All the News That's Fit for Prints:
Newsreels in the Northwest

Many of the Northwest’s earliest newsreel cameramen began their careers as still photographers before transitioning into moving pictures. Some became the local stringers for major newsreel producers like Pathé or Hearst, while others shot on freelance basis, selling footage to local or national outfits where they could. Being a newsreel cameraman, particularly as an independent, was a tough way to make a living, but there were ways to make it pay. In 1927 M.W. Larmour, from Graham, Texas, contributed an article to Moving Picture World describing the local newsreel service he provided for his community.^[1] Graham is in north central Texas, due west from the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and had a population of about 4,500 at the time. While Larmour’s article appeared late in the silent era, it nonetheless captured the steps that many local cameramen took during their careers, either as a freelancer or as part of a larger organization.

M.W. Larmour didn’t mention his background or how he entered the newsreel business, but he had been behind the camera for some time, and perhaps had a background in traditional photography. Because Graham was fairly small and isolated, it was unlikely he’d ever sell footage to one of the big national services. Instead, he shot material that was specific to Graham, an effort to “supplement [the bigger newsreels] with something purely local, of intimate importance to the men, women and children of the community that the theatre serves.”^[2] The comment is as modest as it sounds. Larmour was providing a local newsreel that could only play at theatres in one town. He was putting in long hours for little pay, his trade-off being the community spirit his work engendered.

Because filming was expensive, Larmour tied up with a local business to defray costs. In this case he partnered with the Ramsey Drug Store to create the Ramseygram News Weekly. The store (also the local Eastman Kodak dealer) got naming rights over the finished product, but also supplied the camera, film, developer and the funds Larmour needed to hire a part-time assistant. The cameraman, for his part, was responsible for scouting, shooting, lab work, editing and titling. The Ramsey Drug Store took none of Larmour’s profits, but were “repaid in the good will and advertising [Ramsey] gets out of the stunt.”^[3] This weekly newsreel was only a couple of minutes of screen time, with an average cost of about five cents per foot – depending on the week, each episode cost between $2.50 and $7.50 to produce. It was a partnership that worked well for both for both parties. Though these weekly newsreels were fairly simple, they were also eagerly awaited by local moviegoers, who were not only informed and entertained but felt that Larmour/Ramsey partnership was a form of public service for the Graham community.

The Northwest had its own local newsreels that operated in ways that were probably similar to how the Ramseygram News Weekly was produced. Perhaps the most elaborate was at Seattle’s Liberty Theatre, which in the early 1920s produced their own weekly newsreel in collaboration with the Seattle Star. But smaller towns could pull off the same feat, like M.W. Larmour was doing in Graham. In 1924 at the Liberty Theatre in Kelso, for example, one of the house’s projectionists took an active hand in creating the Kelso News Reel, likely the product of a similar partnership between the venue/cameraman and other local businesses.^[4]

Men like M.W. Larmour could be found throughout the United States, each offering their own unique take on their respective communities. In the Northwest there was Frank Jacobs, for example.^[5] Jacobs was born in Kansas in 1881, but came to Seattle around 1907, at age 26. He started his career in a local drugstore, but photography was his passion and he eventually left that position to open his own portrait studio. In 1909 he was hired as a part-time photojournalist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, one of the paper’s first, an assignment he nabbed, in part, because his studio just happened to be located be in the same building as the newspaper.

Jacobs first assignment was to cover the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, but where he really made a name for himself was in covering local disasters. In 1910, for example, he was the first photographer on site at Wellington in the Cascade Mountains, where an avalanche struck a passenger train, killing over 100 people. Getting there was an ordeal, requiring Jacobs to hike the last mile (encumbered by all his gear, including glass photography plates) in near-blizzard conditions. But the effort paid off, as he earned more than $1,000 for these pictures, with certain shots reprinted in publications around the world.

At some point in the early teens Frank Jacobs branched out into motion picture photography; by World War I, his name showing up in the motion picture trade papers. In 1918, for example, Jacobs took aerial film of 2,000+ soldiers as they marched on their University of Washington training grounds. This was more of a promotion than a drill – as Jacobs and the pilot circled above, the men marched into a formation that spelled out “Buy Bonds for Liberty.” This picture was then made available to movie houses all over Seattle, free of charge, to raise funds for a Liberty Loan drive.^[6]

Jacobs knew that the key to being a successful newsreel cameraman was to always be ready. In late 1922 he was on hand to film Lieutenant Frank Tyndall when he test piloted a prototype aircraft that The Boeing Company was building for the U.S. military. The job was fairly routine – Jacobs took footage of Tyndall before the flight, inspecting his plane, and then shot the takeoff and a few aerial maneuvers, which included some loops and barrel rolls. With enough to produce a story on the test flight, Jacobs started packing up his gear when bystanders noticed that the plane’s left wing was starting to fail some 5,000 feet above the ground. Jacobs quickly pointed the camera skyward, then tracked the plane as Tyndall limped toward Elliott Bay, parachuting away from the aircraft as it plunged toward the surface. Immediately, Jacobs jumped into his car and careened through Seattle streets to the crash site, capturing images of the steely aviator as he emerged from the water near Harbor Island. This was big news locally, and Frank Jacobs was the only stringer to have it on film – the before, during and after shots. The Liberty Theatre, with whom Jacobs already had a relationship, not only bought the footage but cranked up the publicity machine, drawing crowds who wanted to get a close-up look at the accident as it unfolded.^[7]

Frank Jacobs eventually stepped away from motion picture work in the mid-1920s. He continued with his still photography work in Seattle until 1945, when he left for Tucson, Arizona. He passed away there in 1979, a few weeks short of his 98^th birthday.

A newsreeler with a similar history in Northwest film circles was Will Hudson. Like Jacobs, Hudson was an ex-photographer with the Post-Intelligencer who switched to newsreel work. He started at the paper shortly after Frank Jacobs was hired but quickly branched out to shoot news events with a hand-cranked camera. By 1913 Hudson was not only working on local newsreel features but also shopping some of this material for national distribution.^[8]

Will Hudson was born in Oregon in 1877 and eventually studied at the Washington Agricultural College – the original name for Washington State University. He never finished, dropping out to marry his longtime sweetheart, but eventually opened a local photography business.

But Pullman being Pullman, there wasn’t much of anything to keep him there. In 1905 Hudson answered a magazine ad and landed a commercial photography gig in Shanghai. With this assignment, he uprooted the family and went to China (by way of Japan), immersing himself in Asian culture. He went there to do commercial work but used his free time to photograph in and around Shanghai, picking up extra money selling pictures on the side. It was in China, as well, that Will Hudson encountered his first moving picture camera, something that so interested him he began studying how films were made.

