Chasing Mr. C:" Early Motion-Picture

CHASING MR. C: EARLY MOTION-PICTURE EXHIBITION IN ROBESON COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA (1896-1950) Christopher J. McKenna A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2012 Approved by: Dr. Timothy Marr Dr. Linda Wagner-Martin Dr. John McGowan Dr. Robert C. Allen Dr. Malinda Maynor-Lowery 2012 Christopher J. McKenna ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT CHRISTOPHER J. MCKENNA: Chasing Mr. C: Early Motion-Picture Exhibition in Robeson County, North Carolina (1896-1950) (Under the direction of Timothy Marr) This dissertation seeks to document the development of early moviegoing in a specific North Carolina county during the first half-century of commercial film exhibitions. Several local factors resulted in exhibition developments that often did not conform—or only partially conformed—to the metro-centric narratives that have dominated U.S. cinema history. Instead, Robeson’s exhibitors and audiences faced a series of economic, socio-cultural, and racial challenges that shaped the highly-contingent and inescapably public activity of moviegoing in the county’s rural, highly-decentralized, socially conservative, and racially discriminatory small- town communities. This study depicts local moviegoing as neither a ubiquitous nor fully accessible leisure activity due to: Local demographic factors that delayed the implementation of core commercial infrastructures and slowed the introduction and stabilization of local exhibitions until long after several notable exhibition trends that never meaningfully applied to Robeson had long since reshaped metropolitan moviegoing. The concerns of local civic and religious leaders that nearly resulted in the imposition of a cinema-censorship structure based on a legislative proposal during the 1921 General Assembly that had been co-sponsored by a Robeson County delegate. Local racial codes that sanctioned the tri-segregation of virtually all political, social, religious, and civic spaces, and which led Robeson’s exhibitors and audiences (respectively) iii to construct or navigate aggressively segregated facilities whose locally paradigmatic form, the “three-entrance” theater, intentionally re-inscribed these codes within physical structures designed to perpetuate the second-class treatment of non-whites. iv To the former and current residents of Robeson County, who graciously shared their memories and their history with a complete stranger. To Ken and Marion, who remain the friends of a lifetime. To Tom and Alice, who provided the core foundation. To Amanda, Ashley, and my wife, Sharon, who enrich my life each and every day. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee for participating in a project which, though it ranges far from the roots of most English-affiliated dissertations, seemed to me to offer an opportunity to develop an interesting—and at times compelling— set of historical narratives. Despite the project’s more obvious alignment with American, Cultural, and Media Studies, it remains rooted in the rhetorical analyses that remain the stock in trade of English scholars. Bobby Allen’s course on early moviegoing represented one of those completely serendipitous turns in academia for me. It introduced me to the lonesome yet oddly rewarding world of archival research, to an intriguing set of multi-disciplinary scholarship, and to an eclectic set of scholars attempting to reclaim largely ignored elements of cinema history. I’ve found Bobby’s work on early cinema in general, and on the development of moviegoing in North Carolina in particular, to be both influential and instructive. I applaud him for helping to lead a charge for more empirically based cinema scholarship and for seeking a more thoroughgoing awareness of the role that motion pictures and moviegoing did (or did not) play in the “lived experience” of local community members. I am extremely grateful to have found in Tim Marr a director whose open-mindedness and willing championship of a social history based on moviegoing has been not only administratively helpful (thanks to his involvement with both the departments of English Literature and American Studies), but whose spirit and work ethic, as evidenced by the vi thoroughness of his chapter reviews, combine to form a welcome haven for graduate students pursuing interdisciplinary scholarship. In his Philosophy of Language course, John McGowan introduced me to a useful philosophic touchstone: Wittgenstein’s “rough ground” of cultural formation. In pursuing this project, I came to view Robeson’s tri-racial theaters as an example of rough ground, one where I hoped to discover transgressions against social boundaries performed through the sort of “everyday life” practices chronicled by Michel de Certeau. I suspect that Dr. McGowan, perhaps the most rigorous logician I’ve ever met, supports the critique of master narratives that perhaps have lost touch with the “rough ground,” and I am hopeful that this study’s engagement with certain historical exhibition trends meets with his approval. At a time when this project was struggling to understand the experiences of Native American moviegoers within the context of Robesonian tri-racialism, Malinda Maynor- Lowery provided me with an introduction to several extraordinarily helpful contacts in the Lumbee community. In addition, her own investigations into Lumbee history represent a welcome analysis of the ways in which Robeson’s Indians sought to protect their social identity in an environment which, for all too many generations, failed to acknowledge or deter a wide range of political and economic shenanigans locally implemented to marginalize Native Americans. More than a few years ago now, Linda Wagner-Martin helped convince me to leave Wall Street to come to Chapel Hill. In my time here, she has supported more graduate- student scholarship than any other faculty member I know. While so much good work has been accomplished by the young scholars she continues to influence and encourage, I remain cautiously optimistic that this latest dissertation will prove worthy of her faith in it—and me. vii While not participating directly in the dissertation panel, several other scholars played a formative role in its development. Though the attempt to develop a meaningful historical narrative out of disparate sources and sets of evidence, I was fortunate to have studied with both John and Joy Kasson, whose works on Coney Island and Buffalo Bill Cody (respectively) provided models of what a project like this might become. Well into the project, I came across cinema historian Jane Gaines’ ruminations on “counter-ideological phenomena.” Her recognition that what we seek versus what we find during historical research remains as much a product of ourselves—of our hopes, fears, prejudices, and desires—than a product of the evidence we actually find and select to incorporate into our work seemed to me a bracing if necessary admission required of anyone who attempts to construct an historical narrative. If the ghost of Walter Wishart casts the largest shadow over the first several chapters of this work, its latter chapters were heavily influenced by the existentialism inherent in C. Vann Woodward’s studies of Jim Crow. Just as Woodward demonstrated a long series of individual and collective choices—rather than racial essentialism—largely restructured Southern life after the American Civil War, I hope that readers of this work will come to see that the development of Robeson’s tri-segregated movie theaters was by no means an historical inevitability. It was a process, one in which specific choices were made, and a set of physical and social architectures and technologies were implemented, to achieve a particular and long-desired end. However, if theatrical segregation in Robeson was always influenced by the needs of the locally dominant racial group, and if that dominant group was neither simply nor inevitably white…well, these are facts that the historical record will need to account for. In addition, while Pembroke theaters did represent a counter-ideological viii phenomenon, their interior composition would have been significantly different had certain other choices been made. In expressing my thanks to the Robeson County residents who aided this project over the year, special thanks are due Donnie Douglas. As the Editor of the Robesonian, Donnie provided enthusiastic support in Lumberton, and his local knowledge led to especially useful interviews with John Wishart Campbell and John Clayton Townsend. Several of the Carolina Civic Center’s directors shared their time and documents to contribute to this study, including Michael Bloomer, Angela Carter, and Richard Sceiford. Though no longer Robeson residents at the time, Alex Rivera and Jesse Oxendine offered exceptionally helpful insights into the experiences of non-white moviegoers in a tri-racial community. Equally invaluable was the assistance of Henry A. McKinnon, a distinguished former Robeson County legislator and jurist who shared his deep knowledge of local history with me. Judge McKinnon fulfilled the role of a local community historian so well that it is difficult to imagine in the wake of his passing who in Robeson County might possibly replace him. This study’s attempt to document the “lived” experience of Robeson County moviegoers could not have succeeded without the assistance

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