze destroyed the entire operating room.^[5]

Over time, however, increased fire and safety standards in cities throughout Washington, along with improved projection equipment, helped keep some of these incidents in check. When the Everett Theatre caught fire in the early morning hours of December 11, 1923, about $1,500 worth of film and equipment were spared because the projection room and film vault had been specially fireproofed. Which was great news, until you consider that almost nothing else survived except the venue’s exterior walls.^[6] Most fires, however, were not that devastating. A June 1926 blaze in the operating room of the Rose Theatre in Port Townsend destroyed several reels of film, along with two projection machines and other equipment, but was otherwise so well contained that the venue was back operating in short order.^[7] Of course, it also helped to be lucky. A 1914 theatre fire in Anacortes reportedly started near a fuse box, but didn’t spread quickly because, officials theorized, the plastered interior walls slowed the flames.^[8] All three of these venues probably should have been modeled after the Ray Theatre in Olympia, which, when it opened in 1914, reported to Moving Picture World that it was “of slow-burning construction.” ^[9] Which, if you think about it, should have been the universal standard for all new buildings, everywhere.

The problem with these accidents, particularly in rural areas, was that they hit small businesses operating on shoestring budgets, many of which did not have (and perhaps could not afford) fire insurance. This left them extremely vulnerable – many small-town movie theatres were one accident away from going dark forever. Take the tiny theatre in Carlisle, located between Ocean Shores and the Quinault Indian Reservation in Grays Harbor County. In the early 1920s it was operated by Thomas Hughes but was only open a few days a week because the community was so small. When Hughes passed away in 1923, his son Clarence stepped in to keep the Carlisle going, since there were no other local places of amusement. But two days after services were held, the Carlisle Theatre was destroyed by fire, and because the venue had no insurance, Clarence Hughes had no choice but to throw in the towel.^[10]

Similarly, on July 4, 1914, the Dime Theatre in South Bend was destroyed by a fire that originated in the projection room and badly burned operator Roy Green. In this case, the fire was exacerbated by the venue in which it took place. The entire two-story structure (an annex to the Hotel Cassels) was made of rough-hewn wood and went up like kindling, resulting in a loss of $10,000 for the hotel, $3,000 for exhibitor George Reizner and additional amounts for several nearby shops, none of which had insurance.^[11] The incident was a minor setback for Reizner, who would go on to become the area’s premier exhibitor in the 1920s. But he had already traveled a long road just to get patrons comfortable with the safety aspect of motion pictures. “It wasn’t that people didn’t want to come to the show…,” Moving Picture World wrote of Reizner’s first show in 1907, “but they had read that the films were likely to explode and burn up the whole house, and they were afraid to go upstairs.”^[12] Turns out, they were right.

Of course, it wasn’t necessary for the moving picture theatre itself to be the source of the fire – sometimes they were a victim. The Vogue Theatre in Kelso suffered $30,000 in damages (against insurance of $20,000) in a 1925 fire that started when the oil stove in a neighboring store exploded. The fire spread quickly and, for a moment, threatened to consume the entire business district, until firefighters got the situation under control.^[13] A rebuilt Vogue opened six months later. Similarly, the Princess Theatre in Edmonds was hit by a fire in 1928 that started in the shop next door, then spread to the façade of the venue itself. Thankfully, Mr. and Mrs. T.C. Barry, who ran the Princess, had insurance to cover the $1,000 in damages, which took a month to repair.^[14] But sometimes the local fire department just couldn’t get the upper hand, no matter how hard they tried. On June 10, 1924, a fire swept through the town of Kalama and took with it the Majestic Theatre. The blaze appears to have started inside a local café, with flames engulfing several local businesses, including the Majestic, Columbia Hotel, the old town hall, a jewelry store, plus multiple restaurants and apartment dwellings. Most of these downtown businesses were not insured, although the Majestic carried a special $5,000 policy that applied to the house organ.^[15]

Losses on the scale of Kalama were unusual, but not out of the question in small-town Washington. Just three weeks after the Kalama fire, on July 2^nd, the town of Morton in Lewis County was devastated by fire, taking with it the Arcade Theatre in what was estimated as a $4,000 loss. Then it was Hamilton’s turn. Hamilton (a town of 400 between Sedro-Woolley and Concrete) saw its entire business district wiped out in a 1925 fire, including Frank Jacobi’s tiny theatre. This was a devastating turn of events (Jacobi ran the city’s only entertainment venue) and there were real questions whether he and Hamilton’s other business owners would be able to rebuild.^[16]

