First Frames:
Moving Pictures Arrive in the Northwest

In Seattle, one of the city’s earliest stage engagements arrived in 1864 when Pearson’s Panorama of the War gave two shows at Plummer’s Hall on April 4^th and 5^th. Little is known about this offering, but because the city only had a few hundred residents at the time (and because Plummer’s was a tiny second-floor meeting space), the event wasn’t a large one. Nonetheless, at this point a traveling show of this type was probably well attended, if only because the community saw so few. In this case a single presenter – presumably Mr. Pearson – gave a lecture replete with news and gossip from the East. This by itself would have made it a popular attraction, since information about the Civil War, then playing out on battlefields a continent away, only trickled into the Northwest and was often dated by the time it arrived. Pearson, assuming the role of “expert,” likely explained recent events, providing detail and context, and perhaps even answered questions. But, to facilitate his talk, the performer brought along a series of oil paintings, subjects unknown, depicting key Civil War personalities and battle scenes. Given the small size of Plummer’s Hall, these would have been displayed for the audience, allowing Pearson to highlight certain events and personalities, and were likely made available for closer inspection after the show.

Arriving in 1864, Pearson’s Panorama of the War came to Seattle a full year before Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, so the engagement was less art history than living history. In that sense the program would have been valued for its documentary quality, in that Pearson likely had (or claimed to have) Eastern connections bolstering his descriptions of the conflict and its key figures. Not only could the speaker bring the audience new and interesting details, but the paintings helped them visualize people and events they had only heard or read about. So, in a sense, Pearson’s Panorama was a touring current affairs program, bringing news and commentary on the Civil War to citizens who were largely isolated from the conflict by geography and technology.

With a limited population base and few ways to travel the region, except by water, touring engagements like Pearson’s Panorama of the War were few and far between in the early Northwest. But similar “illustrated lectures” would follow, in what became a popular entertainment genre during Washington’s territorial years.

In January 1871, for example, Yesler’s Pavilion in Seattle hosted a three-night lecture series featuring scenes (most likely projected stereopticon slides) from Europe and the Holy Land, and then, six months later, showcased a set of illustrated lectures called Barker’s Great Panorama of the Four Rivers of the West. Later, in September 1873, Yesler’s Hall hosted a three-night engagement of Reed’s Panoramic Views of Oregon and Washington, followed two years later by a magic lantern performance to benefit the Skagit River Jam Removal Fund. Like Pearson’s Panorama, each of these engagements was part education and part entertainment, using still images (either paintings or photographic slides) to transport the audience to a far away location. Unfortunately, Seattle’s newspapers from this period don’t offer much detail about any of these engagements. Other than documenting show dates, venues and subject matter, commentary was often limited to remarks about crowd size or an acknowledgment that the shows were “pleasing.”^[1] When a stereopticon lecture arrived at Yesler’s Hall in February 1877 showing images of Yellowstone and the Dakotas, for example, the Daily-Intelligencer barely had anything to say about the presentation. Their most informative piece was a pre-engagement ad ensuring the event would be “[i]nstructive to the people,” and noting that reserved seats “can be obtained at Jack Levy’s.”^[2] Such was the state of entertainment reporting in the Northwest.

It wouldn’t be until 1882 before an illustrated lecture finally got more than lip service. On October 14^th of that year, R.C. White came to Seattle for a two-day engagement at Yesler’s Hall giving a talk called Sundown Seas. (While the show’s title suggests something dreamy, perhaps even tropical, White was showing landscape paintings from the Oregon coast, including scenes of Yaquina Bay, near present-day Newport, and Young’s Falls near Astoria.) In this case, however, White wasn’t a one-man show. His lecture anchored the event, but the program included Queen Kittie, a dwarf who performed song and dance numbers, as well as a Miss White, presumably a family member, who sang songs and specialized in “motto delineations.”^[3] The Daily Post-Intelligencer lauded the entire show, including White’s lecture and paintings, going so far as to admit that “[s]ome are very beautiful.”^[4]

The increasing frequency of traveling performers coming through the Northwest in the late 19^th century was due, in part, to a growth spurt for Seattle, the region’s largest city – its population increased more than tenfold in the 1880s, and would continue to grow exponentially for the next 40 years. As a result, Seattle quickly outgrew pioneer entertainment venues like Yesler’s Pavilion, Plummer’s Hall and Yesler’s Hall. Squire’s Opera House, the city’s first formal theatre, was constructed in 1879, while the bigger and grander Frye’s Opera House opened in 1884. With a growing population, improved transportation throughout the region and larger, more modern theatres, places like Seattle, Tacoma and Portland emerged as key West Coast stops for an increasing number of traveling performers, some of whom based their tours out of San Francisco.

It wasn’t just the Pacific Northwest undergoing changes. While illustrated lectures like Pearson’s and Sundown Seas used paintings as their visual element, technology was allowing newer and more diverse images to be produced – and more importantly, mass produced. The illustrated lecture took off in popularity when the process of dry photography was developed in the 1870s, significantly reducing the cost to imprint photographic images onto glass stereopticon slides. This made a wide variety of scenes available to traveling performers, adding realism to their lecture subjects without sacrificing color, which could be added by hand to these slides at an extra cost. The development of limelight, as well, allowed magic lantern presentations to be projected to larger and larger audiences. The fact that these slides could be produced cheaply and presented to a packed theatre even changed the nature of the illustrated lecture. Whereas audiences would have expected Mr. Pearson to have a certain expertise when it came to describing the Civil War, the mass production of photographic slide sets allowed lecturers with little or no experience to join the circuit. By the 1880s a performer could buy slide sets on the open market, some of which came with a prepared lecture that, once memorized, bestowed authenticity upon a speaker who hadn’t necessarily earned it. Rick Altman, in his book Silent Film Sound, reprinted a turn-of-the-century advertisement for one slide set that featured almost everything a traveling lecturer would need for a theatrical tour, barring the projection equipment. For $24 the buyer could purchase a set of 61 color slides of New York City, in addition to a full lecture written by Reverend W.J. Esling. On top of this, the showman could enhance the slide presentation by purchasing any of nine Edison motion pictures that depicted New York street scenes, costing from $5 to $15 apiece.^[5] This was one-stop shopping for the lecture artist with ambition – a mixed media package allowing the buyer to undertake an entire stage tour without being encumbered by such things as, say, research or experience.

Advances in stereopticon projection equipment also allowed for a more varied presentational approach. Science-based lectures often had a formal structure, but slides that showed places, told stories or illustrated songs could sometimes be enhanced with features on the projector itself. With the right equipment a skilled performer could present an evening of entertainment that not only engaged the audience with words and pictures, but also with mechanical trickery that helped make the still images more engaging.^[6] Fades, dissolves and slide sequencing, among other things, could be used to enhance the storytelling process, so performers had the ability to create a unique and visually appealing show that could suggest motion without necessarily providing it.

Pinpointing exactly when these newer, more complex shows began turning up in the Northwest would be difficult to do, but it’s clear that the illustrated lecture format became increasingly popular toward the end of the 19^th century. The growth of the lecture industry, together with an expanding railroad system, allowed these showmen (and they were almost always men) to appear more frequently around the country, including the Pacific Northwest. One such performer was Philip Phillips, who held court at Frye’s Opera House for three nights in September 1887. Unlike other lecturers, Phillips had a unique approach that set his shows apart; in fact, his stereopticon slides only played a supporting role. That’s because Phillips was known as “the singing pilgrim” – he was a musician and composer of religious songs who augmented his stage performances with projected images of the Holy Land and other places. In this way the stereopticon played an important (though not central) role in his act, since Phillips was essentially giving a vocal concert with background visuals that complimented his lyrics.

