Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 75 years ago

A story about upcoming movies at the Orpheum featured this intriguing headline: “Local Writer’s Story in Film.”

The movie was titled “Throwback,” a Western starring Buck Jones and Gabby Hayes. And it was, indeed, based on a novel by Spokane author Cherry Wilson.

Today, Cherry Wilson is known only to true aficionados of vintage Western fiction. Yet in 1935, Wilson was probably the region’s best-known and most successful novelist. She began writing Western short stories when she and her husband were homesteading in Republic, Wash. They moved to Spokane in 1928. Soon she had published a number of novels, including “Thunder Brakes,” “Empty Saddles,” “Montana Rides, “Stormy” and “Trail of the Pale Horse.”

“Stormy” was also made into a movie in 1935, starring Noah Beery Jr. and Rex the Wonder Horse, billed in this movie as Rex, King of the Wild Horses, since it was a story about a thoroughbred horse lost among wild horses. Wilson apparently went to Hollywood briefly in 1935 as a staff screenwriter at Universal Pictures but soon returned to Spokane.

Wilson died at age 83 in Spokane in 1976.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1775: The United States Navy had its origins as the Continental Congress ordered the construction of a naval fleet.