Michael Gates talks “Hollywood in the Yukon” with SesayArts Magazine

Try imagining this for a moment: a library of silent films – some thought lost to the world – is unearthed in 1978 in the former gold-rush town of Dawson City, Yukon Territories. 

Likely you can’t, because it seems so, well, implausible. 

Yet this is exactly what happened. 44 years ago, beneath the demolished site of an old hockey arena, a veritable treasure trove of once-lost silent films was discovered – and Michael Gates was there to witnessed the historic discovery. In his new book Hollywood in the Klondike: Dawson City’s Great Film Find, Gates marries first-hand experience and extensive research to make sense of this find and shine a spotlight on an exciting and little-known epoch in Canadian history. 

The Klondike gold rush was unique in the history of Canada and the development of the North. And 125 years ago, Dawson City, the “Paris of the North,” was the hub and entertainment capital of the gold rush. The city boasted more saloons, gambling halls and theatres than places serving food. Live theatre was at the centre of a burgeoning town life that soon included moving-picture theatres. Hollywood in the Klondike details how cultural icons like Robert Service, Jack London, Charlie Chaplin, Alexander Pantages, Sid Grauman, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, and Marjorie Rambeau went from the Klondike to Hollywood, not vice-versa – raising the question, “Did the Klondike make Hollywood, or did Hollywood make the Klondike?”  

In his first-hand account of an unexpected cinematic discovery, Gates explains how the silent films came to be buried beneath the permafrost of this Arctic town. Long revered as the Yukon story laureate, Gates is the author of several historical books, including From the Klondike to Berlin, which was shortlisted for the Canadian Authors Association Fred Kerner Book Award, and Dublin Gulch: The History of the Eagle Gold Mine, which received the Axiom Business Book Award silver medal for corporate history. Based in Whitehorse, YT, he was formerly the curator of collections for Klondike National Historic Sites in Dawson City, and currently pens the popular column History Hunter for the Yukon News. 

SesayArts Magazine was delighted to speak with Gates about his deep knowledge of Yukon history, his decision to document the discovery of the films, the who’s who of actors and authors who got their start in Dawson City, and his abiding affection for the Yukon and its residents.

SM: Can we start by learning a little bit about you and your career as a historian? What set you along this path, and has it been what you thought it would be? 

MG: I evolved into this role more by chance than by design. My university training was in archaeology, which was what first brought me to the Yukon many years ago. I realized that if I wanted to work in the Yukon, I would have to diversify my skill set as there were no positions for archaeologists at that time.  I embarked on a training program at the national museums in Ottawa, where I spent three years learning how to be a conservator. My background got me my job as curator for Parks Canada in Dawson City. All of these compelled me to understand the historical context of my work. I returned to school to get a Master’s degree in History Museum Studies. My senior paper was an historical study of the pre-gold rush history of prospecting in the Yukon. I looked closely at the social structure of this early mining society while writing this paper, and that led to me writing my first book, Gold at Fortymile Creek. I was fascinated by the people, the places and events that were revealed to me during my work. Over the years, I gathered countless stories about the Yukon, which has fueled my History Hunter column in the Yukon News. That started in 2007, and I have penned nearly 700 articles about Yukon history since it began. What I have learned in the process is this: The more I learn about Yukon history, the less I seem to know!

SM: When I started to read Hollywood in the Klondike, I was surprised to learn that the silent films buried beneath an old hockey arena were discovered in the 1970s and not more recently, as I had initially believed. Why did you decide to write about the discovery and the silent-film boom in Dawson City so many years after the discovery? 

MG: I did not originally plan to write a book about the Dawson City Film Find, but over the years, I have heard (and read) so many distorted second-hand accounts of how it took place, it started to bother me. Sam Kula, the former director of the National Film, Television and Sound Archives in Ottawa has passed away, and I realized that there aren’t any others who can relate the original events surrounding the discovery of the Dawson City Film Find. In addition, there has been a continued fascination with the Dawson City Film Find because of the unique circumstances under which the discovery occurred. There will be nothing like it ever again. 

Finally, New York filmmaker Bill Morrison created a documentary film in 2016 titled Dawson City: Frozen Time that has sparked renewed interest in the topic. I decided to dig into the historical context of moving pictures in the Klondike gold rush, and discovered an intriguing story that wove various individuals and events into a rich fabric. I was surprised by how many people got their start in Hollywood back in the gold rush. Sid Grauman was a paperboy in Dawson City. Alex Pantages started out as a bartender. William Desmond Taylor was a time keeper for one of the Dredging companies that came in after the gold rush. Films were made based on stories written by authors who got their start in the Klondike, like Robert Service, Jack London, Dick North and Pierre Berton.