Some venues had narrow escapes. J.G. Beckman’s Rialto Theatre in Wenatchee fell into this category when three buildings on the same block were destroyed by fire in early 1924. Occurring on a Sunday evening, the Rialto was in the middle of a show when the fire, which started down the street, began to shift and move toward the venue, prompting Beckman to shut down and evacuate the audience into the street. But then the wind shifted, sparing the Rialto, although some advertising materials (stored in a different building) were destroyed.^[17] Another close call occurred at Centralia’s Grand Theatre in the early morning hours of April 15, 1924. There a fire caused about $10,000 in damages, though it was largely confined to the rear and non-public areas of the building. The Grand was knocked offline for a couple of days while repairs were made, but the incident could have been much worse. That’s because Frank A. Graham, manager of the Grand, had an apartment at the back of the building; he, his wife and daughter had to flee their home to escape the choking smoke.^[18] The Grand itself reopened after four days, but the Grahams were temporarily displaced until their apartment was repaired.

Fortunately, Washington state managed to avoid a large tragedy with these fires. Deaths were rare, but they happened. One occurred when a fire struck the Palace Theatre in Republic, in Ferry County, on Saturday, October 21, 1916.^[19] The Palace was run by Benjamin Hibbard, formerly an operator in Spokane, who only recently moved into a new exhibition space.^[20] The Palace wasn’t the only show in town; although the population of Republic was less than 1,000, it supported at least one other picture theatre at the time, the Casino. Ironically, at the time of the Palace accident the Casino was closed for renovations, among them fireproofing changes that included new exits so patrons could vacate the building in case of a blaze.^[21]

The fire at the Palace began after hours, at about 11 p.m. Hibbard and his wife Rose Marie were in the operating room when a hot carbon from the projector accidentally came in contact with some exposed film. The real problem, however, wasn’t the specifics of the incident but rather a design flaw in the Palace operating room – one that ended up costing cost Rose Marie Hibbard’s life.

In this case the Palace wasn’t specifically constructed as a motion picture theatre, having been retrofitted from its prior incarnation, as the Republic Opera House. That occurred all the time in small towns, but in this case the operating room was laid out in an unusual manner. Most projection rooms were installed the rear of an auditorium, up and above the audience, and accessed by a set of stairs. The Palace’s operating room, however, wasn’t a contiguous horizontal space. Instead, theirs was a two-story affair, with two rooms stacked on top of each other to form a tower along the back wall.^[22] To show a film, Benjamin Hibbard entered from a door that opened directly off the balcony. This lower room contained a workbench, tools and other equipment, and was also where the nitrate films were stored between shows. To project a film, however, Hibbard had to take each reel up a ladder and through an opening in the ceiling, since the projector was located in the upper portion. This room appears to have contained the machine and little else. It was an awkward setup, forcing Hibbard to go up and down the ladder multiple times during every show whenever he needed new reels, tools or other materials.

Why the Palace operating room was structured this way is a mystery. It was an odd arrangement that was probably forced upon the Hibbards by the available space – a cost-effective solution made when retrofitting the old stage venue into a picture show. But, whatever the reason, it ended up being deadly.

On the evening of the 21^st, Benjamin Hibbard climbed the ladder to change the carbon arcs on the projector, which burned brightly and provided the light source to project the film. The arcs had been running for most of the day, so they were blazing hot and had to be handled with care. So, as Rose Marie stood in the work area below, Benjamin crawled up into the loft to replace the carbons, except that one got away and fell through the opening onto a table below, where there was some exposed nitrate film. That’s all it took. The carbon hit the table and flames erupted, shooting out far enough that Rose Marie Hibbard’s dress caught fire. It happened so quickly, and spread so fast, that when Benjamin Hibbard looked down through the opening he couldn’t see his wife at all, given the smoke and flames, which also prevented him from exiting down the ladder. For him, though, the makeshift construction of the Palace operating room worked to his advantage. As the upper portion began filling with smoke, Hibbard broke through one of the walls, then made his way back down onto the balcony. He ran around to the operating room door, but it had been locked after Rose Marie entered, so he couldn’t get it open. It wouldn’t have mattered – both rooms of the operating tower were now fully engulfed, and flames were spreading to other parts of the balcony, so after some frantic efforts Hibbard had no choice but to flee and hope that his wife escaped ahead of him. She hadn’t – Rose Marie Hibbard died at the scene, at age 31, leaving behind three children, with husband Benjamin suffering burns on his hands and face.

The building housing the Palace Theatre was a total loss; owned by W.L. Stedman and Frank Krek, it was valued at $9,000 by the Spokesman-Review, with another $1,200 representing the loss of the film prints. Two buildings to the north were also destroyed in the incident.^[23] But the damage could have been worse – the fire only burned out because there were two empty lots along the street, so there was nowhere left for it to go. The brick building to the south housed a car dealership, but that structure was equipped with a set of metal blinds that had been lowered for the evening. Without this protection, that structure, which also housed the offices of a local dentist and the U.S. Forest Service, probably would have been the next to go.

