Your Show of Shows:
The Art of Putting the Program Over

The advertising of Washington’s earliest motion picture shows had much in common with the promotion of stage plays, variety performances or traveling circuses at the end of the 19^th century. While larger outfits sometimes had bigger budgets and a broader ability to reach the public, the methods used by both stage and film shows at the time were quite similar. Newspaper advertising, of course, was one method, although early movie shows often employed small notices – more akin to a classified ad – to advertise in local papers, since the cost of a formal ad, complete with a graphic element, was usually too expensive. This may be the reason why one of Seattle’s first kinetoscope engagements, in December 1894, was only advertised in a single local newspaper – it may have been too costly to advertise in others. Instead, what these engagements did was a lot of street-level advertising using signs and banners that could be used and re-used, since most of these early outfits traveled from location to location. This makes traveling shows harder to spot for modern historians, since there’s little paper trail, but they would have been well known in the immediate community, which would have included residents, shoppers and pedestrians in the area. Whether it was a short-term engagement, like Seattle’s first kinetoscope demonstrations, or a longer set of screenings, such as the dueling Pioneer Square film shows in mid-1897, this type of marketing was aimed squarely at the pedestrian, who would have been fully aware of what was playing in the neighborhood.

For traveling exhibitors, particularly in rural areas, the formula was a variation on urban practices. Newspapers might make mention that a show was coming to town, and signage at or around the performance space would have announced the engagement. Frequently, however, these rural engagements were partnerships between the rented venue and the performer, such that the “theatre” had an incentive to boost ticket sales, as was the case when exhibitors Steel and Freeland appeared at a La Conner fraternal hall in 1903. There, with a rental agreement that was likely a percentage of the box-office take, the local group had a financial incentive to ensure a full house and therefore made efforts to engage not only their own members but the larger community as well. Exterior signage, likely carried from stop to stop by Steel and Freeland, would have adorned the performance space, adding another level of public awareness about the engagement. Postering – something used by larger stage companies or circuses – was probably not used for these shorter engagements, though some formal theatres may have created their own form of visual advertising from time to time.

Much of this remained true by the time the Northwest saw its first semi-permanent moving picture shows. When Sally Chandler Sloan helmed the Searchlight Theatre in Tacoma at the turn of the century, she took out the occasional newspaper advertisement but mostly spent her advertising dollars on printed flyers and exterior signage, while also re-using signs that originated at the Searchlight location in Seattle. Both venues used music as a way to attract patrons, blaring photographs into the street to make their presence known. This was likely also the case with the region’s family style vaudeville shows, but these urban venues typically put more effort into newspaper advertising, such that one could track the featured live acts playing a house at any given time. (But not track, incidentally, the motion pictures being shown, which were rarely listed by name.)

The common denominator amongst these varying practices was that street-level marketing, both at and around the venue, was the typical method of reaching the audience, and that held true in cities large and small. This was also the case with the rise of nickelodeon entertainment toward the end of the 1910s, which was also geared toward the toward the pedestrian. This included methods such as ballyhoo music and barkers, but extended the venue exterior itself, which sometimes incorporated elaborate and fantastical designs, complete with rows of electric lights to catch the eye. In addition, nickelodeons popularized a new method of advertising the movies – the individual film poster – which eventually became a ubiquitous sight at many early picture shows.

Posters, of course, were not new, having long been used to market theatrical shows, circuses, Chautauquas or other public events. Up until the nickelodeon period they hadn’t typically been used for individual motion pictures, although there were a handful of specific titles (the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight or The Passion Play, for example) where they might have been used. With the increasing popularity of moving pictures, however, they became a more regular feature of nickelodeon street advertising. It’s not hard to see why – the style of lithography used during this period featured bold colors and creative design elements to depict vivid action scenes. Created for the production companies and often made available for free through exchanges, some early nickelodeons relied so heavily on poster advertising that the front of the house appeared to have been wallpapered. They’re collector items today, but some at the time viewed them as grotesque, particularly when the imagery depicted gunplay, fistfights or under-dressed women. And it wasn’t just the public who felt this way – even some exhibitors were critical. William Hoyt ran the Ideal Theatre in Tacoma, and in 1910 wrote to Moving Picture World with his negative views on poster advertising, which he often found cheap and gaudy. “How intensely annoying it is,” Hoyt noted, “when you know you have a good picture, to have to put out in front a hideous daub supposed to advertise it, and then see people come along, stop, hesitate…then hasten away. You can’t blame them.”^[1] A similar sentiment was expressed by Harold Ballou of Seattle’s Olympian in 1914. “Many favorable comments are made on the absence of posters from the Olympian front,” Ballou stated in a letter to Moving Picture World. “…Somehow posters in front of a pretty theater remind us of a wart on a pretty girl’s nose.”^[2]

Despite complaints, posters became a standard advertising tool for nickelodeon theatres – and, indeed, remain an element of film advertising today. Because they were often provided free of charge, posters were particularly useful for small and rural theatres as a cost-effective way to promote shows. “‘…The lobby-front is the show man’s only window,’” noted Seattle exhibitor Joseph Danz in 1917, “‘and his first problem is to get the possible patron to stop and look at it. That done, more than half the battle’s won…’”^[3] For small and rural movie houses, in particular, posters were a critical element of that process.

The most common poster, the one-sheet, was roughly the size of a modern-day movie poster. But there were other sizes as well. A three-sheet was about three times the size, lengthwise, and might be something that an exhibitor like Joseph Danz could use outside his theatre, provided he had the space. But posters grew in size to 24-sheet versions or larger and were typically used only by the large first-run theatres in urban locations, in spaces that may have been blocks away from the theatre itself. For these venues, their poster strategy extended well beyond their location. Billboards and fences throughout downtown Seattle, for example, might be littered with stage and screen posters, and managers jostled for real estate in high-visibility locations. In 1915 the Seattle Mutual exchange claimed to have 84 different billboards in and around the city that could accommodate anything from multiple one-sheets up to a massive 32-sheet display. The following year, the Greater Theatres Company, which ran the Liberty, Coliseum and Mission Theatres in downtown Seattle, cut a deal with the owners of a new building, then under construction, which was ideally positioned at a major downtown intersection. Under this agreement, which ran for about two months, Greater Theatres leased the exclusive right to hang several 25-foot banners from the structure advertising their shows, and also to poster the first three floors of the construction site as well as the wooden fence along the sidewalk.^[4] By 1919, John von Herberg claimed that Greater Theatres had 40 billboards large enough for 28-sheet posters between his three Seattle houses, which was an enormous about of space, and even included locations that were illuminated so they could be seen at night.^[5]

While poster strategies evolved through World War I, so did newspaper advertising. In family-style vaudeville and early nickelodeon advertising, the films were usually too short and too nondescript to advertise by name. With nickelodeons, as well, many selections only played for a few days at a time, so there was even less importance placed on the names of individual titles. While nickelodeon ads tended to be a bit more descriptive than those for family vaudeville houses, it wasn’t by much. Often the film selections were referred to in blanket terms as “new” or “thrilling,” or emphasizing whether the venue was showing westerns, comedies, travelogues or documentaries, without actually naming them. Some of this was by design. Nickelodeons rifled through film selections and sometimes had no idea what was coming from the exchange; for that reason alone, they often didn’t advertise the names of films simply because they themselves didn’t know what they’d be showing.^[6] The Seattle nickelodeons that ran regular newspaper advertising during this period tended to advertise the venue as opposed to the films. The name would be prominently displayed, often accompanied by a superlative (Seattle’s original Coliseum, for example, billed itself as the “World’s Greatest Photoplay Theatre”). Second billing in these ads typically went to the house’s illustrated singer(s), one of the few elements of the show that didn’t change from week to week, or a particular live act might be called out by name, if the venue also featured stage entertainment.

It wasn’t until the end of the nickelodeon period, around 1912, that newspaper advertising began to morph into a format more analogous with modern-day methods. Here there were a couple of factors at play. Theatres, for one, were beginning to move out of storefronts and into larger, more modern spaces, putting them on the same plane as the legitimate stage. Naturally, these larger venues operated more like a traditional theatre, with greater seating capacities and bigger advertising budgets, which put them on a different playing field than the old storefront nickelodeon. As a result, their newspaper advertising strategies were elevated as well.

The second factor was the changing movie business itself. Early motion pictures were fairly short – a typical nickelodeon bill might contain six or more titles. But by 1912 producers were making longer, more sophisticated pictures. The new industry trend was to show only three or four reels per bill, rather than a basket of shorter offerings. With fewer films, there was more emphasis (and more advertising dollars) put into selling individual pictures and, eventually, the performers in them. What’s more, the production companies (via local exchanges) were offering more in the way advertising collateral, above and beyond simple posters or photographs. Some releases in the early teens began arriving with pressbooks containing promotional suggestions and a basic set of advertising tools, including film and studio logos, drawings, photographs and sample newspaper layouts. Not only did this make the exhibitor’s life easier, but it helped create brand identity for the studio and picture in question.

Perhaps most important, however, was the fact that American newspapers were evolving along with the movies. Not only were the dailies becoming more visual, both in terms of illustrations and photography, but they were recognizing that motion pictures could be an important source of revenue. Many newspapers chose to expand their film coverage, both in recognition of reader interest but also to capture the advertising dollars. Richard Abel studied the symbiotic relationship between newspapers and motion pictures between 1913 and 1916, in which Seattle holds a unique place. The Daily Times was a pioneer with their moving picture coverage, much of it done under the watchful eye of their dramatic reviewer, J. Willis Sayre. Gradually, over time, his work went from a strict theatrical column to one that also promoted the city’s film engagements, and finally to a daily column devoted almost exclusively to motion picture coverage. Whereas his dramatic column was roughly a quarter page, with small associated ads in the surrounding space, Sayre’s eventual film columns sometimes took up an entire page in the Times’ weekly edition, ringed by more and larger advertisements for Seattle’s growing number of downtown picture theatres. By 1916 the Sunday Times had an entire section devoted to film and stage amusements – something that mimicked their “Automotive” section, another area where daily papers expanded coverage, in part, in the quest for advertising dollars.^[7]

Seattle became a model city for theatre/newspaper cooperation. By the mid-teens, in fact, the Daily Times was being held up in the motion picture trade papers as one of the best in the country for film advertisers. “A remarkable example of newspaper cooperation is furnished by the Seattle Times, through its owner, Joseph and Clarence Blethen, and their able picture editor, George H. Bellman,” Goldwyn executive F.B. Warren remarked in 1918. “I believe that the Seattle Times gives the exhibitor better cooperation than any other newspaper in the United States.”^[8] Of course, Seattle had two other dailies at the time – the Post-Intelligencer and the Star – and neither of them were going cede the battlefield. All three eventually had dedicated “photoplay” columns, much of it syndicated articles and promotional materials sourced from local exchanges and theatres. Business was so good that when longtime dramatic critic Charles Eugene Banks expanded the Post-Intelligencer’s coverage, the paper hired a second man, Lloyd Spencer, to work behind the scenes as the paper’s full-time advertising liaison for local theatres.

Part of the reason newspaper advertising became so prominent in Seattle was because it was home to Greater Theaters Company, which grew to dominate exhibition in western Washington and parts of Oregon, with a reach that stretched all the way into western Montana. Greater Theatres became a juggernaut in the exhibition space and were big believers that effective film advertising increased patronage. In 1919 company head John von Herberg observed that the firm’s newspaper ads were “at once a big expense and no expense – that is, you can feel the results rolling back…” In fact, newspaper advertising was so important to the company that when their promotion man George Fullerton eventually left the organization, they went out and poached J. Willis Sayre from the Daily Times to fill his spot.