Philip Phillips was a popular figure and enthralled the audience at Frye’s Opera House. Playing to “the best people of Seattle,” he was a tour-de-force on opening night. “The views presented by the aid of limelights and the photo-opticon were grand and gave a vivid representation of the cities and routes of travel which were shown,” wrote the Daily Post-Intelligencer, without indicating whether these “routes of travel” were ones Phillips actually made himself. “Mr. Phillips also charmed his patrons with his artistic rendering of his popular songs,” they continued. “Taken as a whole, Mr. Phillips gave Seattle last night one of the noblest treats her citizens have enjoyed for a long time and that his audience tonight and tomorrow night will be increased, goes without saying. Those who were there last night will go again and will insist on taking their friends along.”^[7]

Philip Phillips was by no means the last illustrated lecturer to play Seattle, and indeed the form remained popular well into the 20^th century, even after the introduction of motion pictures. Some performers, in fact, incorporated films into the act; in the span of nearly half a century, illustrated lectures went from paintings to slides to movies, and were sometimes a combination of several visual mediums. But with certain exceptions, the growing popularity of legitimate stage, vaudeville and motion picture entertainment cut into the success once enjoyed by the illustrated lecturer. In a sense, these showmen laid the groundwork for the entertainment form that eventually displaced them – one that put even more emphasis on the image and its ability to depict reality. It just took a new technology to do it.

By Eric L. Flom – January 2025

Notes:
[1] Listings for these illustrated lecture engagements was pulled from the “Play Index,” J. Willis Sayre Collection, University of Washington Special Collections Division; and Appendix II in Eugene Clinton Elliott, A History of Variety-Vaudeville in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press – 1944), Pages 68-74.
[2] See Yesler’s Hall advertisement, Seattle Daily Intelligencer, 27 February 1877, Page 2.
[3] See Yesler’s Hall advertisement, Seattle Daily Intelligencer, 14 October 1882, Page 4.
[4] “Sundown Seas,” Seattle Daily Intelligencer, 15 October 1882, Page 4.
[5] See George Kleine advertisement, reprinted in Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press – 2004), Page 135.
[6] Terry and Deborah Borton, Before the Movies: American Magic Lantern Entertainment and the Nation’s First Great Screen Artist, Joeseph Boggs Beale (New Barnet, UK: John Libbey Publishing, Ltd. – 2014), Pages 8-9.
[7] “Philip Phillips,” Seattle Daily Post-Intelligencer, 20 September 1887, Page 3.

The last two decades of the 19^th century were an age of science, where America’s technological and industrial might were being harnessed. No one epitomized this better than Thomas Alva Edison, the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” who invented or improved hundreds of machines and devices helping contribute to the country’s economic expansion. Many viewed him as the American ideal – an entrepreneurial visionary changing the world through his work. The press and public were fascinated with each new Edison invention, eagerly awaiting the next grand idea that might, possibly, transform their lives.

Motion pictures eventually became part of the Edison lore, but the public would have to wait before seeing them for the first time. He began experimenting with the idea as early as 1888, patenting a device he called the kinetoscope, a name derived from the Greek words “to watch” and “movement.” Work on the technology was done at the Edison laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey, and continued for several years under the direction of William Kennedy Laurie Dickson. There, the Edison team developed a motion picture camera and began experimenting with early film techniques, which included constructing the Black Maria studio in early 1893. (The term was slang for a police paddy wagon, which the studio was said to resemble.) The Black Maria had multiple roof openings and was a small building that could be moved and rotated via a system of tracks to maximize the available sunlight, which was integral for the shooting of test films.

The Edison team eventually demonstrated a prototype kinetoscope in 1893, but continued tinkering with its form and function. During this time, the Black Maria played host to a variety of stage performers and artists as Dickson and his men made a variety of camera tests. Dancers, strongmen, boxers, novelty acts – sometimes even laboratory assistants were used as subjects.

It wasn’t until April 14, 1894, that the kinetoscope was finally given a public demonstration, when several units went on display in a parlor at 1155 Broadway in Manhattan. But that opening was the culmination of a lengthy process; for months Thomas Edison had been orchestrating a nationwide campaign publicizing the technology, with newspapers printing countless articles highlighting the wonderous new kinetoscope. Many of these syndicated pieces were picked up in Washington newspapers, including articles that ran in Olympia’s Washington Standard and the Yakima Herald, both of which treated Edison’s latest wonder as front-page news.^[1]

Sometimes dubbed a “peep show” entertainment, the kinetoscope was a large wooden box, about four feet tall, with a small brass viewer on top. Inside, a filmstrip on a looping system unfurled over a series of vertical rollers. Once the patron inserted a coin (usually a nickel), a motor inside the kinetoscope pulled the filmstrip over the rollers, through a revolving shutter and over a light source below the viewer. The result was photographs that appeared to move – at long last, the static image brought to life.

Experiencing this new technology was nothing short of spectacular; that said, it was far from perfect. Kinetoscopes had focus issues, so the images weren’t always crisp and clear, and the film tended to jump and jerk as it was pulled through the machine. Still, this was something the public hadn’t seen before. Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope was heralded as a scientific breakthrough, flaws and all.

About 25 kinetoscope machines were produced initially, and to keep them stocked with fresh, new film subjects, production was ramped up at the Black Maria in West Orange. As before, the subjects typically leaned into popular culture (vaudeville performers, dancers and circus acts), which was a much different than the early films made by other pioneers in the field, such as the Lumière brothers in France, who often shot scenes of everyday life. (While Thomas Edison is viewed as America’s inventor of motion pictures, he was by no means THE inventor of motion pictures. In the last decades of the 19^th century important work was being done by several men throughout the United States and Europe – it’s just that most of them didn’t possess Edison’s resources or marquee value.)

Following the kinetoscope’s debut in April 1894, additional machines were produced and shipped to licensed dealers throughout the United States. The first on the West Coast arrived in June, going to Peter Bacigalupi, the Edison representative in San Francisco. But it wasn’t long before a kinetoscope machine made its way up to Washington state; in Seattle, this took place in September, six months after the technology debuted in Manhattan.

Unfortunately, there’s little historical record around either of Seattle’s two known kinetoscope engagements, in September and December of 1894. For the September engagement, there doesn’t seem to have been any newspaper advertising or press coverage, save for a one-line mention in the September 8^th edition of the Post-Intelligencer. “Edison’s latest invention, the kinetoscope, [is] now on exhibition at 1020 Second street, opposite [the] Rialto [building],” they wrote, almost as an afterthought.^[2] There’s no indication of when this engagement began, how long it lasted, how many machines were on display or what was being shown. But it was held near Second and Madison, most likely in a rented storefront, so there was probably a good deal of signage outside the location heralding its arrival. In this respect the show was aimed squarely at pedestrians. Anyone near that location would have been quite aware that Edison’s latest invention was on display; organizers relied on visibility and word of mouth to promote the engagement. Heightening interest would have been the fact that the show was temporary. Edison licensed his kinetoscopes to individuals who took them through specific geographic regions, usually popping up in urban centers and running for a few days, or maybe a week, before leaving town. So, while the kinetoscope engagement in September 1894 didn’t garner much media attention, these kinds of demonstrations would have been widely known to the people who lived, worked or shopped in that area. There’s no record of where this kinetoscope show went next, but it likely toured other western Washington cities, most likely urban areas where the show’s organizers could be guaranteed of ample foot traffic.