The city of Republic needed that good fortune because the burning of the Palace Theatre exposed a problem that wouldn’t have been uncommon in any number of small towns: the inadequacy of local fire equipment. Even though a nearby storage tank had enough water to douse the blaze, the volunteer fire department didn’t have hoses long enough to access it. As such, they were limited to a pair of nearby hydrants, neither of which had the water pressure necessary to combat the blaze. Even more disappointing, though, was the antipathy of the gathered crowd. Some jumped into action and helped the firefighters (many of them women, incidentally), but many more just stood by and watched the tragedy unfold. “Idle spectators showed a sad lack of gallantry and willingness to work,” sneered the Republic News-Miner in reporting the incident.

All of this was a devastating blow to 29-year-old Benjamin Hibbard, who lost his wife and business to the same tragedy. And, like many small business owners in rural Washington, the Palace Theatre wasn’t insured, so his $6,000 loss would never be replaced.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] James Leo Cahill, “How it Feels to be Run Over: Early Film Accidents,” Discourse, Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2008), Pages 292 and 293.
[2] “Seattle, Wash.,” Moving Picture World, 1 July 1911, Page 1538.
[3] See “Panic in Theater Caused by Flames,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 21 March 1904, Page 12; and “Excitement in Theatre,” Seattle Daily Times, 21 March 1904, Page 7.
[4] “Trade Notes,” Moving Picture World, 25 April 1908, Page 368.
[5] “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 15 April 1927, Page 1382.
[6] See “Spectacular Fire Destroys Theatre in Everett, Wash.,” Moving Picture World, 29 December 1923, Page 811; and “Everett Theatre Completely Destroyed by Fire,” Motion Picture News, 5 January 1924, Page 50. The Everett Theatre, which was rebuilt and is still in operation today, wasn’t the only example of a venue that was given a second lease on life by, ironically, a fire that took its first. A blaze at the Concrete Theatre in the early morning hours of September 14, 1916, destroyed the venue and took with it episodes of the three Pathé serials – chapters of The Iron Claw, The Red Circle and Neal of the Navy. (See “‘Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 7 October 1916, Page 811; “Small Town Theater Burns,” Moving Picture World, 14 October 1916, Page 283; and Eric L. Flom, “Concrete Theatre Burns on September 14, 1916,” HistoryLink website [http://www.historylink.org/File/8419], accessed 14 April 2017.) Owned and operated by C.D. Stickley, the Concrete Theatre was rebuilt, only to be rebuilt again in 1924, when the second Concrete Theatre was shut down and moved across the street, where a larger and more elaborate venue had been constructed. And it’s this version of the Concrete (opened in June 1924 at 45920 Main Street) that has stayed in operation since, and was added to the Washington Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation’s list of historical sites on June 5, 1987.
[7] “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 10 July 1926, Page 155.
[8] “The Fire Record of 1914,” Motography, 15 May 1915, Page 777.
[9] “In the Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 25 April 1914, Page 558.
[10] See “Pacific Northwest Business Much Better Than Last Year,” Moving Picture World, 18 August 1923, Page 555; and “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 25 August 1923, Page 913.
[11] See “Theater Burns on Fourth,” Oregonian (Portland, OR), 6 July 1914, Page 5; and “The Fire Record of 1914,” Motography, 15 May 1915, Page 777.
[12] S.J. Anderson, “Interesting Record of Exhibitor Reizner,” Moving Picture News, 3 November 1917, Page 746.
[13] See “Seattle Exhibitor Supplants Steam Heat with Electricity,” Moving Picture World, 24 January 1925, Page 357; and “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 11 July 1925, Page 173.
[14] “Seattle,” Motion Picture Record, 2 June 1928 (Vol. 5, No. 22), Page 7.
[15] See Eric L. Flom, “Fire destroys parts of downtown Kalama on June 10, 1924,” HistoryLink website (http://historylink.org/File/8398), accessed 2 April 2017.
[16] See “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 28 June 1924, Page 796; “Washington State M.P.T.O Close to Membership of 150,” Moving Picture World, 16 August 1924, Page 541; “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 5 July 1924, Page 101; “News of the Seattle Territory,” Moving Picture World, 9 May 1925, Page 179; and “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 16 May 1925, Page 2451.
[17] “Rialto, Wenatchee, Wash., Narrowly Escapes Bad Fire, Moving Picture World, 9 February 1924, Page 477.
[18] See Eric L. Flom, “Fire strikes the Grand Theatre in Centralia on April 15, 1924,” HistoryLink website (http://www.historylink.org/File/8399), accessed 2 April 2017; “Three Washington Exhibitors Control Centralia and Chehalis,” Moving Picture World, 3 May 1924, Page 55; and “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, Page 2241.
[19] See “Wife Meets Death Visiting Husband,” The Spokesman-Review (Spokane), 23 October 1916, Page 3; and “Fire Saturday Night Causes Death of Mrs. B.F. Hibbard,” Republic News-Miner, 27 October 1916. Excerpts from the News-Miner article were provided to the author by Madilane Perry of the Ferry County Historical Society, who frequently contributes a column to the Ferry County View called “100 Years Ago.” A third article, from S. Clark Patchin in Moving Picture World, seems to have drawn most of its information from coverage in Spokane’s newspapers. (See S. Clark Patchin, “Picture Operator’s Wife Burned to Death,” Moving Picture World, 18 November 1916, Page 1053.)
[20] “Washington,” Motography, 11 November 1916, Page 1054.
[21] “Washington,” Motography, 9 December 1916, Page 1307.
[22] There are several differences in the fire accounts reported by the Republic News-Miner, the Spokesman-Review and, later, Moving Picture World. These include when the fire occurred (after hours vs. during the last show of the evening), how quickly it engulfed the lower part of the projection room, and whether Rose Marie Hibbard may have pushed some of the flaming materials out of the projection booth and onto the theatre balcony, allowing the fire to spread. The description here is from the News-Miner since local journalists were in a better position to get specific details correct, whereas the Spokesman-Review was reporting from afar. The account in Moving Picture World seems to have relied on reporting from Spokane newspapers.
[23] “Washington,” Motography, 25 November 1916, Page 1211.