SM: At what point did you decide that the discovery would make a good story (because it is a great book!)? 

MG: I am always looking for good topics to write about. Personal connection to the story is one element, timing is another, and finally, there must be enough documentary evidence to support the story. I start writing when I can visualize the start and finish of the story, and can connect the dots in between.

SM: As the Yukon story laureate, you already know a lot about Dawson City and the Yukon… Even so, did you learn some new things about Dawson City and the burgeoning of the gold-rush era entertainment scene while writing this book? 

MG: What intrigued me the most were the intricate connections between the gold rush and Hollywood. The people who went on to be famous in the film industry. What a web of interconnected lives!

Also, I came to realize just how central the live theatre, and later moving picture theatres became to the social life of Dawson.

SM: Would you like to speak about some of the larger than life characters who made up the Dawson City entertainment industry, including Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Ned Sparks, Robert Service and Jack London?

MG: Robert Service was an unassuming bank clerk who through talent and circumstance, was to become the most successful (if you measure book sales) poet of the Twentieth Century. He once made a trip down the Mackenzie River and portaged overland to the Porcupine River, and then up the Yukon to Dawson City. It took him all summer and most people would wither at the thought of making such a trip in canoes and on foot. Service had a unique talent for spotting the ironies of life and capturing them vividly in verse.

Jack London only spent a few months in the north but his experiences there were the inspiration for more than half of the stories he wrote. He spent a dismal winter encamped at the mouth of the Stewart River, enduring long hours of darkness and intense cold. By the spring of 1898, he had such a severe case of scurvy, he was forced to leave the north, but his time in the north  inspired one of the most famous authors of the Twentieth Century.

We know that Roscoe Arbuckle performed on the stage of the Auditorium Theatre (now the Palace Grand)  in 1906, but he left when the theatre troupe went bust. One of his fellow actors was Marjorie Rambeau, who spent the winter of 1907/08 stranded in Dawson, organizing amateur theatre and giving elocution lessons. She went on to appear on screen opposite some of Hollywood’s most famous stars, including Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow, Ronald Reagan, James Cagney, John Wayne and (several times) Clark Gable. Her memories of the Klondike were Americanized in later years. She was twice nominated for an Oscar.

SM: I would love to know your view of how the Gold Rush era is remembered today. 

MG: That is a difficult question to answer. I was so intimately involved with the subject, that I see it differently than most people. The story is evolving from a single narrative, essentially a WASP story, to one in which other perspectives are being exposed for the first time. These are the hidden histories of various ethnic groups, Black and Asian history, Jewish history and Indigenous history. All these throw light on the various impacts of the gold rush on different peoples.

SM: Did the Klondike shape Hollywood, or did Hollywood shape the Klondike, in your opinion?

MG: The Klondike gold rush has inspired more than 200 films over the last century. Jack London’s stories have been filmed more than 60 times (Call of the Wild has come out in 13 different screen versions). One of the most famous of these films is Charlie Chaplin’s film, “The Gold Rush.” One television series from the 1950s (Klondike) came off rather poorly.

Unfortunately, Hollywood has remade the gold rush in its own notion of what the gold rush was like. Most of them are filmed elsewhere. Many of them come off  like Westerns moved north. Many of them ignore the fact that there is 24 hours of daylight in the summer, and almost constant darkness in the winter, a fact that would be jarring to most people who live south of us. Budget expediency, preconceived notions of what would sell, pandering to sponsors and unfamiliarity with the facts surrounding the gold rush all tend to distort the image created by Hollywood films.

SM: Whether fiction or nonfiction, whose writing do you enjoy (or are currently reading) that you recommend?

MG: I enjoy a wide variety of books, often reading four or five simultaneously (except when I am in the middle of writing another book, of course). Some I return to again and again. Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy, is one of these. I consider it a modern classic. Personal memoirs of growing up are particularly interesting. Three that I can name off the top of my head are Too Close to the Falls, by Catherine Gildiner, North of Normal, by Cea Sunrise Person, has a northern connection in it, and rough house, by Tina Ontiveros is another. Strange that I notice they are all written by women! I never thought of that before.

SM: What was the biggest surprise to come out of writing Hollywood in the Klondike?

MG: What surprises me repeatedly about Yukon history is that we have unique stories shaped by the distinct characteristics of the north and the northern environment. Finding a hoard of old silent films buried in permafrost? That’s nothing new. We have discovered frozen remains of an Indigenous hunter hundreds of years old, organic archaeological specimens buried in ice and snow for thousands of years, and most recently, the remains of a baby mammoth, dating tens of thousands of years into the past. The earliest evidence of human occupation in Canada can be found in the Yukon. And the people? Amazing stories. Don’t get me started.

© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2022