A second kinetoscope exhibition arrived in Seattle a few months later, in December, when an unknown number of machines took up temporary residence in a storefront on the Occidental Block at Second and James.^[3] This may or may not have been the same kinetoscope program showcased in September; by November 1894, several kinetoscopes had been shipped to individuals in the Northwest, with machines going directly to Seattle, Tacoma and Spokane, among other places.^[4]

The December show was also a temporary affair, but this time the exhibitors went to the trouble of placing advertisements in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; for reasons unknown, they didn’t advertise in the Daily Times. This kinetoscope parlor opened on December 13, 1894, and ran for a total of six days. Again, there’s nothing to describe what the show was like or what viewers were seeing. Advertisements ran between December 13^th through 19^th (“Edison’s Latest Wonder!…The most Mysterious and Marvelous Invention of the Nineteenth Century”), but neither of Seattle’s dailies wrote anything about the kinetoscope as an attraction.^[5]

We can make assumptions about what was likely seen (there weren’t too many kinetoscope films at the time, and certain subjects were more popular than others), but there is more unknown than known about these 1894 engagements. Still, they were the earliest moving picture shows in the Northwest – the first in a series of developments that would eventually lead to the modern film industry. “[M]ark you well this Edison peep show Kinetoscope,” Terry Ramsaye wrote his 1925 book A Million and One Nights. “Every strand in the thread of motion picture destiny runs through it…Every motion picture machine, every motion picture enterprise, every motion picture personality, screen star or magnate of the screen theatre can be traced to some connection growing out of the little black box that Edison dubbed the Kinetoscope.”^[6]

The kinetoscope was indeed a breakthrough, but it only enjoyed a short run of popularity. Besides image quality, kinetoscopes had other limitations. Not enough new films were being created and distributed, for example, so they lacked variety. In addition, most subjects were photographed at roughly 40 frames per second, so for a machine with only 50 feet of vertical looping capacity each kinetoscope could only present about 20-30 seconds of entertainment. Gradual improvements (lower shooting speeds, for example) brought the running time up to a minute, but this was still quite short. The key factor limiting the kinetoscope’s appeal, however, was the fact that it could only show films to one viewer at a time. Making pictures move was a technological breakthrough, but it was going to take another advance before there were movies for the masses, and that wouldn’t come for another two years.

In the United States the first projected motion pictures were shown at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in New York on April 23, 1896, followed by the demonstration of a rival technology, the Lumiere cinematographé, at Keith’s Union Square Theatre on June 29^th. Projection was the key development allowing motion pictures to become a form of popular entertainment, but for a brief time the kinetoscope continued to occupy a place in America’s entertainment industry. Even as late as 1899, when there was seemingly little future for movies shown in a coin-operated machines, the American Kinetoscope Company of Washington D.C. was advertising for sales agents in the Pacific Northwest, offering a “big commission…pays for itself soon.”^[7]

Given where motion pictures were headed, those claims were doubtful.

By Eric L. Flom – January 2025

Notes:
[1] See “Edison’s Kinetoscope,” Washington Standard (Olympia), 16 March 1894, Page 1; and “A Living Photograph,” Yakima Herald, 19 April 1894, Page 1.
[2] See “Edison’s latest invention…,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 8 September 1894, Page 5.
[3] Material on the December engagement of Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope originally appeared in Eric L. Flom, “Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope – forerunner to projected motion pictures – is demonstrated in Seattle on December 13, 1894,” HistoryLink (https://www.historylink.org/File/7582), accessed 18 May 2019.
[4] James Labosier, “From the Kinetoscope to the Nickelodeon: Motion Picture Presentation and Production in Portland, Oregon, From 1894 to 1906,” Film History, Volume 16, Issue 3 (2004), Page 287. In this case, Labosier’s work draws on earlier kinetoscope research by Charles Musser and Gordon Hendricks.
[5] Kinetoscope advertisement, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 14 December 1894, Page 4.
[6] Terry Ramsaye; A Million and One Nights (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster – 1986 [1925]), Pages 72-73.
[7] “Agents for coin slot kinetoscope…” advertisement, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7 May 1899, Page 18.

As with the kinetoscope, there was a lag between the introduction of projected motion pictures in the East and their eventual debut in Washington state. Seattle, in fact, didn’t see projected films until January 1897, when they arrived in a familiar format, as part of an illustrated lecture. This was in a series of talks given by Dr. Gregory De Kannet, a graduate of the Imperial Moscow University who came to the Northwest to give a series of lectures on modern Russia. Traveling under the sponsorship of Novosti, a newspaper in St. Petersburg, De Kannet was a fixture on the U.S. lecture circuit, having presented, among other places, at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Though he visited Russia frequently, De Kannet lived in San Francisco and based his annual lecture tours from the Bay Area, including a tour in 1896 that brought him through Portland on his way to Alaska.^[1] Arriving in April, De Kannet’s Portland lecture, where he showed stereopticon slides on Russian art and history, was billed as a fundraiser for the city’s library fund. This was a promotional ploy. De Kannet liked to roll into town, rent a hall and advertise his show(s) as a benefit one or more community organizations, usually a school or library, in a dual attempt to increase turnout and curry favor with the locals. Then, at the close of the run, he paid for renting the venue, made a donation to the chosen cause and took the rest of the box office for himself.

De Kannet appears to have skipped Washington state on his 1896 tour, going directly from Portland to Alaska before heading across the Bering Sea for a trip back to Russia. But he returned nine months later, when he came to the Northwest for a new series of shows in early 1897. He brought with him a massive collection of glass stereopticon slides, such that he could reportedly lecture on any of nine Russian subjects. And yet, for this 1897 tour, he also brought a new feature to his repertoire – a demonstration of projected moving pictures, which he had apparently been introduced to in San Francisco.^[2] This made Dr. Gregory De Kannet the first person to projected films in Washington state – something that was likely also true in many other places along his lecture route that year.

De Kannet gave four shows in Seattle over a six-week period, the first of which was held on Monday, January 11, 1897, at the Central School. There, almost 500 students and faculty were treated to a talk entitled “The Educational System in Russia,” which appears to have been a subject outside De Kannet’s typical lectures since he didn’t employ any visuals – slides or films. The Post-Intelligencer attended, calling the talk “a rare entertainment” and noting that De Kannet could be as enjoyable as he was educational. “His characteristic and entertaining manner of interspersing his native humor with his talk, here, as elsewhere, won for him the friendship and esteem of his audience from the start.”^[3]

Following this initial lecture, De Kannet booked a pair of shows in Seattle on January 18^th and 19^th, where he promised to showcase his newest attraction. “In connection with the illustrated lectures Dr. [De] Kannet will exhibit the wonderful ‘magniscope,’ the latest invention of Edison, which presents nature in all its phases of life and motion,” claimed the Post-Intelligencer. “Among the magniscope subjects will be a depiction of a scene of the procession in connection with the coronation of the [C]zar, which Dr. [De] Kannet attended…”^[4] That coronation, in May 1896, was for Czar Nicholas II, later imprisoned and executed during 1917 Russian Revolution. (Also, it should be noted that the magniscope wasn’t the work of Thomas Edison, though the writer [or De Kannet] may have known that an Edison invention was inherently more interesting to the public than a non-Edison invention. The magniscope was a different projection machine invented by Edward Amet and manufactured in Waukegan, Illinois.^[5])

For the weeklong gap between his first and second Seattle dates, De Kannet headed to the South Sound for a pair of engagements. His first show, in Olympia, wasn’t reviewed by the Washington Standard, but it appears to have been a lecture with only glass slides as an accompaniment. Because De Kannet’s magniscope required electricity, he could only bring it out at lecture stops with an adequate power source. That may or may not have been the case in Olympia, but for whatever reason he doesn’t appear to have used his picture machine. We don’t know what the Washington Standard thought of De Kannet’s show, since they didn’t bother to review it, but we do know what they thought of his business model. Shortly after he left town, they grumbled “Dr. Gregory De Kannet, the Russian traveler, who impoverished the schools of Olympia by his expensively rendered lectures, is now doing a similar thing for the people of Tacoma.”^[6]

De Kannet’s Tacoma engagement didn’t garner much press either, and motion pictures also don’t seem to have been part of that bill. But, on the evening of January 18, Dr. Gregory De Kannet returned to the Central School in Seattle to give a pair of lectures entitled “The Heart of Russia” and “The Coronation,” both to raise funds for the school’s library fund.^[7] “Dr. De Kannet is noted all over the United States as one of the best informed men on Russia,” assured the Post-Intelligencer, touting his reputation as a traveling lecturer. The Daily Times, on the other hand, was looking forward to a different part of the engagement, noting that “[t]he lectures will be illustrated in a way that has probably never before been seen here, the pictures exhibiting the coronation procession, characteristic street scenes in Russia, etc.”