The motion picture trade papers may not have viewed Washington’s small-town theatres as leaders in the industry, but there was at least one area in which they excelled: frequently, they had the best stories to tell. Perhaps that’s a function of not being mentioned regularly – urban movie theatres generated news, rural ones provided color.

Time and again, the regional news columns in the weekly trades demonstrate that the picture business was just plain different in small town America. When it came time for a rural exhibitor to name his new theatre, for example, there were any number of ways to do that. Some names were common, and they adorned theatre marquees across the country – the Grand, Rialto, Liberty, Empire, Orpheum or Majestic, among others. Some, particularly in the nickelodeon era, focused on the experience of moviegoing itself, like the Dream, Ideal, Unique, Pleasant Hour or Joy Theatres in Seattle. For a more regional take, a name might reflect the location, such as the Everett, Kent or Ellensburg Theatres, the Mount Baker in Bellingham or the St. Helens in Chehalis. Still other theatre names reflected the ambitions (or, more precisely, the ego) of their owners, such as the Clemmer Theatres in Seattle and Spokane, the Mack in Port Angeles (build by Mack Davis in 1922) or the D&R in Aberdeen (built by the partnership of Edward Dolan and William Ripley in 1924). But in 1916, when N.C. Hopkins and Ed Halberg were preparing to open their new venue in Port Angeles, they asked the community to do the naming for them. In this case, they ran a contest in advance of the opening so their future patrons could suggest possible names for the new theatre. More than 200 entries were received, and from that came the house’s official name: the Lincoln Theatre. Five different moviegoers made this suggestion, with Hopkins and Halberg giving each a special prize.^[1]

Of course, bucking convention was one of the freedoms enjoyed by the small-town exhibitor. In places like Seattle, Spokane and Tacoma, the success or failure of a new motion picture venue sometimes depended on its location – for example, was it situated at a popular intersection or in one of the city’s up-and-coming neighborhoods? That formula was slightly different in smaller towns, where most successful businesses were often located on or near the town’s main street, where most commercial activity would have taken place. But some owners were willing to play with the formula, as was the case when the Brook Theatre opened in the fall of 1923. Instead of selecting a location on main street in Snoqualmie (population 600 at the time), W.A. Cochran instead chose to build on a site closer to the edge of town, near the city limit of North Bend (population 800), Snoqualmie’s neighbor to the East. It was a calculated move; situating the venue in between the two cities was a play to draw movie patrons from both locations. And based on opening weekend, at least, that seemed like a prescient decision. The Brook had enough paid admissions for their inaugural program, headlined by Rex Beach’s The Spoilers, that they boasted that almost everyone in both towns had dropped by to catch the film.^[2]