The scale of Greater Theatres’ operations drove some of their newspaper campaigns. Like other theatres, they received generic photos, pre-made cuts and mattes from the exchange, but also had an in-house advertising staff that used these materials as a jumping off point for their own campaigns.^[9] They were not alone in doing so; over at the Clemmer Theatre, the venue was not only doing the same thing but also developing their own set of unique ads based around their popular doorman, Herbert “Hick” Hixon. Hick was a colorful and gregarious fellow who had been greeting Clemmer patrons for years, and the advertising folks decided to make him their patron saint for a campaign that ran throughout 1915 and 1916. They had an artist make a cartoon mockup of Hick, which was then used in many of the Clemmer’s newspaper ads, almost always with a little quip mimicking Hixon’s personality. When the controversial film Damaged Goods arrived at the Clemmer in November 1915, for example, Hick’s animated likeness remarked “this picture is causing more discussion than either the European war or the [University of Washington] football game.”^[10]

The fact that print advertising had become a critical component of promotions was demonstrated in December 1919, when Motion Picture News published a newspaper directory for key cities around the United States. For each location, they listed the city’s daily paper(s), provided the name of the editor or photoplay editor, the general cost for placing an ad (per column inch), and summarized the various services each offered. Among the Washington cities featured were Aberdeen, Everett, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, Vancouver, Walla Walla and Yakima.^[11]

Newspapers, of course, were a broad way to market films. A more targeted approach was to create flyers or an in-house newsletter that could be distributed at the venue itself or through a mailing list. On the most basic level these materials alerted recipients to upcoming shows, but in some cases they ran several pages and might include pictures or short articles on various films or stars. Much of this was studio-generated publicity material obtained from the exchange, through pressbooks or the trade papers. The benefit of a house newsletter was that it wasn’t necessarily a sunk cost – by selling advertising space to neighboring businesses, the money could be used to subsidize printing and distribution.

For example, Harold Ballou of the Olympian, on Seattle’s First Hill, was publishing a weekly house newsletter in 1914 that was distributed at the venue. This included a list of upcoming films and brief descriptions of each, which Ballou sourced from various trade papers. Each newsletter was six pages long, mimeographed on Olympian letterhead and contained advertisements for several other First Hill businesses. But the ads didn’t cover the entire cost of the effort, so Ballou was chipping in an extra $3 per week for a run of 2,000.^[12] Two years later and a short distance away, over on Capitol Hill, George Ring of the Society Theatre took a different approach with his printed materials. His flyers were also available at the venue, but Ring looked to take advantage of the fact that Capitol Hill was Seattle’s “apartment district,” with a good many high-density buildings. His particular strategy was to befriend the local handymen and janitors who worked these secured buildings, getting them take the Society’s print materials inside in return for free weekly passes.^[13] This was a clever solution, but matters of distribution could be more challenging in Washington’s smaller cities. Jack Kaufman operated Hoquiam’s Liberty Theatre, and in 1918 put a good deal of effort into creating the house’s first-ever newsletter. He then hired a group of local boys to distribute them throughout town and was delighted when the initial run was out almost immediately. But, later that week, as Kaufman was walking along the Hoquiam River, he noticed hundreds of his newsletters floating by – some of the boys were taking his money and dumping the material upstream. With that, Kaufman pulled aside some of the older boys and put them in charge of policing distribution, paying them extra for the effort.^[14]

Flyers and newsletters were also distributed by mail, though this was more common in larger cities than small, given the additional cost. When used, it meant that the theatre had to establish and maintain a mailing list, which sometimes came in handy for related promotional gimmicks. For the 1923 film Bavu, starring Wallace Beery, the Seattle Universal exchange organized a special postcard promotion, which they conducted on behalf of clients. Shortly before the picture arrived for an engagement at the Columbia Theatre, the house handed over their mailing list, which the exchange used to send out pre-printed postcards from an individual only identified as “S.” This person claimed to have seen Bavu during its Portland run and wanted to encourage the recipient to see the picture when it turned up at the Columbia. To complete the illusion, Universal addressed the postcards in Seattle but bulk shipped them down to their Portland exchange, who dropped them off at the local post office in order to secure the proper postmark.^[15] A similar effort was used for Fool’s Highway in 1924, when the host venue’s mailing list was used to send a special “telegram” from Hollywood with a personal message from the picture’s star, Mary Philbin.^[16]

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] “About Posters” (letter from William W. Hoyt dated 23 November 1910), Moving Picture World, 7 January 1911, Page 37. Another common complaint (from moviegoers and exhibitors alike) was when the poster depicted scenes that weren’t actually in the movie. This apparently wasn’t a problem for J.V. Lynn of the Grand Theatre in Everett, who in 1912 wrote the Solax company in Flushing, New York, to praise their beauty and creativity of their posters. “I do not regard them in any way as being detrimental to [my] business simply because the scene is not taken from the film itself,” he wrote. (See “Solax Posters Attracting Attention,” Moving Picture News, 10 August 1912, Page 10.) Lynn’s letter of approval was accompanied by one from an exhibitor in New York City who had similar views. Most assuredly, however, these men were the exception and not the rule – most people resented those instances when the poster indicated one thing, but the picture showed another. Those of us who have been suckered into a movie after watching the trailer, only to find that the clip contained all the interesting moments, know the feeling.
[2] Harold Ballou letter and Epes Winthrop Sargent response in “The Olympian Newsletter,” Moving Picture World, 4 July 1914, Page 56.
[3] Joseph Danz to S.J. Anderson, “Exhibitor Thinks Posters Could be Better,” Moving Picture World, 24 March 1917, Page 1977.
[4] See “Mutual ‘Comrades’ Hold Meeting at Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 27 November 1915, Page 67; and “‘Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 30 December 1916, Page 1416.
[5] John von Herberg, “Advertising Big Expense and No Expense,” Motion Picture News, 30 August 1919, Page 1811. Between the Liberty and Coliseum, Greater Theatres also kept a stash of over 100 framed photographs of various motion picture stars which they rotated through their venues and other local businesses throughout downtown Seattle, depending on which stars had films playing one of their theatres. See “Seattle Finds Way to Big Business,” Motion Picture News, 28 July 1917, Page 638.
[6] Kathryn H. Fuller, At the Picture Show: Small-Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press – 1996), Page 68.
[7] See Richard Abel, Menus for Movieland: Newspapers and the Emergence of American Film Culture (Oakland: University of California Press – 2015), Pages 74, 79 and 252-253.
[8] F.B. Warren, “Goldwyn Official Points to Splendid Advertising Work by Western Exhibitors,” Motion Picture News, 4 May 1918, Page 2671.
[9] John von Herberg, “Advertising Big Expense and No Expense,” Motion Picture News, 30 August 1919, Pages 1811 and 1812.
[10] See Clemmer advertisement, Seattle Daily Times, 16 November 1915, Page 12; and “What `Hick’ Says,” Moving Picture World, 15 January 1916, Page 463.
[11] See “Motion Picture News First Annual Newspaper and Theater Directory,” Motion Picture News, 27 December 1919, Pages 156-168.
[12] Harold Ballou letter to Epes Winthrop Sargent in “The Olympian Newsletter,” Moving Picture World, 4 July 1914, Pages 55-56.
[13] S.J. Anderson, “Finds Janitors are Good Press Agents,” Moving Picture World, 16 December 1916, Page 1684.
[14] S.J. Anderson, “What Kauffman Did With Hoquiam’s Liberty,” Moving Picture World, 23 February 1918, Page 1080.
[15] “Postcard Stunt is Worked in Advance of Bavu Run,” Motion Picture News, 16 June 1923, Page 2873.
[16] “Seattle Fool’s Highway Stunts,” Motion Picture News, 22 March 1924, Page 1322.

While posters, newspaper ads and newsletters were used throughout the silent era, they eventually became components of much more elaborate promotional campaigns. The practice grew with the introduction of longer, feature-length films – in many ways, film marketing grew in tandem with production budgets. Sometimes these campaigns were suggested by the exchange or the film’s advance materials, but the various trade papers also encouraged exhibitors to grow ever bolder with their promotions, celebrating these accomplishments in their regional news columns. “Keep your eyes wide open for the stunts that alert showmen have used with success,” implored Exhibitors Trade Review in 1923, “and then better them in adapting them to your ideas.”^[1]

By the mid-teens the Liberty Theatre in Seattle was already the Northwest’s most innovative venue when it came to movie promotions. Although they relied on studio recommendations and freely borrowed ideas from the trade papers, the Liberty also had in-house staff who created their own campaigns as elaborate (and sometimes moreso) than anything produced elsewhere. The Liberty’s proximity to Seattle’s Film Row was a key factor in this effort, since they regularly obtained prints in advance, previewed them and built specific promotional campaigns around each feature – a luxury that out-of-town theatres usually didn’t have. To this end the Liberty had its own special “screening room,” separate from the auditorium itself, where manager John von Herberg and staff could preview films and plan on how to roll those out to the public. While other downtown Seattle theatres also previewed their upcoming features, the more common practice was to show the picture to staff, either before or after hours, in the auditorium.

In mid-July 1916, “girl reporter” Cornelia Glass of the Seattle Star got a first-hand look at the Liberty’s process when she was invited to experience the show behind the show. Glass was invited to come down one afternoon, right in time to join von Herberg and advertising manager Gordon Fullerton as they got their first look at an unnamed Triangle feature. “I have been behind the scenes in a motion picture house,” she wrote of the experience. “Perhaps you didn’t know there was any ‘behind the scenes’ in a motion picture house. I didn’t until now.” In this case, the Liberty turned some unused space at the back of building into their preview room, but it was decidedly unglamorous – just a narrow concrete area with a few chairs, a barrel and a small projector casting the film onto a makeshift screen. (This space would eventually get a more glamorous makeover in 1919.^[2]) “It was the first time I had ever seen a film without all the external decorations,” Glass remarked. “Always before I had been in a soft leather chair before a velvet draped screen…In the ‘projecting room’ there isn’t any velvet drapery around the screen. There are no leather chairs and there is no music…All the glow was gone. There was just the clack of the machine and the men’s voices as they criticized the picture.” Although George, the projectionist, hummed and sang a bit to accompany the action, the preview was more akin to a business meeting than a movie presentation, with an ongoing discussion between von Herberg and Fullerton on how to put the picture over. “Once a ‘close up’ of the heroine was flashed on the screen,” Glass reported, prompting a snide remark from George, who had seen many of her recent pictures. “‘She’s getting fatter every month,’” he remarked. Glass chuckled, and asked George if he had some sort of personal connection with the screen performers. “‘Yes…’” the projectionist admitted. “‘I watch ‘em get old and notice the changes they make in their make-up to hide it.”^[3] (Glass didn’t mention the film they were previewing, but her article ran alongside a photograph of William S. Hart in The Captive God, which had just opened at the Liberty the day before. Assuming that was the film in question, then the fat actress was Hart’s co-star, Enid Markey.)

Cornelia Glass’ article didn’t elaborate on the next step in the process, but a write-up in Motography two months later fills in the gaps. This article, provided to the paper by Gordon Fullerton, described the Liberty’s promotion work for the William S. Hart film The Dawn Maker, which opened on September 24^th.^[4] “Every time a Hart feature is booked us we mark the days in red ink on our booking sheet and then get busy – for we are always sure of big business,” he noted. As with Cornelia Glass’s visit, the local Triangle exchange delivered a print of The Dawn Maker several days in advance so Liberty staff could preview the film. Once it ran through, John von Herberg set the tone for the entire campaign by choosing to emphasize a “Frozen North” theme, since the picture was set in northern Canada. Fullerton and his staff then went to work elaborating on that idea, while house organist Oliver Wallace was tasked with developing a musical program to match, which (for some pictures) may have included sound effects.

On the promotional side, Fullerton devised the look and feel of the show’s print advertising, which included newspaper ads and customized window cards, a special advertising feature used by the Liberty at the time, for which they contracted through a local lithographer.^[5] Starting with images and designs obtained from the Seattle Triangle exchange, Fullerton created a series of materials that not only captured the look and feel of the Triangle brand, but also incorporated elements distinct to the Liberty itself. The William S. Hart name and image took center stage, of course, but print materials also incorporated the Liberty’s traditional header (a “signature,” as Fullerton called it), although their usual font was altered so the venue name was now spelled out with logs dusted in snow, an effort to pick up the cold, Canadian theme. Then, after the newspaper ads were placed and the window cards were being printed, Fullerton moved to the postering campaign, which doesn’t appear to have differed substantially from the house’s usual practice. In this case, they obtained posters of various sizes from the Triangle exchange, affixed a secondary strip at the bottom with details of the Liberty engagement, then had those placed in “territory” that the Liberty informally controlled and used every week for their poster advertising.