Unfortunately, the Daily Times didn’t bother to cover the lectures, so it was left to the Post-Intelligencer to provide detail. And despite two shows, each augmented by over 100 glass slides, almost all the paper wanted to talk about was the magniscope. The machine was only used at the end of De Kannet’s second talk, but at least half of the Post-Intelligencer’s review was given over to this one feature, which they claimed to be the first projected motion pictures ever shown in Seattle.

The highlight was, of course, scenes of the coronation ceremony, which showed “more magnificent [a] parade than has ever appeared before on any theatrical stage, the distinguished personages standing boldly out as they marched past, and their every movement, even to those of the lips, being faithfully reproduced.” But the Russian pictures weren’t the only ones that thrilled. De Kannet projected other subjects as well, straying a bit from his Russian focus. There were street scenes from New York City, for example, plus a filmed dance by Carmencita. “Thanks to this new invention,” the reporter observed, “Carmencita and her world famous [sic] dancing will long outlive Carmencita herself.”^[8] To which, of course, he was exactly right.

From Seattle, Dr. Gregory De Kannet next took his talents to Everett, where he played two nights at the Central Opera House before heading north for engagements in Victoria and Vancouver. In Canada, however, De Kannet ran into the kind of trouble that plagued any number of early film exhibitors. He played Victoria on February 5^th, but the magniscope’s power source wasn’t as good as he was led to believe, so the presentation was significantly hampered. Things went better, though not perfectly, in Vancouver. There, once De Kannet was through wrestling with the machine, the crowd was enthralled with a fire scene in which a woman leapt from an open window into a blanket held by firemen below.^[9]

Following these Canadian dates, Dr. Gregory De Kannet returned to Seattle, giving a final lecture on Thursday, February 26^th, at the Seattle Theatre. Entitled “The Jewel Box of Russia,” De Kannet promised to show almost 150 slides and give a demonstration of moving pictures. But none of Seattle’s papers covered this return engagement; advance notices promised a new set of magniscope films (or, at least, new to Seattle audiences), including glimpses of Venetian gondolas and some railroad scenes.^[10]

So Dr. Gregory De Kannet appears to have been the first person to show projected motion pictures in Washington state, as part of his 1897 illustrated lecture tour. And now that projection enabled large audiences to see and experience moving pictures in a single sitting, the Northwest entertainment landscape was about to change, and quickly.^[11]

By Eric L. Flom – January 2025

Notes:
[1] James Labosier, “From the Kinetoscope to the Nickelodeon: Motion Picture Presentation and Production in Portland, Oregon, From 1894 to 1906,” Film History, Volume 16, Issue 3 (2004), Page 300.
[2] Dr. Gregory De Kannet’s addition of moving pictures to his 1897 lecture tour approximates the time when Burton Holmes, perhaps the era’s most famous exhibitor of travelogue shows, added them to his own performances. See Jennifer Lynn Peterson, Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film (Durham, NC: Duke University Press – 2013), Page 38.
[3] “Dr. [De] Kannet on Russia,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 13 January 1897, Page 8.
[4] Ibid.
[5] See Labosier, Page 300. Labosier notes that for some of his Oregon engagements, De Kannet was identifying the machine as an “electrograph,” a term that does not show up in accounts from Seattle.
[6] “Dr. Gregory De Kannet…,” Washington Standard, 15 January 1897, Page 3.
[7] See “Dr. De Kannet to Lecture for the High School Library Fund,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 17 January 1897, Page 8; and “In the Land of the Czar,” Seattle Daily Times, 18 January 1897, Page 2.
[8] “With a Magniscope,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 19 January 1897, Page 8.
[9] See Paul S. Moore, “Mapping the Mass Circulation of Early Cinema: Film Debuts Coast-to-Coast in Canada in 1896 and 1897,” Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Volume 21, Issue 1 (Spring 2012), Pages 72-73; and John Mackie, “This Week in History: 1897: The first generation of cinema is unveiled in Gastown,” Vancouver Sun, 29 November 2019 (https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/this-week-in-history-1897-the-first-generation-of-cinema-is-unveiled-in-gastown), accessed 23 December 2021. Moore indicates that De Kannet couldn’t get the magniscope working in Victoria and only barely got it going in Vancouver, but Mackie’s piece reprints period articles from the Victoria Times and Vancouver World that indicate that De Kannet got the machine running in both locations, just not optimally.
[10] See Seattle Theatre advertisement, Seattle Daily Times, 25 February 1897, Page 4; and “Russia and Uncle Sam,” Seattle Daily Times, 25 February 1897, Page 5.
[11] James Labosier has shown that Dr. Gregory De Kannet didn’t stay away from the Northwest after his brief tour in early 1897. Later that summer he returned to the Portland area where he not only showed films but tried his hand at making them as well. See Labosier, Pages 299-301.

The fact that a traveling lecturer gave Washington’s first projected film show clipped the wings of the state’s original picture pioneer, if only by a few weeks. That’s because Olympia’s Joseph Chilberg took possession of his own projection equipment around the same time that Dr. Gregory De Kannet was appearing in Seattle, though Chilberg doesn’t seem to have debuted his show until the end of January, while the Russian lecturer was up in Canada.

Joseph Chilberg was born in 1850 and came to the Northwest at age 21. He was part of a large family that emigrated from Sweden in 1846, settling in Iowa before ending up in the Puget Sound region. The extended Chilberg family did well for themselves; one was Joseph’s nephew, John, a prominent Seattle businessman who would eventually help organize the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Joseph himself had several professions over the years, most in and around Thurston County, including farming, dry goods, real estate and government, serving as the Olympia city treasurer in 1891. He eventually relocated to Nome, Alaska, where he operated a mercantile and dabbled in mining interests. After several years bouncing back and forth between Olympia and Alaska, Joseph Chilberg eventually retired to the outskirts of Los Angeles.

If nothing else Chilberg was an appealing character, in part because his interests were so diverse. Frequently noted as a “weather observer” Chilberg had, over the years, fashioned himself into an amateur meteorologist – Olympia’s answer to the Farmer’s Almanac. When the Mason County Journal reported on weather predictions for December 1894, for example, they leaned on his statistics to cite temperature ranges, average monthly rainfall and the ratio of clear to cloudy days. None of this was guesswork – Joseph Chilberg claimed to have accumulated his data over the previous 17 years.^[1] But even more interesting than Chilberg the meteorologist was, perhaps, Chilberg the Socialist – odd when you consider his work in areas like real estate and mineral rights. His interest in politics also went beyond the lone term as Olympia city treasurer. He ran for city council at least twice; in the 1903 election, with 198 ballots cast across multiple candidates, Chilberg (running as a Socialist) garnered three votes. He lost again the following year, but did better in 1908, after moving to Nome. There he ran to become Alaska’s lone representative to Congress, finishing second to Judge James Wickersham.

It’s not clear how or why Joseph Chilberg became interested in moving pictures, but he bought the equipment and set himself up as an exhibitor, starting with a show at Olympia’s Odd Fellows Hall in late January 1897. Chilberg appears to have been showing films on an animatoscope, an early projection machine developed by William L. Wright of Portland.