Of course, movie theatres could be seen as a hazard, at least to other business owners. A story originating from Tacoma in 1910 had Herman Klauber, a hops farmer in the South Sound, installing a moving picture machine on his farm for the benefit of his seasonal pickers. This was a wonderful amenity, but Klauber was being less gracious than it seemed. The movies had become so popular with his farmhands that he couldn’t keep the men from sneaking away to late-night picture shows in nearby towns, which in turn impacted the next day’s work.^[3] Keeping them on the farm thus became a priority. Similarly, in Fairfax, a rural community in Pierce County near Mount Rainier, several local businesses banded together in the mid-1920s to form the Fairfax Picture Club, a cooperative that showed movies a couple of times a week under the management of R.D. Moore. Unlike Herman Klauber’s farm, the goal of the Fairfax Picture Club wasn’t to keep the workers local, but to provide them an entertainment outlet that kept them away from liquor and other “unwholesome” activities.^[4]

Small-town exhibition had some unusual challenges as well. The Concrete Theatre was the upper Skagit Valley’s largest moving picture house and attracted folks from nearby towns despite the fact that this area still didn’t have a fully developed road system. What they did have, however, was a railroad spur that ran from Rockport down through Sedro-Woolley, carrying locals between towns as they did business, ran errands or simply took in a show. The problem was, however, that train service through Concrete was limited and never synched with screening times. So C.B. Stickley, owner of the Concrete Theatre, created an entirely new job for his staff. Throughout operating hours, one of his employees was assigned to go outside whenever the arrival time of a train neared, listening intently for the approaching whistle. Once the signal was heard, the employee would rush back into the auditorium, in the middle of the film, and loudly announce that the east- or westbound train was moments from arrival. And nearly every time, the disruption sent a few patrons scurrying for the door, mid-show, particularly at evening screenings when a missed train could spell difficulty getting home.^[5]

Not all small-town theatres were characteristically slow and backwards – some could appear cutting-edge, even when they didn’t mean to be. The talkies wouldn’t sweep the United States for another 15 years or so, but in 1913 the Palace Theatre in Vancouver got a head start on the sound experience. The Palace, it seems, had a bit of a rodent problem, something that prompted management to put a rat trap in the alleyway behind the theatre, up against the back wall where the screen was hung. Unfortunately, in the midst of one performance, as a somber deathbed scene unspooled on the Palace screen, the trap was sprung, capturing a small terrier that that had wandered down the alleyway. The trapped dog let out a series of painful howls, which threw the paying audience for a loop since the sound more or less corresponded with the wailing and moaning taking place onscreen. After a few seconds, however, it was clear this was not part of the show, so a patron left his seat and went out the back door, into the alleyway, rescuing the injured pup.^[6]

That’s one way to play a death scene. Another, equally inadvertent situation occurred to a patron in Okanogan, who recalled seeing a show as a child in which the pianist got so involved in playing the song “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” that she didn’t notice the onscreen action had changed, and the film’s heroine was now in danger of drowning.^[7]

Despite the appearance of a slower, more laid-back lifestyle in rural communities, business could be just as ruthless as it was in the big city. In December 1924, Frank Wade – manager of the Victory Theatre in Anacortes – bought the venue from his boss, in what was his first foray into theatre ownership. Wade continued with day-to-day management of the Victory, until his ownership tenure was undone by a rookie mistake. When Wade purchased the house it was near the end of its lease, but he was so wrapped up in operating the venue that he forgot to have it renewed before January 31, 1925. And that was great news for B.B. Vivian, who owned Anacortes’ rival venue, the Empire Theatre. Wade may have forgotten when his lease was up, but Vivian did not, so he swooped in and leased the space himself, intending to force Wade out of the business. And while that’s what happened in the long run, Frank Wade was angry and not about to go quietly. He was no longer the leaseholder of the Victory, but he still owned everything inside the theatre. So he stripped it bare – all the seats, all the equipment, all the decorations, and had it put in storage, giving Vivian what Moving Picture World described as an “empty victory.”^[8] The idea was that Frank Ward would find a partner to either build or rent a new location, although that doesn’t appear to have happened – according to the 1930 census, Frank Ward went on to become an apprentice undertaker.

