application/pdf
2036-461X
19047
4
en
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
The Redpath Chautauqua Collection. University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
4
Projects & Abstracts
2004-03-01
2022-11-20
2004-03-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Rick Altman
2004/03/01
University of Iowa
2036-461X
4
en
The Redpath Chautauqua Collection. University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19047/16807
4
THE REDPATH CHAUTAUQUA COLLECTION
University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections
Rick Altman, University of Iowa




  Few areas of film history have been so systematically overlooked as the elusive realm
of itinerant exhibition. From the 1890s to the 1950s traveling showmen periodically
brought moving pictures to spectators interested in topics outside the mainstream of
public entertainment, avid for a level of seriousness and erudition superior to that of
theaters, or located in small towns lacking permanent projection facilities. Most travel-
ing exhibitors signed season-long contracts with booking agents who sold their servic-
es to churches, charitable and fraternal organizations, or municipalities. Turn-of-the-
century shows took place in churches, Lyceums, or opera houses; later, summer tent
Chautauquas and public schools were the venues of choice. Throughout this period,
traveling exhibitors made or commissioned many of their films. Often uncatalogued
and ignored by historians, these films were almost uniformly documentary in nature,
concentrating on local events, little-known portions of North America (including the
newly established national parks and Alaska), foreign sites from European cities to the
Panama Canal and the South Sea Islands, or unusual and exciting experiences such as
sea rescues and big-game hunts. Just as important to early film exhibition – and just as
ignored – as vaudeville and amusement parks, traveling lecture circuits have been
almost totally excluded from film history.

  This neglect has been partly caused by lack of available archival materials covering
lecturers and their shows. One collection that deserves to be consulted is the University
of Iowa’s Redpath Chautauqua Collection. First organized in 1874 in the western New
York town that gave it a name, a “Chautauqua” was a three to seven day meeting, usu-
ally in a tent, featuring lectures on topics of cultural interest, often accompanied by
music and other uplifting entertainments. Organization into “circuit Chautauquas”
began in 1904, with the booking of lecturers and other acts into circuits (on the model
of vaudeville). For thirty years, until the Great Depression, circuit Chautauquas consti-
tuted one of middle America’s most important gathering places. At its peak in the mid-
1920s, circuit Chautauqua performers and lecturers appeared in more than 10,000 com-
munities in 45 states to audiences totaling 45 million people. What the picture palace
was to the city, Chautauqua was to the hinterlands. The Redpath Lyceum Bureau was
the country’s foremost booking office for circuit Chautauquas, totally dominating the
Midwest. Now deposited at the University of Iowa, the Redpath Bureau papers include
648 shelf-feet of talent pamphlets, business records, correspondence, and photographs
dating from 1890 to 1940. This is the largest collection of its kind in existence.

  Thanks to the Library of Congress program on “American Memory,” major portions of

CINEMA & Cie, no. 4, Spring 2004                                                     ­143
RICK ALTMAN

the Redpath Chautauqua Collection are now available online, under the title “Traveling
Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century.” Online materials include 7,949
publicity brochures, promotional advertisements and flyers for 4,545 lecturers, teach-
ers, preachers, statesmen and politicians, actors, singers and opera stars, glee clubs and
concert companies, magicians, whistlers and other performers who traveled the cir-
cuits at the beginning of the 20th century. Each page of all 7,949 brochures can be dis-
played. Of particular interest to film scholars are the many pamphlets advertising the
services of lectures who exhibited moving pictures, most of which they personally
made in the off-season. These include everything from John J. Lewis’s Passion Play films
to Edward Burton MacDowell’s films of the Panama Canal, the Fiji Islands, and Samoa.
Other filmmaking lecturers represented include Arthur K. Peck, Arthur J. Pillsbury,
Clarence Price, George Earle Raiguel, and A. W. Stephens. While most of their films
were shot on location to document current events or disappearing civilizations, others
involve narrative recreations, such as J. E. Comerford’s recreations of sea rescues. The C.
J. Hite Company exhibited Gaumont Chronophone synchronized sound films. All of
this and much more can be located with the help of the search function included in the
online collection.

  The Redpath Chautauqua Collection may be consulted in the Department of Special
Collections, located on the third floor of the University of Iowa Library. The
Department is open from 8:30 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., Monday to Friday, except on national
and some University holidays; scholars visiting from a distance are urged to check serv-
ice hours on the Department website (http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll) or to com-
municate prior to their visit, preferably by e-mail at lib-spec@uiowa.edu. The
Department’s telephone number is 319/335-5921; the fax number is 319/335-5900. The
Department generally does not have staff resources to search the record books or to
make large numbers of photocopies for readers. A limited number of photocopies can
be made from some of the materials in this collection.
  The online collection may be found at:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/iauhtml/ or accessed through the University
site (www.uiowa.edu, select Libraries, go to specific Main Library unit, select Special
Collections, select About Us, select Traveling Culture).




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