By 1907 the Hudson family had returned to the Northwest, and within a few years he joined the staff of the Post-Intelligencer. But, by 1912, Will Hudson’s fascination with moving pictures had firmly taken hold, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. His growing interest coincided with the emergence of the weekly newsreel, which many were describing as a “visual newspaper.” The first time Hudson saw one, he was hooked. He went to a movie house in downtown Seattle and saw a locally made short featuring some military exercises, and knew he had found his calling. “I let out a whoop of joy,” Hudson recalled years later. “By the time the calvary charge was finished I would not have changed places with the President of the United States. I was newsreeler.”^[9]

With full knowledge of the Post-Intelligencer, Hudson began shooting his own newsreel footage, sometimes pulling double duty at events as he tried to capture the action in both still photography and in motion pictures. Initially he sold this footage on a freelance basis, but Hudson also looked for other outlets to showcase his work. In late 1912, for example, some of his films were booked into a show at the Grand Opera House, where audiences were entertained with scenes of Mount Rainier, a local forest fire and glimpses of Vancouver, Washington. He did the same thing in 1914, showing some Alaska footage he had taken, and screened another set of local pictures at the Class A Theatre the following year.^[10]

In 1913 Will Hudson left the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for good, becoming the official photographer for an Arctic expedition underwritten by Harvard’s Museum of Natural History. It wouldn’t be the last time he filmed in the frozen north, nor would it be the last time he went on an expedition that went belly-up. In a Shackleton-like stroke of luck, the group’s ships got stuck in the polar ice, one of them eventually being crushed and sinking beneath the surface. Hudson and his colleagues were stranded for some time before they were eventually rescued. Nonetheless, it was valuable experience that helped pave the way for his first official newsreel job, as the Northwest stringer for Pathé, in a territory that covered Washington, British Columbia and Alaska. Except for brief stint during World War I, when Hudson shot films for the U.S. Army, he would be a Pathé employee for the rest of his career.^[11]

Will Hudson’s work for Pathé News put him on scene at important events around the Northwest for the next 20-plus years. He and Frank Jacobs, for example, were on hand to film the walkout at the Skinner and Eddy Shipyard that served as a prelude to the 1919 Seattle General Strike.^[12] In mid-1921 Moving Picture News reported he had recently returned from Portland, where he took pictures at the city’s Rose Festival, including a locomotive collision that was staged during the event. Then he was off to shoot some “Indian pictures” in Montana, following by some conferences in New York at Pathé’s corporate offices.^[13] Later, in mid-1923, Hudson was balancing his newsreel duties with a $1,500 contract he received from the Seattle Port Commission, where he took film of the waterfront and other places around Washington in an effort to promote the Port and associated businesses.^[14]

It was Hudson’s interest in filming these subjects that led him to leave Pathé News, temporarily, in 1926, with Lou Hutt stepping in as his replacement. Once again, he found an Arctic project he just couldn’t pass up: Hudson was off again to Alaska, where he traveled with George Hubert Wilkins as part of the Detroit Polar Expedition. Wilkins, an Australian by birth, was a decorated World War I pilot and noted ornithologist who had turned his attention to Arctic exploration. He took a several trips to the North during his career, drawing on his aviation background to explore the area from the air. But, as was the case 10 years previous, the 1926 trip was beset with problems and eventually abandoned – Will Hudson just had no luck when it came to the Frozen North, save for a little footage he was able to sell on the side.^[15]

In the mid-1930s, as he continued to work for Pathé on sound newsreels, Will Hudson began writing his memoirs, though he never got very far into the project. Mostly he collected notes and wrote some draft passages on his life or on specific incidents. Hudson passed away in 1945, with these materials remaining in the family until Bert and Margie Webber (the cameraman’s granddaughter) picked them up and pieced his story together in 1999. It’s through these fragments, woven together by the Webbers, that the process of being a newsreel cameraman comes to life.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] See M.W. Larmour, “Shoot Them for Cash,” Moving Picture World, 31 December 1927, Pages 43 and 46.
[2] Ibid., Page 43.
[3] Ibid., Page 46.
[4] “Movies do Well in Seattle Despite Inclement Weather,” Moving Picture World, 1 March 1924, Page 47.
[5] See Eric L. Flom, “Frank Jacobs (1881-1979),” HistoryLink website, http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=3258 (accessed 13 February 2016).
[6] S.J. Anderson, “Makes Film of 2,000 Sailors,” Moving Picture World, 2 November 1918, Page 614.
[7] See “Drops Mile in Plane Crash; Local Army Pilot Dodges Death,” Seattle Daily Times, 16 November 1922, Pages 1 and 15; and “Seattle News,” Motion Picture News, 16 December 1922, Page 3069.
[8] Louis L. Goldsmith, “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 24 January 1914, Page 428.
[9] Will Hudson, as quoted in Bert and Margie Webber, I Shot the News! The Adventures of Will E. Hudson, First Newsreel Cameraman in the Pacific Northwest (Medford, OR: Webb Research Group Publishers – 1999), Page 93.
[10] See F.H. Madison, “In the Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 7 December 1912, Page 992; Louis L. Goldsmith, “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 24 January 1914, Page 428; and Charles Eugene Banks, “Moving Picture of Seattle,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4 February 1915, Page 12.
[11] A 1920 account of filmmakers in the Northwest claims that Will Hudson made pair of fiction films shortly after his trip to the Arctic. These films (identified as a one-reel comedy called The Moocher and an Alaskan story called Emutuck’s Awakening) were only shown in local theatres in 1915 and never went into wider distribution. (See Frank C. Teck, “Seattle Scenes in Silver Horde,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4 April 1920, Drama, Music and Motion Picture Section, Page 3.) It may be that Hudson was only the cameraman on both productions; that seems to be the case with Emutuck’s Awakening. The same notice mentions that Hudson spent part of 1916 in Tacoma helping shoot a five-reel photoplay “showing the trials and customs of the early settlers.” That suggests he may have been the cameraman hired to shoot the Pacific Coast Motion Picture Company’s Gog-Gle-Hi-Te. Other titles that Will Hudson was involved with included Fight or Farm, a picture supporting the war effort, a two-reel comedy called The Last Bride and a farming picture called Appleblossom Land. With respect to Will Hudson’s career at Pathé, for a brief time a company merger had him working for the Hearst-Pathé newsreel, but he came back into the Pathé fold when those two companies decoupled.
[12] S.J. Anderson, “Walkout Increases Attendance,” Moving Picture World, 8 February 1919, Page 790.
[13] “Seattle,” Moving Picture News, 9 July 1921, Page 233.
[14] “To Exploit Seattle’s Facilities via the Screen,” Motion Picture News, 21 July 1923, Page 279.
[15] See R.A. Swan, “Sir George Hubert Wilkins (1888-1958), Australian Dictionary of Biography website, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wilkins-sir-george-hubert-9099 (accessed 17 February 2016); and “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 31 July 1926, Page 423.