Even good old-fashioned criminality was sometimes different outside of Washington’s big cities. In December 1924, the Weir Theatre in Aberdeen was hit in a nighttime robbery that resulted in an estimated $4,000 loss. That was a substantial sum for such a small market and occurred only because the Weir was hit on a Sunday night while holding the collected box office receipts for more than one theatre. That much wasn’t unusual – there were many robberies in Seattle, Spokane and Tacoma, among other places, which followed a similar pattern. The difference with the Weir, however, is in how the heist was accomplished. There was no safecracking, no explosives, nor was it an inside job. Instead, in a fitting tribute to the blue-collar character of Aberdeen, these burglars went about their task in true workmanlike fashion: they entered the Weir in the dead of night armed with sledgehammers and chisels, then beat the living hell out of the safe until it finally popped open.^[9]

That kind of pluck and ingenuity could be used for good as well, and might even turn the tide on a minor disaster. That’s exactly what happened with L.W. Harris, who owned a small, somewhat ramshackle movie theatre in Ephrata. In the fall of 1925, the city was holding a community fair near his venue when, as fate would have it, a terrific rain and thunderstorm rolled in out of nowhere and sent attendees scrambling in every direction. Many jammed into Harris’ theatre seeking refuge, which was midway through a screening of the Monty Banks film Racing Luck. Within minutes the tiny house went from sparsely attended to overflowing as the rain pounded away at the outside of the building.

Unfortunately, L.W. Harris’ tiny theatre wasn’t equipped to hold many people. Nor, apparently, was it equipped to keep the water out. This particular deluge was so hard and so heavy that within minutes the ceiling began to leak, sending patrons scurrying to find dry spots, such that there were empty (albeit wet) seats dotting the auditorium, with a mass of people just a few feet away pressed against the outer wall attempting to stay dry. Even the projection room had issues. When that, too, began to take on water, the only way the operator could keep the film running was to pull a tarp over the projector, hide underneath and attempt to keep it from short-circuiting.

Needless to say, this particular screening of Racing Luck was all but ruined – within minutes everything turned to chaos, with an audience worried they were about to drown, and an operator worried he was about to be electrocuted. There wasn’t much that could change the situation, so L.W. Harris used the only thing he had left in his bag of tricks – he stopped caring altogether. With thunderclaps shaking the building, Harris got into the spirit of the situation by turning on the house’s thunder and lightning effects, triggering them in call-and-response fashion to whatever was going on outside. His patrons – damp, cold and huddled together – began to laugh and clap, allowing themselves to get caught up in the moment, despite of the incongruity between what was happening onscreen and what was happening around them.^[10] It was one of those moments when the shared experience was greater than the show itself, and the “survivors” of the Ephrata storm were grateful that Harris helped make an otherwise dismal moment bearable. And once that story got out, for L.W. Harris and his small (but leaky) theatre it was the kind of favorable publicity money just couldn’t buy.

Sometimes men like L.W. Harris were civic fixtures – successful businessmen who brought joy to the community through operating the local picture show. That was certainly the case with exhibitor Claude Thompson of Pomeroy, in Garfield County, who passed away in the fall of 1925, in what was a real blow for the area. Thompson was only 44, but he had been associated with local stage and film entertainment for a quarter century. At age 19, in 1900, he was named manager of the Seeley Opera House, and later, in 1913, helped build the Seely Theatre, which became the city’s only movie house. He had been such a pillar in the community that, at the moment he was laid to rest, every business in the city of Pomeroy shut down for a full hour out of respect for his memory.^[11]

A similar reverence was shown to Raymond exhibitor George Reizner when he passed away two years later. Reizner originally came to Raymond around 1906, taking a job as a butcher in a local meat market. As a sidelight in 1907, however, he opened the People’s Theatre, which may have been Raymond’s first semi-permanent moving picture show. Reizner was a one-man operation – cashier, manager, projectionist and, thanks to an excellent singing voice, the entertainment for patrons during reel changes. The People’s was a success, prompting Reizner to open a larger venue the following year, the Lyric Theatre. It was a sign of things to come; his theatre interests kept growing along with the population of Raymond, and eventually he branched out to open similar venues like the Dime and People’s Theatres in neighboring South Bend. These were tiny storefront venues, but in 1919 he moved into the big time when he opened the Tokay Theatre in Raymond, which he followed up by building a second Tokay in South Bend in 1924. George Reizner was partial to the Tokay name – he and his extended family owned some vineyards in Lodi, California, with the tokay being one of the of the grape varietals they commonly grew.^[12]

Reizner, a lifelong bachelor, became a towering figure in the Raymond and South Bend communities during the 1920s. Not only did he operate the largest movie theatres in both cities – each a physical manifestation of his belief in both places – but the so-called “movie king of Willapa Harbor” was a director at the First National Bank of Raymond and active in social and fraternal circles. He was warm and generous, perhaps to a fault. But George Reizner also suffered from poor health, and eventually passed away on April 13, 1927, at the mere age of 47.

