Movies Shown in Arizona 100 Years Ago

Once upon a time, long, long ago, before computers, before television, even before the automobile - in the year 1880 - there came to Globe, Arizona from Columbus, Ohio, a teenager named C.L. "Valley" White. He was a bright young man and moved to Globe with his family, where his father would soon found the Globe Pioneer Brass Band.

It must have been an exciting time to be in the West, what with holdups, Indian raids and the arrival of the latest technologies such as the train, the phonograph and the telegraph. C.L. White wasted no time in finding a job for himself in Globe, and that was as a telegraph messenger boy for a man named Charles McCoy Clark.

There happened to be another man named Clark that spent some time in Globe the following year and who made a big hit in the newspaper with his Dissolving Steriopticon Views. That was Professor George D. Clark ... Niagara Falls, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Capitol and Treasury buildings in Washington would all be brought to Globe, thereby saving railroad fare, grub bills, hack hire and street car tickets for patrons who would part with the Eagle of an American half-dollar. Professor Clark's Dissolving Steriopticon Views were shown with a machine known as a Magic Lantern which was one of the ancestors of what we now call movies.

After selling band instruments to all the young men in Globe, like a real life Professor Harold Hill from "The Music Man", C.L. White's father moved his family to the San Francisco area in 1881. The next documented visit C.L. White made to Arizona was in 1897 with his Marvelous Projectoscope Motion Picture Show.

Replica of 1897 Edison Projectoscope

C.L. White met up with his old telegrapher friend from Globe while in Jerome, Arizona on his Projectoscope tour in November of 1897. White's former boss Charles Clark now had an assay office which he had lost to fire a couple of times and when White offered Clark a partnership in his Projectoscope show, Clark jumped at the chance. Soon the pair were showing movies everywhere from Ash Fork to Fort Apache. After almost causing a riot by showing the Apache Indians the first movies they had ever seen, Clark and White returned to Holbrook, Arizona in February of 1898. White was to go ahead to Gallup, New Mexico to promote the next shows while Clark would wait for supplies from San Francisco. White never made it out of town. He slipped off the train as it was crossing the switch onto the main line and died under the ether while having his legs amputated. A sad end to a forgotten pioneer of the exhibition of motion pictures, still his story lives on. Some of the very same films C.L. White showed 100 years ago have been shown in London on a replica "Projectoscope" by Professor Hall and in numerous shows around the country. You can read about CL White's 1st Movie Show in Arizona in the January, 1998 Arizona Highways Magazine.

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