The Motography article doesn’t indicate whether the exterior of the Liberty was specially decorated for The Dawn Maker, but it almost certainly had posters, signage and incidental decorations to catch the eye of pedestrians. Once the patron entered the venue, however, the house went big. In this case the Liberty brought in truckloads of tree branches, which they wove together and affixed to the ceiling, walls and support columns, such that patrons walked through the front doors and into a large evergreen cavern that smelled overwhelmingly of pine, cedar and spruce. In addition, since the film was arriving in autumn, Fullerton had staff collect bags of leaves that were interspersed throughout this display, adding a bit of seasonal color. Then, on top of everything, he had Liberty staff dress the part. The house’s female ushers and cashiers were costumed in Indian garb, rented from a local costume shop and embellished with eagle feathers and “wampum beads” obtained through the Hudson Bay Fur Company.

The promotional element of this show was labor intensive, but perhaps not as intricate as the presentational element, which included both lighting and music. While Oliver Wallace and the house musicians worked on the film’s musical accompaniment, Fullerton devised a creative way to transition the auditorium from light to dark. For The Dawn Maker, Liberty ushers were instructed to stop seating patrons as the house lights dimmed, which in this case was done in absolute silence. Then, one by one, a series of lights began illuminating parts of the ceiling and curtain as a single cello and violin could be heard in the orchestra pit, followed by chimes that sounded “as if one had awakened in the dark and the grandfather clock had tolled the hour.” This eventually morphed into a sunrise lighting effect that was thrown onto the curtain, complete with a silhouetted mountain background and colored lighting that gradually changed from a cool blue to bright yellow, as songbirds chirped in the distance. Then, as both the image and the sound began to fade away, the projectionist began showing the first reel of The Dawn Maker, the title being projected directly onto the curtain as it rose to reveal the screen. Unlike similar mood-setting presentations (not uncommon in metropolitan theatres), this was done in relative silence, with full musical accompaniment beginning only when the opening scenes of The Dawn Maker were finally shown.

The kicker for this elaborate setup was that it was all undertaken for a film that only ran at the Liberty for a total of four days. Admittedly, the venue put more effort into their William S. Hart engagements than others, but that’s an extraordinary amount time, effort and expense to lavish on a picture that was only scheduled to play half a week. But audiences responded to the extra attention, and Gordon Fullerton felt the work more than paid for itself. “Round after round of applause greeted [the opening] effect which has been the talk of all Seattle since we have opened the picture…,” he bragged.

Part of the Liberty’s effort to promote The Dawn Maker was to decorate the interior of the venue, such that the patron was transported elsewhere upon entering. But the “lobby,” in era parlance, wasn’t strictly the interior, and included the street area in front of the venue, under the marquee, which could also be used to engage the public. Much like theatre ornamentation in the nickelodeon period, elaborate lobby decorations caught the eye of pedestrians and announced the feature attraction to everyone along the street. In its simplest form, exterior decorations might include a combination of posters, banners, lobby cards and sandwich boards – any ornamentation that transformed the house from its natural state. It didn’t take much additional work to get into the spirit of a picture. Even a small, rural theatre showing a run-of-the-mill western could spruce up the house with some photos and posters, along with a display consisting of a bale of hay, some boots, a hat and lasso. That’s not much, but it’s something. For larger movie houses in urban areas, however, lobby decorations could get quite elaborate, with displays inside, outside and, sometimes, all the way down the street. To that end, observed historian Peter Graff, “[l]obby spectacles expanded the boundaries of the theatrical experience and performed a formative role in an event that encompassed everything between the marquee and the movie screen…” The most elaborate of these displays, like the Liberty’s interior for The Dawn Maker, were designed as immersive experiences. “The lobby was the first element patrons encountered inside the theatre and was therefore instrumental in setting the tone for the evening of entertainment…These displays often sought narrative unity across the event through visuals and music and even invited the audience to participate…”^[6]

To promote Mary Pickford’s Madame Butterfly in 1916, the Wenatchee Theatre leaned into the film’s Far East theme by decorating the lobby, auditorium and stage with a combination of cherry blossoms, butterflies and Japanese lanterns. Manager J.E. Ferguson also dressed his female ushers in kimonos and gave away postcards of the film’s star. And for Mary Pickford’s 1917 film The Pride of the Clan, Dr. Howard Clemmer of Spokane not only decorated his theatre to tartan excess but hired a pair of Scottish bagpipers to play aside the ticket booth. Which was an interesting choice, considering The Pride of the Clan was playing Spokane in the dead of winter, putting those bagpipers (assuming they dressed in Highland tradition) to a bitterly cold test.^[7]

Most lobby displays were a function of time, effort and creativity; cost wasn’t always a factor, unless the house was small. Still, even modest venues could come up with displays that impressed. To promote The North Wind’s Malice in 1920, the Everett Theatre transformed the entire front of the venue into an Alaskan snow scene, complete with icicles dangling from a marquee, with actual tree branches jutting over the sidewalk. The ticket booth was reworked into a tiny log cabin with a massive thermometer along one of the wall spaces that registered a consistent temperature of 20 degrees below zero; behind this was a second, larger cabin, which was the actual entrance to the theatre.^[8] But sometimes it wasn’t the décor that got people’s attention. When showing The Fox, a 1922 western starring Harry Carey, William Cutts of Seattle’s Columbia Theatre dressed the front of the house to look like a desert scene, which included posters and other images to promote the feature. The box office was remade into a large rock pillar, which led up to a scene atop the marquee depicting several cowboys on horseback. None of that, however, was the focal point of Cutts’ display – that honor went to a machine gun nest that was also built atop the marquee. Unlike the galloping cowboys, which were still depictions, the nest was active, creating an effect so startling that it alarmed pedestrians strolling past the venue. “The biggest seller was the machine gun,” Moving Picture World noted approvingly. “This was made of pipe with a small red electric bulb in the muzzle. A snare drum from an old air organ was placed back of the scenic barricade and run from a vacuum cleaner, giving a striking reproduction of the sound of a gun in action…[this] made a strong appeal to the men, but did not go so well with the women, and Cutts noticed this, so he splashed heart interest appeals on the scenery and that brought in the skirts, too.” ^[9]

Movies with exotic themes or locales provided exhibitors with logical approaches to their lobby displays. Virtually any location or culture could be recreated to help sell a picture, as the Wenatchee Theatre did when showing Madame Butterfly. When the Priscilla Dean feature The Virgin of Stamboul came to Seattle’s Colonial Theatre in April 1920, manager John Danz had the front of the venue dressed up to look like a stone wall in Constantinople, placed murals on the doors, transformed the ticket booth into a minaret and dressed his entire staff in Turkish costumes. Similarly, when Robert Bender of the Columbia booked another Dean feature, the 1924 release A Café in Cairo, his promotion staff created an Egyptian-themed lobby display inside and out, with an interior featuring tapestries, burning incense and a miniature replica of the Sphinx.^[10]

Of course, the setting of a particular film didn’t have to be exotic for the promotions staff to run wild. Hoot Gibson was a popular western star in the 1920s, but audiences had seen any number of western promotions by that time, the genre being so common. Still, when the Casino in Spokane booked Let ‘Er Buck in 1925, the venue dressed up the lobby with authentic western detail, right down to the hitching post they erected on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. Then, as an added bonus, the Casino announced that anyone who came to the venue on horseback would not only have their steed tied to the post out front but could see the Gibson feature for free. And because it wasn’t out of the question for someone to ride a horse into downtown Spokane at the time, several patrons took the Casino up on the offer, which garnered not only the attention of passers-by but also of local newspapers.^[11] A more subtle display was created at the Liberty Theatre in Yakima for the 1922 Raoul Walsh film Kindred of the Dust. In this case manager H.A. Gillespie created a peaceful forest scene atop his theatre marquee, similar to those shown in the film. In the daylight there was nothing else to this visual display – just an artistic row of trees. At nighttime, however, he had colored lights trained on the scenery, an effect enhanced by running steam from the Liberty’s heating system through tubes that dispersed it from the tops of the faux trees. Given the cold winter temperatures in Yakima, this combination of colored lights and rising steam gave an eerie ambiance to the venue’s exterior.^[12]

Sometimes these lobby displays weren’t necessarily tied to the motion picture being shown. In 1925 Herbert Sobottka, manager of Tacoma’s Colonial Theatre, used some quick thinking to distinguish his house from others in the neighborhood. That year Tacoma was upgrading the city’s water mains, but officials eventually discovered a problem – drinking water that was slightly tainted by creosote, which they could neither explain nor immediately fix. This resulted in temporary service disruptions throughout downtown Tacoma as workers attempted to correct the situation, and when businesses near the Colonial Theatre lost water service for a few days, many elected to close temporarily and wait things out. For Sobottka, however, this was as opportunity. Warned that a shutoff was coming, he drove out to a local spring water company, cutting a deal for daily deliveries of cold, purified water to the lobby of the theatre. He then went to a local print shop and had a large banner created for the front of the Colonial, the central message of which was then filtered into the Colonial’s newspaper advertising. Rather than promote the week’s feature film, Sobottka instead trumpeted the fact that the Colonial, in the middle of Prohibition, was now serving “drinks” in the lobby. Attendance at the Colonial soared during the outage, with 20 gallons of purified spring water consumed on the first day alone.^[13]

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] “You and Your Exploitation,” Exhibitors Trade Review, 6 October 1923, Page 861.
[2] In 1919 the Liberty updated their preview space by having actual chairs were installed, complete with “smoking stands” that allowed staff to relax and better enjoy themselves. The screen was also replaced with a newer version, draped by miniature velvet curtains. Cornelia Glass’ description makes the space sound cramped, but it was apparently large enough to hold a small piano, which gave one of the house musicians (frequently Oliver Wallace) the opportunity to test out musical ideas as the film unfurled. See “Seattle Theatre has Fine Quarters,” Moving Picture World, 26 July 1919, Page 550.
[3] Cornelia Glass, “Girl Reporter Goes Behind Scenes in Photo-Play House,” Seattle Star, 24 July 1916, Page 3.
[4] See “What Theater Men are Doing – An Open Forum,” Motography, 21 October 1916, Pages 911-912.
[5] See “What Theater Men are Doing – An Open Forum,” Motography, 2 December 1916, Page 1223. According to the Motography article, which appears to have been spurred by a letter that Gordon Fullerton sent to the paper (along with samples of his work), the house had undertaken a thorough study of the best areas to have window cards placed (apparently that was along Second Avenue), as well as the circumstances in which a merchant would or would not put one up. One obstacle they discovered right away: some higher-end stores, restaurants and soda fountains balked at the idea of putting up a cheap cardboard sign. The Liberty’s solution was to bulk purchase a variety of frames, such that the card could be placed inside a frame that had woodwork complimenting the interior of the host business.
          The success of the Liberty’s lobby card campaign could be seen in how they were printed. At first the venue was ordering about 100 cards at a time from the lithographer, but that amount steadily grew to 350 for some shows. In addition, what started out as simply black and white imagery had advanced to the use of up to four colors, depending on the release. “‘We believe the window card campaign has helped out business in two ways,’” Fullerton exclaimed. “‘first it serves as a connecting link between billboard and newspaper, by keeping our theater’s name and play showing, constantly before the people – and second it directly helps the matinee business. With the thousands of people shopping or promenading to and fro in the business section [of downtown], the card’s message proved a veritable magnet, drawing the crowds already downtown to our theater.’” (Fullerton submitted the same article to Motion Picture News – see “Wise Window Card Placing Proves a Winner,” Motion Picture News, 23 December 1916, Page 3395.)
[6] Peter Graff, “Lobbyology and the Role of Spectacles in Silent Film Exhibition,” Film History, Volume 30, Issue 4 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press – 2018), Pages 49-50.
[7] “Spokane Exhibitors Advertise Each Other’s Shows,” Motion Picture News, 3 March 1917, Page 1376.
[8] “Turner Builds a Novel Lobby Display,” Motion Picture News, 1 January 1921, Page 365.
[9] “Clemmer’s Vivid Lobby Drew Longest Standout,” Moving Picture World, 21 January 1922, Page 303. William Cutts was a big believer in electrical effects when it came to promotion, perhaps more than any other Seattle exhibitor. When he took over management of the Clemmer, for example, Cutts paid to have the exterior of the venue fully wired, with electrical outlets in multiple places that allowed his staff the freedom to design and construct displays without the need to hire electricians come in and specifically wire each installation. (See “Clemmer Lobby Sold Conflict on Effects,” Moving Picture World, 4 February 1922, Page 539.)
[10] See photograph, Colonial Theatre circa 1920 (University of Washington Special Collections, Digital Collections, Seattle Photographs, PH Coll 696.20); and “Seattle Exhibitor Supplants Steam Heat with Electricity,” Moving Picture World, 24 January 1925, Page 357.
[11] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 28 March 1925, Page 366.
[12] “Steam Gives Realism to Lobby on Kindred of Dust,” Motion Picture News, 3 February 1923, Page 564.
[13] “Seattle Exhibitor News,” Moving Picture World, 15 August 1925, Page 713.

