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Way-Back Machine
Jim Albanese
Hot movie at the Bagby
May 12, 2008

I don't know when and where the first motion picture was played in Monterey
County, or what its title was.

The first moving pictures for commercial use were distributed around 1894.
These films were short depictions of everyday life: people walking, horses
pulling carts and things like that. It wasn't until Thomas Edison shot "The
Great Train Robbery" in 1903 that moving pictures endeavored to tell a
story.
So great-grandma and great-grandpa probably didn't think those early
flickers were a big deal. If they wanted to make out in the balcony in those
days, they'd go to a vaudeville show. Between acts and for costume changes,
it was customary to show one of those horse-pulling-wagon film shorts.

Vaudeville remained the more popular form of entertainment in Salinas until
the post-World War I years, even after D.W. Griffith and others had
perfected the epic multi-reeler.

The reason for this may have been an incident in Monterey on Dec. 2, 1904.

On that night, the Great Western Vaudeville Co. was played to a packed house
at the Bagby Opera House. It was between acts. The lights dimmed. The
curtain rose. The projector exploded.

Anything else exploding, these folks probably could have managed OK. But
this was a new-fangled gadget. If it exploded once, might it not explode
again?

The crowd decided not to take any chances: It panicked.

In the projection area, a flame flared and someone yelled "Fire!" It was
every man for himself, and few heroes distinguished themselves this night.

According to newspaper accounts, "women and children were crushed between
the seats and the aisles. Screams and oaths and cries of pain were heard."

Now, I wouldn't make light of this incident if anyone was killed or
seriously hurt. And no one was. In fact, the fire was extinguished almost as
soon as it erupted.

The Bagby Opera house was a two-story affair. Some people in the upper seats
jumped from windows to the roof of the first floor. The most serious injury
was sustained by a pipeline worker from Coalinga. He fell on the pavement
outside the theater and suffered a broken arm.

It may not sound like a dramatic story today, but it may be one reason
Salinas folks generally shunned moving pictures in the 1910s, even though
the area around Monterey County was frequently used as a canvas for some
early film masterpieces.

JIM ALBANESE is a copy editor for The Salinas Californian who, after seeing
Hayley Mills in 'Pollyanna,' wrote to Walt Disney asking for a part in her
next film. He received a polite rebuff, sweetened with an autographed
picture of Miss Mills. E-mail him at jalbanes(at)thecalifornian(dot)com.

--
Bruce Calvert
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