100 years ago in Spokane: Editorial says movies aren’t art; first woman to serve as college education instructor in Washington dies

The Spokesman-Review editorial page went on a tirade against the movie industry, saying that it was “absurd” to call motion pictures an art form.

“If motion pictures are an art, then so is the shoe business,” said an editorial.

The editorial was prompted by a national report on the movie business and whether it should be censored. The report called motion pictures “primarily an art,” which meant it should be judged in the same way as an art museum, and not as “journalism or literature or business.”

This is what set off the editors. They charged that movies largely consisted of “insipid sentiment, crude melodrama and thinly veiled salacity.”

“There is no literary art in the movies, and precious little dramatic art,” they wrote. “… They should be regulated not as an art, but as a business – and few businesses need to be watched more closely.”

From the education beat: Mattie Clair Hoyt, said to be the state’s first woman “normal school teacher” – meaning, college education instructor – died in Spokane at age 61, due to complications of influenza and pneumonia.

She taught at the State Normal School at Cheney (which evolved into Eastern Washington University) from 1891 to 1896. In 1891, the newly established school had about 50 students, 29 of whom were women.

Later, Hoyt’s husband established Hoyt Brothers Greenhouses and Florist Co. in Garden Springs, where she lived until her death.