The Wrath of Richardson:
How Not to Operate a Picture Show

Much of Frank Herbert Richardson’s personal history comes from Gordon Bachlund, who sketched his life using notes compiled by the columnist’s granddaughter.^[1] Richardson was born in Centerville, Iowa, on October 25, 1866. His mother died when he was young, forcing young Frank to live with relatives while his father, a Civil War veteran, worked as a locomotive fireman, having previously been a furniture maker and undertaker in Unionville, Missouri. As a teenager Richardson moved back in with his father, who had remarried, but found himself at loggerheads with his new stepmother. This homecoming was brief; with a dismal home life and a father who worked largely on the road, Richardson decided to run away, hopping a railcar to St. Louis and working odd jobs. But he was too young and couldn’t make the situation work, so he had little choice but to return after several weeks. Unfortunately, the situation with his stepmother never improved. Reportedly a cruel woman, life for Frank Richardson became so untenable that his father eventually sent him to boarding school at Brookfield Academy in Laclede, Missouri – one of the few options the elder Richardson had to maintain order within the family.

Frank Richardson spent two years at Brookfield before leaving at age 18 to take an entry-level railroad job secured by his father. It was the start of his first career – a long series of railroad jobs that had him primarily based out of the Midwest. This included positions as a night watchman, fireman, brakeman and, eventually, engineer. With that promotion, young Frank Richardson had the opportunity to see and experience much of the western United States, which included a brief stint on the Oregon Short Line that ran through Montana, Idaho and northern Utah.

In 1887, at age 21, Frank Richardson married Lizzie Francis Johnson, a girl he met during his school years in Laclede. For at least a decade after their nuptials he continued working for various railroad companies, though he eventually left the business for stints in a sawmill and as a house painter, a failed business venture organized by his brother-in-law. He also briefly held positions with the city water works and electrical plant in Palestine, Texas. Frank and Lizzie Richardson would have five children (one of whom died within weeks of birth), but eventually divorced in 1903.

None of this history hints at Frank Richardson’s future career in motion pictures, save for his interest in machinery. But at this point his career took a giant left turn, when in 1904 he published a travel book called Richardson’s Tourist’s Guide to Chicago, The West and the Lake Superior Country. This volume, companion to an earlier work he penned on the city of Chicago itself, boldly proclaimed on the title page that “This Guide is One of a Series Which Will Cover Every Point on the Western Hemisphere That Has Anything of Interest to the Tourist and Traveler…” The “Western Hemisphere” claim was a bit dubious, but the book, running 240 pages, drew on material that would have been widely available in other guidebooks and travel writings, which was then colored with Richardson’s own personal observations, gleaned from his railroad travels throughout the West. (Of Spokane: “This is a thriving inland city and a very wealthy one. It is one of the typical Western towns, alive, full of hustle, and is surrounded by magnificent farming country.”^[2]) Distributed at newsstands and train stations, the Chicago-based publisher claimed to have several volumes in preparation, including guides of Mexico, South America, a Sportsman’s guide, and various other city guides.

Interestingly, Frank Richardson’s new career as a travel writer didn’t last, for he soon found another outlet for his interest: moving picture projection. It’s not clear how or when Richardson got into the picture business, but he was living in Chicago at the time, so there were plenty of vaudeville and nickelodeon theatres sprouting up around the city. In a speech he gave in the 1920s, Richardson claimed to have been a projectionist in Chicago for about four years, after which he moved to New York to become an inspector for Nicholas Power’s projection machine company. He began writing on the subject in 1907, while working for the Power’s company, then eventually joined the staff of Moving Picture World, a position he held for most of the silent era before eventually moving over to Motion Picture Herald. For both publications, Frank Richardson produced a weekly column (originally called the “Operator’s Column,” but most famously known as the “Projection Department”), where he updated readers on the latest in projection technology, answered questions and in all matters strove to improve the quality, pay and working conditions of those in the trade.

In 1910, early into this stint with the trade paper, Frank Richardson penned the Motion Picture Handbook: A Guide for Managers and Operators of Motion Picture Theatres, published by Moving Picture World.^[3] This was an assignment from the trade paper; many of their regular columnists did the same, producing “how-to” guidebooks on motion picture advertising, screenwriting, etc. Unlike most of those volumes, however, Richardson’s work stood the test of time – his Handbook became an indispensable tool for projectionists throughout the United States, Canada and England. It was updated frequently and went through multiple editions, and was still being reprinted in the late 1940s, several years after Richardson himself had passed.

When it came to motion picture projection, Frank Herbert Richardson had, essentially. penned the Bible. He was widely regarded as the industry leader on projection matters, and was a trusted authority to men in the trade. His opinions carried weight, and in 1917, Richardson decided it was time to use that influence.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] See Gordon R. Bachlund, “Frank Herbert Richardson (1866-1943): Railroader and Motion Picture Pioneer,” Screening Room Services (http://www.screeningroomservices.com/Frank_Herbert_Richardson.htm), accessed 25 November 2016.
[2] Frank H. Richardson, Richardson’s Tourist’s Guide to Chicago, The West and the Lake Superior Country (Chicago: Monarch Book Company – 1904), Pages 143-144.
[3] See F.H. Richardson, Motion Picture Handbook: A Guide for Managers and Operators of Motion Picture Theatres, New York – The Moving Picture World/World Photographic Publishing Co. (1910). While other columnists at Moving Picture World produced their own books, only Richardson’s work and the one written by Epes Winthrop Sargent (the magazine’s columnist on scenario writing) ran through multiple editions and had a lasting impact on the industry.

Frank Richardson’s cross-country tour in 1917 was a testament to his popularity in the field and was a massive undertaking. But it also wasn’t a one-off event – rather, it was the culmination of two earlier trips he made, one for business and one for pleasure.

The first was in 1913, when he took leave from the Moving Picture World offices in New York City to serve as a delegate at the annual conference of the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Operators (IATSE). A staunch union man, it wasn’t surprising that Richardson remained active in labor issues, even though he was no longer actively engaged in the profession himself. And, interestingly, the 1913 IATSE conference he attended just happened to be held in Seattle, between July 7-12 at the Labor Temple, located at Sixth Avenue and University Street.

In making the trip westward, Frank Richardson departed New York on June 28^th with the expectation that he’d arrive in Seattle two days before the meeting began. But, before he left, he announced in his weekly column that he would not be returning to the Big Apple after the convention. Instead, he wanted to travel down the coast from Seattle to San Francisco, and eventually Los Angeles. After this West Coast swing, he planned to go to Salt Lake City, then Montrose, Pueblo and Denver in Colorado, then on to Kansas City. At each stop, Richardson wanted to meet with local union officials and operators, as well as inspect conditions in local moving picture houses. He didn’t plan anything after his stopover in Kansas City; the remainder of his trip home would be personal, with visits to Laclede and Iowa before returning to New York.^[1]

All along the route, Frank Richardson continued writing his weekly column, though his dispatches had more to do with his travels than they did with projection matters. Part of these columns, of course, drew on his time in the Pacific Northwest. Richardson’s train, for example, deposited him on Tacoma on the 4^th of July, 1913, where he planned a brief stay before making the final jaunt up to Seattle. There he dropped by the Lyric and Palace Theatres, writing about both venues in a subsequent column. What impressed Richardson about Tacoma was the ability of its relatively modest theatres to draw crowds despite the double-whammy of a national holiday and uncooperative weather. This was particularly true at the Palace, where the small venue (holding barely 250 people) had well over 2,000 paid admissions in a three-hour span. Some of that had to do with the Palace’s acting manager, who was doing his best to attract the locals by marching up and down on the sidewalk, in the rain, $10- and $20-dollar bills jutting out of his coat pockets, while chomping on a cigar and sing-songing “God Save the King” at the top of his lungs.^[2]

Richardson spent the evening in Tacoma, and on the following day, July 5^th, made the journey up from Tacoma by boat. His column didn’t talk much about this trip or the places he visited in Seattle, devoting most of his thoughts to IATSE convention business. Still, he made time to visit with folks at the Seattle Stage Lighting Company, the local Universal exchange and met with Louis Goldsmith, Seattle’s correspondent for Moving Picture World. (“…Goldsmith is not Irish, exactly, but he’s one darned good feller just the same…”) He also visited with exhibitor John Hamrick and toured the new Colonial Theatre at 1515 Fourth Avenue, which was then under construction.

Following the close of the IATSE convention Frank Richardson boarded a train and headed south, then streaked through the Midwest until he ended up in Kansas City. His columns for this part of the tour were given over to his travels, writing about the theatres he saw, the men he spoke with, and the projection room conditions he witnessed. Once back in New York, he continued to write about what he had seen and experienced, and found himself compelled to answer the question he was asked most often: how did picture conditions in the West compare to those in the East? And much to the chagrin of the Eastern establishment, Richardson had to acknowledge that the projectionists in the western U.S. were achieving better results. He found them better trained, for one, but ultimately it was the fact that a projectionist in the West could earn a higher salary. This had long been one of Frank Richardson’s key issues – he felt strongly that when operators were paid well, they excelled at their craft. “…[I]t is exactly as one would expect to find it,” he observed, “because in the far West operators’ salaries are much higher than they are in the East, and, as I have long contended, this brings to the profession of operating a higher class, or grade of men…[but] I am speaking only in general. Some of the operators of the East compare with anything the West can show. However, I again repeat what I have often said in the past, that the higher the salary the better class of men it will attract.”^[3]

Frank Richardson’s visit to the Northwest in 1913 was a springboard for the tour he would undertake a few years later, but a personal excursion the following year helped solidify the format. In 1914, Richardson, age 47, embarked on a motorcycle tour of the Northeast that found him engaged in impromptu mini tours of area picture houses. Accompanied by his teenage daughter Nellie, the columnist left New York City for planned stops in Bridgeport and New Haven, Connecticut, then Springfield and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, before heading back into New York and riding down through the Hudson River Valley, with stops in Troy, Albany and Newburgh, among others.

The 1913 tour of the West Coast and Midwest was something of a lark; a year later, however, during this Northeastern swing, the process was formalized. In his Moving Picture World column, Richardson pre-announced his travel schedule, then came into town where he was warmly greeted by local exhibitors. Leaving Nellie Richardson behind, apparently, he would then tour a few local theatres and, on occasion, end the day by speaking at an event held in his honor.^[4] It was shades of things to come.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] F.H. Richardson, “To the Coast and Back,” Moving Picture World, 5 July 1913, Page 44.
[2] F.H. Richardson, “A Remarkable Performance,” Moving Picture World, 16 August 1913, Page 741. It was one thing to draw crowds, but it was another to deal with them once they chose to stay. At the Rose Theatre in Everett, manager Joe St. Peter used an old carnival trick to keep his audiences placated during waits at the ticket booth. On those occasions when there was a large gathering outside the Rose box-office, St. Peter sent his brother Fred outside onto the sidewalk as a roving ticket seller, with a small box resting against his chest that looped up, via a strap, around his neck. While the Rose cashier worked furiously dispensing tickets, Fred worked the crowd by walking up and down the line selling tickets and making change as best he could. (“‘Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 17 June 1916, Page 1373.)
[3] F.H. Richardson, “The East and the West,” Moving Picture World, 16 August 1913, Page 742.
[4] See F.H. Richardson, “Editor Will Visit,” Moving Picture World, 23 May 1914, Page 1111; and Richardson, “The Editor’s Trip,” Moving Picture World, 27 June 1914, Page 1826.

It’s not clear if the impetus for his massive cross-country trek came from Frank Richardson or his editors at Moving Picture World, but planning began in late 1916. After announcing the tour in one of his weekly columns, hundreds of letters were dispatched from the paper’s offices announcing the writer’s pending schedule, almost all going to local IATSE unions across the country. Richardson was offering a deal: he was going on tour and wanted to make your city one of his stops. There he wanted to meet with local operators, exhibitors and exchange men, then give a speech in the evening on matters of projection and showmanship. If the local union was interested, they only had to let Richardson know, then arrange (and pay for) a place for him to stay, plus rent a space (usually a hotel ballroom) where all could enjoy a midnight supper while he gave his speech. The catch was that everyone must attend Richardson’s talk – and he wasn’t kidding. Every union projectionist in town, every local exhibitor, a representative from every local exchange and, for good measure, the invitation should be extended to colleagues in the neighboring cities and towns where he wasn’t stopping. Frank Richardson was delivering a message for the entire industry, and he expected everyone to be on hand to hear it.

This letter campaign churned through the offices of Moving Picture World in New York over a series of weeks as Richardson laid out his travel schedule. He also personally reached out to local unions that didn’t respond to his initial letter, all while continuing to plug the trip in his weekly columns. Gradually, plans began to solidify while Richardson worked diligently to fine-tune his stump speech. Then, finally, on February 28, 1917, after months of planning and preparation, he began the trip by boarding a train in rainy New York City, bound for Washington, D.C. This initial leg was for pleasure, not business; accompanied by his second wife, the two planned to spend some personal time together before he left for several months. No theatres were visited in Washington, D.C., and no speeches were given. Instead, the couple took a few days to tour the city and take in the sights, the Museum of Natural History in particular. Then they parted ways – Mr. Richardson to his cross-country tour, and Mrs. Richardson to a lodging house where she stayed so she could attend the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, taking place on March 5^th. The columnist left Washington for Richmond, Virginia, where the trek began in earnest.

And so it went for the next 10 weeks, as Frank Richardson, accompanied by a revolving series of male stenographers to record his observations, crisscrossed his way across the USA. The trip started in Virginia and moved southward – day by day, stop by stop – until he reached Miami. From there, he turned north and headed through central Georgia and up into Ohio and Indiana, then doubled back and headed into the Deep South, with stops in Alabama and Louisiana before heading into the Midwest. Then, in Wichita, Richardson changed courses and headed down into Texas, after which he cut westward until arriving in San Diego. From there he reversed his 1913 tour, heading up the Pacific Coast, city by city, until he arrived to inspect conditions in Portland, Oregon.

