New Boston Historical Society

New Boston Historical Society
New Boston, New Hampshire

Albert W. Plummer and his cameraman

New Boston — the Hollywood of the East?

In the autumn of 1926 a man named Plummer arrived in New Boston intending to make our town the "Hollywood of the East," the movie-making capital of New England. He and his associates rented rooms at The Tavern and set up their film processing laboratory in the Creamery next to the Apple Barn. Making movies is an expensive business, so Plummer sold shares in his "Pannaway Picture Corporation" to local investors. (The company was most likely named after Pannaway Plantation, the site of the first English settlement in New Hampshire.)

Plummer and his cameraman were seen around town taking pictures, and many a young person dreamed of becoming a movie star. Unfortunately, a few months later Plummer and his friends disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving behind a stack of unpaid bills.

tavern
The movie men stayed at The Tavern

Was Pannaway Pictures a scam or simply a failed business venture? That's a mystery I've been pondering for some time, ever since I read one of Rena Davis's history columns which was published in 1976, on April Fool's Day of that year, as it happens. After I read Rena's article, I tried to learn more about Pannaway Pictures. I found only the State of New Hampshire's record of its incorporation in August of 1926, so I reluctantly added Pannaway to my "unsolved mysteries" file.

Plummer rented the Creamery for his laboratory

Recently new information has come to light; rather it's old information that's new to me. The good people at the Wadleigh Memorial Library in Milford, NH, have digitized over a hundred years of local newspapers, including the Farmers' Cabinet and the Milford Cabinet. They've made these images available on-line, which is a wonderful resource to us as there are many articles about New Boston. (Hint: when searching the oldest issues, from 1802 for example, you'll want to search for "New Bofton" because the letter S was sometimes printed as an F at that time.)

cabinet

Delighted to discover this newspaper database, I thought to search for stories related to my unsolved mysteries, and was pleased to find not one but two articles about Pannaway Pictures in the Milford Cabinet.

In its October 21, 1926 issue, the Cabinet wrote about Albert W. Plummer, president of the newly organized Pannaway Pictures Corporation. "Mr. Plummer says his organization has bought the Whipple barn in New Boston with 10 acres of land, and will establish there a studio with all the appurtenances of a film studio." He said that most outdoor photography was planned for a farm on Chestnut Hill. A well-stocked zoo somewhere in New Boston would supply animals for the movies. (I for one am disappointed this never happened!)

barn
The Whipple barn was intended to be Pannaway's film studio

An article printed the next week explained that Plummer wanted to purchase the Fellows farm on Chestnut Hill, one thousand acres in Amherst, Bedford, and New Boston. For this he'd need $25,000 from his investors. Of all the many places he inspected, the farm was best suited to his purpose. "The films he plans to make are historical and stories of the Northwest."

I'd like to believe that Albert W. Plummer truly intended to make movies, perhaps with Joe English Hill standing in for Mount Rainier or the Yukon. I found trade journals showing that he'd been involved with other motion picture companies in Massachusetts, New York, and Florida since at least 1920. Exactly why he left New Boston, with how much of his investors' money, is not explained by subsequent issues of the Milford Cabinet.

Back to Rena Davis's 1976 history column… Rena wrote that Pannaway actually did complete a movie reel of New Boston people and places, and this "old and fuzzy" film was viewed at the Historical Society in the 1970s. The movie showed the Tavern, the railroad depot and its station agent, the school with its scholars marching past the camera, Fogg's blacksmith shop, and Dodge's Store with Homer's grandfather Clarence in the doorway. A few decades later when the Historical Society sent the film to a laboratory to be converted to video, the lab said that the old cellulose nitrate film stock was unstable and dangerously flammable and could not be preserved. How I wish I could have seen that hundred-year-old movie!

Once I knew Plummer's full name I could look him up in the Internet Movie Database where I found he directed "Darkness and Daylight" in 1923. Plummer was listed as a producer of "talking moving pictures" living in Chicago, IL, in the 1930 U.S. Census.
Albert W. Plummer (1878-1961) is buried in Inglewood, CA, ten miles south of Hollywood.

— Dan R. 2024