100 years ago in Spokane: Fledgling local movie industry tries to find footing

Spokane’s fledgling movie industry was again on shaky ground.

Wellington Playter had just purchased the bankrupt Washington Motion Picture Corp. studios at Minnehaha, but now he said he needed to raise another $50,000 if his new Playter Photo Players were to remain a Spokane entity, the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported.

“I don’t wish to be dictatorial about it, but we must have the support of the Spokane people if we are to have this a Spokane institution,” Playter said. “We are offering a more attractive proposition with a $50,000 capital stock than was offered by the other company with a $300,000 capital stock. I am going to Los Angeles about the 29th of this month, and I want to have our books closed before I go.”

Spokane investors, who had flocked to the earlier company’s overinflated vision of Spokane as a movie-making paradise, were apparently more wary at this point.

From the Interstate Fair beat: An international “tableau” was being planned for the Interstate Fair in early September.

A number of Spokane young women were being recruited to parade “in native costume” at the fair. Fair officials hoped to represent Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Finland, Poland, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Rumania, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland.