In 1924, Hollywood film promoter Harvey C. Weaver and several monied partners founded an independent film-production studio in Tacoma. Their plan was to run the operation in the Northwest, where costs were lower, the scenery was compelling, and they had the playing field to themselves. A studio complex was built on donated land, movie stars were recruited from California, and Weaver landed deals with big New York distribution firms. Over the following few years Weaver’s team produced three silent feature films: Hearts and Fists, Eyes of The Totem, and Heart of the Yukon. This occurred toward the end of the silent-film era, however, and near the dawn of "talkies" – movies that included recorded audio. The Tacoma enterprise crumbled in 1928, and for many subsequent decades it was widely believed that all three films had been lost or destroyed over time. But in 2014, a surviving print of one Weaver film was unearthed and restored.
H. C. Weaver Productions Company
Harvey C. Weaver was a gifted salesman, working for the Remington Typewriter Co. in Salt Lake City, Utah, before moving up to selling oil-stock certificates. Then, around 1918, the Christy Film Company in Los Angeles needed certificates for use as film props, and he provided them. That interaction sparked Weaver's interest in the film industry, and he began working in it on the managerial side. By 1922 he was in San Francisco working as a promoter for the Paul Gerson Film Company and its 1923 film Cricket on the Hearth. Weaver also assisted with the 1924 silent drama, Rayart Pictures' The Street of Tears. During this period, he absorbed the basics of "how to sell stock certificates to the public in order to structure a film company" (Flaaen).
Heading to the Pacific Northwest, Weaver went to the heart of Seattle’s business action, the White Building at 3rnd Avenue and Union Street, to seek investors in a new film company. His promotional skills resulted in a group of prominent investors, among them businessmen Harry K. Dunham and Stephen A. Hull, and attorneys John E. Ryan and Thomas N. Swale. Additional investors from Tacoma included banker Chester Thorne and Gen. James M. Ashton. On May 24, 1924, Weaver and his partners filed articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State’s office in Olympia for the H. C. Weaver Productions Company, to be based in Seattle. On June 21, the industry's leading trade publication, Motion Picture News, reported that the firm had been capitalized at $202,000 ($3.58 million in 2024 dollars).
On October 23, 1924, Weaver’s "place of business" was officially changed to Tacoma, where the city's business establishment warmly welcomed his team and his plan to create an all-new industry there. A 5.5-acre building site near Titlow Beach along Puget Sound was donated by local supporters and construction materials also were donated, probably by the St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Co. Weaver envisioned the site as his little "Hollywood-by-the-sea." It was built by the Albertson, Cornell Bros. & Walsh construction company, featured an administrative office and a huge production studio, and "a village of Hollywood style bungalows for his film colony" ("Totem Story Retold ...").
Before footage was first shot in January 1925, Weaver traveled to New York City to hammer out a film distribution contract with the Associated Pathé company. In December 1924 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Weaver was self-effacing enough to admit "it was through no ability of his own that it was obtained, but rather through the interest shown by Jack Woody, vice-president and general manager of Associated Pathé, who formerly lived in Kent and had an office in Seattle as Northwest manager of Realart. Being familiar with conditions in the Puget Sound country, Woody is one of the few men in the industry aware of the possibilities for motion picture production here. Any lack of sunshine will be no obstacle to the filming of pictures in Washington, according to Mr. Weaver" ("Dedication of First N.W. Film Studio ..."). The P-I couldn’t resist joining in the boosterism, trumpeting the notion that, "The new enterprise will do more towards advertising the natural advantages of the Puget Sound country and its industries than any other concern in the state" ("Dedication of First N.W. Film Studio ...").
Hearts and Fists
By the end of December 1924, construction of Weaver’s studios had been completed, and planning for its first film production were underway. The debut project was to be a storyline with a Pacific Northwest theme depicting rugged westerners involved in lovin’ and fightin’ escapades titled Hearts and Fists, which was based on a popular magazine article written by popular fiction essayist and author Clarence Budington Kelland, the self-described "best second-rate writer in America (The Ocean ... 29). Weaver hired Lloyd Chauncey Ingraham as director. Ingraham was an experienced Hollywood actor who had first appeared in D. W. Griffith’s 1916 silent feature Intolerance. Perhaps he was selected based on his having directed about 100 films since 1913, including the 1919 Pacific Northwest lumber camp-themed drama Man’s Desire.
