Traveling showmen brought first movies to Bangor

Bangor didn’t have a real movie theater until 1907, when the Nickel opened on Union Street across from the Bangor House “devoted to moving pictures and illustrated songs.” Before that, area residents could see movies only sporadically at the Bangor Opera House, fairs or at other places where plays and vaudeville shows were shown occasionally.

Of course, these early flickering fantasies were nothing like what’s playing at your local cinema. While the acting and production may have been crude, however, people got just as excited as they do today when the latest installment of “Star Wars” or “Harry Potter” opens at the cinemas.

A century ago, before theaters like the Nickel were widespread, movies were brought to town by itinerant exhibitors. The exhibitor who came to Bangor the most in 1904 and 1905 was Archie L. Shepard, formerly a traveling tent showman. Moving pictures had appeared in Bangor before Shepard arrived, but the art form was still new enough to provoke awe.

“Life actually counterfeited,” declared a small headline in the Bangor Daily News’ theater column on Jan. 1l, 1904. The Shepard Moving Picture Company was coming to town to show “the great Delhi coronation” and the crowning of Pope Pius X. It was as good as going to school, the paper stated in another promotional piece two days later.

The day of the first show, Friday, Jan. 15, the Bangor Daily Commercial, the city’s other newspaper, had an entirely different take on what would be shown. Shepard would feature a “mythical Fairyland made reality by the magnificent panorama presented.”

What theatergoers were not told by either paper was that besides “Fairyland,” “Babes in the Woods,” “Rip Van Winkle,” “Oliver Twist,” and “An English Fox Hunt,” they would also be able to see “The Great Train Robbery,” one of the most famous movies in history. Despite being only 12 minutes long and made in New Jersey, the little film set the formula for movie westerns. Murders, robbery, chases, and gunfights were just what Bangor residents needed to warm a cold January night.

It was the medium itself, not its content, that continued to amaze people after the shows were over. The Commercial in Monday’s paper said, “Many Mystifying Illusions Are Produced by Picture Machines.” By superimposing two films, the producers were able to create silent images of a sleeping prisoner dreaming about murdering his girl friend, who also appeared on screen, and a decapitated man finding his head inside a large egg.

Shepard returned in March. A newspaper advertisement said he would be showing “The Baltimore Fire.” The newspaper writers revealed in promotional pieces that he would also be showing “Puss in Boots” and “The Life of Marie Antoinette.”

Those who had missed it the first time would be able to see “The Great Train Robbery,” the BDN announced. “The smoke of the pistols is plainly seen, and men drop dead right and left, but no sound is heard. Nevertheless, while witnessing the exhibition, women put their fingers in their ears to shut out the noise of the firing! That is pure realism,” said the paper.

Shepard had changed the name of his company in his advertising from Shepard’s Famous Flickerless Moving Pictures to Shepard’s High-Class Moving Pictures. A flickering film could cause definite problems. The Sloan Moving Picture Company put on a show at Old Town City Hall on Jan. 1, 1905, including views “representing” the execution of President McKinley, but much to the chagrin of the audience, the projector wasn’t working properly. “The male element made their presence conspicuous by offering advice to the show’s manager as to the proper way to show the pictures,” the local BDN correspondent reported politely.

Fortunately for the projectionist, another act was there to take up the slack. He was Eddie Giguere, the French Warbler. He was “a young man with a white vest, which he showed to good advantage by keeping his hands in his trousers’ pockets while warbling, sang, without a piano accompaniment, several solos,” the correspondent wrote. “Eddie’s work was rather ragged at times, but the audience enjoyed it, judging by their applause. And the vest was stunning.”

Archie Shepard returned to the Bangor Opera House in February, April and September. He showed the same kind of fare – scenes of the Russo-Japanese War and the peace conference in Portsmouth, President Roosevelt’s inauguration, a trip through Borneo, New York’s subway, the Egyptian pyramids and more.

He mixed the frivolous with the significant just as movies do today. In September he showed a piece about a magic automobile – “a new sensational moving picture conceit which has kept New York laughing for the past 16 weeks.”

The Nickel and hundreds of other theaters like it across the country soon wiped most of the itinerant motion picture exhibitors off the map, or at least knocked them into the sticks. Shepard adapted to the times. He began leasing theaters in 1906 and had a cinema chain, including a movie house in Lewiston, within a year. Men like these, long before Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, were the real pioneers of the movies.

Audrey Amidon at Northeast Historic Film and Richard R. Shaw provided information for this column. Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.org.