Reizner’s death was such a blow to southwestern Washington that his passing was mourned like a President or a fallen warrior. “George Reizner’s personality and his presence here will be sadly missed,” wrote the Willapa Harbor Pilot right after his death. “His passing is a real calamity to the twin cities. He passes on right in the prime of life and at a time when he was planning great things. These two towns are as if a pall had shrouded them today…”^[13] He was laid to rest at Fern Hill Cemetery in Raymond four days after his passing. It was a rainy Easter Sunday, but the holiday program was set aside, to a degree, at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, which was beyond capacity, to celebrate the man who had filled parishioners with so much joy over the proceeding 20 years. When Reizner’s body was transported up to Fern Hill, the procession was reportedly two miles in length.^[14]

But if there was any act that paid tribute to George Reizner’s memory, it was the scene that took place at the Tokay Theatre in Raymond. The day before his service the theatre was closed for business, but its doors remained open while Reizner’s body lay in state, surrounded by bouquets of flowers sent from friends, employees, service clubs and community leaders. The citizens of Raymond and South Bend, young and old, came out en masse to pay their respects, filing slowly past the casket throughout the day, in what must have been a surreal scene for folks who normally attended the Tokay for pure enjoyment. Members of the local Elks Club kept vigil over the scene for all of Saturday, while the Knights of Columbus took over on Saturday night.

The fact that these fraternal organizations stepped in to watch over George Reizner’s body was significant. Three years earlier, in March 1924, Reizner opened the Tokay Theatre in South Bend, representing an outlay of $150,000. As was the case with most theatre openings, the initial set of engagements were stressful – there was a lot of money on the line, and it was important to get the venue off to a good start. But George Reizner did something very unusual during his first week of operation. On one evening, film fans who dropped by the new venue found that the lights were off, the doors were locked, and no film was scheduled to play. Why the closure? Because the Tokay’s opening had been delayed due to construction issues, and it started backing into the dates for a long-planned community play given by local fraternal organizations. So George Reizner voluntarily closed up shop, leaving money on the table during his first week of operation so as not to interfere with what was otherwise a small community event.^[15] After his passing in 1927, it’s as if the local Elks and Knights of Columbus were repaying him for the favor.

And finally, there’s Essie Malone who, together with her husband William, ran the Colonial Theatre in Charleston, today part of Bremerton. Mrs. Malone represents a sorely overlooked aspect of film exhibition, particularly in rural America – the fact that many of these early theatres were, quite literally, family-run businesses. Typically the husband was the name above the title, recognized in the community as the “face” of the local movie theatre. But behind the scenes there were wives, children and extended family members that often managed and staffed these venues themselves. Don’t discount the number of exhibitor wives who contributed to the success of the local movie house but did so with nowhere near the same level of recognition.^[16] Essie Malone may have held court in Charleston, but there were thousands of Essie Malones all across the United States.

One day in 1923, an exchange man from Film Row in Seattle rose early, boarded a boat on the waterfront and made the hour-long trip over to Bremerton. Once he landed, he took a car from the dock over to the Colonial in Charleston, where he was due to make an early house call. The theatre wasn’t yet open for business, but the front door was open and he entered to find Essie Malone hard at work, prepping the house for the day. “‘Good morning, Mrs. Malone,’” he beamed, feeling accomplished at having made such a long journey, only to arrive well before his scheduled appointment. “‘I’ll say it’s a good morning,’” she piped back. “‘I got up this morning, swept out the theatre, changed [decorations in] the lobby, put up a 24-sheet [poster], got my husband’s breakfast, tidied up the home and here I am!’” That response stopped the exchange man cold, as he glanced over Mrs. Malone’s shoulder at a nearby clock. It was only 9:37 in the morning.^[17]