By the time Frank Richardson hit the Northwest he had been traveling about 10 weeks, but this wasn’t a vacation in any sense. His schedule was a grueling one – an endless cycle of too-late nights followed by too-early mornings, with the grind of daily train travel thrown in for good measure. At almost every stop the setup was the same: Richardson would alight from the train, where he would be greeted by a party of local union and industry officials, after which he would press the flesh and pose for photographs before being whisked off to a hotel. If his schedule permitted, Richardson might then be taken on an auto tour of the city, or perhaps visit a local landmark or two. Frequently, however, he got straight to business, heading out to inspect conditions in as many area movie houses as time permitted, after which he would retire, briefly, to his hotel room, before rising to give his speech late in the evening. The fact that these gatherings were always midnight suppers, beginning after 11 p.m. and lasting until 2 or 3 in the morning, was a necessity. For projectionists and exhibitors to attend en masse, Richardson’s speech had to be given after the city’s theatres were closed for the evening. This was a punishing schedule and Richardson maintained it week after week; the fact that he never fell ill until late in the tour was a downright miracle. “Sleep and I are becoming only acquainted by courtesy,” he remarked a few weeks into the tour, after departing Chattanooga for Knoxville.^[1]

The centerpiece of Frank Richardson’s presentation was a speech, almost two hours in length, in which he presented his views on moving picture showmanship, with particular emphasis on the role played by the projectionist. Good projection was a dual responsibility, Owners and managers needed to provide operators with the type of equipment and facilities that allowed them to achieve good results; meanwhile, projectionists were duty-bound to excel at their craft, delivering the clearest and cleanest images possible. On top of this, film exchanges owed it to America’s picture theatres to provide pristine, undamaged prints in a timely manner, with enough time for those venues to plan for and promote their screenings to local audiences. Most of the talk, however, centered on the operator’s role. For Richardson, a good projectionist didn’t simply run the machine, but was also an engineer and, frequently, an inventor or magician with the innate ability to problem-solve. It didn’t matter if the operator worked in a large, modern theatre with lots of resources or in the lone picture house in some small, out-of-the-way community – the projectionist had to be his own man, with an ability to resolve issues on the fly. Had he been alive, the columnist would have loved the sequence from 1995’s Apollo 13 in which NASA scientists at Cape Canaveral help devise a makeshift oxygen filter for the flight crew using only materials available inside the capsule. That’s the type of clever ingenuity Richardson felt every operator should possess, sans the life and death consequences.

The most interesting part of Frank Richardson’s dispatches from the road, however, were his observations on the moving picture theatres he was visiting, which now formed the bulk of his weekly column in Moving Picture World. Those visits were also the basis for the color commentary he injected into each speaking engagement, and woe to everyone if he didn’t like what he had seen that day.

Although he was occasionally moved by the décor and ambiance of a well-designed theatre, Richardson was usually more focused on matters impacting the projection of motion pictures. Auditorium lighting, for example, was a prime concern. He felt strongly that poor interior lighting (and by “poor,” he meant “bright”) detracted from professional screen results. For safety reasons, of course, complete darkness was impossible, so the best lighting schemes were sparse and indirect – just enough for patrons to enter and exit without difficulty, and no more. Even where required, he felt counter measures should be used to keep light sources from becoming a distraction. It was Richardson’s opinion, for example, that exit signs should never be brightly lit or white in color. Rather, managers should instead add a dark red color panel over the light source so that the sign was illuminated, but in the darkest way possible. House musicians, by the same token, who were often positioned directly below the screen, needed to shield the lights used to read sheet music so they would not distract the patron’s eye. But Frank Richardson’s cardinal rule was that no light whatsoever should be cast on the walls at the front of the theatre, near the screen. In his experience this was a common problem for two reasons. First, theatres in this period operated without air conditioning, so it wasn’t uncommon for buildings to have roof openings that allowed for a better flow of air, which sometimes let in sunlight from the outside. This was the case, for example, at the Dime Theatre in Wenatchee, where in 1909 the venue installed decorative lattice work above the box office that was backed by a large sheet of canvas. In the winter months this feature was covered and secured to keep the heat in, but in the spring and summer management took the barrier down so a breeze could flow through the theatre.^[2] Depending on the position of the sun, then, there would be times when the interior of the Dime may have had a considerable amount sunlight. Although Frank Richardson wasn’t against improving a house’s ventilation, he was adamant that it should never be done in a way that allowed direct sunlight into the auditorium.

A second most common lighting violation seen on Richardson’s 1917 tour was the bane of his existence: theatres with an illuminated wall clock on either side of the screen. This was actually quite common. Even though the nickelodeon era was long over, many film patrons continued to enter and exit shows on their own timetable, a holdover from the early days when films were short and bills ran continuously. Clocks were therefore a practical matter, since many patrons continued to have a “drop in” relationship with the movies (as well as vaudeville) and wanted a way to gauge their time in the darkness. But if it was up to Richardson auditorium clocks would be outlawed, and he only grudgingly accepted that audiences insisted on having them. At stop after stop during his trip, Richardson never missed a chance to criticize the placement or the illumination of an auditorium clock. But since they were a fact of life, proper mitigation was in order. “Paint those clock faces black, with white hands and white figures, gentlemen,” he noted midway through the tour, in one of the nicer mentions of the problem. “[A]nd for the love of the Pink-Toed Prophet, confine the light absolutely to the dial of the clock.”^[3]

Operating rooms were another primary focus, because no projectionist could deliver good results from a poor workspace. And the conditions Richardson saw during his cross-country tour were eye-opening, since he visited projection booths in some of the newest and best equipped theatres in North America, as well as some in its smallest rural venues. On more than one occasion he toured picture houses that were equipped the way Spokane’s Empire Theatre was, in a description that came from a 1908 issue of Moving Picture World: “The operating room has been built like an iron vault. Sheet iron covers a lining of asbestos [throughout the] entire room. Automatic spring shutters cover all openings and wires are led to machines through [a] conduit.”^[4] That may have been highly advanced for 1908, but viewed today the Empire projection room had all the ambiance of a coffin.

To this end, it was Richardson’s opinion that ample workspace, quality tools, proper ventilation (too many projection booths were cramped sweatboxes) and, where available, hot and cold running water were key features. The walls of a good operating room should be painted black, or at least be dark in color; also, light sources should either be kept to a minimum or angled so that the rays didn’t intrude on the patron experience. Operating rooms of the day usually had multiple viewing portals, and those should be kept small enough to reduce noise while being strategically placed so the projectionist could see the screen at all times from all parts of the room. It was the careless projectionist who just loaded a reel of film and walked away. The screen image had to be constantly monitored while the operator prepared for the next reel change, cued up a glass slide or, depending on the size of the house, ran the operating board that controlled the house’s light or sound effects. Films needed to be in frame, stay in focus, and be shown at the proper speed; Richardson visited more than a few houses that purposely sped their films in order to squeeze in an extra show or two each day.

A big challenge for Richardson was the disparity he saw from house to house and city to city. His 1917 trip took him not only to some of the largest theatres in Chicago and San Francisco, but also to the three tiny venues Fort Scott, Kansas. Depending on where he was, a given city’s theatres and equipment could be all over the map, so it wasn’t always possible for a venue in Sherman, Texas, to match the quality of a house showing the same picture in Denver. Nonetheless, Richardson held his line: regardless of location, it was up to skilled operators and enterprising managers to maximize their resources and showmanship. Patrons expected, and deserved, shows of the highest quality – even if they had no choice but to live in Sherman, Texas.