Large urban theatres like Seattle’s Liberty broke new ground with their promotional activities, and leaned hard into what was perhaps the era’s most common advertising tool, the tie-up. In its simplest form, a tie-up was when two different businesses banded together in a shared promotional activity that benefited them both. An example might be the theatre showing a film based on a popular novel, prompting it to approach a local bookstore with the offer of a cross-promotion. If the bookstore opened window space at their retail location(s), the theatre would provide a variety of colorful advertising materials that would not only promote the movie engagement but help sell the copies of the book, which the shop was encouraged to order in advance.

The earliest form of tie-up came from travelling exhibitors, who toured Washington at the turn of the century. To ensure a sizable audience when coming into town, some shows (working through the theatre manager) partnered with an area social or fraternal organization. In return for their sponsorship, the organization received a cut of the box office receipts, discounted tickets and perhaps both. But it was an idea didn’t die with traveling exhibitors. When Douglas Fairbanks’ Robin Hood came to Wenatchee’s Rialto Theatre in 1923, management turned to the local Elks lodge for help putting the picture over. This started with an eight-page newspaper called The Elks Herding Call that was mailed to every household in Wenatchee and the surrounding communities. This paper was packed with wall-to-wall photos and articles about the film, much of it studio-generated publicity. The Elks were also tapped to organize a series of stunts, contests and giveaways throughout the Rialto engagement, which was on top of the venue’s own advertising campaign, which included special postering and window displays arranged with various local merchants.

All of this led up to a special Elks Night screening at the Rialto, which filled the venue beyond capacity. But the Elks had a lot more invested in the success the Rialto’s Robin Hood engagement than a single evening. That’s because theatre management went into the run by striking a financial deal with the organization in return for their participation. The Herding Call paper, for example, was created by the Rialto and the United Artists exchange, but printing and mailing costs were shouldered by the Elks, who were also on the hook for funding and staging the week’s promotional stunts. In return, the Rialto gave a portion of the box office receipts directly to the organization – not just for the Elks Night presentation, but for the entire Wenatchee run. Motion Picture News, which reported on the engagement for Robin Hood, touted the arrangement as a new and innovative promotional model that created maximum excitement while reducing the venue’s advertising costs.^[1]

The tie-up offered limitless opportunities for businesses to join forces with the movies, including some with no natural connection to the industry. To promote the 1920 Alla Nazimova film Stronger Than Death, James Clemmer linked up with a Seattle jeweler. A special window display was devised around one of the movie images, in which Nazimova was shown clasping a necklace, providing an excuse for various promotional materials to be shown alongside some of the jeweler’s finest pieces, including diamonds, sapphires and pearls.^[2] Fashion shows were another easy tie-up that worked well, particularly in urban locations. What’s more, the exhibitor did little or nothing for this type of promotion, which frequently wasn’t tied to the picture showing onscreen. Working with a local department store, the retailer supplied the clothes, the models and, typically, a master of ceremonies – all the venue had to do create space on the bill. For years the Coliseum in Seattle held semi-regular fashion shows whenever seasonal clothing lines were being introduced.

If fashion was a natural pairing for movie promotions, so was food. In 1916, to celebrate Paramount films coming to Hoquiam, manager Thomas Bruce of the Electric Theatre huddled with a local sweet shop to create a “Paramount sundae,” which became an advertising feature for both businesses. Bruce wasn’t the only one to get on the ice cream bandwagon, either. A few months later, in Seattle, several area soda fountains were offering themed ice cream sundaes to promote the Pearl White serial The Iron Claw.^[3] These were on top of the numerous times Washington theatres gave away free ice cream bars at special events or celebrations – treats that were often donated by another local business, who got a bit of free advertising in return.

Ice cream was a good selling point, but bakeries were even better. When Bellingham’s Fred Walton wanted to advertise The Flirt in 1923, he approached a local bread company with the idea of inserting a free movie pass into every 100^th loaf. John Hamrick used a similar approach when he booked Scaramouche into Seattle’s Blue Mouse the following year. He started by placing advance notices for the film in the bread loaves of a local bakery. The real effort, however, was put into selling the company’s butternut cakes, a luxury item for which they were looking to grow sales. So together with the Blue Mouse, they came up with a Willy Wonka-style promotion where the advance notices in their bread not only promoted the film but also encouraged consumers to spend a little extra to get a butternut cake, where three lucky people might find passes to see Scaramouche in the Blue Mouse’s finest seats. Sales of butternut cakes, it was said, took off like a shot.^[4]

Of course, why go to the bakery when the bakery could come to you? That’s what exhibitor John McGill of Port Orchard did for an engagement of the Mary Carr film Drusilla with a Million. Partnering with a local business, McGill had them bake special cakes that were sliced into thin strips and inserted into small, oiled envelopes, which he handed out to every woman attending his shows.^[5] And when The Christian, starring Richard Dix and Mae Busch, played the Strand in Seattle, the theatre ran a special promotion in partnership with the Pacific Coast Biscuit Company. In this case, the bakery created 14,000 bite-size treats they called “Mae Busch Kisses,” which were handed out on street corners and in area restaurants on the day the film opened.^[6]

Candy, too, was an effective marketing tool. For the 1922 Jackie Coogan picture Trouble, Seattle’s Coliseum Theatre hired a Coogan look-alike to walk through downtown distributing candy – in this case, 25,000 sample packages of Life Savers – with a large sign on his box stating “I’m in Trouble.”^[7] For Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera, not only did the Columbia Theatre engage a local confectioner to create special box of Phantom-themed chocolates, but also printed 5,000 promotional napkins that were distributed to lunch counters and soda fountains throughout the city.^[8]

Sometimes, however, there were situations where the “food and film” combination went in the other way – where the picture advertised the fare. One was dreamed up by Hazen J. Titus of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1917. One of the Northern Pacific’s claims to fame was “The Great Big Baked Potato,” a featured item in their dining cars. Titus came up with the idea to create an animated short to help sell the railroad via its signature dish, then distribute it free of charge to movie theatres along the rail line. This picture followed the King of the Great Big Baked Potato Patch as he went on a series of comic (mis)adventures, eventually leading to a trip along the Northern Pacific.^[9] Moving Picture World correspondent S.J. Anderson called it a “funny romance,” which sounds benign until you consider that King Potato left his homeland only to bumble into a railroad dining car where he was, presumably, drawn, quartered and eaten. Then, of course, there was the food-related promotion that ran in several Puget Sound movie houses for an entire week in April 1920. “During the celebration of ‘Coffee Week’ in Seattle and Tacoma, The Gift from Heaven, [a documentary short] made by Universal Film Manufacturing especially for this occasion, was shown in the different picture theatres and was well received.”^[10]

Coffee week. In the Pacific Northwest. There’s an idea that’ll never fly.

These types of tie-ups and cross promotions eventually resulted, in the 1920s, in some of the Northwest’s most sophisticated promotional campaigns, such as the one devised to sell Mary Pickford’s Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall in the spring of 1924. Opening at the Strand Theatre in Seattle, the marketing of Dorothy Vernon showed how sophisticated and far-reaching the advertising game had come in the span of a few years.

The Pickford film was a big one, booked to play a full two-week engagement, so it was imperative that the Strand create a campaign that guaranteed full houses deep into that run. The effort began weeks before the film was released. United Artists had a lot riding on this expensive costume picture, so they primed the publicity pump by releasing a variety of press stories about Pickford, her co-stars and the film – from humorous incidents (real or concocted) that occurred during production, to the favorable reaction of preview audiences. These materials were funneled through the United Artists exchanges and made available to newspapers and fan magazines around the country. The idea was to build awareness in the weeks and months before the picture was released, getting details about Pickford and her new film into print as often as possible.

Thus, well before a Northwest date for Dorothy Vernon was known, movie fans in Seattle and elsewhere were being keyed into her latest release. But in Seattle, the Strand used yet another way to heighten anticipation for the film. When the engagement was finally announced, the Stand claimed that Seattle audiences would be amongst the first to see Dorothy Vernon – even before film patrons in Chicago. That may or may not have been true, but the Strand was lending an aura of exclusivity to the picture that, they hoped, would translate into box office dollars. Of course, the Strand didn’t rely on that detail alone to market the film. Between studio-generated publicity and direct marketing by the Strand, the venue had in upwards of “35 columns” worth of advertising in local papers, which didn’t include a special “news” insert that the house produced themselves. This ad blitz began several weeks before the picture arrived and continued well into the first week of the film’s local engagement.^[11]

Over 200 window cards were obtained by the Strand and distributed to businesses throughout downtown Seattle, in addition to more than 100 photographic stills, plus an unknown number of 11 x 14 lobby cards, 22 x 28 displays, and several large cutouts of the star herself. More than 80 one-sheet posters and 20 three-sheet posters went up in and around downtown Seattle, plus more than 50 24-sheet posters in strategic locations around the city.

With the newspaper and print materials out of the way, the Strand moved on to creating not one, but several tie-ups with local businesses. Many of these created window displays in their stores, but the Strand reached out specifically to the Canterbury Candy Company to create 1,000 special “Mary Pickford” chocolate boxes. These were candies that Canterbury already produced, the only difference being a new, Pickford-themed label and a small photo card of the actress that was inserted into each package. Canterbury was a savvy company to tie up with – they had 15 locations throughout downtown, another 20 in outlying neighborhoods and 13 more in nearby cities. So, in addition to the Pickford-themed chocolate boxes, each store was provided with Dorothy Vernon promotional materials so they could create window displays at each location.

But even then the Strand wasn’t done. Their pièce de resistance was a special foxtrot commissioned by United Artists, the sheet music for which was featured prominently in stores around the city.^[12] This song, called “Love Has a Way,” was the theme for Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (an interesting choice, having a foxtrot promote a film set in 16^th century England). The song, of course, formed a key part of the Strand’s musical program for the engagement, but that’s not the only place moviegoers would have heard it. Not only was “Love Has a Way” promoted at the Strand, but the venue collaborated with local restaurants and cafés in downtown Seattle to have their musicians put “Love Has a Way” into heavy rotation, perhaps even paying these venues to do so. This was in addition to “Love Has a Way” becoming a featured song on a popular radio program sponsored by Rhodes department store.^[13] In an age before the movie soundtrack, the Strand’s song tie-up (an exchange promotion done in other cities as well) was the analog version.

As Dorothy Vernon’s foxtrot suggested, the Strand’s promotional activities here were only partly home-grown. By 1924 studio pressbooks had become commonplace, particularly for big releases. These had been around in some shape or form since the mid-teens but grew in frequency and importance in the 1920s. Not only did they contain the building blocks for advertising (logos, photos, sample print layouts), but gave the exhibitor suggestions for possible tie-up opportunities, lobby displays and promotional stunts, and sometimes contained cue sheets or at least musical suggestions to enhance the actual presentation.^[14] This isn’t to say that the Strand wasn’t coming up their own promotional ideas, but pressbook materials served as a jumping off point for the venue’s own work, or at least give them a solid foundation on which to build. This was a significant help, but it was also part of a growing effort by the studios in the 1920s to better control not only the production and distribution of their films, but also how those were marketed to the public.