When this exhibition began isn’t documented, but it was said to be Olympia’s first picture show and thrilled viewers, even if the Washington Standard struggled to describe what it was. “[The animatoscope] combines the wonderful life-like movements of pictures shown on [a kinetoscope], with the distinctness and size of projection from the stereopticon, a combination of the two instruments resulting in the animatoscope.” With individual films stretching to 100 feet in length, Joseph Chilberg showed scenes of Niagara Falls, a Turkish dance featuring three women (a “delight of the young men,” the Standard observed) and a short boxing match between Bob Fitzsimmons and Thomas Sharkey. The clear audience favorite, however, was a second boxing film that pitted the iconic character of Uncle Sam versus England’s John Bull. Uncle Sam, of course, emerged victorious, “knocking, punching and kicking the burly form of our choloric ancestor [in a bout] that excites patriotic fervor and provokes shouts of laughter.”^[2]

How long Chilberg’s engagement lasted at the Odd Fellows Hall isn’t known, but the Standard was taken with the animatoscope’s ability to make technology appealing. “To the student of science the exhibition is something more than pastime,” their reporter exclaimed, “[it is] a study into the adaptation of modern research for producing effects which seem to override and defy natural laws.” For that reason alone it was a worthy attraction, and it was probably why, on February 26, 1897, Chilberg brought it back to Olympia for a return engagement. This time we don’t know where the animatoscope played but it’s likely that Joseph Chilberg set up shop in a rented space with high visibility, much like the first Northwest kinetoscope engagements. He also seems to have acquired some new films, or at least one of his newest pictures was a notable addition to the show. This was a simple scene of a mother and daughter standing on a porch, feeding chickens, while other farm animals darted in and out of frame. That doesn’t sound like much, but it mesmerized the audience with its faithful reproduction of farm life. “It is one of the most wonderful and satisfactory exhibits of animated life that has been projected upon canvas by the new process,” gushed the Washington Standard. As mother and daughter fed the gathered flock, “a covey of doves descend from their cote in the gable of the farmhouse and pick up a share of the grain, but fly away apparently in alarm at some motion or sound. The rural scene is complete to the swish of the horse’s tail, in the background, and the look of recognition which that intelligent animal apparently bestows upon the always appreciative witnesses of this beautiful living picture.”^[3]

But while Joseph Chilberg’s shows seem to have been appreciated, the curious thing about his interest in moving pictures was his abrupt decision to stop being interested. Showmanship may not have been his forte; he went to the trouble of obtaining a projector and films, organizing a handful of engagements in early 1897, but there’s nothing to indicate that he toured widely with the machine, which would have impacted his financial returns. Both of his known animatoscope shows were in Olympia, and while he likely took the projector into neighboring cities and towns, at this point there’s scant evidence. It’s almost as if Chilberg was just dabbling with the medium, testing it out before giving up – by the end of 1897 he left Olympia for Alaska and didn’t return for two years. Presumably he sold his equipment, but when, to whom, and whether they got their own shows off the ground isn’t known.

So Joseph Chilberg may have been Washington’s first, albeit short-lived movie exhibitor, but others were also getting into the business. And as 1897 wore on, more and more picture shows began popping up in communities around Washington state. For example, even though projected motion pictures in Seattle debuted in January, by March similar films were being shown at the Third Avenue Theatre, where patrons were being urged to catch the “wonderful magniscope of animated pictures.”^[4] The Third Avenue was a legitimate stage venue that booked small-time variety acts into an adjacent space, which patrons could attend for a separate admission. Rarely were these variety acts advertised by the Third Avenue – like the first kinetoscope engagements, they put up signs to attract passers-by – so it’s impossible to know long this engagement lasted.

The Third Avenue show, however, wasn’t the only demonstration of moving pictures in the Puget Sound region. In early April the Pike Street Theatre in Seattle, a small variety house, added a weeklong vitascope attraction to their bill, showing pictures of the battleship Maine and excerpts from a boxing match. That same week, James McConahey was showing subjects in a rented space at Second and Cherry. This was in addition to an appearance by Portland’s William L. Wright around this time, who was briefly booked into the Olympia Theatre for a demonstration of his animatoscope. (Because the Olympia rarely advertised, pinpointing those dates may be impossible.) Nonetheless, all these screenings came on the heels of De Kannet and Chilberg showing their own projected films just weeks earlier. It was part of a trend – as 1897 moved into the summer months, the floodgates were about to open.^[5]

By Eric L. Flom – January 2025

Notes:
[1] “December Weather,” Mason County Journal, 14 December 1894, Page 1.
[2] “The Animatoscope,” Washington Standard (Olympia), 29 January 1897, Page 3.
[3] “Farmlife on Canvas,” Washington Standard (Olympia), 26 February 1897, Page 3.
[4] See “At the Third Avenue,” Seattle Daily Times, 6 March 1897, Page 3.
[5] See “Pike Street Theatre,” Seattle Daily Times, 1 April 1898, Page 8; and “A Splendid Entertainment,” Seattle Daily Times, 2 April 1898, Page 15. It’s not known exactly when William L. Wright appeared at the Olympia; James Labosier uncovered a notice in Phonoscope that mentioned the Wright engagement coming around this time. See James Labosier, “From the Kinetoscope to the Nickelodeon: Motion Picture Presentation and Production in Portland, Oregon, From 1894 to 1906,” Film History, Volume 16, Issue 3 (2004), Page 296.

Small film shows were becoming more frequent in the Northwest, but almost all of them had one thing in common: audiences usually came to the exhibition space without knowing (or perhaps even caring) what films they were going to see. It was process over pictures; the depiction of motion and the science behind the projector were often the primary attractions. In newspaper accounts from the period, the machine was typically the center of conversation, while the films were mentioned only briefly and almost never in detail. The actual venue likely had signage that detailed at least a few of the offerings – a bill might include railroad scenes or glimpses of Paris, for example. By and large, however, at early film screenings the subjects were less important than the technology.

But that wasn’t always the case. If there was one motion picture in 1897 that captured the public’s imagination more than any other, it was the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight. This was a much-publicized championship boxing match between James J. (“Gentleman Jim”) Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons. Part of the film’s appeal lay in its backstory: Corbett became the heavyweight champion in 1892, but after a few years stepped away from the ring and handed the belt other to another fighter, Pete Maher. Maher lost to Fitzsimmons in early 1896, but many boxing aficionados considered Corbett the rightful champion since he chose to relinquish the title rather than have it taken from him. Promoters thus worked to set up a showdown between Corbett and Fitzsimmons, and motion pictures became a key element in sealing that deal.^[1] The match eventually took place on March 17, 1897, when cameras whirred as Bob Fitzsimmons emerged victorious, ending the fight in the 14^th round.

This championship (filmed using a new camera, the veriscope) highlighted what would become a symbiotic relationship between motion pictures and prizefighting. As a sport, boxing had long been a scourge for reformers, who viewed it as brutal, corrupt and immoral. “Often criminalized,” Dan Streible observed of the period, “prizefighting was part of an underworld connected to gambling and other vice trades. Professional boxing retained a social stigma because of the men who ran and patronized it.”^[2] Antagonism in the East, where it was banned in many jurisdictions, often led prominent matches to be held out West, where there were fewer restrictions and a willingness to cash in on the sport’s underground popularity – the Corbett/Fitzsimmons bout, for example, took place in Carson City, Nevada. “Hosting heavyweight championships in defiance of eastern authority inadvertently strengthened the West’s cultural ties to average Americans,” Meg Frisbee has noted, “and demonstrated the weakness of moral reform movements in the West.”^[3]

Many early filmmakers wanted to shoot boxing matches, as the sport not only had a built-in following but provided thrilling action for the camera. Meanwhile, motion pictures offered boxing a new source of revenue for fighters and promoters, and for the Corbett/Fitzsimmons matchup both sides wanted to go big. Though the contest was a billed as a “championship” fight, in reality it was organized with the camera in mind, the film men consulting on the layout of the temporary venue and both fighters holding a financial stake in the resulting picture. They were also taking advantage of a legal loophole: whereas many states prohibited actual prizefighting, those restrictions wouldn’t necessarily prevent the screening of a motion picture that simply depicted prizefighting.^[4]

It was a good gamble. There was so much interest in the match and the resulting film that the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight toured the United States continuously for almost three years, including an engagement at the Seattle Theatre that began on August 10, 1897. “You can see the contest in every detail sitting comfortably in an opera chair that others traveled many miles and spent hundreds of dollars to witness,” observed the Daily Times before the picture’s debut. “…These pictures are a marvel of scientific achievement. Over 150,000 separate and distinct photographs were taken, at the rate of 2,700 per minute, on a celluloid ribbon of film two and one-quarter miles in length.” ^[5] The original version of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight ran about 90 minutes, give or take, with intervals of several minutes tacked on each time a film reel needed to be switched out. When speakers and other elements were added to the mix, this pushed the show well past the two-hour mark, making it a good deal longer than any previous film exhibition in Seattle.

Adding to the excitement was the fact that the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight allowed audiences to answer an important question: was the punch that Fitzsimmons threw at Corbett in the 14^th round, ending the fight, an illegal hit?^[6] Sportswriters were divided, but now, through the magic of the veriscope (or literally, “truth viewer”), there was no need to take the word of a journalist. The action would be right there, onscreen, for everyone to see and judge for themselves.

          The views show the entire ring and the crowd beyond it on the side opposite where the photographic apparatus was stationed. The people in the ring are plainly shown. After the fight ends Referee [George] Siler can be seen picking his way front of the ring to Harry Corbett [James’ brother], with whom he has a talk. Muldoon, the timekeeper, is plainly seen all through the fight. Low Houseman, Fitzsimmons’ timekeeper, is also in full view, as well as Billy Madden. The views expose a questionable tricky [sic] action by Houseman, who, as the gong was about to sound for the end of a round, would raise his hat in the air to signal to Fitzsimmons and his seconds [before] the expiration of the three minutes.
          The fact is demonstrated by the views that Fitzsimmons is clearly the better man, and that he won by no fluke or foul.^[7]

Aside from the boxing element, part of the significance of this veriscope engagement lay in the fact that a motion picture being featured at the Seattle Theatre. Three years after Edison’s kinetoscope arrived with little fanfare, and just months after projected films were shown locally for the first time, a motion picture was headlining the city’s finest theatre and drawing audiences from all walks of society. “Second only in the interest attached to the Veriscope was that which was obtained in scanning the audience during the brief intermissions which were allowed for changing the [reels],” said the Post-Intelligencer. “Such a conglomerate mixture of elements has rarely been seen in a theater in this city, almost every stratum of society being represented in the gathering. There were the all-round sports and men of the town elbowing with well-known society women and mothers and daughters of prominent families, escorted by fathers and brothers, and the young society men, whose accomplishments are those of polite surroundings.” Both Seattle dailies made specific mention of the feminine element in the crowd. “There was nothing in the exhibition that could offend the most sensitive nature” commented one, while the other assured that “[m]any ladies were there, and nothing occurred to cause them in any way to regret their presence.”^[8] Booking the film into a city’s best theatre and courting female attendance was part of the show’s strategy – an attempt to bring boxing out of the shadows and present it as a legitimate, mainstream sport. “Motion pictures of fights – silent, black and white, edited, and narrated – mediated the experience of watching bouts in which men sweated and bled before shouting partisans,” noted Dan Streible in his book Fight Pictures. “Transported into a variety of venues, prizefights were seen by new audiences, who often made different sense of them. The social stigma remained, but the sport and the spectator’s experience of it were transformed.”^[9] With the ring violence one step removed on film, this version of prizefighting was, for some, less threatening to the moral standards of the community. A film like the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight was also opening the door for women to experience a pastime that had traditionally been reserved for men.

Despite complaints that the flickering images strained the eyes, the Daily Times found the presentation quite compelling. “The first impression when the display commences is one of disappointment,” their reporter observed. “[The film] looks so unreal, so ghostly. There is no noise, the whole thing being fed to the brain through the sense of sight. But soon the realness of the thing becomes apparent, and the terrible earnestness of the fighters is appreciated. Every detail, every motion made, every blow struck is plainly shown. The pictures as a show are a wonderful thing, but aside from that the audience sees a reproduction of the greatest fight of the age.”^[10]

The Post-Intelligencer was in full agreement.

          Seattle has been treated in the past to other exhibitions of machines similar to the Veriscope, but nothing approaching it in the length of time employed and succession of connected events has ever been seen in this city. Some of the pictures are slightly indistinct and others remarkably clear, but on the whole the performance was one of genuine and intense interest and the incidents of the great contest were closely followed by an audience that completely filled the theater…
          The pictures were generally excellent as a whole. Every movement of the big pugs, every blow struck, every step taken is faithfully shown. In some places the lightning-like changes produced a vague blemish, but only for a moment, and the next instant the gladiators are hard at it with all the brain and muscle they possess…Some discontent was expressed at the five or six-minute waits that occur at intervals [for reel changes], but they are a great relief for the eyes, which are tried in watching the screen closely.^[11]

Johnnie Williams served as master of ceremonies for these veriscope shows, dressed in eveningwear and addressing the crowd before the picture began. Williams talked briefly about boxing technique, doing some feigns, dodges, and throwing a few punches as an illustration. Williams and six others toured with the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight, including fight promoter Dan Stuart; during their Seattle stay, the group took up residence at the Butler Hotel.

Williams’ appearance was followed by some piano numbers, which heightened the gaiety in the theatre. Then the film began, with no musical accompaniment and only the occasional remark from Williams between rounds. Reporters from both the Daily Times and Post-Intelligencer were struck by the fact that the veriscope caught so many intimate moments – the kind of details one normally could only see ringside. Just before the first round was to begin, for example, the two fighters engaged in what appeared to be a friendly conversation. In another moment Fitzsimmons could be seen sitting on a stool, rubbing his feet with a rosin bag, while the action between rounds seemed to bring the audience directly into each fighters’ corner. As for the bout itself, it was clear that Bob Fitzsimmons was in full control from the opening bell, with the veriscope capturing the chaos that erupted once the fight ended.

          When the last round was called the voice of Mr. Williams came out of the darkness in a speech in which he called upon the audience to observe the fine points of the finish. Although prepared for the blow which decided the championship of the world, it escaped many of the audience. The spectacle of the conquered Corbett sinking slowly to the floor and crawling to the ropes was as realistic as could be desired. There was a look of agony on his face, while [referee] Siler is seen in the middle of the ring counting off the seconds that marked a defeated champion. After getting to the ropes Corbett hangs there until twelve seconds elapses, and then he rushes like a madman across the ring toward Fritz, who is waving his handkerchief and jumping up and down like a schoolboy. Corbett pushes everybody out of his way and clinches Fritz, whom he bears to the ropes. Everything is confusion and the efforts of Corbett’s trainers and seconds to drag him back are as realistic as any part of the show. People clamber over the ropes into the ring watching the scene of excitement, and then the rest is blotted out as Fitz swings out of the ring on his way to the dressing room.^[12]

After two days of shows at the Seattle Theatre, the veriscope company used the city as a base camp for shows in other Northwest locations, as Dr. Gregory De Kannet had done earlier. All told, the group spent about three weeks playing dates around Puget Sound and up into Canada. It wasn’t until the end of August that the entourage finally moved south, playing a one-night stand at the Olympia Theater on August 28, 1897, before heading down the coast.^[13]

The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight was the screen’s original blockbuster – far and away the most successful moving picture of its day. The film was screened several times in the Northwest, though not in the elaborate way it was shown at the Seattle in August 1897. It returned, for example, in January 1898, when Mose Goldsmith of the People’s Theatre booked at least part of the film for a variety bill. For that engagement the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight was one of several attractions, which included a live-action boxing skit, an Irish comedian and a cycling act, among others.^[14] For that reason it’s unlikely that the People’s Theatre was screening the entire film, and was probably only showing select rounds. Indeed, most return engagements showed only portions of the original film.