All these factors helped Frank Richardson form an opinion on the theatres he was visiting, with those successes and failures becoming material for the speech he would give later that evening. The Richardson stump speech was a combination vision statement, state of the union and public flogging. On the one hand he spoke of how far the industry had come and where he envisioned it going, giving pointed observations on a variety of common exhibition practices. He entertained and instructed, but sugarcoated nothing. Richardson was doing this tour for the good of the industry, and he was going to tell everyone the truth. It was strong stuff (depending on the venues he toured earlier in the day, sometimes very strong stuff) but he was delivering, in his mind, exactly what operators, managers and exchange men needed to hear. And yet, despite the verbal thrashings he dished out, those who heard Frank Richardson speak often came away with nothing but good things to say. Take, for example, what the local Moving Picture World correspondent wrote after Richardson gave one of his lectures in Vancouver, British Columbia, just after his swing through western Washington:

…Mr. Richardson took the floor, and for nearly two hours kept his hearers interested, thrilled, amused, and inspired by a lecture that will live in the memory of all who had the privilege of hearing it…
         The main object of the lecture was to drive home the tremendously important, but often sadly neglected part that projection plays, or should play, in the presentation of the modern high class photoplay. That productions costing thousands of dollars, and on which endless labor and care have been spent, should to a large extent have their success in the operator’s hands to make or mar, is a fact only partially realized by those most concerned. To assist the operator and to awaken him to a higher sense of the responsibilities of his calling was Mr. Richardson’s chief aim and object. He did not mince matters, but attacked his subject, and sometimes his hearers, with a vigor and force that drove every word home with telling effect. He had his audience feeling very uncomfortable one minute, and rocking with laughter the next.^[5]

That would be an apt description of Frank Richardson’s time in Washington state, which encapsulated both the best and the worst of motion picture exhibition as it stood in 1917.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] F.H. Richardson, “Richardson Takes a Turn Northward,” Moving Picture World, 14 April 1917, Page 266.
[2] See “Dime Theatre at Walla Walla, Wash.,” Moving Picture World, 20 November 1909, Page 717.
[3] F.H. Richardson, “Richardson in Texas and Oklahoma,” Moving Picture World, 12 May 1917, Page 943. Writing of the early sound era, Thomas Doherty observed that “[t]he compulsion for seeing a motion picture from beginning to end, on time and uninterrupted, was a gradual evolution in motion picture spectatorship, a learned behavior that is a legacy of the strict screening times of the [post-1960 movie] era, itself a by-product of the precision timing of radio and television programming.” See Thomas Doherty, “This is Where We Came In: The Audible Screen and Voluble Audience of Early Sound Cinema,” in Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (editors), American Made Movies: From the Turn of the Century to the Early Sound Era (London: British Film Institute – 1999), Page 145.
[4] “New Theaters Opened,” Moving Picture World, 29 February 1908, Page 160.
[5] Thomas, D., “F.H. Richardson’s Visit to Vancouver,” Moving Picture World, 23 June 1917, Page 1927.

By May of 1917 Frank Richardson had made his way up the Pacific Coast and was wrapping up his Portland visit when his schedule was thrown into a lurch. Initially, when planning the trip back in New York, he intended to go directly from Portland to Tacoma. Somewhere along the way, however, a group of exhibitors in Grays Harbor reached out and asked if he could come out to Aberdeen on the coast. The columnist appears to have kept at least one or two days a week relatively open, giving him a chance to recharge or, in this case, accommodate a last-second request. This wasn’t the first time, nor the last, that he shifted his itinerary to squeeze in an extra engagement, probably at his own expense.

But this one didn’t start well. Richardson, the former train engineer, took a lot of pride in his ability to navigate the American railway system, and was immediately hit with a problem. According to maps and schedules, he had plenty of time to make the connections between Portland and Aberdeen. But when he went to purchase the tickets, the clerk at the Portland station was adamant that Richardson’s chosen route wouldn’t get him to Aberdeen on time. The columnist, of course, insisted he was correct, which led to a protracted (and heated) discussion between the two. Neither would budge, but eventually Richardson reasoned that he had no choice but to trust the clerk if he wanted to get to his destination. He was now expected to “get off at Centralia, climb aboard a jerkwater train on a tank road, ride thirteen bumptious miles, get off and climb into another train which carries one to the destination.”^[1] Part of this new trip included an extended layover in the middle of nowhere, putting him in Aberdeen about 5½ hours later than he wanted, and ensuring he would have no time to tour any of the city’s movie houses.

The kicker to his story, of course, was obvious. The second Frank Richardson stepped off the train in Aberdeen and began relating his story, he was met with a sea of confused faces. That’s when the Grays Harbor movie men broke him the bad news: he had been right about his original travel plans, and the clerk in Portland was as big a buffoon as Richardson thought. “I bit (almost) a chunk out of the corner of the [train] station,” he growled.

Nonetheless, the show went on. Frank Richardson used what little time he had to get situated, then left his hotel for the midnight lecture (clocking in at 2¼ hours), which was followed by a sumptuous feast of crab and lobster salad, veal loaf, olives and pickles, followed by cake and ice cream for dessert. The bright spot was that while the local IATSE union in Aberdeen was a small one, with only nine members, a full 20 people attended the lecture and included operators from nearby Hoquiam and Montesano. All listened intently to the talk and pledged to put Richardson’s recommendations into practice.

It was a late night in Aberdeen, but Frank Richardson arose the next morning and caught an 8:30 a.m. train to Centralia, using the very route that the Portland clerk knew, for sure, wouldn’t work. When he briefly disembarked to stretch his legs during the stopover, he was suddenly mobbed by exhibitors from Centralia and Chehalis, who hadn’t scheduled a lecture engagement but nonetheless came down to the station to shake Richardson’s hand and wish him well. The journalist then got back onto the train and headed up to Tacoma, bypassing (by accident or design) the state capital of Olympia.

So Frank Richardson was once again in the South Sound, four years after his original visit, and set up shop at the Tacoma Hotel, marveling at a building that sat “on the edge of the bluff overlooking apparently four-fifths of creation.” This was followed by an automobile tour of Point Defiance Park, then a brief stop at Stadium High School so he could take in their bowl-shaped football stadium, which also looked out over Commencement Bay. There he could have enjoyed the architectural or aesthetic beauty of the location, but he was already in business mode. “In my judgement, a 25-foot picture could be projected with fairly good results, always provided the operating room be located in approximately the center of the stadium field.”^[2]

Then Richardson did what he hadn’t been able to do in Aberdeen – inspect conditions in local theatres. “Tacoma still has a considerable number of the old type ‘storeroom’ theaters,” he noted, “and in some of these the auditorium lighting is considerably worse than bad, though the operating rooms were very fair for that type of house – that is to say as regards to size.”^[3] He started at the Melbourne Theatre, which had an auditorium that was far too bright and contained two of his biggest pet peeves – a radiant “Ladies Parlor” sign and a clock at the front of the house, just to the left of the screen. Nonetheless, he praised the work of projectionist A.E. Soult, an acquaintance from his 1913 visit, who “was delivering good results” despite the Melbourne’s lighting atrocities.