The notes intended for Will Hudson’s memoirs, while not extensive, vividly recount his life behind the camera, complete with details on how he (and probably others) approached the job. Being a newsreel cameraman was much like being a print journalist – one always had to have an ear to ground. “To be a successful news man,” he wrote, “one should have a ‘nose for news.’ One needs to be able to smell a story from the abstract, in addition to being able to handle an obvious event that occurs right in front of you. In my judgement, one could become a successful cameraman only by great vigilance and no end of self-study, practice, and ability to keep on-the-go. A newsreel cameraman must a self-starter.” As he discovered early on, newsreels were a topsy-turvy business that required complete dedication and a willingness to drop everything at a moment’s notice. “…One of [a cameraman’s] prime responsibilities is to keep the car’s gas tank full, extra cans of oil in the trunk, and having a knapsack containing a camera and plenty of film, extra clothing, and some Hershey bars, at one’s fingertips night and day.”^[1]

Hudson was part of a small group of Northwest newsreelers, most of whom were based out of Seattle and included company men, such as himself, plus a handful of freelancers. They often attended the same events, so everyone knew everyone, but that’s not to say that they were overly chummy. This was an exclusive club where your colleagues were also your rivals, attempting to get the better story, the better camera setup, the better footage. Men like Will Hudson, Frank Jacobs and others may have been gregarious and friendly, but they also didn’t show their cards to one another. If Hudson had a story lead in Port Angeles, the last thing he wanted to do was tip someone off, then have that competitor sneak in and take his own footage. In this sense newsreel cameramen operated much like print reporters, who not only attended major public events but also used a network of private sources to get story tips.^[2]

Newsreel cameramen like Hudson had a weekly footage quota, and each newsreel company had different requirements when it came to subjects. At Pathé, Hudson was required to send the New York office a certain amount of film each week for possible inclusion in the national newsreel. If some or all of that was picked up, Hudson was paid for the length of film used – at one point he was earning 60 cents per foot when his pictures were selected. But he had to pay all his expenses – equipment, supplies, food, travel and lodging, something that forced him (and other newsreel cameramen) to shoot subjects quickly and efficiently. On occasion Pathé might give him a stipend of up to $10 to explore a longer subject, but that was the exception and not the rule.

In addition to the weekly quota, there were also purely local film to shoot – the type of material Hudson took knowing it wouldn’t be considered by New York. Individual theatres in Seattle were willing to pay for this material, though not nearly as much as Pathé. For these films Hudson retreated to his backyard darkroom, putting together local subjects to supplement the venue’s national newsreel service. Such films were rarely longer than a single reel, and were delivered (often by hand, often by his daughter) with a “poop sheet” that let the venue know what the footage contained. Both the national Pathé newsreel and Hudson’s local version had a two-week shelf life, give or take. In week one these films played one or more major downtown theatres and then, perhaps, they might move over for split weeks at one or more of Seattle’s neighborhood theatres. A third week was usually out of the question, since by that point there was no longer anything newsworthy about Hudson’s newsreels.

Particularly when shooting local films, speed was the watchword. If a big sporting event or local news occurred, cameramen such as Will Hudson would often shoot, develop and edit their footage as quickly as possible, such that local movie audiences could see it within hours. “…[W]e worked hard and we worked fast,” he recalled. “No subject was overlooked that had the slightest possibility of human interest…[C]ameramen watched public reaction and worked accordingly…[anything] that brought a laugh, smile or favorable comment was considered worthy of attention.”^[3]

On top of Hudson’s weekly film quota, Pathé also required him to submit one longer piece each month. These projects took time to coordinate, with Hudson putting together short, documentary-style films on subjects of his own choosing. If this was about an irrigation project in eastern Washington, for example, it might require him to plan ahead and shoot the material over multiple visits so he could tell a broader story. For these shoots he sometimes wrote a script to help guide him through the scenes, and occasionally hired an assistant to help him get the footage. This was a much different approach than simply capturing an event as it unfolded; here, Hudson was doing advance research and arriving on location with a pre-conceived idea of what he wanted to shoot and how he wanted it to look. He also had to shoot these projects in between his regular duties, so things needed to run like clockwork.

The fact that Hudson’s films were sometimes scripted led to some interesting situations. All the top cameramen knew their films had to be short, snappy and engaging, so a little pre-planning helped ensure they got all those elements. Newsreels needed to be compelling, but they didn’t need to be 100% truthful. Take the “world’s record” apple pie that Hudson remembered filming in Wenatchee.^[4] According to his unfinished memoirs, the cameraman was in chatting with a fellow stringer, both men complaining that there just wasn’t much going on locally. With footage quotas to meet, they headed over to eastern Washington for the apple harvest where, theoretically, they’d find something to shoot. But no such luck – there wasn’t anything going on in Wenatchee they hadn’t already seen in a newsreel. And now they had a real problem, because they were stuck in a rural farming community with looming deadlines and nothing compelling to shoot. So the two men put their heads together and came up with a solution: since there was no news happening locally, it was time to make some.

They settled on the idea of baking the world’s largest apple pie, then pitched it to the Chamber of Commerce. It was a winner from the get-go. The Chamber put out calls to local businesses, quickly arranging details and securing material donations. Meanwhile, Hudson and his companion set about planning the event so it would unfold in a way that allowed it to be filmed to the best advantage – the whole thing was, after all, a promotional event being staged for the benefit of their cameras. They intended to show the baking process itself, but also wanted to capture the apples being harvested, peeled and sliced. To do this, they needed footage of the machine that processed the apples, but recognized immediately that it took too long for the fruit to pass all the way through. No matter – they faked it. As cameras rolled, a worker dumped a box of bruised, mealy apples into the top of the machine, after which Hudson panned his camera down to show a bunch of newly-peeled, pristine apples rolling off the belt – fruit that had been placed there in advance. This economized the amount of film used to get the shot without the audience knowing the difference. “When the pie was baked and ready to serve,” Hudson later recalled, “the committee of the Chamber lined up more than a thousand school kids from all over the county and fed them hot apple pie served with small shovels on paper plates…In a way it was a grotesque story and rather silly [but] nevertheless everyone had a good time.”^[5]

A little subterfuge was part of the newsreel process. Hudson also recalled the time he accompanied some Japanese diplomats on a fishing trip to northern Idaho. The visitors were eager to spend time on Lake Coeur d’Alene but also understood that Hudson didn’t have all day to wait around for the fish to bite. So, they hatched a compromise. Hudson contacted a local fisherman and purchased some freshly caught rainbow trout, which he hooked the diplomats’ lines and tossed into the water. Then, on Hudson’s signal, poles started jiggling and fish were hauled into the boat, all in a single take. With the footage he needed, Hudson then retreated back to Seattle, where he processed the film and had it shipped to Washington, D.C. The Japanese delegation was due there for meetings, and a highlight of their stay was a special dinner where motion pictures of their U.S. travels would be unfurled for the gathering, allowing everyone to witness these Japanese officials in the act of telling a very American fish story.^[6]

Following Will Hudson’s second aborted trip to the Arctic, he resumed his camera duties for Pathé News. But with the arrival of sound film at the end of the 1920s, Hudson was thrust into a new era of filmmaking. Sound made the newsreel, already a key feature on movie bills across the country, even more popular than before. But while sound added realism, for Hudson it was also a giant hassle. Pathé eventually sent him portable sound equipment, and he sometimes had use of a mobile sound truck and assistants to help run it. This was necessary for recording purposes, but it also required Hudson to carry more gear and made him less mobile, so whatever was gained from sound was lost in spontaneity. Now shooting a scene took much longer to set up, and Hudson not only had to worry about getting a good shot, but also whether the audio would turn out. It was an entirely new process that made it even more important orchestrate scenes so they’d turn out correctly. “It was a physical impossibility to make good candid news pictures when burdened with an outfit that weighed almost 100 pounds,” he recalled. “In addition to all the weight, we were further handicapped by the heavy length of cable that came from the power source to camera, to microphone, to monitor. For a long time it was all ‘noise’ that we were shooting as too much attention was being paid to sound so the picture suffered.”^[7] Hudson wasn’t against learning a new technology, but it made newsreel shooting more of a mechanical process and detracted from the excitement of taking the same footage, on the fly, using an old-fashioned silent camera.

After working for Pathé for nearly 30 years, Will Hudson finally retired from the business in 1942. He continued drafting his memoirs, off and on, for the next few years before passing away at his home, near Fort Lawton in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood, in 1945.^[8]

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] Will Hudson, as quoted in Bert and Margie Webber, I Shot the News! The Adventures of Will E. Hudson, First Newsreel Cameraman in the Pacific Northwest (Medford, OR: Webb Research Group Publishers – 1999), Pages 12 and 13.
[2] Ellen S. Thomas, “Scooping the Local Field: Oregon’s Newsreel Industry, 1911-1933,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Volume 90, No. 3 (Fall 1989), Page 246.
[3] Will Hudson, as quoted in Webber, Page 132.
[4] Ibid., Pages 206-207. The date for Hudson’s Wenatchee film isn’t given in the Webbers’ book, but in 1938 the city baked a 2,200 pound apple pie in Memorial Park, a feat they recreated in 1997. (See “Wenatchee Apple Pie Takes Shape Hundreds Peel, Roll, Bake For Place In Guinness Book,” The Spokesman-Review [Spokane], 17 August 1997 [https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/aug/17/wenatchee-apple-pie-takes-shape-hundreds-peel/], accessed 11 September 2021.) Yakima pulled the same stunt earlier, in 1927, with newspaper accounts that made specific mention of the newsreel cameras on hand to capture the event. (See Paula Becker, “Herman Loevenstein and assistants bake a one-ton apple pie in Yakima on October 15, 1927,” HistoryLink website [https://www.historylink.org/File/8371], accessed 11 September 2021.) The Hudson quotes used in the Webber book would seem to indicate that the cameraman was recounting the Yakima event, not Wenatchee, particularly because he claimed that the event helped spark a wave of “world’s largest” publicity stunts over the next few years.
[5] Will Hudson, in Webber, Page 207.
[6] Ibid., Page 171.
[7] Will Hudson, as quoted in Webber, Page 187.
[8] See “W.E. Hudson, Cameramen, Dies at Home,” Seattle Daily Times, 13 November 1945, Page 5.

While men such as Will Hudson and others captured the sights and scenes of the Pacific Northwest for established newsreel services, they also took on side projects as a way to supplement their incomes. Some were contract gigs while others were undertaken for their own merits, but local stringers did more than just chase news stories. There were plenty of filmable subjects throughout Washington and the surrounding region, and plenty of people/organizations who wanted to capture those on camera.

Most often cameramen took on side gigs on behalf of local businesses or governments, helping document operations or capture notable events. For several years in the early 1920s, for example, Frank Jacobs was the official photographer for Mount Rainier National Park and took time during the summer months to shoot still photos and motion pictures on and around the mountain.^[1] In 1922 he also shot the promotional film My Country for the real estate firm of Burke and Farrar. This film toured outside the Northwest and promoted the east side of Lake Washington as a potential destination for folks moving to the area.^[2] Will Hudson, too, took pictures that he didn’t necessarily submit to Pathé or make available through a locally produced newsreel. For part of February 1919, for example, he was in rural Washington and Oregon shooting educational films commissioned by the Committee on Public Information. These and other commercial projects were processed in his own private laboratory, a converted chicken coop in his backyard.^[3]

Some jobs were smaller and merely undertaken to capture a particular event of local interest. After seeing films of Rose Festivals in Pasadena and Portland, manager Eugene Levy commissioned local cameraman William Harbeck to film scenes of Seattle’s Potlatch celebration in 1911, which were then shown exclusively at the Coliseum Theatre.^[4] Similarly, the Palace Theatre in Tacoma hired Beverly B. Dobbs to take pictures of the 1914 Stadium Day celebration, which were then shown at the Palace for a full week to an estimated 40,000 people.^[5] Such efforts were also undertaken outside the state’s metropolitan areas. Over in Walla Walla, manager Clarence Crews of the Dime Theatre hired no fewer than five cameramen document the opening of the Celilo Canal, near The Dalles. This man-made waterway was constructed aside the Columbia River and helped circumvent Celilo Falls, which (when coupled with a lock system farther upriver) allowed boat passage all the way from the Pacific Ocean to Lewiston, Idaho.^[6]

Local sporting events were another reason to hire a motion picture cameraman. In November 1923, A.C. Cormier of the Liberty and Rialto Theatres in Centralia hired Alex Singelow to come down and film the annual Centralia/Chehalis high school football game. Cormier’s idea was to film the game and then show it at his venues during Thanksgiving week, while it was still topical.^[7] (This turned out to be a good move, as Centralia mounted a strong second-half comeback to defeat Chehalis 25-12.) At the same time A.C. Cormier was having footage taken of the local high school game, Robert Bender of the Columbia Theatre in Seattle hired an unnamed cameraman to film the University of Washington’s Apple Cup victory over the State College of Washington, with the venue showing game highlights a mere three hours after it was played in Husky Stadium.^[8]

Not all projects had the drama of a gridiron matchup. In 1914 the Puget Sound Traction, Light and Power Company hired a cameraman to film their annual summer picnic, then somehow convinced exhibitor James Clemmer to add it to one of his bills. Most in the audience were probably bored to tears with this selection, but it was a good way to get the company’s employees to attend the venue throughout the week, if only to get a glimpse of themselves and their co-workers at play. Apparently this was the hip, new tend; the following year the Seattle Press Club filmed their own summer outing and had it screened in similar fashion.^[9]

The fact that the moving picture camera could be used to engage the audience led many Washington cameramen to not just create content for local picture bills, but to promote them as well. In 1917, for example, John Hamrick debuted a weekly contest at Seattle’s Rex Theatre called “Putting the Ring Around Who’s Who.” Clunky name aside, this was an engaging concept: each week Hamrick had a local cameraman shoot at a public event or simply capture pedestrians walking along city streets. This film was then developed, and Hamrick or one of his staff would pick a random individual from the crowd and have a circle added around the person’s face. That film – part newsreel, part home movie – was then inserted onto the Rex’s weekly bill. If the person happened to be in the audience or could present themselves at the Rex at some point during the film’s run, he or she would earn a $5 prize.^[10]

This type of general promotion, an effort to boost the house as opposed to one of its films, could get even more elaborate. In 1914 the Dime Theatre in Walla Walla conducted a “Miss Walla Walla” contest whereby a mystery woman, face obscured, was filmed in well-known places around town. These pictures, taken by an unknown cameraman, were broken into installments, much like a serial, with new “episodes” projected at the Dime in regular intervals. Manager “Doc” Crews then ran newspaper advertisements with a coupon that readers could clip out to write down the name of the woman whom they suspected of being Miss Walla Walla. Contest entries could be dropped off at the Dime box office, with cash prizes ranging from $50 to $10 for patrons who correctly guessed her identity.

