A Girl and her Dog, 30 Years Later

When I posted the image of Labradorean Inuit celebrity Nancy Columbia and her dog at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, the post got quite a lot of views. Miss Columbia was indeed, as my friend Kenn Harper has aptly said, the "most famous Inuk in the world," the star of stage and screen (she wrote and appeared in "The Way of the Eskimo," produced by Selig Polyscope in 1911). But by the time this photo was taken sometime in the 1930's she'd married, had a daughter, and retired almost completely from public appearances; indeed, this may have been her last. By this time, she was living in the Santa Monica area in Los Angeles, and the photos above -- staged on a backdrop with a little "snow" on it -- appears to have come from some dog show; it's part of a sequence of dog show photos on glass plates that were part of the Security Pacific Bank Collection, and which are today -- happily -- available to the public via the digital photo collections of the Los Angeles Public Library, where I was able to help them identify the photo's subject in 2010. 

Alice Guy Goes North

Watching the first episode of Mark Cousins's Story of Film on TCM, I was glad to see him credit the pioneering director Alice Guy-Blaché as the person to very nearly invent the idea of a story arc. A number of the films she made for Gaumont are readily available on DVD from Kino Lorber, but very her early American films, produced for Solax with her husband Herbert are much less well-known. The Blachés were innovators not only in story lines, but in portraying such things as the struggles of immigrants or the everyday life of an African-American family, that many studios didn't think were screenworthy. And here, in an advert from 1911, is another genre-busting film; more than a decade before Nanook of the North, the Blachés tackled Arctic exploration as a film subject. The movie, alas, is not known to have survived, but it was probably filmed in Saranac Lake, New York, at a film 'camp' established by champion dog-musher Caribou Bill Cooper; Cooper's "Arctic Film Company" rented out its sets and dog-teams for all manner of early "Northern" films.

Rescuing Balto

Most people still know something of the story Balto, the Siberian Husky who led his dog team on the crucial final link of the serum run to Nome, Alaska in 1925. And yet, despite the engaging animated version of Balto's life, and its (forgettable) sequels, few realize that, within a year or two after his heroic feat, Balto himself needed rescuing -- from a dime museum where he was confined, ill-treated, and exploited by a showman in search of that "one thin dime" from his customers. As news of Balto's situation spread, the good people of Cleveland, Ohio stepped up with a "Balto fund" that collected enough money to buy him and six of his companions from the museum and install him in permanent, comfortable home at the city's zoo. Balto's arrival was heralded by a parade on March 19, 1927, which was well-attended despite the rain. Balto lived out his years in comfort with top veterinary care; after his death in 1933, his remains were taxidermied and placed in a case at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History -- where they may still be seen today. You can read more about Balto's life and career here.

The Man from Beyond

He's just been discovered aboard an icebound ship in the remote wastes of the Arctic, and chopped out of a block of solid ice in which he's been frozen more than a century. And yet, he's alive! Who else but Harry Houdini could think of such a scene, and bring it to life -- not on stage, of course, but through the magic of cinema. Few people realize that Houdini not only had several starring roles, but managed his own Harry Houdini Film Company, of which the above feature -- 1922's The Man from Beyond -- was perhaps its finest achievement. Happily, the film itself survives, and can be seen online, or in better resolution as part of Kino-Lorber's wonderful DVD boxed set, Houdini the Movie Star.

Zenith Radios in the Arctic

Image via the fabulous Lantern media history site

Product endorsements from Arctic explorers are nothing new -- way back in 1863, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane had given his seal of approval to Borden's Meat Biscuits, and MacMillan's old boss Robert Peary had endorsed, among other things, Howard Watches (not to be outdone, Peary's wife Jo appeared in ads for Jaros Hygenic Underwear). But unlike biscuits, watches, and underwear, radios had an enormous capacity to decrease the hazards of Arctic travel -- not only, as this ad notes, by reducing one's sense of solitude, but by enabling lost explorers to, well, not be so lost.

White World

"White World" was a short-lived attraction -- it ran only from 1905 to 1906 -- on Surf Ave. in Coney Island -- showcasing the accomplishments of polar explorers. It was built in the form of a giant iceberg, and was probably a variety of what's known in the trade as a 'dark ride' -- a slow indoor roller-coaster type ride that passed through dioramas and views of various subjects. The designs for this ride were made by the Italian-American artist Albert Operti -- you can just make out his name in the high-resolution version at the Library of Congress -- who had travelled with Robert Peary to the Arctic on one of his earlier expeditions. It's hard to know what the exhibit contained, though it's safe to assume it was based in some way on the illustrations Operti made for the book of the same name, published in 1902.

The Polar Dog

Many songs have been sung of the thrilling exploits of Polar explorers, but what of Polar Dogs? This particular dog, exhibited by one "Professor Faber" in 1846 alongside other curiosities such as a dwarf in a bear-skin, may not have in fact hailed from the Arctic seas, but many expedition dogs were publicly exhibited -- three of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane's dogs, "Etah,""Whitey,"and one known as "Myouk, the celebrated Singing Esquimaux Dog" were exhibited in the United States in the 1850's and 1860's.

Caribou Bill

William Frank "Caribou Bill" Cooper led a storied life, from his days as a dog-musher in Alaska, to the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific exposition of 1909, to New York's Coney Island, to being the proprietor of his own film studio in Saranac Lake, NY. Among the films he produced at his facilities was 1915's "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," based on Marvin Dana's prose adaptation of the Robert W. Service poem -- you can see dozens of stills from this lost film in the GoogleBooks version of the book. In his later years, Bill worked as a consultant for RKO Pictures; he died in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Takoma, Washington on November. 2, 1933.

A Girl and Her Dog

A girl and her dog -- an all-American family moment -- except that this was Nancy Columbia, the most famous Inuit girl of her day. This stereoview was taken at the "Esquimaux Village" at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, where Nancy and her family were appearing. Nancy had, in fact, been born at a world's fair -- the 1893 Columbian Exposition  -- and would go on to be a fixture at more than twenty major fairs in the United States, France, Germany, and Spain, as well as appearing in a dozen early silent films, for one of which -- 1911's "The Way of the Eskimo"-- she wrote the scenario (the equivalent of a screenplay for a sound picture). You can read more about Nancy here, and here, and here.

Another Eskimo advert from 1904

Lest one assume that, in 1904, all images of Inuit or "Eskimos" in advertisements were negative, I present this one for Eskay's Food, a popular solid food for babies. It's based on a photograph of Esther Eneutseak and her son Norman (the text mistakenly uses just the surname for the baby). They had, as the ad states, been part of an "Eskimo Village" at the Louisiana Exposition of 1904 in St. Louis, where Eskay's had a promotional presence.