In January 1925 preliminary shooting reportedly began. Yet, months later, on May 10, The Seattle Times noted that, "The cast for 'Hearts and Fists' … arrived in Tacoma tonight. In the party were Marguerite de la Motte, John Bowers, Alan Hale, Dan Mason, Charles Hill Mailes, Jack Curtis, Vlademar Caskey and [Lloyd’s daughter, Lois] Ingraham … Work on 'Hearts and Fists' will start Monday morning" ("Motion Picture Stars Arrive ...").
Weaver had done well, recruiting bona fide stars including de la Motte and Bowers, successful stage actors who had just married, and who made a big impression on locals during their stay in Tacoma. In fact, the petite blond De La Motte made such an impact that after participating in a recruitment drive for the Washington National Guard, a ceremony was held to declare her an honorary member of their 148th Field Artillery unit. Then there was Hale, who had appeared in at least 43 earlier films including 1911’s The Cowboy and the Lady, 1914’s Jane Eyre, 1922’s Robin Hood, and 1924’s Code of the Wilderness. Unusual for a "silent" movie – which typically were presented in theaters with the actors' dialog shown as readable text on the screen, and backing music provided by a live pianist or organist – Weaver and Ingraham included a scene depicting one (or more) musical performances by Spokane's Mann Brothers Famous Orchestra.
Shooting began May 11. The interior scenes were done on built sets in Weaver’s studio, at urban sites in Tacoma, and at the Clear Fir Lumber Co. mill on Days Island. Outdoorsy scenes were done on location in the nearby Kapowsin area, and the small towns of Eatonville, Mineral, and Morton. Work continued over the following months, and in September 1925 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Weaver had returned from another business trip to New York, where he successfully sold Hearts and Fists to the Vital Pictures Corporation, which also signed a contract for Weaver to produce 10 additional films. Weaver announced the imminent signing of additional contracts from the Associated Exhibitors company. He also announced a construction project to enlarge the Tacoma studio at the expense of $25,000.
Making its "World Premiere" at Tacoma’s 900-seat Rialto Theatre (at 310 S 9th Street) on January 2, 1926, Hearts and Fists was, as later noted in The Seattle Times, "a 6-reel melodrama about real, he-men loggers … Larry Pond (John Bowers) inherits an almost bankrupt lumber company from his father and attempts to turn it into a successful operation, taking into partnership his father’s loyal clerk, and a college friend. Preston Tolley (Alan Hale), a rival lumberman, hires a thug to prevent Larry from getting his logs to the mill, but Larry beats the thug in a fight and, commandeering a train and a preacher, marries Alexia Newton, Tolley’s former fiancée, on route to the mill with his logs" ("Those Were the Good Old Days"). The film thrilled locals, moving on from the Rialto to Seattle’s Colonial Theatre (at 1515 4th Avenue), and then, through Associated Pathé, it enjoyed far wider distribution. One year later The Seattle Times reported that the film had been a "decided hit all over the country" ("Five Stars Engaged ...").
Eyes of the Totem
The Weaver studio’s second film took shape under the working title of The Totem Pole Beggar. The idea had likely been inspired by the impressive 80-foot-tall cedar totem pole that was erected in 1903 across from the Tacoma Hotel (at 913 A Street), where Weaver was now ensconced. The pole itself began as a 105-foot-tall log as donated by the St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Co. A brass plaque attached to the base proclaimed that the "Tacoma Totem Pole" was the "Largest Totem Pole In The World – Made and Carved by Alaska Indians – Presented To The City Of Tacoma By W. F. Sheard and Chester Thorne. (The former was a hunter; the latter, a banker who commissioned the pole’s carving, and later became one of the investors in Weaver’s studio.) The fact that such poles had little connection to local Native populations and were instead associated with the Haida and Tlingit Tribes of North Vancouver Island, Canada, would later become a heated civic issue.