The Miss Walla Walla promotion was such a hit that the locals didn’t much mind when they learned that manager Crews hoodwinked them all. The mystery woman turned out to be Viola Harter, a longtime cashier at the Dime who also worked the box office at Crew’s other venue, the Arcade. Some patrons weren’t fooled, but Crews’ logic was that the audience would overlook the candidate hiding in plain sight. In fact, many patrons ended up handing their contest entries directly to Viola Harter, the very woman they were attempting to identify.^[11]

Camera work was sometimes commissioned for more more formal promotions. In late 1922 manager R.W. Case of the Columbia devised a tie-up promotion for Under Two Flags, starring Priscilla Dean, in which a local bakery inserted handbills into their loaves of bread to advertise the engagement. In return, Case arranged for a cameraman to go out to the bakery and take scenes of their operations, which were then shown as part of the Under Two Flags bill.^[12] Similarly, in April 1923 Frank Jacobs made a specialty film for the Strand Theatre called University Days, commissioned by manager H.B. Wright in support of “University of Washington Week.” Jacobs filmed in and around the campus, showing classwork and various student activities, then paired that film with newsreel footage he shot in 1920 at the dedication for the campus’ new football stadium. University Days played at the Strand alongside an engagement featuring the school’s Varsity Quartet, which supported the feature film All the Brothers Were Valiant, starring Malcom McGregor and Billie Dove. To this end manager Wright heavily advertised on the college campus, which brought a large turnout “as the students and faculty members were anxious to ‘see themselves as others see them.’”^[13]

The lure of being onscreen was a powerful one, and the camera was frequently employed to make screen tests of audience members, giving them a taste of the Hollywood experience. That’s what the Clemmer Theatre did for an event in the spring of 1921, in a promotion that wasn’t tied to the picture they were showing – just a sideshow to attract crowds. Harold Binney of Pacific Film Enterprises was hired to film contestants, with select screen tests shown at the venue over a period of weeks, each time the Clemmer changed bills. Frank Steffy of Seattle’s Coliseum Theatre organized a similar event when he booked Souls for Sale in 1923. In this case, 30 young women were chosen as part of a contest, and were driven to various locations around Seattle on a flatbed truck, complete with banners promoting the film. (This truck was a was a loaner, a separate tie-up between the Coliseum and the Mack Truck Company of Seattle.) Not only were clips of these screen tests shown during the engagement of Souls for Sale, but the Coliseum went further and dangled the prospect of even greater fame for the girls involved. “The women who showed up well in the tests will have their [film] sent to the Goldwyn studio in California, according to the terms of the contest. There they will be viewed by the casting, scenario, production and directional departments. Reports giving their findings were to be forwarded to the girls.”^[14] This hook (almost certainly a gimmick) seems to have been part of the studio’s promotional campaign for Souls for Sale and was probably replicated in other cities around the country. About a year later, in the spring of 1924, Robert Bender of the Columbia in Seattle arranged a nearly identical promotion for the Mary Philbin picture Fool’s Highway involving an elevated platform constructed on the sidewalk outside the venue. There, on opening night, newsreel cameraman Shorty Randolph took “screen tests” of select patrons, some of which were thrown onscreen during the run. This was on top of footage Bender commissioned of a recent Elks parade and dance, which also formed part of the Columbia bill.^[15]

If hiring a local cameraman was an effective way to engage your patrons, the final leap wasn’t just to film an event or a promotion – it was to make them part of the show. An early example comes from 1915, when Spokane’s Liberty Theatre teamed with local girl Virginia Lee Riblet to produce a short comedy called A Matrimonial Mix-Up, based on a scenario she herself had written. A member of Spokane’s smart set, Riblet’s circle of friends played support in this film, though large party scene (filmed in her own house) included more than 150 of the city’s finest. It’s not known which cameraman did the shooting, but the effort was put together by William Cutts, general manager of the Liberty Amusement Company, and helped generate an estimated 22,000 paid admissions during its brief four-day run.^[16]

Melvin Winstock, manager of the Mission Theatre in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood, organized a similar stunt in 1927. Winstock himself penned a short, football-themed scenario called Over the Goal Line, then hired a local cameraman to help him make it, putting Mission regulars into the starring roles. This was a promotion strictly undertaken for fun, and in no way tied into any of the venue’s picture offerings, but had the additional benefit of celebrating the audience in the process. Not only did Winstock promote the film’s planning and production, but he even showed “rushes” from Over the Goal Line on several Mission bills, giving everyone a sneak peek at their own screen work, for better or worse. This was a brilliant decision, drawing patrons to the house repeatedly not only to see parts of the unfinished film, but then again after the picture had been cut and titled by Seattle’s Olympic Film Studios.^[17] Unfortunately, no one knows what became of this little film – Over the Goal Line was strictly a one-off project for the Mission Theatre, and doesn’t appear to have been shown anywhere else.

The local cameramen who took on these small jobs also had their own personal projects to sell. Alex Singelow, for example, first turned up in the Northwest as a saloon owner in the Riverside section of Everett. But he eventually left the booze business to open the Star Theatre on Hewitt Avenue, where he not only served as manager but also shot local footage that often turned up on his bills. He sold the Star in 1915 and briefly went to Los Angeles to pursue filmmaking, but returned to the Northwest and became the local newsreel man for the Gaumont Company, and later Fox.^[18] But, in 1918, Singelow filmed the five-reel documentary Camp Lewis and the Northwest Prepares for War, which detailed preparations at the new Army cantonment at American Lake, outside of Tacoma. With war preparation efforts going on throughout the region, Singelow briefly roadshowed his project throughout the Northwest.^[19]

Like Singelow, Charles Perryman was a professional newsreeler who shot for Selznick, including a trip up to Vancouver Island in the summer of 1921 where he documented a whale and shark capture effort.^[20] But Perryman’s biggest splash was made the following year when he (camera in tow) and a pair of experienced climbers ascended Mount Rainier in the middle of winter, a first for Washington’s signature mountain.^[21] The notoriety was such that the group briefly formed their own production company, based out of Seattle, specializing in scenic and educational films, though it ended up being a short-lived business venture.^[22] Similarly, in early 1923 Thomas G. (“Shorty”) Randolph, local stringer for the Hearst newsreel, partnered with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to create The Tale of the Pipe, a multi-reel exposé on perils of drug use. The film was shown at the Columbia Theatre much like a serial – a new one-reel episode every week – with Randolph being lauded for his uncompromising take on the subject. “It contains figures on the narcotic evil and is supplemented by scenes in opium dens, exhibits of narcotic instruments, and descriptive titles regarding all phases of the situation,” Motion Picture News reported.^[23]