Next up was the Bijou, a storefront venue where Richardson was greeted with the sight of “the inevitable, omnipresent, picture murdering clock.” And that was the good part of his review. The Bijou auditorium had sunlight streaming in thanks to a pair of rooftop fan openings, which added to an interior lighting scheme that struck Richardson as both distracting and unnecessary. But the house’s worst offenses, it seems, were onscreen. “There was some discoloration in the [projection] light, also the speed was too high, but, working under such conditions, the operator has little encouragement to do high class work. At the rear of the house a loud, unmusical piano pounded away, to what must most certainly have been the intense annoyance of those seated at the rear. I know, I was seated there (and I had paid my way in) and would cheerfully have heaved a brick into the works of that music murderer by the time I had sat there as much as three minutes.”^[4]

The Bijou’s failures were great news for the Apollo (later known as the Blue Mouse), his next stop, which was Shangri La by comparison. True, it had a clock in the auditorium and the projection room was brightly lit, but that was Richardson being nitpicky. The lighting in the actual auditorium was just right, he observed, the house ventilation was excellent, and the operators were outfitted with a modern workspace and a generous array of tools, though they lacked running water. Richardson was particularly taken with the ingenuity of projectionists H.H. Woodin and Bert Campbell, who were using a small Westinghouse generator to link the Apollo’s two Simplex projectors together. In an era when many (if not most) houses had to pause while film reels were changed, this innovative setup allowed Woodin and Campbell to power up the second machine while a reel ran out on the first, creating a near-instantaneous switch that kept the picture running with little or no delay. “It struck me as a corking good stunt,” Richardson noted, given that reel changes were a fact of life for many moviegoers. “After the boys have get their invention [patent] protected, they will no doubt supply a description to [this] projection department, so that you may all know just how it works.” It’s not clear why Richardson was so taken with this process, since he witnessed something similar during his Tacoma visit in 1913, and even wrote about it in one of his columns. Nonetheless, Woodin and Campbell were demonstrating the value that experienced, creative projectionists should bring to their work. Film exhibition in 1917 may have had standards, but that’s not to say everything was standardized. In Richardson’s mind, the operator who observed a problem should solve it himself; it didn’t take the latest or most expensive equipment. Woodin and Campbell improved the show by using the resources at hand – all it took was some ingenuity to create whatever was needed.^[5]

In his weekly column covering the Tacoma visit, Richardson didn’t mention where his talk was held (most likely at the Tacoma Hotel), though it brought out nearly all of the city’s managers and operators, who listened intently and held spirited conversations until 4:30 a.m. “Though I landed on them pretty hard,” Richardson wrote, no thanks to the Bijou, “still they accepted it philosophically, and even good-naturedly…The consensus of opinion was our efforts in Tacoma would result in good to the industry of the city.”^[6]

The following morning Frank Richardson decided to bypass the rails and make the journey from Tacoma to Seattle by boat, as he had done four years earlier, in 1913. “The sail on Puget Sound from Tacoma to Seattle is delightful, and although nearly frozen by the early morning crispness, I remained manfully at my post on the upper deck, absorbing it all.”^[7] He disembarked at the Seattle waterfront, where he was greeted by an entourage from IATSE Local No. 154, one of whom was William Ladd, the former manager of the Searchlight Advertising Company who, nearly 20 years earlier, sold a Gramaphone Grand to Sally Chandler Sloan, later used at Tacoma’s Searchlight Theatre. This group then escorted Richardson up to the Butler Hotel.

The journalist had fond memories of his 1913 visit, which included a tour of the Clemmer Theatre on Second Avenue, which he lauded as one of the finest picture venues he had ever seen. On this visit, however, Richardson found a new theatre to fall in love with. “The limitations of space would not permit any kind of adequate detailed description of the several splendid photoplay theaters of which Seattle is the proud possessor,” Richardson gushed, “but I feel that some words of praise are certainly due the magnificent installation at the Liberty…”

The Liberty Theatre – located on First Avenue, across from the Pike Place Market – opened in 1914 and was the flagship venue for the Greater Theatres Company, run by Claude Jensen and John von Herberg. Almost everything Richardson observed there mirrored his views on how a modern picture theatre should be equipped and operated. The projection facilities and interior lighting (save for the balcony) were all top notch – the projection booth was on the smallish side, but well equipped and plumbed with hot and cold running water. But what really struck Richardson was the house’s interior design and decoration, features he didn’t normally write about during his 1917 tour. Like his earlier praise of the Clemmer, what he saw surprised and delighted the senses. “Beginning with the [marquee] sign, the Liberty impresses one as being ‘different.’ A long curved lobby leads into the back of the auditorium. The upper levels are reached by sloping, red-carpeted inclines, or ‘gradients,’ which curve gracefully around in the most delightful way imaginable. Halfway up their slope, these inclines pass through an oval-shaped mezzanine floor, in which there are, right and left, beautifully equipped lounging rooms, off [of] which [there are] open rest rooms for women, free telephone booths and smoking and toilet rooms for men. It is truly the most charming thing of the kind I have ever viewed.”^[8]

The Liberty was a tough act to follow, but Frank Richardson went from there to another Jensen and von Herberg house, the Coliseum, at the corner of Fifth and Pike, which opened just 18 months previous. Despite being the newer venue, here he found the auditorium lighting less than impressive, although the projection room contained a switchboard that allowed the operator to control the house’s interior lights from a single location. From the Coliseum Richardson was then taken over to the new Mission Theatre on Fourth Avenue, between Pike and Pine, though he didn’t elaborate on the house except to namedrop the folks he met and note that it had a “good” operating room. Jensen and von Herberg also operated the Mission; they had fast become Seattle’s most prominent exhibitors, and their venues monopolized Richardson’s downtown tour schedule.

On the whole, Seattle impressed. “Taken by and large,” Richardson later wrote in Moving Picture World, “the photoplay theaters in Seattle are, it seems to me, distinctly above average. The operators are, at least for the most part, good men, who only need more careful study of the technical end of their profession to become distinctly high class men. I did not see sufficient of the screen results in Seattle to make intelligent comment, but I am told it is good.”^[9]

Although Frank Richardson had time to inspect even more of Seattle’s movie houses, after the Mission he was instead corralled by W.H. Winters for an automobile tour of the city. This was the columnist’s first good look at the area, and he marveled at the “very much wrinkled landscape” – but, unsurprisingly, Richardson knew how to fix that. “There was a serious mistake made concerning Seattle in the beginning. Before laying out the city, they should have ironed down the bumps. During the rainy season it gets well sprinkled, so that the ironing process could have been easily carried out, and then you wouldn’t have to put ‘er in low and pinch ‘er tail going up [hills], and make the [automobile] brake shriek a song of protest coming down. But it is all very pretty nevertheless, and that Seattle is the real thing…this writer will cheerfully bear witness.”^[10] After this motor tour, Winters deposited Richardson at the home of William Ladd, at 1016 Union, where he got to experience one of the rarest of treats on his North American journey: a home cooked meal.

Later that evening, at 11:30 p.m., Richardson spoke to a packed house of Seattle operators, managers and exchange men, in an event that didn’t formally wrap up until 3 a.m.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] F.H. Richardson, “Richardson Looks Over Great Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 16 June 1917, Page 1762.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., Page 1763; see also “F.H. Richardson, “A Remarkable Performance,” Moving Picture World, 16 August 1913, Page 741.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., Page 1764.
[10] Ibid.

Frank Richardson rose the next morning and again, as he had in Tacoma, bypassed the usual train ride and traveled to Everett, his next destination, by different means. But whereas the boat ride from Tacoma to Seattle was pleasant, albeit chilly, the trip northward out of Seattle was nothing short of hair-raising. “From Seattle to Everett, thirty-four miles,” he later recalled, “I traveled by auto…The ‘stage’ was a six cylinder, seven passenger touring car, driven by Mr. Speedo Getthere. Curves were nothing in his young life – nothing whatsoever. When we approached one I grabbed hold and hung on. A car ahead was simply something for him to pass. Get thee behind me, landscape, was evidently his favorite motto.”^[1]

Despite the white-knuckle experience, Richardson made it to Everett in one piece and with plenty of time before he was scheduled to catch a train for Vancouver, British Columbia. Now, you might ask why Frank Richardson didn’t just board a train in Seattle and go directly to Canada, since he had no other speaking engagements scheduled in western Washington. But there was a special reason why Frank Richardson came to Everett, and it came with a special backstory.

When planning his North American trip back in in New York, Richardson knew he’d be passing through the Everett along the way. He’d written directly to the local IATSE union, of course, and doubtless they had seen news of the tour in his Moving Picture World column, but the group never reached out to request an audience. This was probably an oversight, he thought, so Richardson wrote to the local union a second time to gauge their interest. This was his modus operandi. For those cities and towns that didn’t contact him right away, a nicely worded follow-up letter was usually all it took to set up a speaking engagement. But not this time. That’s because Everett had an entirely different take on Frank Richardson’s 1917 tour. He may have wanted to drop by, but no one there wanted to see him.

If you set aside clocks in auditoriums, nothing perturbed the journalist more than people who didn’t attend his very, very important lecture. It was one thing to not reply to his letters – he could dismiss those cities as not being worthy of his attention. But it was quite another to tell Richardson, directly, that no one was interested in what he had to say. Whereas the receipt of a second Frank Richardson letter was usually enough to get the local IATSE union on board, that wasn’t the case with Everett. There the local union authorized a note, written by the group’s elected secretary, that not only turned down Frank Richardson’s invitation to be invited, but informed him, curtly, that the Everett union would have no further correspondence with him on the matter. In their mind they had sound reasoning, based on the fact that that both of Richardson’s letters had been written on stationery that didn’t bear the telltale stamp indicating it had been printed in a union shop.

This was less petty than it seems. Six months before Frank Richardson arrived in Everett, a staunch union city, it was rocked by a pair of incidents involving labor violence, both stemming from a strike by local shingle mill workers. On October 30, 1916, a group of 41 radical laborers from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) arrived in Everett to support the local strike, intending to hold a rally in downtown Everett. But as their boat from Seattle docked at the waterfront, they were met by nearly 200 armed deputies and informed that they could not meet downtown and instead had to hold their rally outside city limits. This led to an altercation in which all 41 IWW members (dubbed “Wobblies”) were taken into custody. These men were later driven to an isolated area in the middle of the night, where they were beaten and left to fend for themselves. When news of this incident filtered back to IWW officials in Seattle, a second gathering was planned for November 5^th, when a group of Wobblies boarded the steamships Verona and Calista with the intention of disembarking at Everett. But local law enforcement once again knew they were coming. When the steamships arrived on the waterfront they were greeted by another group of armed deputies, led by the Snohomish County Sheriff, and after a brief shouting match shots were fired. It’s not clear who fired first, but five Wobblies died that afternoon along with two deputies, both of whom were shot in the back by their own men. This second incident became known locally as the Everett Massacre and inflamed the city’s labor tensions to new heights. Wobbly leader Thomas Tracy was arrested and tried for his involvement in the incident (none of the deputies were), but was acquitted on those charges on May 5, 1917, shortly before Frank Richardson arrived in Everett.^[2]

The Everett IATSE union also wasn’t the only one to call Richardson out for the lack of a union stamp. Operator unions in Savannah and Cincinnati registered similar complaints during the 1917 tour, but those cases were protesting the fact that Moving Picture World itself didn’t print on paper bearing a union stamp. None of this mattered, of course, to Frank Richardson; he was a longtime union man with a history of supporting labor causes, and considered these protests “unadulterated piffle.” In both Savannah and Cincinnati, the so-called controversy didn’t prevent him from appearing, but he did use his column to assure readers that yes, in fact, the paper was printed in a union shop. “If The Moving Picture World, for business reasons, sees fit not to order the label put on, I can’t help that,” he griped to his fellow brethren.^[3]

So given that backdrop, Richardson had little sympathy for the views of the Everett operator’s union, though he probably wasn’t aware of why the lack of a union stamp was such a hot-button issue. The response he received from the local IATSE appeared ludicrous, since it was made to someone who was clearly dedicated to the goals of the organized labor, something of which the Everett folks should have been aware. But there was an even more basic issue at hand – Frank Richardson had a low tolerance for stupidity. “[U]nder this rule,” he remarked sarcastically, “a member of the Everett Union could not answer a letter from his mother…” This entire exchange of letters occurred months earlier, while the writer was still in New York, but Richardson was still nursing a grudge by the time he hit the Northwest. “I decided to drop off in Everett for a couple of hours, once-over the situation, and do a little Sherlock Holmesing on my own account.”^[4]

This was bad news. As demonstrated time and again in his Moving Picture World columns, Richardson could be highly critical of the theatre conditions he was witnessing. Now he was in Everett, sans invitation, with a chip on his shoulder. Richardson didn’t have a lot of time, but he was laser-focused on what he wanted to accomplish. Sixty minutes, he thought, “would give me ample time to accomplish my fell design…” The quest was simple. Richardson had no speaking engagement, no intention of surveying theatre conditions and didn’t want to meet any local exhibitors. All he wanted to do was to make an unannounced visit to one particular location.^[5]

That’s how Frank Richardson ended up at Everett’s Apollo Theatre, at 1711 Hewitt Avenue, where he quietly paid his admission. Once inside he surveyed the landscape, eyeing the establishment from top to bottom, discerned which door led up to the projection room and proceeded upstairs. There was a second door at the top, and Richardson opened it forcefully, coming face-to-face with Mark Bebeau, the Apollo projectionist and a man who just happened to be, not-so-coincidentally, the secretary for the Everett operator’s union.^[6]

To be sure, Frank Richardson’s column in Moving Picture World detailing this encounter was a bit one-sided, for he wasn’t in a charitable mood. His first impression upon entering the Apollo projection room, which Richardson later memorialized in the trade paper for all to read, was that the conditions were about as deplorable as any he had seen anywhere on his trip. Mark Bebeau was “working in a – what shall I call it? Surely not an operating room – coop-box, cubby-hole, booth, take your choice! He was running two old wooden-table, spider legged, antediluvian type projectors, propelled by home-made motor drives.”^[7]

Bebeau was, of course, taken aback by Richardson’s entry. Not sure what was happening, he demanded the strange man leave immediately, then fumed when Richardson failed to do so. Saying nothing, the writer just glared into Bebeau’s eyes as he slowly reached into his jacket pocket. “What’s this man reaching for?” the projectionist must have thought. “A knife? A gun?” It was neither. Frank Richardson slowly, methodically, reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter, then thrust it in Bebeau’s face. asking him, point blank, if he was the author. The columnist was so incensed with the response he received from the Everett IATSE that he brought it with him all the way across the country.

That’s when Mark Bebeau finally understood what was happening. He was the author, he had to admit, but as he began stammering out a response Richardson abruptly cut him off. The columnist wasn’t interested in excuses; instead, he demanded to see a pair of plyers lying on a nearby table. That also didn’t sound very good to Bebeau, but the projectionist, slightly bewildered, handed them over anyway – Richardson took them up and scoured the tool from top to bottom. Then, without saying a word, he set them aside and began walking about the room, inspecting other tools in much the same manner. Mark Bebeau had no idea what to make of this; his workspace was the subject of a hostile takeover, and because he was in the middle of projecting the Apollo’s feature film, he had to split his attention between the intruder and the show he was attempting to run.