Regardless, for Weaver and company, the exotic, and for some folks, fearsome, look of the towering carving was its appeal. The initial storyline would be penned by W. W. Dickson and Everett C. Maxwell, who had written the 1925 fur-trapper drama The Northern Code. Weaver hired Woodbridge "Woody" Strong Van Dyke (1889-1943) as director. In February 1926, The Seattle Times reported that Van Dyke "has considerable experience as a director in the Hollywood film colony" ("Five Stars Engaged ..."). Indeed, in 1915 Van Dyke had served as assistant director on D. W. Griffith’s epic and subsequently controversial The Birth of a Nation, as well as numerous other silent films. In 1917 alone, he directed several, including The Land of Long Shadows, The Range Boss, Open Places, and Men of the Desert. Later he directed Hollywood classics including 1932’s Tarzan the Ape Man, 1934’s The Thin Man, and 1936’s earth-shaking, and Oscar-nominated, San Francisco.
Weaver was pleased to have Van Dyke on board, in part because he worked fast and efficiently, to the point that he’d earned the nickname "One-Take Woody." In February 1926, Weaver and General Ashton headed to Hollywood scouting for talent. The Seattle Times soon reported that, "Five new stars, all well known in the land of Klieg lights and whirring cameras, have been added to the roll of Tacoma’s new motion picture company" ("Five Stars Engaged ..."). The talent roster would include Wanda Hawley, a former Tacoman who had worked in Hollywood since 1918 (as Mariam Hardy, the female lead); Tom Santschi, who Weaver had worked with in Hollywood in the 1924 film The Street of Tears (as the villain); Anne Cornwall (as the ingenue); Violet Palmer, who had appeared in a few films including the 1921 Northwest Mounted Police crime adventure Tangled Trails (as Stella Haynes); Bert Woodruff (as Toby, the blind beggar), and Gareth Hughes (as the juvenile lead). In addition, locals were recruited, including 2-year-old Peggy Ann Sessoms (as Betty, the kid), Helene St. Louis (as a maid), and Nell Barry Taylor, "one of Seattle’s prominent dramatic instructors, and the director of her own drama school, the Nell Barry Taylor Studios" ("Drama Director Appears ..."). Numerous Chinese-Americans worked as on-camera extras.
The Seattle Times noted that The Totem Pole Beggar "was written to fit the many scenic advantages of Western Washington … The first scenes will be shot about March 7 and the picture completed in the early summer" ("Five Stars Engaged ..."). As work progressed, the film’s storyline evolved, and the title was changed to Eyes of the Totem.
The suspenseful plot involves a Gold Rush Era couple and their toddler Betty traveling from Alaska to Tacoma. Along the way the husband is robbed and murdered by Phillip La Rue, who is clad in furs, such that only his hateful, evil eyes can be seen. Haunted by those unforgettable eyes, Mariam crosses paths with Toby, a blind, sunglasses-bedecked street beggar grifter, who kindly leads she and Betty to shelter at a beggar’s society, the sketchy "Palace Rooming House" – in actuality, Tacoma’s historic Sylvan Hotel (at 701 St Helens Street), which had been built as the headquarters of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1874. Committed to tracking down her husband’s killer, she then places Betty into a boarding school – Tacoma’s Annie Wright School at 827 N Tacoma Avenue – so her hunt can begin. Inspired by the blind man’s modus operandi, she acquires her own pair of dark glasses and, pretending to be blind, with tin cup in hand, takes up a centrally located observational post on a bench at the totem pole.
Additional outdoor scenes were shot at Narada Falls on Mount "Tacoma" (i.e. Rainier), Chester and Anne Thorne’s Thornewood Castle in Lakewood, and Tacoma’s Old City Hall. Interiors were filmed at Weaver’s studios and at the Winthrop Hotel, which was recast as the Golden Dragon speakeasy, where our villain just so happened to work and lurk, luring girls into immoral professions. Meanwhile, seasons fly by. A snowy winter. Roses blooming in early spring. And all the while, Mariam begs by the pole, whose carved eyes "dissolve into the killer’s eyes periodically in the film" (Sailor). Finally, summer arrives, as does the fearsome man with the pitiless eyes. Spoiler alert! Next comes a blood-curdling, albeit silent, scream, followed by the arrival of a cop (played by Van Dyke).