So the men who shot newsreels in the Northwest, either for one of the national outlets or on a freelance basis, were experienced in a variety of formats. There was news, documentary, human interest, publicity and, depending on the gig, everything in between. For each shoot, however, they were always on the lookout for the unique – something that would set their work apart from everyone else’s. This could take a variety of forms, such as a different approach to the subject, the incorporation of narrative elements or simply getting the best view of the action. Experienced newsreelers were adept at assessing the event and the location, then determining how to shoot the subject from a perspective that would engage the viewing audience. At best, these decisions made for compelling motion pictures that held theatre patrons spellbound. At worst, the desire to get better and more thrilling views led cameramen to take risks.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] See “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 12 August 1922, Page 785; and “Seattle Breveties,” Motion Picture News, 7 October 1922, Page 1774.
[2] Eric Flom, “Frank Jacobs (1881-1979),” HistoryLink website, http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=3258 (accessed 13 February 2016).
[3] “Hudson Returns to Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 1 March 1919, Page 1222.
[4] L.L. Goldsmith, “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 22 July 1911, Page 133.
[5] “In the Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 18 July 1914, Page 458.
[6] “Washington State Items,” Moving Picture World, 29 May 1915, Page 1461.
[7] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 15 December 1923, Page 609.
[8] “Midnight Alarm – Columbia,” Seattle Daily Times, 27 November 1923, Page 6.
[9] See “In the Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 29 August 1914, Page 1257; and “In the Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 12 September 1915, Page 1542.
[10] “Putting a Ring Around Who’s Who,” Moving Picture World, 29 September 1917, Page 2038.
[11] See “In the Northwest,” The Moving Picture World, 21 November 1914, Page 1102; and “Other Northwestern Notes,” The Moving Picture World, 9 January 1915, Page 237.
[12] “Under Two Flags Heralds Go Out in 300,000 Loaves,” Motion Picture News, 18 November 1922, Page 2543.
[13] “Around Seattle’s Photoplay Circles,” Motion Picture News, 19 May 1923, Page 2399.
[14] See “Screen Tests are Given Girls on Souls for Sale,” Motion Picture News, 2 June 1923, Page 2663; and “Screen Test Stunt on Truck Used on Souls for Sale,” Motion Picture News, 28 July 1923, Page 414.
[15] “Seattle Fool’s Highway Stunts,” Motion Picture News, 22 March 1924, Page 1322.
[16] “Spokane Girls Make Hits,” Moving Picture World, 18 September 1915, Page 2040.
[17] “Seattle,” Motion Picture Record, 12 November 1927 (Vol. 4, No. 46), Page 12.
[18] David Dilgard, Mill Town Footlights (Everett, Wash.: Everett Public Library – 2001), Pages 87-89.
[19] S.J. Anderson, “Cantonment Film as Road Show,” Moving Picture World, 9 February 1918, Page 861.
[20] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 10 September 1921, Page 196.
[21] “Washington State,” Moving Picture World, 25 March 1922, Page 383.
[22] Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 4 August 1923, Page 543.
[23] “Seattle Bulletins,” Moving Picture World, 17 February 1923, Page 838.

The perfect shot could not only be elusive, but sometimes dangerous. Will Hudson had a close call at the Ellensburg Rodeo in 1926, when he set up inside the ring and narrowly escaped a charging horse, diving out of the way at the last second.^[1] Hudson was unharmed, but his camera was destroyed – “far less serious than a shattered career” he quipped.

Only the foolish cameraman put himself in obvious danger, but boundaries were nonetheless pushed. Risk went with the territory – a well-placed camera, offering a unique perspective on the action, was sometimes the difference between footage that sold and footage that did not. As such, newsreelers were accustomed to a degree of risk-taking, balancing what audiences wanted to see with what the cameraman could get away with. No one epitomized that compromise better than Seattle’s longtime Hearst stringer, Thomas “Shorty” Randolph.

Randolph was born in Louisville, Missouri, though the family eventually relocated to the Northwest, where his father was a prominent Methodist minister. Like Frank Jacobs and Will Hudson, Randolph began his Northwest career as a photographer, working with the firm of Webster and Stevens before venturing out on his own. Already dabbling in motion picture work, in 1913 Randolph bought out his partner and left still photography behind, transitioning the business into one that shot motion pictures of special events, usually screening these films at local movie houses but making them available to the national services on occasion.^[2] In 1916, for example, during a huge snowfall that hit Seattle that February (famously collapsing the dome of St. James Cathedral), Randolph was a familiar sight around town. “[Randolph] and his motion picture camera were seen in all parts of [Seattle] cranking out motion pictures of the unusual snow for the Eastern weeklies. In some parts of town where the snow had melted but little all that could be seen of Shorty was his head above the drifts.”^[3]

As a pioneer in a relatively new field, it didn’t take long before Shorty Randolph gave up freelancing and joined forces with one of the national services, putting in stints with Selig and Universal. In 1918, however, Randolph was named local stringer for William Randolph Hearst, and set about delivering 300-plus feet of Northwest footage every week for a national newsreel that was distributed, at the time, through Universal. It was a position he’d hold for the next decade.

Randolph’s engagement with Hearst International News coincided with a key development in how their newsreels were delivered to audiences. As W.A Mead, local manager for Hearst News, was eager to trumpet, “‘[t]he fact that these news reels will be developed in Universal City [California], instead of their being sent back to New York, will insure more prompt release and make for greater news value.’”^[4] This change allowed Universal to offer three weekly newsreels to Northwest exhibitors, each arriving on different days of the week: Universal Current Events, the Screen Telegram and Hearst International News.

By the time he started with Hearst, Shorty Randolph was already a well-known figure about town, hobnobbing with men like Frank Jacobs, Will Hudson and the other cameramen based out of Seattle. Well-liked along Film Row and within the business community, his local ties were deep – sometimes surprisingly so. At one point, in 1926, he was called to give testimony at the trial of Roy Olmsted, the former Seattle police officer who had become Puget Sound’s most notorious bootlegger. The prosecution was attempting to pinpoint Olmsted’s whereabouts on a particular date, 18 months previous, and Randolph was his alibi. Randolph testified that Olmsted couldn’t have been in Seattle on the day in question, since the two of them were in Vancouver, British Columbia, traveling together while Randolph shot movies of Edward, the Prince of Wales, who was visiting at the time.^[5] Randolph’s testimony wasn’t much help, however; Olmsted was convicted a short time later.

Like several of his contemporaries, Shorty Randolph developed the reputation for being an aggressive newsman with skill and daring. Unfortunately, those were also traits that cost him dearly.