A woman exhibitor’s work is never done.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] “Split Reel Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 19 August 1916, Page 423. Edwin Hallberg (N.C. Hopkins left the business shortly after the Lincoln opened) was as much a gentleman as he was a showman. When Mack J. Davis opened the Mack Theatre in Port Angeles in November 1922, Hallberg voluntarily let his business rival carry the day. Not only did he close the Lincoln and give up a full day’s receipts, but he helped celebrate the new Mack Theatre by attending the opening festivities himself. (“Lukan to Manage Hamrick’s Theatres in the Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 16 December 1922, Page 636.) Davis would eventually sell the Mack Theatre to Edwin Hallberg in 1926.
[2] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 13 October 1923, Page 565.
[3] “Tacoma, Wash.,” Moving Picture World, 8 October 1910, Page 827.
[4] “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 12 September 1925, Page 1278.
[5] Charles M. Dwelley, So They Called the Town “Concrete” (Concrete, WA: The Concrete Herald – 2009), Page 65.
[6] “This Theatre has Talking Pictures,” Seattle Daily Times, 19 March 1913, Page 11.
[7] Bruce Wilson, Late Frontier: A History of Okanogan County, Washington, 1800-1941 (Okanogan, WA: Okanogan County Historical Society – 1990), Page 311.
[8] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 28 February 1925, Page 898.
[9] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 27 December 1924, Page 852. Unfortunately, thieves continued to target the Weir Theatre even after this burglary. Just weeks after this first break-in, the venue was struck again when auditor P.H. Pike was attacked by a lone individual late one Sunday night in his office. Inexplicably, the Weir continued to hold the weekend box-office receipts for three area houses, with as much as $5,000 sitting there for the taking. This time a lone man entered the building armed with a pistol, and was perhaps just as startled to discover Pike as Pike was to discover him. The auditor wasn’t going to let the house get robbed again, so he lunged at the intruder, the two wrestling outside his office before tumbling down a stairwell. At some point the gun discharged, but no one was injured and burglar took the opportunity to flee.
          Not a penny was taken this second time, but one wonders if the incident made an impact on P.H. Pike, who shortly resigned his position and announced that he intended to become an exhibitor himself. Better to experience the war as a commander, perhaps, than to be a soldier on the front lines. (See “Seattle Exhibitor Supplants Steam Heat with Electricity,” Moving Picture World, 24 January 1925, Page 357.)
[10] “Rain Aids Realism in Washington House,” Moving Picture World, 10 October 1925, Page 497.
[11] “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 17 October 1925, Page 1833.
[12] See “Raymond’s Pioneer Theatre Owner Dies,” Seattle Daily Times, 14 April 1927, Page 16; and Theater Owner Dies,” Tacoma News Tribune, 14 April 1927, Page 8.
[13] See “George Reizner, Tokay Theatres Owner, Passes Away in Raymond,” Willapa Harbor Pilot, 13 April 1927, Pages 1 and 8.
[14] “Geo. H. Reizner Laid to Rest in Fern Hill,” Willapa Harbor Pilot, 20 April 1927, Page 1.
[15] See “Thousand Seat House Opens in South Bend, Washington,” Moving Picture World, 19 April 1924, Pages 673-674.
[16] In addition to Sally Chandler Sloan, there were a fair number of women exhibitors in the silent era, particularly in the Northwest’s small towns. My list is a long (and wholly incomplete) one, but would include Inge Carstens, who managed the Fremont Theatre in Seattle as early as 1916 and later the Green Lake Theatre, or women such as Madame Paul (the Bijou in Marysville), Marie Connelly (the Grand in Renton), Mrs. E.B. Gerdon (the Rex in Arlington), Meta Ruth (the Ideal in Stanwood), Mrs. Queenie Batchelder (the American in Arlington), Mrs. I.W. Winkler (the Yesler in Seattle), Irene Gordon (the Lois in Grandview), Fannie Calven (the Rose in Rosalia), Agnes Fensler (the Fensler in Deer Park) and Miss I.L. Colburn (the Yesler in Seattle). The exchange side saw fewer women in key positions, but one of them was Josephine Donnelly, who started in the business at the local Fox exchange and eventually became the number two person at the A.T. Lambson exchange in 1917. That year Donnelly, formerly a stenographer, briefly took the helm after Lambson’s sudden passing, and eventually moved over to take charge of the Bee Hive exchange in mid-1918. (See “Washington,” Motography, 9 November 1912, Page 380; “In the Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 16 November 1912, Page 673; S.J. Anderson, “Seattle News Letter,” Moving Picture World, 9 December 1916, Page 1534; “Miss Donnelly Becomes Queen Bee,” Moving Picture World, 8 June 1918, Page 1469; “Seattle Slants,” Motion Picture News, 6 January 1923, Page 81; “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 22 March 1924, Page 1342; “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 20 November 1926, Page 1969; and “Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 19 November 1927, Page 40.)
          More common were the husband-and-wife teams like the Malones, where wives took uncredited roles in support of their husbands. Some women were treated like equal business partners, like Donald and Myrtle Geddes in Seattle, but countless other women simply helped out in what were essentially family-run businesses. Sometimes even daughters got into the action. F.C. Weskil managed houses in Colfax and northern Idaho, and regularly made visits to Seattle’s Film Row, often in the company of the family dog who would entertain anyone who paid him attention. When Weskil couldn’t make a trip, however, he sent his wife to do business for him, and eventually she began bringing along their two daughters. “[Mrs. Weskil] is educating the girls to the various work in connection with the theatres so they will ‘know what it’s all about.’” (“Seattle,” Motion Picture Record, 24 September 1927 [Vol. 4, No. 39], Page 10.) Good for you, Mrs. Weskil.
[17] “This Seattle Eve Outspeeds Exhibitorial Adams, They Say,” Moving Picture World, 28 April 1923, Page 916.