For exhibitors that kind of help was useful, for the scale here is important. For 1916’s The Dawn Maker, the publicity was elaborate but largely confined to downtown Seattle, save for posters that went up in a few outlying neighborhoods. With the Dorothy Vernon campaign eight years later, the film was marketed as a regional event, with advertising both in and outside Seattle, and reaching the intended audience on multiple fronts, including a variety of print materials, consumer goods, window displays, music and radio.

With promotions of this magnitude nothing was left to chance, and the bigger theatres frequently assessed how well their promotions were engaging the audience. An example of this comes from 1921, when John Hamrick of the Blue Mouse Theatre in Seattle had his team organize a ticket giveaway in conjunction with The Foolish Age. Piggybacking on a plot point, the Blue Mouse purchased 150 keys from a local hardware store, then dropped them in locations throughout the city. Each had a tag stating that, if lost, the key should be returned to 1421 Fifth Avenue, the street address for the Blue Mouse. Each time that occurred, the individual was thanked and presented with a pass to see The Foolish Age.

That was the surface-level promotion – in actuality, the Blue Mouse was conducting an experiment. Of the 150 keys disbursed, 125 of them were returned to the venue, or about 83% of the total. The recipient was given a free pass, but it was a special one unlike those typically issued at the Blue Mouse. Then, every time one of these passes was presented at the box office, the cashier exchanged the pass for a free ticket, but also made note of how many members were in the viewing party. The pass was only for the recipient; anyone accompanying him or her to the theatre had to pay their way in. By tracking this information throughout The Foolish Age’s run, the Blue Mouse discovered that all 125 passes were eventually redeemed, with the free tickets generating at least 160 paid admissions by friends and family.^[15]

Those extra 35 admissions may not sound like much, but the lost key stunt cost virtually nothing and was easy to coordinate – a promotion that could be replicated almost anywhere. A similar effort was organized at Seattle’s Heilig Theatre (the original Orpheum) in 1924. In this case the feature film was The Lullaby, and the house commissioned a special glass slide alerting female patrons that they could drop by the front desk to receive a pre-printed, postage-paid card recommending the film to a friend, who could redeem it for discounted tickets at the box office. The Heilig even set up boxes in the lobby so patrons could address the card, drop it in and go on their way. It’s not clear whether all 2,000 postcards were distributed, but more 500 came back to the Heilig box office and were redeemed for discounted tickets.^[16] And, unbeknownst to those patrons, the addresses on every one of those returned cards was added to the Heilig’s internal mailing list.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] “Robin Hood Aided by Tie-Up with Wenatchee Elks,” Motion Picture News, 30 June 1923, Page 3161.
[2] “Good Jewelry Hooked on Nazimova,” The Moving Picture World, 28 February 1920, Page 1486.
[3] See “`Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 17 June 1916, Page 1373; “`Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 19 August 1916, Page 423; and “`Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 14 October 1916, Page 899.
[4] See “Goldsmith Managers to Make Seattle Woman Change Mind,” Moving Picture World, 24 February 1923, Page 769; and “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 15 March 1924, Page 204.
[5] “Crowds Flock to New Seattle Theatre,” Moving Picture World, 24 October 1925, Page 649.
[6] “Thorough Promotion Campaign Behind Christian,” Motion Picture News, 28 April 1923, Page 2050.
[7] Tears Up Seattle Traditions in Exploiting Trouble at Coliseum,” Motion Picture News, 26 August 1922, Page 1013.
[8] “Seattle Drive for Phantom,” Motion Picture News, 9 January 1926, Page 179.
[9] S.J. Anderson, “First Railroad to Use Animated Cartoon Advertising,” Moving Picture World, 14 April 1917, Page 314.
[10] “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 24 April 1920, Page 3707.
[11] See “Seattle Scene of Striking Dorothy Vernon Drive,” Motion Picture News, 28 June 1924, Page 3092.
[12] Based on research done by Peter Graff, the “theme song” promotion used for Dorothy Vernon in Seattle (and other localities, to be sure) was not unusual for the 1920s, though it was usually reserved for larger films with bankable stars. Graff’s research focused on only a few select releases, but among them there were similar musical approaches taken with The Arab, a 1924 release starring Ramon Navarro, as well as 1928’s Ramona, starring Delores del Rio. And, as was the case with Dorothy Vernon, the theme for Ramona was aimed more at popular musical culture than mimicking the Mexican and Native American themes depicted in the film. See Peter Graff, “Lobbyology and the Role of Spectacles in Silent Film Exhibition,” Film History, Volume 30, Issue 4 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press – 2018), Pages 57-58, 68, and 73-74.
[13] “Seattle Scene of Striking Dorothy Vernon Drive,” Motion Picture News, 28 June 1924, Page 3092.
[14] See Graff, Pages 53, 58, 68 and 77.
[15] “New One for Foolish Age,” Motion Picture News, 14 January 1922, Page 515.
[16] “Post Card Stunt Works Well in Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 19 April 1924, Page 1759.

Tie-ups were a key feature of movie marketing, but there was one kind of tie-up may have paid the biggest dividends – when the theatre joined forces with a daily newspaper. This was a match made in heaven. Whether it was a contest, stunt or some other event, a newspaper tie-up offered big benefits for both parties. The theatre, of course, got an extra bit of promotion and hoopla around their feature attraction, particularly when you consider the paper might be running several articles over several days. The newspaper, on the other hand, stood to gain from additional ad buys from the venue, over and above what was usually spent. What’s more, in return for giving up some real estate on their pages, the papers were creating the type of popular content that drew readers back on a daily basis – to learn the next clue, play the next round or read the next installment. These type of marketing relationships between theatres and newspapers were so important, in fact, that in 1925 manager Robert Bender of Seattle’s Columbia Theatre gave an address to the Washington State Press Association entitled “Closer Cooperation and Tieups [sic] Between the Theatre and the Newspaper.”^[1]

A good example of how a motion picture venue and a newspaper could cooperate on a promotional idea can be seen in the exploitation for Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model, organized by Vic Gauntlett, publicity manager for Seattle’s Blue Mouse Theatre. The film was based on a 1906 play by Owen Davis that spoofed the kind of stage melodramas popular with certain theatregoers at the time. In it, the heroine Nellie, an orphan, works as a clothing model in a department store, but otherwise lives a dreary life in a run-down boarding house operated by her mean uncle. Nellie has no clue that she’s in line to receive a substantial inheritance, but that’s not lost on the extended family, who are secretly plotting ways to get rid of her so they can take the money for themselves. This leads to a series of increasingly elaborate murder plots from which the heroine manages to escape, each time, in the nick of time – in the stage play, Nellie is lashed to the railroad tracks, escapes an elevator accident, gets tied to the mast of a sinking ship and is nearly blown up. True to the parameters of popular melodrama, however, by the final act the culprits are apprehended, Nellie falls into the arms of a handsome young man and is eventually reunited with her mother, whom everyone believed was dead. (Although this also meant she was out of her inheritance, at least for the time being.)

The film version, made by Goldwyn in 1924, starred Claire Windsor in the title role, and therein lay Gauntlett’s angle for his promotional campaign. That’s because Claire Windsor was a former Seattle girl, having graduated from Broadway High School under her real name of Clara (“Ola”) Cronk. It was a somewhat tenuous connection (Windsor spent most of her childhood in the Midwest and considered herself a Kansas girl, not a Seattle girl), but it’s all Gauntlett needed. In this case, he tied up with the Seattle Star under the following premise: knowing her latest picture was about to open at the Blue Mouse, Claire Windsor sent a telegram to the venue putting up $25 for the Seattle girl who could undergo the same perils her character endures in Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model.^[2] So with the help of the Star, the Blue Mouse Theatre announced their contest, in which 86 girls telephoned the theatre volunteering for the challenge. All 86 were interviewed on the spot, but only one, Florence Tonkin, was chosen to be “Seattle’s Nellie” for the week.

Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model was scheduled to open at the Blue Mouse on Saturday, May 17, 1924. But the Tuesday before, Tonkin was instructed to come down to the theatre to begin her promotional work on the film. She arrived, introduced herself to the Blue Mouse staff, and was ushered upstairs to an office where manager John Hamrick and a few others were gathered. There were introductions and some small talk, and the group was just beginning to discuss what would be expected of Florence Tonkin over the next few days…

WHEN SUDDENLY

…the office doors violently crashed open and a pair of thuggish men burst into the room, startling everyone. “‘Where’s da goil?,’” one growled, with the other barking “‘where’s da skoit?’” – words spoken in a room where Florence Tonkin was the only female. They locked eyes on her, grabbed Tonkin by the arms and dragged her out through the lobby of the Blue Mouse and onto Fifth Avenue, where a Flint motorcar sat idling. One of these villains was Vic Gauntlett, Blue Mouse promotional manager, while the other was Jim Marshall, a reporter for the Seattle Star, both of whom had been made up to look like movie goons. The getaway car, meanwhile, was being driven by the sales manager of the Seattle Automobile Company, which was loaning the Blue Mouse a Flint to use in their daylight kidnapping. And, capturing all this action on the sidewalk was newsreel cameraman Frank Jacobs, cranking away at his camera, filming the crime for posterity. To the surprise of onlookers walking along Fifth Avenue, who didn’t quite know what was happening, the men dragged Tonkin out of the Blue Mouse, paused to smile and wave for Jacobs’ camera, then roughly threw her in the back of the car, which then sped down the street and out of sight before ending up on the Seattle waterfront.

That’s where the nefarious plot unfolded. A bewildered Florence Tonkin was taken from the car and tied to the railroad tracks, where she would spend the next two hours, give or take. As was eventually made clear, the villains were expecting a mail train to pass by, crushing her under the wheels. But, until her death was a little more imminent, Tonkin killed time by conducting a ground-level interview with Marshall, who only moments before lashed her to the tracks but, now, wanted the girl to open up about how that made her feel. Florence Tonkin also posed for a few publicity shots for the Star, inasmuch as a girl can pose while bound and, nearly, gagged. Once these formalities were out of the way, but with no train in sight, Tonkin announced her intention to take a short nap, although she insisted on being woken up as the train approached and she was about to die.

Eventually, of course, the mail train did arrive, and Florence Tonkin was roused so she could witness her own death, but it passed uneventfully, on a different track, well away from where “Seattle’s Nellie” had been lashed. The whole effort had been for nothing. Florence Tonkin was still alive. Everyone, Tonkin included, was disappointed. So they all went home.^[3]

The next day, “Seattle’s Nellie” again reported for duty in the lobby of the Blue Mouse Theatre. As before, nothing seemed amiss…

WHEN SUDDENLY

…Florence Tonkin was snatched again, in what was perhaps the least surprising development of the day. “‘Kidnapped?’ she breathed rapturously” as her assailants grabbed her arms and hustled her into the waiting Flint.^[4]

Again, the entourage headed down to the waterfront, but this time Tonkin was unloaded at a pier, after having been bound with rope during the car ride. On a waiting sailboat she was tied to the mast, after which the vessel was taken out into the middle of Elliott Bay. There, our makeshift villains, Gauntlett and Marshall, revealed their dastardly plans – they intended to light the sailboat on fire and row away in a dinghy, leaving “Seattle’s Nellie” to burn alive before sinking beneath the surface. But, as everyone knows, setting up a good and proper boat fire takes time, so while Florence Tonkin waited for incineration, she used her free time to pose for the Star’s photographer, instructed cameraman Frank Jacobs on the most flattering way to film her last living moments, and gave yet another interview to Star reporter Jim Marshall.

While Tonkin and Marshall chatted amongst themselves, Gauntlett lined the deck with all kinds of materials that, once ablaze, would surely send the girl and the ship to the bottom. And when he was done, the culprits dramatically set the whole thing alight – or they tried to. Somehow, inexplicably, these bumbling criminals couldn’t get the fire started no matter how hard they tried. Matches went out, smoldering material fell overboard – and so it went, over and over. As with day one, poor planning and worse execution thwarted their plans for murder and mayhem. The whole elaborate scheme, unfolding right there in the middle of Elliott Bay, was an embarrassing failure. Rather than face additional humiliation, the villains instead opted to give up altogether, slink home and, perhaps, try a little harder the next day.