None of that mattered to Frank Richardson. He continued about the room conducting a silent inspection, as if Mark Bebeau wasn’t even there, before suddenly turning back to the operator, looking him straight in the eye and asking him a simple question: how is it possible that Bebeau could work with these tools when none of them – not a single one – bore a union stamp?

Leave it to Richardson to take an awkward situation and make it painfully awkward. Unfortunately, Mark Bebeau never got a chance to respond because, lo and behold, God intervened. Throughout this entire exchange, going on in the Apollo projection booth, down below in the auditorium there was a paying audience enjoying the picture show, unaware of the drama unfolding directly above their heads. But, in the columnist’s account, just seconds after he posed the question about Bebeau’s tools, the arc lamp on the house projector suddenly went out, plunging the theatre into darkness. Undoubtedly, Richardson was smirking; if it were possible, he would have cackled ominously as thunder crashed in the distance.

This was an operator’s nightmare, but it was also the type of situation that, in Frank Richardson’s mind, required a good projectionist to act quickly and decisively. So as the journalist looked on sternly, arms folded, Bebeau fumbled around before determining that a piece had dislodged from the projector. He crawled on the floor, located the item, put it back in place and powered things back up, but it detached a second time, and the screen went dark yet again. (“[W]ere [the audience] used to it, yes-no?” Richardson would later muse.) Again, Bebeau crawled around on all fours, found the piece, applied the fix and this time it held. But now there was another problem. Looking through the booth’s portals, both men could see that the onscreen image was marred by a white spot – mostly likely a piece of debris within the camera – that was wandering up and down the frame as the picture ran. Nervously, Bebeau spent time fiddling with the projector but nothing he tried could correct the onscreen image. Richardson, of course, may have been able to help, but he was far too busy enjoying Mark Bebeau’s comeuppance to lend a hand. By that point he had seen plenty, so the writer abruptly turned away and, without saying a word, marched back down the stairs and left the venue. “It is to laugh,” he wrote later.

This entire scene in the Apollo projection room must have happened quickly, because Richardson visited at least two other theatres before finally departing for Vancouver. Predictably those houses didn’t fare much better, and as a result the city of Everett came in for some of the harshest criticism that Frank Richardson dished out on his 1917 cross-country trip.

          “A glance into the other ‘operating rooms’ (?) [in Everett] shown them to be more crowded, cramped cubby-holes, totally unfit for the projection of modern photoplays.
          “I set all this forth to show how utterly silly and inconsistent grown-up men can be when they try. Heaven knows if what I saw was a fair sample of conditions in Everett, and I am told it is, then that city had every need for the message I have to deliver [in my speech], yet it was refused, and refused on grounds which, particularly in view of what I found, were little short of downright childish.”^[8]

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] F.H. Richardson, “Richardson Looks Over Great Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 16 June 1917, Page 1764.
[2] See Margaret Riddle, “Citizen deputies beat 41 IWW members at Everett’s Beverly Park on October 30, 1916,” HistoryLink (http://www.historylink.org/File/7887), accessed 24 May 2020; and Walt Crowley, “Five IWW members and two deputies die in a gunbattle dubbed the Everett Massacre on November 5, 1916,” HistoryLink (http://www.historylink.org/File/5326), accessed 24 May 2020.
[3] See F.H. Richardson, “Richardson Hands Out Bumps and Bouquets,” Moving Picture World, 7 April 1917, Page 85; and “Richardson Lets Out a Link,” Moving Picture World, 21 April 1917, Page 413.
[4] F.H. Richardson, “Richardson Looks Over Great Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 16 June 1917, Page 1764.
[5] In the account of his Everett visit in Moving Picture World, Richardson eviscerated the city and its movie theatres but didn’t single out the operator by name nor give his place of employment. But thanks to some fine detective work by the late David Dilgard of the Everett Public Library, we can identify the operator as Mark Bebeau, who was the secretary of the Everett operator’s union that year and employed at the Apollo.
[6] Mark Bebeau and his brother William, also an operator (at the nearby Orpheum Theatre) lived together in the Bebeau family home at 2514 Virginia in Everett. (See Polk’s Everett City and Snohomish County Directory [Seattle: R.H. Polk & Co. – 1917], Page 48.) Mark was originally employed in the family sign painting business but became a moving picture projectionist around 1910. William followed him into the trade a short time later.
[7] F.H. Richardson, “Richardson Looks Over Great Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 16 June 1917, Page 1764.
[8] Ibid.

Like Frank Richardson’s visit to Aberdeen, a layover in Bellingham wasn’t part of his original itinerary. In fact, Bellingham was in the same doghouse as Everett because the union there also failed to respond to his letters – although, in their defense, at least they managed not to enrage the columnist in the process. So despite having fond memories of 1913, when attendees at the Seattle labor convention took a brief excursion up to Bellingham for a salmon dinner, Richardson had written the city off his list. Or he did, until he stepped onto the platform at the station, where the train had briefly stopped.

Exiting the railcar to take a short walk, Richardson was immediately accosted by a group of IATSE men who cheered his appearance, shook his hand and went to scoop up his baggage. The journalist didn’t understand – he wasn’t planning to stay, an admission that caused a mild uproar. The Bellingham operators had a hotel booked and a city tour planned, plus a full house ready to attend his speech. Here again a union secretary was at fault, though in this case the gentleman simply dropped the ball and forgot to send Frank Richardson a formal acceptance. So the Bellingham union, thinking everything had been arranged, went ahead and made plans without informing the guest of honor that he was supposed to show up. Thankfully, they were in luck – there was an opening on Richardson’s schedule, so he cut into his own free time and stayed the evening in Bellingham, lecturing to a packed house of operators, managers and stagehands.

Perhaps he should have kept moving. Though his evening talk was very well received, the working conditions he saw at four Bellingham theatres – the Grand, Liberty, Bell and American – were less than exemplary. “The Grand auditorium lighting is bad; operating room fair, but flooded with daylight at matinees; lens system not right. The Liberty has a good operating room, but light-flooded; picture light brilliant. The Bell has but one machine, which seems queer at this stage of the game, in a city the size of Bellingham.” Only the American fared well under Richardson’s critical eye, with a modern projection room (“clean as a new pin”), good lighting and ventilation.^[1] His stay was brief and, aside from the mix-up at the train station, relatively uneventful.

After Bellingham, Richardson jumped right back into his formal schedule, with stops in Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton and Calgary. Vancouver, he observed, was a completely modern city with several excellent moving picture theatres, something that earned it more space in his Moving Picture World column than other cities. He was taken with the beauty of Victoria but felt something missing from the city’s character. “Beautiful [Victoria] is in a quiet way,” he noted. “But it is too quiet. It is like a deserted city. [World War I] has drained its very lifeblood, until its streets are like empty canyons in which one can but instinctively listen for the tread of ghostly feet of those departed.”^[2] In Edmonton Richardson was greeted warmly by operators and managers, which made up for the fact that they were small in number.