On April 22, 1927, Shorty Randolph arrived at Oak Point, roughly 12 miles west of Longview, at a fairly wide segment of the Columbia River, where he came to film a controlled explosion on nearby Bunker Hill Cliff.^[6] Randolph, age 40, was traveling with his older brother Francis, a film salesman visiting from California; they were accompanied by 24-year-old Arthur Bassett, an amateur cameraman from Longview who worked as a driver for the Hotel Monticello. They were there to witness the partial detonation of the cliff, which rose some 200 feet above the river and stood in the path of the Ocean Beach Highway that would eventually connect Longview to the east side of Willapa Bay. Construction of the roadway had come to an impasse, so demolition experts rigged a 30,000-pound powder blast to remove part of the cliff face so the project could continue forward.

Tapping Bassett, who was familiar with the area, as their guide, the Randolph brothers scouted the area in advance, with an eye toward securing the ideal shooting location. There were many options along the shoreline, but those offered a fairly standard view of the action, and they’d likely have to compete with other newsreelers for the best spots. They could take a boat and anchor out in the Columbia, but that didn’t provide much room for setting up the cameras, and if the conditions were windy or choppy, they may not get a good shot. But fortunately, the solution was sitting right in front of them: an outcrop of rocks in the river, with a vantage point that was isolated, about 15 feet above the water surface, and roughly 500 feet out from Bunker Hill Cliff. Bassett secured a boat that could ferry the men and their equipment out to the rocks, which had enough space to position three cameras to capture the action.

But while ideal for newsreel cameras, the location raised a lot of red flags for the construction crew when they saw Randolph setting up his equipment. Groups of workers were patrolling the area around Bunker Hill Cliff, ensuring that crowds (which had also gathered to witness the event) were well away from the blast zone, and the Randolph party was too close for comfort. As final preparations were underway, powderman Roy Hobart and others shouted to the moviemen several times, with repeated warnings that their position may be unsafe. But, having outsmarted his newsreel colleagues to stake out the best location, Shorty Randolph dismissed each and every one. “‘[R]isk is part of our business!’” he allegedly shouted back. “‘We don’t care for a little water; we’re going to get a good shot of this thing.”^[7]

Vintage Randolph. He wasn’t telling the crew how to lay their explosives, and they shouldn’t tell him how to shoot the blast. After all, this wasn’t his first experience with water scenes. Several years earlier, in December 1923, Randolph was near Coos Bay, Oregon, taking footage of the lumber ship C.A. Smith, which had run aground. A Coast Guard cutter got him close to the wreck, but Randolph wanted something more spectacular and asked to be rowed to a rocky outcrop nearer the vessel. Inexplicably this request was granted, though probably because conditions allowed it. Once on the rock, however, after Randolph lugged his camera to the top, the situation abruptly changed and a large wave came out of nowhere to knock him over, nearly sweeping him into the churning water. The Coast Guard was able to extricate Randolph, but not before he lost his newsreel camera in the process.^[8]

It wasn’t just Randolph and his camera setup out in the Columbia River that had the construction crew worried. A group of 100-plus bystanders were gathered along the shoreline a little farther back, and the workmen were concerned enough that they drove out and tried to move everyone up the embankment. The crowd followed instructions, for the most part, though as soon as the crew drove away they began inching back into their original positions. Frank Mellis, a local mechanic who was part of that crowd, was one of the few who took the warning seriously, making it his mission to keep people in check, to the extent one man could herd the entire crowd.

Mellis became an inadvertent hero. Unbeknownst to everyone, the charges laid for the blast were too large for the job, in part because work crews failed to accurately determine the geology of Bunker Hill Cliff. Instead of moving 30,000 cubic yards of earth, as planned, the detonation moved almost three times that amount as dirt and rocks sheared away from the cliff all at once, dropping straight down into the water.^[9] With that, it took only a few seconds for the tragedy to unfold. “[T]he mighty blast lifted the whole face of the cliff off into the water…” reported the Grays Harbor Daily Washingtonian. “A huge wave swept to the bank where the cameramen were working. Before they could move they were swept into the torrent, and amid a maelstrom of water, rocks, smoke and debris swept down into the current.”^[10] According to eyewitness D.B. Horton, postmaster of Stella (halfway between Longview and the blast site), the Randolphs and Bassett may have been able to survive the initial wave, had they not followed the instinct to save their cameras. “‘When I saw the wave coming,’” Horton said later, ‘‘‘I shouted to the men on the rock, and they grinned and started to gather up their equipment before trying to run to safety. Then the wave struck them and they and their cameras were swept off.’”^[11]

Workers rushed from the blast site in an attempt to rescue Shorty Randolph and Arthur Bassett, both of whom surfaced after being knocked into the Columbia. A pole was extended to Randolph and a rope thrown to Bassett, but the churning water prevented either man from getting to their lifelines. When a large secondary wave rolled through the area, rescuers had to flee for their own safety; afterwards neither Randolph nor Bassett could be seen. No one saw any sign of Francis Randolph.

That the filming party was already about 15 feet above the water level gives one an idea of the size of the blast wave. Members of the construction crew told reporters that it was much larger than the rock, being well above the height of the men when it struck. It also moved at an astonishing rate. After sweeping the Randolph party into the water, it continued up the Columbia and became an immediate danger to the men and women gathered along the shoreline. It came in so quickly, in fact, that the hundred or so onlookers had to scramble for cover, screaming and running helter-skelter.^[12] There were only minor injuries amongst the onlookers, but the incident impacted some more than others. One woman fainted and had to be dragged to higher ground, but another in that crowd was Dorothy Randolph, wife of Francis, who had accompanied her husband and brother-in-law down to Longview. Not only did she watch the tragedy unfold but had to run for her life so she didn’t also become a victim.

At least six boats were on scene within minutes, but by that time it was already a recovery effort, not a rescue mission. It was a grim situation all around; as the Seattle Daily Times noted, locals felt “[t]he character of the river at the scene of the deaths is such as to give small hope of [the bodies] ever being recovered…”^[13]

Local officials and search volunteers arrived onsite as fast as the news could travel. Joseph Mallery, a prosecuting attorney in Cowlitz County who also served as the local coroner, came down to interview construction personnel and other witnesses. The construction team had already lost a worker earlier on the highway project (a man who fell to his death), but Mallery determined that workers did an adequate job of warning others about the potential danger. In his view, the Randolph party assumed voluntary risk in setting up too close to the blast site, despite ample warnings not to do so.^[14]

So local officials, at least, put blame squarely on the shoulders of the cameramen for failing to maintain a safe distance. Adding insult to injury was the fact that Mallery later discovered that Arthur Bassett, the amateur cameraman from Longview, had a similar close call a few months previous. During an earlier detonation on the highway project, Bassett was filming from a boat in the Columbia that was nearly swamped by a wave that was much smaller than the one generated by Bunker Hill Cliff. It’s not clear whether the Randolph brothers knew about this earlier incident when they tapped Bassett as their guide. But given Shorty Randolph’s reputation for risk-taking (and how cavalierly he threw off warnings), there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have cared. He was experienced; he made his own decisions.^[15]

Once the grim news became clear, Dorothy Randolph was taken back to Longview to recover, where she was eventually joined by Shorty’s wife Estella, who came down from Seattle as search parties combed the river. Francis and Dorothy had no children, but Shorty and Estella (just shy of their 20^th wedding anniversary) had a pair of daughters. The Randolph bothers were survived by their immediate families and three additional brothers, all residing in the Northwest, as well as Reverend and Mrs. W.T. Randolph of Seattle.

The search for the men’s bodies continued for several days. The Hearst International News office in Portland hired a powerboat and diver’s barge to aid in the effort, and volunteers (largely organized by the American Legion) fanned out to search the shoreline. The Reverend and Mrs. Randolph offered $100 each for the recovery of their sons; Longview Mayor A.L. Gibbs offered $50 for the recovery of Arthur Bassett’s body. William Randolph Hearst, according to Motion Picture News, sent a telegram expressing his sympathy to the Randolph family and asked company executives to make financial arrangements for the cameraman’s wife and children.^[16]

Francis Randolph was the first to be located, about 24 hours after the accident; grappling hooks snagged his body in about 50 feet of water. Over the next two days, the bodies of Shorty Randolph and Arthur Bassett were also recovered. All were in close proximity to each other, and within 250 feet of the rock they had had been using as a platform.

Arthur Bassett, leaving behind a young widow, was laid to rest in Longview less than a week after the tragedy. The bodies of the Randolph brothers were brought back to Seattle, where a large gathering was held in their honor. Their father, an assistant pastor at Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, drew upon friends and colleagues to conduct the ceremony. The Seattle film community in full attendance, a sign of Shorty’s popularity in local business circles, with fellow cameraman Frank Jacobs serving as a pallbearer. The string quartet from the Columbia Theatre provided music for the service.

Shortly after the Randolph brothers were laid to rest, at a Seattle meeting of Methodist ministers, the members expressed their condolences to Reverend Randolph and his extended family, passing a resolution lauding the brothers for their courage and bravery in capturing news events for the public. Shorty Randolph was also honored by Seattle’s Board of Park Commissioners for his camera work on behalf of the Parks Department, as well as for his longtime commitment to improving conditions at the Woodland Park Zoo.^[17]

Interestingly, search efforts not only recovered all three bodies but also two of the three cameras used to film the blast. Despite being in the Columbia River for several days, the film was eventually developed, and in a macabre twist the pictures were shown at a benefit for Arthur Bassett’s widow. “The film illustrates far better than the account of any witness, the intrepid manner in which ‘Shorty’ stuck to his post,” said the Post-Intelligencer, which sent a reporter down for the Bassett gathering.

It shows the huge rock cliff tumbling into the water after a giant blast, whole trees going down in the avalanche. The mighty splash is plainly visible as the tons of earth and rocks strike the water, and then comes the wave, towering over the spectator just as it towered over “Shorty.”
          There the picture ends, abruptly – as abruptly as the lives of the three men were stuffed out that instant.^[18]

Later, after the film was transported up to Seattle, Joseph Hubble, an executive with Hearst International, viewed it as well, taking possession of the footage and declaring that it would never again see the light of day.^[19] Hubble had come up from Los Angeles not only to confiscate the film, but to formally name Jesse Sill as the new Hearst cameraman for the Northwest.

Incidents like the one that took Shorty Randolph’s life were rare, but not unheard of. Minor injuries were typically the worst thing that befell a newsreel cameraman. But as much as the Bunker Hill tragedy was an anomaly, it almost happened again two years later. On October 10, 1929, in the city of Concrete, the Portland Cement Company was preparing a quarry blast for the following day. But during the setup for that explosion (designed to move 200,000 tons of rock), one of the charges went off unexpectedly, killing 32-year-old Fred Baker of the Du Pont Powder Company, and injuring six others.^[20] One of those injured, Ed Woolbert of Concrete, age 41, died the following day; despite the incident, Portland Cement went ahead with the October 11^th blast as scheduled. But newsreel cameraman Alex Singelow was there at the time of the accident, having come up a day early to film setup activities and stake out a blast position. He wasn’t near the explosion and was unhurt in the incident but had to run for cover as debris shot in every direction; “[o]nly some clever footwork saved [Singelow] from serious injury,” reported Motion Picture Record.^[21]

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 23 October 1926, Page 1601.
[2] “Randolph Buys Lewis Out,” Seattle Daily Times, 26 October 1913, Page 24.
[3] “Right on the Job,” Seattle Daily Times, 2 February 1916, Page 10.
[4] S.J. Anderson, “Gives Use of Theatre for Worship,” Moving Picture World, 28 December 1918, Page 1531.
[5] “Olmsted Alibi Obtained from Movie Men Who Took Pictures of Prince of Wales,” Seattle Daily Times, 15 February 1926, Page 5.
[6] See “Three Are Drowned in Wave from Explosion,” Seattle Daily Times, 23 April 1927, Pages 1 and 3; and “Interat’l News Cameramen Die in Attempt to Film Blast,” Motion Picture News, 6 May 1927, Page 1668.
[7] See “Three Are Drowned in Wave from Explosion,” Seattle Daily Times, 23 April 1927, Pages 1 and 3; “Omen Foretold ‘Shorty’ Randolph of Death,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 23 April 1927, Page 2; and “Three Killed in Cliff Blast Near Longview,” Grays Harbor Daily Washingtonian, 23 April 1927, Pages 1 and 2.
[8] “Photographer Risks His Life to Film Wreck,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 21 December 1923, Page 17.
[9] See “Three Are Drowned…,” Page 1; and “Washington News Items of Interest,” Kalama Bulletin, 29 April 1927, Page 1.
[10] “Three Killed in Cliff Blast Near Longview,” Grays Harbor Daily Washingtonian, April 23, 1927, Pages 1 and 2.
[11] “Three Are Drowned…,” Page 3.
[12] “Three Killed…,” Pages 1 and 2.
[13] “Three Are Drowned…,” Page 1.
[14] Ibid., Page 3.
[15] Ibid.
[16] See “T.G. Randolph Known for Daring in Taking Pictures,” Seattle Daily Times, 23 April 1927, Page 3; and “Interat’l News Cameramen Die in Attempt to Film Blast,” Motion Picture News, 6 May 1927, Page 1668.
[17] See “Park Commission Pays Tribute to Randolph,” Seattle Daily Times, 13 May 1927, Page 4; and “Cameraman is Remembered,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 13 May 1927, Page 7.
[18] “Film Undying Monument to T.G. Randolph,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1 May 1927, Page 76.
[19] See “Double Funeral for Randolphs is Planned Here,” Seattle Daily Times, 25 April 1927, Page 4; and “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 3 June 1927, Page 2237.
[20] See “Scene of Fatal Blast,” Seattle Daily Times, 11 October 1929, Page 11; “Fatal Dynamite Blast at Concrete held Accidental,” Seattle Daily Times, 12 October 1929, Page 7; and “Second Victim of Concrete Blast is Dead From Injuries,” Seattle Daily Times, 13 October 1929, Page 11.
[21] “Seattle,” Motion Picture Record, 19 October 1929 (Vol. 6, No. 42), Page 3.