Florence Tonkin probably had an inkling of what was in store for her when she woke up on Thursday morning – she just, perhaps, didn’t know how it would unfold. She was told to report to the offices of the Seattle Star, and did so dutifully, expecting the worst. Only the worst didn’t happen. Instead of being abducted yet again, she was introduced around the newspaper offices before being driven over to Maxime’s, a local clothing store, where she was fitted for a brand-new outfit that would be hers to wear for the day. Now this was a promotion she could get behind; Tonkin looked smart and stylish in clothing that screamed the summer of 1924. She was having the time of her life modeling this expensive outfit…

WHEN SUDDENLY

…the undynamic duo of Gauntlett and Marshall burst into Maxime’s, wrestled Florence Tonkin away from a full-length mirror and drug her outside, where the trusty Flint awaited – her only consolation being that she looked really good while doing it.

For once, the goons’ nefarious plans did not involve the waterfront. Instead, the Flint roared through downtown Seattle before ending up at Second and Yesler, directly in front of the Smith Tower. Tonkin was yanked from the car and rushed into the building, then whisked up to the observation deck, almost 500 feet in the air. There was a small crowd on hand; as flash bulbs went off and cameramen cranked, the dastardly pair threatened, repeatedly, to pitch “Seattle’s Nellie” off the top of the building, without regard for the steel slats on the Smith Tower observation deck that were designed, specifically, to prevent that very thing from happening.

These threats went on for a bit, with everyone having a great laugh over Tonkin’s impending 500-foot plunge…

WHEN SUDDENLY

…a call came into the switchboard of the Smith Tower, and a note was rushed up to the observation deck. It seems that no one present could (or was willing to) save Florence Tonkin from her terrible fate, but this phone call, coming in the nick of time, brought everything to an abrupt halt. Except it wasn’t the police, nor was it a tearful, desperate plea from Tonkin’s parents. The call was from Maxime’s. That outfit, the one Florence Tonkin was wearing, was a loaner. Gauntlett and Marshall could pitch the girl off the top of the Smith Tower if they wanted, but the blood and brains from her crumpled body would surely ruin her clothing. And if that happened – well, Maxime’s would have no choice but to hold the killers financially responsible.

So that’s how “Seattle’s Nellie” cheated death for the third consecutive day. This time it wasn’t the inability to read a train schedule or operate a match that saved her. On this day, Thursday, Florence Tonkin was saved by the bill.^[5]

Then came Friday, the last day of the promotion; Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model was scheduled to debut at the Blue Mouse the following day. But this time, Vic Gauntlett and Jim Marshall didn’t have any lavish plans to kill off Florence Tonkin. They made their daily appearance, as expected, but didn’t want to menace her in any way – in fact, they felt terrible about their behavior throughout the week. Rather than kidnap her for the fourth time, they instead invited her for a pleasant stroll along the waterfront so they could set things straight. Tonkin agreed to go – but you’d think, by this point, she’d be a little wary of anything that took place along the waterfront.

So the three walked by themselves, near the water, killers and killee, chatting away like old friends. The kidnappers had completely changed their tune, Tonkin thought. And they had. They no longer had any interest in offing “Seattle’s Nellie,” but had every intention, instead, of letting a new set of villains do it for them. It was a textbook sub-contract killing.

So the trio were on their leisurely jaunt near Pier 41…

WHEN SUDDENLY

…the lovely spring day was jarred by screams. The S.S. President Jefferson had broken loose from its moorings, and someone had to jump aboard and keep her from drifting away from the dock. And that someone wasn’t going to be A.C. Girard of the Admiral Line, an experienced boat pilot who, on this day, set aside a lifetime of professional training and chose instead to do a lot of shrieking. “‘I will save her!’” cried “Seattle’s Nellie,” as Tonkin dashed up a gang plank and onto the President Jefferson, taking ahold of the wheel and powering up the engines so the ship wouldn’t drift away. And how did Florence Tonkin know to do any of that? Like the stage melodrama upon which the film was based, the Seattle Star chose to overlook things like facts and logic, since they proved inconvenient to a good story.

What Tonkin wasn’t aware of, however, was that the whole thing was a setup – she had stumbled into a trap. With no warning, four Chinese sailors rushed the bridge, grabbing Tonkin by the arms and dragging her to the middle of the President Jefferson, where the newly hired lead henchman, L.J. Lancaster of the Admiral Line, was set to interrogate her. For reasons no one seemed to know, let alone explain, Lancaster threatened to have Tonkin pitched into the hold below, the only thing to break her fall being a small cluster of mail sacks. “‘Well,’” Tonkin said defiantly, “‘[that] will be all right if you can arrange it for me to fall on some love letters. They’re sure to be soft.’” It was a line of dialogue that demonstrated, quite clearly, why the film adaptation of Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model needed to be done in the silent era.^[6]

That’s all it took to win Florence Tonkin’s release. That wincingly terrible quip, uttered in the face of non-existent danger, charmed L.J. Lancaster so much that he agreed, on the spot, to give up trying to shanghai Florence Tonkin and instead let her go.

This incident on the deck of the S.S. President Jefferson served as the finale of the Blue Mouse’s tie-up with the Star, which was deemed an unqualified success by both theatre and paper alike. The exploits of “Seattle’s Nellie” were carried in two front-page announcements plus five additional articles, each breathlessly detailing the previous day’s events for eager moviegoers, like new installments of the latest movie serial. Motion Picture News estimated that about 240 column inches were used during the tie-up, all of which were enhanced by having the Star‘s photographer snap away so each article could be accompanied by images.^[7] They didn’t mention Frank Jacobs’ newsreel footage, but this almost certainly made its way onto the Blue Mouse bill – some local color that got the audience in the mood even before the feature film began its run.

But even though the promotion was over, the Blue Mouse Theatre wasn’t quite done with Florence Tonkin, at least not yet. On the Monday after the movie opened, a week after it all began, Florence Tonkin was once again summoned to the Blue Mouse Theatre, reporting dutifully at 10 p.m. in the evening. This time, however, she had nothing to fear; the venue organized a special party in her honor, which was also thrown open to the general public. “Seattle’s Nellie” was, of course, the guest of honor, but she was joined by many of the other girls who had auditioned, via telephone, for her part. Then, after a short ceremony in the lobby, everyone took a seat and enjoyed the evening screening of Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model. Tonkin, of course, got in free, and she wasn’t alone in that – the Blue Mouse offered free tickets to any Seattle girl whose first name was Nellie.^[8]

There’s no record as to how much the “Seattle’s Nellie” tie-up boosted the Blue Mouse’s box office, but it certainly got the film noticed around town – way more than the average feature attraction. At the time the Star was the city’s most popular newspaper, so in that sense you could call the Nellie contest a huge success…if you could call it a contest at all. The story was a good one – 86 girls auditioned with Florence Tonkin, being the best of the bunch, hand-selected to perform the death-defying acts that unfolded throughout the week. Except the story didn’t match the facts. There may have been 86 girls who volunteered for the part, but in selecting Florence Tonkin the Blue Mouse wasn’t choosing just anyone. That’s because she was a 29-year-old mother of two who just happened to have a side job…as a film inspector at the Selznick exchange. The picture was a Goldwyn release, but the fact that Tonkin worked in the business calls everything into question. More likely than not, the call for volunteers was merely for show, with the Blue Mouse pre-selecting Tonkin for the role, so everything was a setup from the get-go. Florence Tonkin likely knew the basics of her daily itinerary and was familiar enough with these types of promotions to know how they were supposed to run. That’s why there was little surprise when she was kidnapped and whisked away to parts unknown – because they were known. And no one would be the wiser, save for Florence Tonkin’s close friends and family; for the average reader of the Seattle Star, who had exclusive access to the story for the entire week, this was just a clever promotional stunt.

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] See “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 7 March 1925, Page 1024.
[2] See “Thrills and Cash Await Girl,” Seattle Star, 12 May 1924, Page 1; and “Now for the Thrills!,” Seattle Star, 13 May 1924, Page 1.
[3] “Cloak Model Faces Death on Tracks!,” Seattle Star, 14 May 1924, Page 9.
[4] “Model Kidnapped Aboard Lugger!,” Seattle Star, 15 May 1924, Page 11.
[5] “What! In THAT Gown?,” Seattle Star, 16 May 1924, Page 6.
[6] “Nellie’s Shanghaied,” Seattle Star, 17 May 1924, Page 4.
[7] “Striking Publicity Given Nellie,” Motion Picture News, 14 June 1924, Page 2884.
[8] See “Nellie, Thrilled for Life, Still Smiles!,” Seattle Star, 19 May 1924, Page 7; and “Striking Publicity Given Nellie,” Motion Picture News, 14 June 1924, Page 2884.

As was demonstrated with the newspaper tie-up for Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model, when it came to silent era movie promotions there were relatively few rules. Obviously, there were some standard ways to advertise motion pictures – posters, newspaper ads, etc. – but all kinds of attention-grabbing stunts were used to engage the public. Most were undertaken in good fun, were well organized and completely on the level. And yet, the wide-open nature of promotional work sometimes led theatres to push boundaries, both ethical and legal.

Most of these were fairly innocent. When the Strand in Seattle booked the movie version of The Christian in 1923, for example, they devised a multi-faceted promotional campaign, including a tie-up with local bookstore. But the Strand’s campaign also included a special window display, organized with the help of the Greenstone Millinery Company. Greenstone created an entire display based on a hat inspired by the film’s leading lady, Mae Busch. According to the story, the folks at Greenstone were so taken with the actress that they created a special, one-of-a-kind hat and had it shipped directly to the Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood. Busch was so delighted with this creation that she immediately arranged for a set of publicity photos so she could show it off. Then she boxed the hat up and shipped it right back to the milliner’s shop in Seattle, along with a stack of her new pictures. That hat, and the photos Mae Busch took in it, then anchored Greenstone’s window display during The Christian’s run at the Strand.^[1]

Logic, of course, dictates that this was just a story. In all likelihood the Greenstone Millinery Company was never “inspired” to create a special hat for Mae Busch, didn’t send the imaginary hat to California, Busch didn’t pose for photographs nor did she return said hat (with photos) to the Seattle shop. The more likely scenario was that the Strand received a new set of Mae Busch photos from the Goldwyn exchange, some of which included a fancy hat, then went over to the Greenstone Millinery Company to see if they could replicate it for a window display. Less glamorous, but more truthful. That was likely also the case for a 1921 contest at Seattle’s Winter Garden Theatre, when the house was showing a return engagement of the Mary Pickford film Through the Back Door. In this case manager Charles Harden organized a Pickford look-alike contest, open to girls between the ages of seven and 12, where the winner would receive the EXACT costume worn by the actress in the film, which had been shipped to the Winter Garden direct from Hollywood.^[2] Which is, of course, a tale believable only to girls between the ages of seven and 12.

A different kind of subterfuge was used in 1928 at the Columbia Theatre in Longview. For the Lon Chaney film When the City Sleeps, the venue reportedly tried to bring the actor up from Hollywood for a personal appearance at the opening. Unfortunately, that couldn’t be done – Chaney was much too busy on a new picture – so the Columbia instead arranged for him to address the audience via a special telephone connection. On opening night, when the moment came for Lon Chaney to speak to the people of Longview, his portrait flashed on the Columbia screen and, after some scratchy moments, the actor said a few kind words to the crowd. Sort of. The audience was being addressed live, but it wasn’t through a special phone connection and it most certainly wasn’t Lon Chaney. Instead, the voice was the public relations manager for the Electrical Research Company, who devised the stunt as a way to demonstrate their synchronous sound machine for Columbia management. This gentleman stood in the theatre’s projection room and spoke into a microphone, the projected sound giving a fair imitation of a telephone call. “The illusion, according to comment, was a success from all angles,” said Motion Picture Record, who wholeheartedly approved of the deception. “Only the newspaper publishers, theatre manager and projectionist shared knowledge as to the true nature of this broadcast.”^[3]

Some promotions, however, went further than white lies. In 1923 the firefighting picture The Third Alarm was on its third local run, playing at the Apollo in West Seattle. There, manager Frank Farrow pulled out all the promotional stops to ensure a large turnout on opening night. It worked like a charm: when The Third Alarm debuted, the crowd stretched down the block. But then Farrow employed his real strategy, which was neither new nor particularly creative. After spending all that time getting the crowd primed for the film, Farrow turned around and called the cops on the very audience he had cultivated, telling police that there was an “unruly mob” outside the Apollo box office. Nothing of the sort was happening, but the police activity helped garner additional attention that, Farrow hoped, would translate into increased ticket sales.^[4] If local officials questioned Farrow’s false police report in any way, that was never recorded.