Then came Calgary, which put all other cities on the 1917 tour to shame. Upon disembarking the train, Richardson was overwhelmed by whoops and hollers that seemed to come from every direction as a large group of cowboys on horseback came galloping into the station, guns ablaze. The journalist was promptly lassoed to the shouts of “String him up – hang him!,” though the chaos eventually subsided when Duncan G. Inverarity (formerly of the Pantages Theatre in Seattle, now managing the Calgary house) stepped forward. Inverarity silently placed an Indian bonnet on Richardson’s head, then presented him with a fur-trimmed war club and several other artifacts. Then he formally welcomed Frank Richardson to Calgary – first in the Chinook language, then in English. “‘We greet you, Big Chief Manhattan, and, here at the limits of our fair city, [we] bid you welcome.’”^[3]

The Calgary folks were just getting started. Frank Richardson was hustled into a waiting caravan of six automobiles, the lead car adorned with a large banner reading “Chief Richardson, captured from the Wilds of Manhattan by Calgary Exhibitors, Exchangemen and Local Union No. 302, I.A.T.S.E., Now on Exhibition.” Yet another banner, on a different car, actually looked ahead to the verbal beatdown everyone expected to receive during Richardson’s speech later that evening. “Welcome to our City,” it read, “Hammer and All.”^[4] This entourage then motored about 10 miles into town, lurching about over dirt roads that, due to recent rains, were nearly impassable.

Next on the itinerary? Not a hotel, a theatre, nor a tour, but a trip to see Mayor Michael Copps Costello. There Richardson was presented with a key to the city and informed that all the Indian regalia he had been presented with was not only authentic, but his to keep. The Mayor’s office is also where the journalist discovered that he had been the subject of a city-wide movie promotion coinciding with his visit. All throughout Calgary, the city’s moving picture theaters boasted signs at the box office offering free admission to anyone whose last name was Richardson. “It is said that in some mysterious manner, the tribe of Richardson suddenly increased marvelously, and past all understanding,” he later remarked.

Needless to say, the excitement and fanfare generated by the small but enthusiastic Calgary union men ended up being a highlight of Frank Herbert Richardson’s trip.

Following Richardson’s invasion of Canada, he returned to U.S. soil by traveling from Calgary to Great Falls, Montana, then to Butte and Missoula. He then planned to go from Missoula to Coeur d’Alene, though not to inspect area theatres. This was a personal trip; in the winter of 1883, when Richardson was working on the Oregon Short Line Railway, a gold discovery near Coeur d’Alene brought a slew of prospectors into northern Idaho, but he was never able to visit the area. The trip from Missoula to Spokane, on a very small rail line, was his opportunity to finally see Coeur d’Alene for himself.

But alas, it was here – some three months into his cross-country travels – that Frank Richardson’s luck with trains finally ran out. (The trip from Portland to Aberdeen didn’t count – that was the station clerk’s error.) Heavy rains in northern Idaho washed out parts of the smaller line, forcing Richardson to abandon his plans and take the main line from Missoula to Spokane. “[T]his is the first time I have got knocked out at any point of my schedule since I left New York – put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Wise Guys [back] in the office, who said I couldn’t do it…”^[5]

It was a minor setback, but one that put Richardson in Spokane a day ahead of schedule, allowing him to sneak into the city’s moving picture houses with little fanfare. He started at the Rex, which he found outstanding in every way – so much so that he was willing to overlook his old scourge, the clock, which graced one of the walls at the front of the auditorium. The Empire didn’t fare as well. The picture was out of frame, there was yet another clock to glare at, and the lighting scheme left a lot to be desired. Even the musician got theirs – when the lone piano player left her post and switched the instrument to automatic, she forgot to turn off the light she was using to read sheet music. Instant demerit.

The presentation was better at the Lyric, where J.W. Allender was manager, but the lighting was bad in both the auditorium and the projection room. And while lighting was not an issue at the Liberty, where manager Ralph Ruffner presided, the operating room was poorly situated with terrible ventilation. Richardson also observed that in every Spokane house he visited, the operators rewound film reels with such speed and force that the prints were almost certainly being damaged over time.

Richardson’s talk the following evening was pleasant enough, but he had already observed plenty that needed improvement when it came to the city’s photoplay houses. On the bright side, however, he was impressed with Spokane Falls, which he got to see in flood stage – “[s]ome sight.”^[6]

Next Frank Richardson travelled southward. “Walla Walla is a pretty little city, very quiet and a bit old-fashioned,” he observed, “…but solid and substantial nonetheless.”^[7] But this quaint city of 18,000 already had five moving picture theatres, plus another (the American) under construction when he arrived.

Frank Richardson began his tour of Walla Walla by dropping by the operating room at the Liberty, which he found to be clean and thoroughly modern – an altogether an excellent setup for presenting shows. This was also true of the Arcade, although the house ventilation could have been improved. He didn’t comment on conditions at the Strand, except to say that he was sorry not to have met manager J.H. McDonald, who had taken ill shortly before his arrival. Thankfully, as would have been the case in any number of mom-and-pop theatres across the United States, Mrs. McDonald dutifully stepped in to run the show during his absence.

So that evening, J.H. McDonald excepted, all of Walla Walla’s managers and operators gathered to hear Frank Richardson’s infamous lecture. It was a small affair, but the group demonstrated that despite Walla Walla’s size, they were an attentive audience who knew how to put together a lovely function. Lovely, that is, until a fellow operator put a crack in the shiny veneer. “The only untoward incident to mar the occasion,” Richardson later wrote, “was when Brother James (Topsy) Dugger, operator [at the] Strand theater, arose, strode fearlessly across the [dining] room, his napkin waving gently in the breeze and bellowed down the dumbwaiter shaft these historic words: ‘Breast, breast, breast! Chicken breast! More!’”^[8]

Walla Walla was the final stop on Frank Richardson’s Washington tour, and he left there for an engagement in Pocatello, his only official stop in Idaho, before continuing through Utah, Colorado, and the upper Midwest. He then returned to his old hometown, Chicago, after a swing through Minnesota and Wisconsin, spending an entire week there (some of it in convalescence – it was the first time he truly fell ill throughout the trip), then ended his journey by going through northern Indiana and Ohio.

As his long 21-week tour drew to a close, Frank Richardson, accompanied by his wife (the two were reunited in Cleveland), was finally able to board a train and return to New York City. “And we, the Squaw and Chief Manhattan (Oh, you Calgary!) clambered aboard a New York train, and at 5:25 P.M. [on] Sunday, July 22, stepped out upon the platform – New York City – home again, after 18,738 miles, and experiences which will long live in the memory. I would not do it again for anything I can think of – I would not have missed it for ten years of my life. The strain was something pretty awful, but the kindness of my reception, and the splendid way the men accepted the truth, even when it proved to be a bitter pill, gave me courage to go forward, even when weary almost to the very point of exhaustion. For I feel that I was not laboring in vain, and that much good would eventually come to the profession through my efforts.”^[9]

So there endeth the lesson of Frank Herbert Richardson. He was relieved to be back home, safely behind a desk in New York City, with no more trains, hotels or midnight speaking engagements in his immediate future. And meanwhile, back in Everett, Mark Bebeau was praying it would stay that way.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] F.H. Richardson, “Richardson Crosses Line Into Canada,” Moving Picture World, 23 June 1917, Page 1923.
[2] Ibid., Page 1924.
[3] Ibid., Page 1925.
[4] Ibid., Page 1926.
[5] F.H. Richardson, “Richardson Among the Ranchers,” Moving Picture World, 30 June 1917, Page 2075.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., Page 2076.
[9] F.H. Richardson, “Richardson Back on the Job Again,” Moving Picture World, 25 August 1917, Page 1207.