Two things were demonstrated when the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight played the Seattle Theatre in 1897. First, it showed that audiences were willing to patronize a theatrical engagement anchored by a moving picture. Second, it revealed that while many were opposed to actual prizefighting, boxing that was shown onscreen was greeted on slightly different terms. One form was objectionable; the other, tolerable. These two factors were seen over and over, not just in the Northwest but wherever the film toured.

Because the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight quickly became “early cinema’s most lucrative property,” according to Dan Streible, other film producers began looking for ways to capitalize. For well over a decade, production companies filmed a good many boxing matches in the hopes that lightning would strike again. Some bouts were more successful than others, but it would take more than a decade before filmmakers found another property as lucrative as the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight. Even so, moving pictures and prizefighting were entering into a partnership that would benefit each for the next 15 years. Production companies wanted fast-moving, exciting content that drew audiences into the theatre. Boxing wanted increased visibility and respectability; moving pictures not only helped grow the fan base but also provided new sources of revenue for both the sport and for the fighters themselves.

By Eric L. Flom – January 2025

Notes:
[1] See Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (Berkley, California: University of California Press – 1993), Pages 194-195.
[2] Dan Streible, Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema (Berkley: University of California Press – 2008), Page 7.
[3] Meg Frisbee, Counterpunch: The Cultural Battles Over Heavyweight Prizefighting in the American West (Seattle: University of Washington Press – 2016), Page 4.
[4] Boxing and cinema came of age at about the same time and were wed almost from the beginning. In Thomas Edison’s first kinetoscope parlor, opened up in Manhattan in the spring of 1894, one of the features was a filmed version of the Leonard-Cushing fight. See Streible, Pages 23 and 30.
[5] “Corbett-Fitzsimmons Pictures Tonight,” Seattle Daily Times, 10 August 1897, Page 5.
[6] See “Did Fitzsimmons Foul Corbett?,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7 August 1897, Page 2; and “Corbett-Fitzsimmons Veriscope,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 8 August 1897, Page 3.
[7] “Corbett-Fitzsimmons Veriscope,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 8 August 1897, Page 3.
[8] See “In the Mystic Ring,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 11 August 1897, Page 8; and “Corbett-Fitzsimmons, Seattle Daily Times, 11 August 1897, Page 8.
[9] Streible, Page 15. Streible also notes that for this film, James J. Corbett wore unusually tight boxing trunks, such that more of his physique was on display than would normally be acceptable. This was a surprise bonus for women attending the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight, and it played into Corbett’s public persona of being a heartthrob. And the display may not have been strictly for the women; there was also a homoerotic element to seeing half naked men in tight clothing moving about the ring. (See Streible, Pages 88-89 and 93-94.)
[10] “Corbett-Fitzsimmons,” Seattle Daily Times, 11 August 1897, Page 8. To help ease eye strain caused by the flickering images the show apparently had a number of “intermissions” between rounds, in addition to the time it took to change reels. James Labosier notes that the Portland engagement had at least five such intermissions. See Labosier, Page 294.
[11] “In the Mystic Ring,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 11 August 1897, Page 8.
[12] Ibid.
[13] See Olympia Theater advertisement and “Success of the Veriscope,” Washington Standard, 27 August 1897, Page 3.
[14] See People’s Theater advertisement, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1 January 1898, Page 4.

The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight was far and away the biggest film of 1897, but it was also an outlier. Most patrons of early film shows weren’t seeing them in elaborate settings like the Seattle Theatre, nor were they seeing just a single feature. Instead, they were seeing a variety of shorter films in temporary venues, usually in shows that were passing through town.

In late July 1897, for example, two weeks before the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight arrived at the Seattle Theatre, J.R. Wilson opened a picture show at Second and James, showing films on a new machine called the Edison projectoscope. Unlike the kinetoscope engagements in 1894, which came and went in a matter of days, Wilson was emboldened to take out a three-month lease on this space, formerly a storeroom. He was coming to Seattle after having operated a projectoscope show in Portland, where he closed a three-month run a short time earlier. Wilson promised a weekly change of films, as he had done in Portland, where one of his repeat customers was Oregon Governor William Paine Lord.

Wilson showed 14 individual films during his opening week in Seattle, all of which could be viewed for 10 cents a head. These included Corbett and Courtney Before the Kinetograph, a boxing exhibition between James J. Corbett and Peter Courtney originally filmed by the Edison Company in 1894, plus Black Diamond Express, a one-minute film showing a train in rural Pennsylvania whizzing past the camera at 70-plus miles per hour. Train films such as Black Diamond Express (which Edison and other companies filmed multiple times) were thrilling subjects for audiences, some of whom were not yet accustomed to movie magic. In 1979 a former resident of Ritzville, in eastern Washington, described his experience seeing one of these train films as a child, some 80 years previous. “I sat on the aisle and when the train came along the tracks headed for middle aisle we were scared to death but fortunately the train turned left, but the crowd screamed when it came straight for them.”^[1]

J.W. Wilson’s shows ran from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. daily and lasted about 30 minutes, though roughly half that time was spent watching films while the other half was spent waiting patiently in the dark while the next picture was queued up. “It is a show that ladies and children, as well as gentlemen, can attend,” assured the proprietor.^[2]

But while J.R. Wilson expected his projectoscope show to run at least three months in Seattle, it only lasted about two, falling short of the business he did in Portland. That’s probably because he spent at least part of that time competing with an exhibition of the Lumière cinematographé at First Avenue South and Washington, just a few blocks away. This show opened a few weeks after Wilson debuted his projectoscope.

Tickets for the cinematographé show were 10 cents per person (“worth $1” it was claimed), with films that included scenes from Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, along with some travelogue and comedy pictures. On top of this, a Mrs. Hannum, “Portland’s leading soprano,” performed musical selections between films.^[3] This would eventually become an industry standard; whereas patrons sat in the dark while J.R. Wilson loaded his next picture, the cinematographé shows provided a secondary form of entertainment while patrons waited. They were getting a bigger bang for their (1/10^th of a) buck.

The Lumière cinematographé was a hit in Seattle, running from mid-August to early October before finally closing. And the show was popular enough that it was rented out on at least one occasion, when the Seattle Athletic Club opened a new facility on September 24, 1897. Several entertainments were lined up for guests that evening, one of which was the Lumière cinematographé, showing pictures of the Queen’s Jubilee and some European travel scenes.^[4] Held in the Club’s brand-new gymnasium, partygoers were captivated with the machine. Four films were shown that evening, the clear favorite being a scene shot in the baths of Milan, where swimmers leapt from diving boards into the cool waters of the pool. The gathering was so wildly enthusiastic about this picture, in fact, that they called upon the operator to show it a second time – a request that led to Washington’s first known movie mishap.