On June 6, 1927, the 81-minute Eyes of the Totem made its debut in a private screening for cast and crew and associates at the Rialto Theatre. On June 10 it opened to the public next door at the Broadway Theatre in a program with accompanying music provided by Seattle organist Oliver Wallace and the Knights O' Notes. The film subsequently was distributed through deals Weaver cut with Associated Exhibitors and Pathé Exchange. That December it began showing in Seattle in the 1,500-seat Palace Hip (short for hippodrome) theatre on 2nd Avenue. On June 1, 1928, the film began showing at the 700-seat Colonial Theatre. The Seattle Times deemed it a "Drama as unique as it is thrilling characterizes the Pathe feature … To say that it is a mystery in which a woman’s search for the murderer of her husband provides the dramatic highlights, doesn’t do it justice. Around this fundamental theme the director has built up a novel and thrilling plot with many variations which put it in a class by itself" ("Eyes of the Totem").
Heart of the Yukon
In April 1926 Weaver’s studio announced that it was preparing to begin work on its third film, Raw Country, written by Woody Van Dyke. It was to be a tale about early times in snowy Alaska. "The snow scenes will be photographed [sic] in Rainier National Park. A street scene is being erected back of the Titlow beach studio. Here will be staged the action centering in saloons and 'gambling joints'" ("14 Sled Dogs Sought ..."). While the featured actors had not yet been announced, Weaver did inform The Seattle Times that he was in need of fourteen sled dogs for hire.
Soon renamed Heart of the Yukon, this production would be yet another action-packed Northwestern drama, again directed by Van Dyke, while also seeing the return of leading man John Bowers (as Jim Winston), and Anne Cornwall as the requisite ingenue (Anita Wayne). Other imported Hollywood actors included Edward Hearn (as Jack Waite), Frank Campeau (as "Old Skin Full"), Russell Simpson (as Cash Cynon, the villain), and George Jeske (as the bartender). A few local actors were recruited, including Nell Barry Taylor – now described as the director of the Taylor Dramatic School – along with additional Seattle talents including Katherine Skidmore, an accompanist and student at the Jacques Jou-Jerville’s studio, and her brother Chester Skidmore, a senior at Broadway High School, among the 60 other local extras. Tacoma architect Gaston Lance served as the film’s art director and set designer.
The film’s Alaskan Gold Rush era plot, as near as can be reconstructed, revolved around the ugly duckling Anita Wayne, who, upon her mother’s death, learns that she has inherited a goldmine. Problem is, her father had raced to the goldfields years before and she’s never met him. Handed a golden locket – that apparently holds some clue – Wayne heads north to locate him. Upon arrival, she is told that an imposter (the local saloonkeeper) is her father, when in fact her father is the town drunk Old Skin Full. She settles in, ignoring the attentions of Waite the prospector, and instead falls for his partner Winston, who isn’t interested. According to the Tacoma Public Library’s records, "What follows is an extravaganza of snow blizzards, dog sleds and rough mining life" (General Photograph Collection).
Thanks to the work of One-Take Woody, Heart of the Yukon was shot quickly; Pathé released it on May 29, 1927. The film was screened locally at Seattle’s Colonial Theatre, the Palace Hip, and the Neptune. Although considered by some to be Weaver’s best film, it barely got mentioned in the local media. The Seattle Times gave it a perfunctory nod as "an epic of the North" ("Palace Hip Signs ...").
From Silent Flicks To Talkies
The emergence and successes of Weaver’s Tacoma studio had been thrilling, but the silent-film era was drawing to a close due to a revolutionary technological advance. In 1925, General Electric introduced a cone-style loudspeaker that was considerably more efficient than the previous models of horn-type radio speakers. Initially, theaters and other live performance venues began using them in conjunction with microphones to increase the volume for orators and singers – public-address systems in essence. But within a few years, the entire landscape of the film industry changed as motion-picture theaters were outfitted with such audio systems to accommodate the new generation of "talkies" – films that included an audio component.
In August 1926, the Warner Brothers studio released its short Don Juan film, which mesmerized audience with its recorded sound effects and musical score by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. It took another year before the world’s first full-feature film incorporating synchronized dialog and music was produced. In October 1927, mere months after the release of Weaver’s Heart of the Yukon, Warner Brothers released The Jazz Singer to theaters. The film boasted only two scenes with actor dialogue. That was surpassed in 1928 with the same studio’s Lights of New York, which included audio throughout. Audience expectations were heightened, and the Talkies Era had begun.