Sowing chaos was apparently a good strategy. In 1914, the Bijou-Grand Theatre in Walla Walla wanted to do something special for patrons on Independence Day, so they got their hands on several boxes of firecrackers and handed them out to youngsters attending their shows. It was a lovely gesture that ended predictably – within hours things were blowing up all over town, and police converged on the theatre to shut the giveaway down.^[5] Yet another “are you sure this is a good idea” moment came during an engagement of Don Q, Son of Zorro at Spokane’s Liberty Theatre in 1925. Before a special matinee screening, the pre-show attraction was to let boys under the age of 18 try their hand at snapping one of several leather whips laid out on the sidewalk in front of the venue. As hundreds of boys clustered around, organizers did their best to contain everyone while the youngsters took turns showing off for their friends. No injuries were reported, at least not by Motion Picture News, but handing leather whips over to teenage boys, then surrounding them with a crowd, doesn’t seem wise from a liability standpoint.^[6]

Safety also wasn’t much of a concern when Seattle’s Columbia Theatre promoted Foolish Wives in 1922. Manager William Cutts organized an extensive two-week publicity campaign, which included transforming the front of the venue to look like a palace in Monte Carlo. A late addition to this effort, however, was when Cutts hired a local aviator, F.R. Miller, to fly over Second Avenue at 12:30 p.m. on April 27^th. The catch was that Miller’s wife (a foolish wife, newspaper ads assured) was going to leap from the plane somewhere over downtown, then parachute to the street below. No one could predict where she would end up, but there was a $20 prize for the person who “captured” the young woman and escorted her back to the offices of the Post-Intelligencer.

It’s not clear whether Mrs. Miller actually made this jump; with the possibility of inclement weather, backup plans included launching a paper mâché effigy from the plane or simply dropping weighted envelopes along Second Avenue, each containing a prize certificate. Any of these scenarios would have been problematic. For starters, the event attracted hundreds of lunchtime onlookers, their eyes trained to the sky. Regardless of what came out of that plane, these people had their focus on what was falling from the heavens, and not on things like curbs, signs, traffic or, for that matter, each other. Miller would have had some control over her parachute, but a dummy or weighted envelopes would be at the mercy of the wind, with onlookers running this way, then that way, then this way as the object(s) fell to earth. This was a promotion rife with the potential for injury, but however it came off (there was no follow-up report), it seemed to be of little consequence.^[7]

But that was minor compared to the promotion used to sell The Unbeliever when it came to Everett in 1918. With U.S. doughboys in the trenches of France, manager S.P. Totten of the Star Theatre decided to promote this war-themed picture by setting up a recruiting station in the Star lobby, and had a contingent of 10 servicemen from the Bremerton Navy Yard (under the command of Corporal F.K. Hollister) brought over for the effort. The film’s four-day engagement began on July 28^th, and the idea was to have the servicemen on hand at the venue, with Corporal Hollister giving an enlistment pitch to the crowd at every screening. Hollister’s speeches (which he also gave at the nearby Everett Theatre) not only prompted several men to sign up during the film’s run but raised an estimated $158 for military charities, “a splendid sum considering the purpose of the collection was not advertised beforehand,” according to the Everett Herald.^[8]

All of that was well and good, but on the Saturday before The Unbeliever opened, S.P. Totten had an idea on how to announce his upcoming feature. Since the Marines were already in town, he invited them down to the Star to gladhand audiences before the final screening of the film Confession. But he also had another idea. Before Confession was to begin, these Marines, who arrived in full dress uniforms, were split into two groups, then directed toward a pair of automobiles in front of the venue. Both had banners promoting The Unbeliever, and Totten wanted the men to drive around town as a way to drum up business. One car was to head through the downtown business district, while the other was directed into Everett’s nearby residential area.

In the waning light of a summer evening, however, Totten wanted to make sure this contingent would get everyone’s attention. The way to do that, he reasoned, was to supply each vehicle with several boxes of blank cartridges, then tell the men to load their firearms and shoot at will, thus ensuring that no one – and ABSOLUTELY no one – would miss them as they passed.

The results of this promotion were predictable. While a good many citizens came outdoors to see what the ruckus was about, others never saw the cars because they were too busy running for cover, phoning the police department or reporting spontaneous gunfire to local newspapers. These folks had no idea what was happening, were frightened out of their minds and weren’t about to stick their heads up to see what was going on. For many of them, it was obvious that Germany had invaded the U.S. mainland in Everett, and the Huns were now fighting from house to house.

To read media coverage of this promotion, however, there just wasn’t a downside to the stunt. Despite catching the news and police officials off guard, the Everett Herald treated the incident as if the Marines were giving the city a 21-gun salute; the paper had more to say about the recruiting and fundraising efforts than whether it was appropriate to orchestrate an active shooter situation. Moving Picture World also reported on Totten’s promotion, but their coverage wasn’t any better. There the manager reported that the Star did capacity business during The Unbeliever’s four-day run and emphasized the recruiting and fundraising successes; the fact that the soldiers also opened fire on the citizenry was just a minor detail. In fact, the only halfway negative thing about this promotion was the fact that the Star’s operator, after chatting with Corporal Hollister and the others, decided to leave his post and enlist.^[9]

Not only were guns used to sell pictures, but so was vandalism. In 1914, at the Dream Theatre in Bremerton, the house was preparing to show the Essanay western The Man Trail and decided to employ some mischief to sell the picture. Manager Eugene Oswald instructed his staff to purchase two car tires, using the rubber from one to cut out a series of shoeprints, then affixing those prints to the second tire, which they then placed on the exhibitor’s automobile. Next, they devised a scrub brush contraption that was attached to the fender, such that the raised shoeprints rubbed against the brush with each tire rotation. This brush was hooked to a rubber tube that ran into the back seat of the car, where an employee sat with a hand pump and a bucket of whitewash. Once perfected, this contraption moved the paint from the bucket and down the tube, distributed it over the brush head, then coated the rubber footprints every time the tire went around. A pair of Dream employees then drove the car to the outskirts of Bremerton, got everything ready, then drove all the way back to the theatre leaving white shoeprints wherever they went, which included both lanes of city streets, sidewalks and vacant lots – basically, wherever they could drive without hitting a pedestrian. And they did this multiple times, from various starting points around the city, such that all the prints, if someone chose to follow them, lead directly to the Dream Theatre where The Man Trail was being shown.

How Eugene Oswald accomplished this without provoking the ire of Bremerton city officials was never mentioned. Nor was that the case when The Man Trail played Renton, where the theatre used a scaled-back version of the same stunt, hiring a pair of day laborers to paint the soles of their shoes and walk all over downtown.^[10]

Of course, when it came to dealing with city officials, sometimes it was better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. One assumes this was the case when James Clemmer showed the 1916 Metro film The Snowbird, starring Mabel Taliaferro, at his busy Second Avenue house. Unbeknownst to patrons, there was an element of danger just getting tickets at the box office because the venue brought in a live mountain lion, which they caged up on the sidewalk. “This Is a Genuine Mountain Lion,” read a sign, “[c]ome inside and see them chase this same lion with dogs through deep snowdrifts and catch it alive.” (Although The Snowbird had a wilderness setting, the display was for an accompanying short in which hunter H.M. Baker stalked these animals in Montana.) It’s not clear how James Clemmer got his hands on full-grown mountain lion, or why (or if?) the city of Seattle allowed him to display the animal on a busy downtown street. But he wasn’t the only Clemmer to dabble with this idea. In 1921 James’ brother Howard organized a special screening of Mary Pickford’s Little Lord Fauntleroy for sick and disabled children at his Clemmer Theatre in Spokane, where he arranged to have a baby polar bear dragged onstage as part of the film’s prologue.^[11]

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] “Thorough Promotion Campaign Behind Christian,” Motion Picture News, 28 April 1923, Page 2050.
[2] “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 16 July 1921, Page 336.
[3] “‘Personal Appearance’ Stunt for Lon Chaney Film Does Wonders for Box Office of Columbia Theatre, Longview, Wash.,” Motion Picture Record, 15 December 1928 (Vol. 5, No. 50), Page 15.
[4] See “Seattle is Scene of Extensive Third Alarm Campaign,” Motion Picture News, 21 April 1923, Page 1904; and “Seattle,” Moving Picture World, 5 May 1923, Page 40.
[5] “In the Northwest,” Moving Picture World, 1 August 1914, Page 722.
[6] “`Masked Marvel’ Exploits Don Q in Spokane,” Motion Picture News, 31 October 1925, Page 2036.
[7] See “Aviator Will Launch Effigy,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 26 April 1922, Page 2; Columbia Theatre advertisement, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 26 April 1922, Page 6; and “Selling Foolish Wives to Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 20 May 1922, Page 2842. Although cars and trucks were more common, airplanes were occasionally used in the promotion of motion pictures. During “Paramount Week” in 1920, the Seattle exchange hired local pilot Eddie Hubbard fly a seaplane over downtown while Coliseum manager Frank Steffy and Albert Malotte, the house organist, dropped leaflets from above. Seattle officials apparently had no issues with this kind of stunt, but that wasn’t the case in Hoquiam. There, a similar 1927 flight landed the pilot and his assistant in custody after being arrested (by a traffic cop, no less) for “reckless operation of an airplane and menacing public safety.” (See “Seattle,” Motion Picture News, 16 December 1920, Page 3044; and “Arrest Hoquiam Theater Fliers,” Tacoma News Tribune, 26 April 1927, Page 10.)
[8] “Marines Come for Recruits; Also Aid Boys’ Tobacco Fund,” Everett Herald, 29 July 1918, Page 3.
[9] See Star Theatre advertisement, Everett Herald, 27 July 1918, Page 10; “Marines Come for Recruits; Also Aid Boys’ Tobacco Fund,” Everett Herald, 29 July 1918, Page 3; Star Theatre advertisement, Everett Herald, 30 July 1918, Page 5; Star Theatre advertisement, Everett Herald, 31 July 1918, Page 5; Star Theatre advertisement, Everett Herald, 3 August 1918, Page 10; and S.J. Anderson, “Seattle Trade Letter,” Moving Picture World, 24 August 1918, Page 1147.
[10] “V-L-S-E Seattle Branch Offers Gold Watch for Best Publicity Stunt,” Motion Picture News, 20 November 1914, Page 57.
[11] See Charles Eugene Banks, “Clemmer’s Thrilling Film Shows Capture of Lion,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 30 May 1916, Page 8; “‘Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 22 July 1916, Page 198; and “Spokane,” Motion Picture News, 24 December 1921, Page 134.

One of the most popular ways for a theatre to engage their audience was to hold a contest. Whether simple or elaborate, such promotions typically featured prizes sourced through donations from other local businesses. These could vary across the spectrum, but most were inconsequential, from small cash awards to everyday household appliances.

On occasion, however, the prizes got bigger – up to and including a brand-new automobile. But these contests were uncommon and almost always came with strings, since cars were too valuable to simply give away. A common format was to tie this kind of promotion to ticket sales, such that the house got its patrons to become their sales staff. Participants were encouraged to get friends, family and acquaintances to purchase ticket booklets, the dollars raised used to gage the “performance” of each participant. Ticket sale contests typically ran for several weeks at a time, with some venues posting a leaderboard, complete with pictures of the top contestants, so regular theatre patrons could keep track of the standings.

For the most part contests were easy to run, but that’s not to say they always went off without a hitch. Or several. Such was the case on Saturday, October 23, 1915, when Spokane police were summoned to the Empress Theatre following a contest giveaway gone wild.

The events of that evening began six weeks earlier. Lon Brown, owner and manager of the Empress, embarked on an extended ticket sale contest featuring a new car for the first-place winner, along with a diamond ring for the runner up. Brown wasn’t the first Northwest exhibitor to run this type of event but, unlike most others, he didn’t have a larger entity backing him up. Similar auto giveaways were usually organized by the theatre’s film exchange, who had the deep pockets and organizational know-how to pull off this type of event. Instead, Brown hired Charles Adelsperger, who had run similar contests in the past, to manage the effort. Adeslperger was given a temporary office at the Empress, then worked diligently to get everything up and running while Brown handled day-to-day operations at the theatre. The Empress ticket sale contest was only open to women (a common stipulation), and “votes” were earned through the sale of special tickets that could be redeemed at the box office. There were different ticket levels being sold, each earning the contestant a certain number of votes, with the top vote-getter receiving a $900 Studebaker touring car.

Everything launched smoothly and ran like clockwork until two weeks into the event, when Lon Brown abruptly sold his venue to the newly formed Empress Amusement Company, a group of five young men looking to break into the business. One of these investors was Joseph F. Krom, who came in and took over day-to-day management of the Empress and thus assumed responsibility for the ticket contest. To that end, Krom met with Charles Adelsperger and signed a revised contract transferring responsibility from Lon Brown to the Empress Amusement Company. The terms were the same ones originally negotiated by Brown – Charles Adelsperger would be paid 25% of the money earned through ticket sales, with the Empress Amusement Company on the hook for purchasing the contest prizes.

The good part of this arrangement is that Adelsperger, working independently, stayed on to keep the contest running, freeing Krom to focus on operations. He, like his four partners, was new to the theatre game and keenly focused on changes they wanted to make at the Empress. After some time, however, Charles Adelsperger approached Krom about phase two of the promotion, which was to purchase and display the top prizes. This was critical to success: both the audience and the contestants needed to see what was up for grabs, and having the prizes on display in the theatre would motivate people to keep selling. The Empress had a partitioned entrance, for example, so the car could be driven inside and ringed with signage to highlight the contest, while a separate display could be erected to showcase the diamond ring.

But all that was a problem for Krom, since the contest had been out of sight/out of mind during his first few weeks of management. The Empress Amusement Company was already tight on funds and Krom knew the group didn’t have the money for prizes. Surely, he argued, they could dip into the ticket money that had already come in to make those purchases. But very little had – this wasn’t uncommon, in Adelsperger’s experience, because contestants often held their cards close to the vest until the deadline approached. That left the new manager in a bind, as he didn’t want to inform his business partners that he had already made a relatively expensive mistake. Krom and Adelsperger discussed options, pooling available funds and even contributing from their own wallets but were still $500 short on the cost of the Studebaker alone. With few viable options, their conversation gradually turned to creative ways they could get themselves out of the mess. And that’s when one of them – it’s not clear which – piped up with the words that have doomed many an endeavor: “Hold on – I know a guy…”

It began as a reasonable solution. They had enough for the diamond ring, but needed someone to pony up for the Studebaker, money that could be repaid once contest funds rolled in. So they brought in “the guy,” John Raymond, a railroad conductor from nearby Hillyard, and laid out their dilemma. Raymond was willing to put up the money, with interest, but also wanted to secure his investment. His wife Elizabeth was participating in the ticket contest, so Raymond wanted the loan amount credited to his wife’s vote tally if he wasn’t repaid before the results were announced. That would easily vault Elizabeth into first place, so John Raymond was looking for a guarantee that the loan was either being repaid or he was going home with the Studebaker. With Joseph Krom somewhat desperate for a solution, the two executed a pair of written assignments – one that went into the collection box for the contest, and the other that was given to John Raymond as security. It was Krom’s intent to repay Raymond from contest money, lifting the vote credit from his wife and allowing the contest to run its natural course. Everything else would occur behind the scenes, and no one would be the wiser.

That bullet dodged, the contest continued as planned. Both the Studebaker and the diamond ring were purchased, then put on display at the Empress, and contestants continued to sell their tickets while competing for a grand prize that, if things didn’t work out, had already been awarded in a secret handshake deal. All that was left to do was to wind down the contest, collect the money, repay John Raymond, tally the votes and name the winners.

Everything led up to Saturday, October 23, 1915, when the contest participants, their friends and families gathered at the Empress to watch the house’s last show of the evening, after which the winners would be announced. The day was an exercise in controlled chaos. Ticket money had trickled in throughout the week, but on Saturday the spigot was turned on, with Charles Adelsperger spending a good deal of his time taking in funds, writing receipts and collecting unsold tickets. Meanwhile, Krom and his staff were preparing for the evening’s big event, which included a special program complete with a master of ceremonies, so the Empress was a flurry of activity right up to the final moments.

Everything was falling into place. Everything except the repayment of John Raymond’s loan.

Raymond himself was unconcerned. Instead of getting paid, he knew he’d be going home with the Studebaker, which was a fair consolation prize, seeing as he’s the one who purchased it. He changed his tune during the formal ceremony, however, when the master of ceremonies awarded the diamond ring to the contest’s second place winner: Elizabeth Raymond. The audience erupted as Mrs. Raymond (it’s not clear whether she was aware of the backroom deal) went onstage to accept her prize. Her husband, however, was furious. Part of the announcement included Elizabeth’s vote total, and it was obvious that the loan amount hadn’t been credited to her as agreed. John Raymond leapt from his seat and ran into the foyer, looking for someone who could give him answers. Joseph Krom, meanwhile, took one look at Raymond and realized he had a problem. He was so caught up in planning the festivities that he hadn’t repaid the loan, assuming Charles Adelsperger would have taken care of that detail. The failsafe had failed: John Raymond wasn’t repaid, and Elizabeth wasn’t taking home the car.

How did this happen? In a frenzy, Krom bolted for Charles Adelsperger’s office, only to discover that his contest organizer wasn’t there. In fact, no one had seen Charles Adelsperger since about 9 p.m. that evening. He was gone, but he left behind quite a bit of paperwork in his temporary office, including ledger books and contest receipts. And, unfortunately, it didn’t take a forensic accountant to see that none of it matched up. Even with a cursory review, Krom could tell he was short at least $600 (this eventually soared to $2,000), and most of the funds collected by the Empress that day weren’t even logged. Charles Asperger spent his day collecting money and writing bogus receipts, then vanished.

Meanwhile, back in the Empress auditorium, where nothing yet seemed amiss, the grand prize announcement went ahead as planned. The winner of the Empress ticket contest was 17-year-old Josephine Lein of Hillyard, who shrieked with excitement when her name was announced. To cheers and applause, Lein rushed into the lobby of the Empress, hopped into her new car and started blowing the horn, proudly announcing that she was giving free rides to anyone and everyone.

This scene was a wonderous victory celebration until John Raymond intervened, shoving his way to front of the crowd and ordering the girl out of the car, screaming like a wild man that she wasn’t the rightful owner. The crowd was angry and confused; no one understood why he was ruining Lein’s good fortune. And things quickly got out of hand – John Raymond was shouting at everyone, while the crowd began making their own threats and instructing Lein not to surrender the vehicle. Empress staff jumped in to restore order but eventually had to retreat and call Spokane police instead. They arrived to a mob scene, with young Josephine Lein in the middle of it all, sobbing incoherently while slumped in the driver’s seat of the Studebaker.

It wasn’t until 1:30 in the morning, after most of the crowd had dispersed (and a deputy prosecutor was called in) before there was any resolution. Police interviewed Krom, Lein, Raymond and others in attendance, and after consulting with the prosecutor, made a very unpopular decision: Mr. and Mrs. Raymond got to drive away in the car. They did so because John Raymond had with him the copy of his written assignment for the Studebaker loan, which was signed by Joseph Krom and proved that he had a valid claim to the vehicle. Since the loan wasn’t repaid, since Elizabeth Raymond’s vote total hadn’t been adjusted, and since the credit would have carried her past Josephine Lein’s total, the car was awarded to Raymond. Lein was absolutely beside herself and had to be escorted home by family.

The Empress was looking at a loss of about $2,000, but the reputational damage was incalculable. While police were off searching for Charles Adelsperger, Joseph Krom had to deal with the fallout, and it came from every direction. After all, he was the one who invited the Spokane press to the Empress that evening, but instead of reporting on the venue’s latest promotional success, they instead had front-row seats for a drama that included, among other things, a robbery, a backroom deal and a teary-eyed heroine.

Krom had problems in spades. First off, his business partners learned of the debacle in the morning papers and were, understandably, not happy. They stopped short of throwing him under the bus, but reached for comment they were also very clear: Krom cut the deal, then failed to keep his end of the bargain. The Empress Amusement Company wasn’t involved, nor did they know anything was amiss. The newspapers were also where Empress patrons learned of the fiasco, and they had lots of opinions to share with manager Krom, most of them none too kind. This included any number of contest participants who were upset to have worked so hard for a promotion that was poorly run at best and rigged at worst. Then there were the Empress’ vendors, who suddenly appeared out of the woodwork. With a purported $2,000 loss, stretched finances and pending lawsuits, Krom was besieged by local companies who wanted to collect on unpaid bills – right then, right now.

Then, of course, there was 17-year-old Josephine Lein, who may have been reeling from the incident but nonetheless had the presence of mind to lawyer up. “I was announced from the stage that I was the winner and I think I should have the car,” she told The Spokesman-Review. “I gave six weeks of my time selling tickets to get votes. Nobody worked harder than I did…”^[1]

Lein wasn’t kidding – she dropped out of high school to pursue the contest win, something local papers treated as a sign of her pluck and ambition rather than, say, a poor educational decision. It was easy to portray Josephine Lein as a victim, but some journalists eventually noted that she wasn’t squeaky clean. According to the Spokesman-Review, Lein and her brother struck up a relationship with Charles Adelsperger while the contest was running and were getting private updates on where she ranked in the standings. At one point, as the deadline approached, Adelsperger indicated that Lein would likely win the Studebaker, but later added that it would take another $200 to ensure the win. With that information, the Lein and her brother dug into the family savings and funneled an extra $170 to Charles Adelsperger in an effort to get over the top.^[2]

Even so, Josephine Lein claimed to hold no animosity toward manager Joseph Krom, stating that they were both victims in this mess. Krom, for his part, just wanted the whole thing behind him. “We don’t want Miss Lein to lose the car and will do all we can to obtain it for her,” he said the day following the incident – a statement he appears to have made before consulting his business partners.^[3]

This was an enormous legal and public relations fiasco for the Empress Amusement Company. Although John Raymond drove away with the car, the company tried to save face by conducting an investigation of the incident. To that end, they named a committee of five prominent Spokanites, including lawyers and bankers, to review the evidence and render a decision. “The prizes will be awarded according to the judge’s decision, just as soon as our muddled finances are straightened out,” secretary E.O. Farrell told the Spokane Daily Chronicle.^[4]

The committee’s decision was predictable. They reviewed the evidence and determined that the deal Krom struck with John Raymond had to be honored. So the Raymonds were allowed to keep the Studebaker, but the damage was already done. With details splashed across Spokane’s daily papers, the attention reinforced the notion that entire Empress organization were careless business managers.

Other than Mr. and Mrs. John Raymond, there were no winners. Within days of the investigation Joseph Krom either stepped down or was removed from his managerial post, and the Empress was eventually sold. Krom was driven out of the Northwest movie business for good, eventually becoming part of the management team at a nearby mining and smelting company, where he worked for the bulk of his career. It’s not clear whether or how the Empress Amusement Company settled with Josephine Lein, but she was likely compensated in some way, perhaps after the venue was sold. And as for Charles F. Adelsperger, he remained at large on a warrant for embezzlement. It’s not clear if he was ever apprehended.^[5]

By Eric L. Flom – June 2025

Notes:
[1] Josephine Lein, as quoted in “Says Car Winner is Mrs. Raymond,” The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA), 27 October 1915, Page 6.
[2] “Says Car Winner is Mrs. Raymond,” The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA), 27 October 1915, Page 6.
[3] Joseph Krom, as quoted in “Mob Scene Staged Over Auto Award,” The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA), 25 October 1915, Page 1.
[4] “Empress May be Forced to Close,” Spokane Daily Chronicle, 25 October 1915, Page 3.
[5] Ibid.; see also “Exhibitor Rues Having Prize Contest,” The Moving Picture World, 13 November 1915, Page 1346.