The Milan swimming film had run through the cinematographé, a hand-cranked projector, and was deposited into a basket below; the concept of a take-up reel had yet to be invented. Re-threading the film was a simple process – all the operator needed to do was retrieve the filmstrip from the basket, run it back into the projector and start cranking the handle again. But with the crowd clamoring for more, this showman decided to give the audience something unexpected. After all, if they were amazed with the Milan baths the first time, they’d be speechless if he reversed the intake and cranked the film backwards, so the swimmers magically sprung out of the water and back onto the diving boards.^[5]

You can’t assail the operator’s logic – many in the room were seeing motion pictures for the first time, so they weren’t aware of its ability to capture (or distort) reality. You can, however, assail his execution. How far he got into this visual sleight-of-hand isn’t clear, but the film eventually jammed in the projector, the stuck frame overheating from the light source below and starting a small fire. This was disastrous for the operator, but probably delightful for the audience. Just as they were clueless that a film could be run backwards, they also had no idea that projector fires would eventually cause an enormous amount of property damage, injuries and deaths over next 30-plus years. For them, seeing their first motion picture was a delight; seeing one burst into flames didn’t necessarily diminish the experience. Fortunately, the operator quickly got the fire under control, but print was destroyed, a costly and ill-timed blunder.^[6]

Other locations around Washington were also seeing more picture shows in mid- to late 1897. In August, for example, a different Lumière cinematographé show was booked into the Olympia Theatre. On September 27^th, in Pullman, a Professor Wilbur gave an animatoscope exhibition in the chapel of Washington Agricultural College, later known as Washington State University. The subjects at Professor Wilbur’s demonstration weren’t given, but assurances were made that the animatoscope was a vast improvement over projecting machines like the vitascope, a statement that might indicate this wasn’t Pullman’s first look at moving pictures.^[7] Meanwhile, the Olympia Theatre played host to second film exhibition in November…almost. In this case a touring stage production of The South Before the War arrived with a cinematographé projector in tow, offering 10 different films in addition to their stage drama, which boasted a cast of 50 performers. The company had a one-night engagement at the Olympia on November 18, 1897, and a large crowd gathered to see this prestigious roadshow. But, for reasons unknown, the widely advertised cinematographé demonstration was scrapped at the 11^th hour, something that didn’t go over well with the Washington Standard, who decried the fact that ticketholders paid advanced prices only to get hoodwinked. “…[T]he cinematograph [sic] pictures promised were not exhibited, simply because it might involve a little additional labor and expense. Such details are never neglected by truly first-class companies who play on the circuit with which [the] Olympia Theater is connected.”^[8] The Standard’s complaint was an interesting one. At the start of 1897 the very mention of projected moving pictures would have been met with bewilderment by many in Washington state. Eleven months later, however, the public was justifiably angry when a film show wasn’t delivered as promised. (In fairness, however, the same touring company returned to the Northwest the following year and managed to present their film show. In Seattle, at least.)

By the end of 1897 it was clear that the preceding 12 months had been a breakout period for moving pictures in the Northwest. And over the next few years an increasing number of Washingtonians would have their first experience with the movies, particularly outside the state’s population centers. What’s more, people weren’t just experiencing film as a means of entertainment, as Professor Wilbur’s animatoscope lecture suggests. In fact, Wilbur may have been onto something. In March 1898 students and faculty at the Washington State Normal School in Ellensburg (now Central Washington University) were treated to a pair of cinematographé exhibitions. It’s not clear what was shown or why, but because the Ellensburg Dawn reported that the organizers were “pleased with the result,” it suggests that the exhibition was made to demonstrate the educational qualities of moving pictures.^[9]

Still, for most people moving pictures were a source of entertainment. Just a week later, in what was then known as North Yakima, a Mr. Clifford opened a two-day engagement of the Lumière cinematographé at Mason’s Opera House. Clifford (certainly the showman who appeared in Ellensburg) was showing a variety of American and European scenes, noting in his advance material that motion pictures had the ability to bring the world directly to the viewer. And the technology seemed to have few limits; Clifford’s advertising even included the outlandish notions that color film and synchronized sound might one day be commonplace. But until those features were fully developed, the cinematographé “is enough to insure [sic] its perpetual hold as a leading entertainer and instructor of the public.”^[10]

Clifford was no stranger to the exhibition business. He was the man who played for seven weeks near Pioneer Square in Seattle, going head-to-head with J.R. Wilson’s projectoscope a few blocks away. (And by default, that likely makes him the operator who torched the Milanese swimming film on behalf of the Seattle Athletic Club.) Now he was on the road after playing several weeks in Tacoma, then going into some of Washington’s smaller towns. “The press wherever the pictures have been shown never fails to give them substantial endorsement,” Clifford exclaimed in his own publicity, “and because of the educational features, school superintendents and educators speak words of praise [on] its behalf.”

Unfortunately, Clifford’s show at Mason’s Opera House went unreviewed, even though the exhibition went so well that the run was extended from two days to a full week. He then returned to North Yakima six months later, in September, playing another weeklong engagement, this time showing films in a vacant storeroom between Front and First Streets. But there’s nothing that lets us know what kind of films Clifford was showing, other a blanket notice that the September dates showcased pictures that had not been shown during the April engagement.^[11]

Men like Clifford and J.R. Wilson were amongst the initial wave of picture pioneers in the Northwest. They weren’t making a lot of money, but they were introducing a new form of entertainment to audiences throughout the state, laying the groundwork for the formal movie houses that would be erected over the coming decades. Clifford, in particular, was also proving that movies weren’t just an urban phenomenon. The fact that he played a return engagement in North Yakima, a town of barely 3,000 at the time, showed that there was an appetite for picture entertainment in Washington’s rural areas as well.

A market for picture shows was developing. As Clifford was noting in his advance publicity, film offered limitless possibilities. It was up to exhibitors to exploit them.

By Eric L. Flom – January 2025

Notes:
[1] Partial letter from an unknown writer to John Pavlik, editor of the Ritzville Journal, dated 24 April 1979; from the Gilson Scrapbooks (Adams County) (https://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/Record/View/15DD991DE534BED50F83EBF064835B70), accessed 20 September 2020. The author recalled this film as being The Great Train Robbery, but what he was describing was more akin to films like Black Diamond Express.
[2] See “Edison’s Projectoscope Coming,” Seattle Daily Times, 28 July 1897, Page 8; and “Last Three Days of Projectoscope…,” Seattle Daily Times, 28 September 1897, Page 1.
[3] See “Cinematographe [sic] ‘Pictures Alive’…,” Seattle Daily Times, 28 August 1897, Page 8; “Queen’s Jubilee in Pictures Alive,” Seattle Daily Times, 29 August 1897, Page 5; “Queen’s Jubilee Tomorrow,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 29 August 1897, Page 8; and “Queen’s Jubilee Children’s Day…,” Seattle Daily Times, 10 September 1897.
[4] See “S.A.C. Opening,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 23 September 1897, Page 8.
[5] Charles Musser, interestingly, in his study of traveling exhibitor Lyman H. Howe, cites an 1898 Howe engagement in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in which he was also projecting films backwards, and was even using a film of swimmers and divers to do it. (See Charles Musser [with Carol Nelson], High Class Moving Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition, 1880-1920 [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press – 1991], Page 85.) According to Musser, running film backwards was a trick that Howe used off and on during his early career.
[6] “Beauty and Music,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 25 September 1897, Page 5.
[7] “An animatoscope exhibition…,” Pullman Herald, 25 September 1897, Page 1.
[8] “While the performance…,” Washington Standard (Olympia), 19 November 1897, Page 3.
[9] “Normal News,” Ellensburg Dawn, 24 March 1898, Page 3.
[10] “Pictures Alive,” The Yakima Herald, 31 March 1898, Page 3.
[11] “The Lumiere Cinematograph [sic]…,” The Yakima Herald, 29 September 1898, Page 7.