Weaver’s operation seemingly didn’t have the gumption, or perhaps the finances, to gear-up with all new audio-recording equipment, and thus in 1928 the studio on Titlow Beach was shuttered. Caretaker Herbert Thomas moved in with his family, but Thomas died after being struck by a car in December 1931. The facility started a promising second life in 1932 as a beachfront dancehall, but that plan went up in smoke in a fire on August 24, 1932. Weaver’s company was formally dissolved on July 1, 1932.
Team Totem
In 1953 Tacoma’s famous totem pole was moved to Fireman’s Park, where it stood deteriorating in the rain until 2013, when efforts to save it involved buttressing it with a steel support column. But various community members had taken issue with the pole’s existence, and the expense and effort devoted to stabilizing and preserving it. In February 2021, a committee comprised of "council members from the Puyallup, Tlingit, and Haida Tribes along with representatives from the Tacoma landmarks Preservation Commission and Arts Commission" met to discuss serious concerns about the pole’s lack of historical connection to Puget Sound Native culture. For one thing, the cedar pole itself had been provided by the St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Company – so, how and where, exactly had it been turned into a totem pole? Another reasonable concern: Had it even been made by Native carvers? In March a vote was taken to have it removed. And thusly, on August 3, 2021, a city crew sawed the pole into eight sections and placed it in storage.
The former studio site at Titlow Beach is today a quiet residential neighborhood where curious history buffs poke around occasionally, trying to imagine its long-gone heyday as a studio lot. Little remains aside from the studio’s concrete vault designed for film-reel storage, now in one homeowner’s private backyard.
Meanwhile, film historians had for many decades believed that all three of Weaver’s films had been lost to the mists of time. Theaters hadn’t screened any of them in ages, and dedicated archivists couldn’t identify a collection anywhere that held any of the films. In 1974 The Seattle Times began poking around and had to report that the archival records of the American Film Institute (AFI) revealed that the first film, Hearts and Fists, was "unavailable," and that AFI's assistant public-information officer was unaware of any surviving copies, telling the Times that a rough estimate of the silent films that had been destroyed over time, "would be about 85 per cent of those produced … Producers used to burn old prints to make room for new ones ... Not until recently has preservation been more than an afterthought of the industry" ("Those Were the Good Old Days").
In June 2014, the City of Tacoma hired a new historic preservation coordinator, Lauren Hoogkamer, who soon managed to locate an original copy of Eyes of the Totem stowed away in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. The complete set of seven reels had been donated by the estate of Woody Van Dyke upon his death in 1943, and the nitrate films were stored with other volatile film stock in the MOMA collections.
Tacoma historian Michael Sean Sullivan enthused over the surprise discovery: "Not only is the film a boon for Tacoma but also for the movie world. The discovery of an intact American silent movie that was made outside of California is extremely rare. Only a handful exist" ("'Eyes of the Totem': Long-Lost Silent Movie ..."). As word spread within the local history community, an ad hoc volunteer group calling itself Team Totem began pushing to have the aged print restored. MOMA informed that the cost of restoring the volatile nitrate film footage would likely be $40,000. That’s about when the Tacoma Art Museum’s director, Stephanie Stebish, stepped in and negotiated a deal with MOMA that resulted in a fast-track digital conversion for the discounted price of $4,300, which Team Totem raised locally.
After the film was professionally digitized, Team Totem gathered at Tacoma’s Blue Mouse Theater in February 2015 to enjoy a sneak preview of the film. The next step, before offering viewings to the general public, was to deal with the fact that no one knew what, or if, there had been a music score originally produced to accompany the film, which is now in the custody of the Tacoma Historical Society. Often in the silent-film era, sheet music would have been provided to theaters along with the film reels, and the house pianist or organist would play along live. In this case, Tacoma-based composer John Christopher Bayman was hired to write and record an entirely new, old-school-style score to accompany the film. From there, Eyes of the Totem made its grand second debut on September 18, 2015, at the same venue where it had originally debuted, Tacoma’s Rialto Theatre.
