Seattle: Gateway to the Northwest

Seattle: Gateway to the North (1940)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Nice entry in MGM's TravelTalks series has James A. FitzPatrick traveling to Washington where he talks about its growing city Seattle. We start off by taking a look at Mount Rainier and then we learn a bit of history about how Seattle was just a small village with a thousand people or so living there until the 1897 Gold Rush had people storming the city since it was the closest port to Alaska. We also hear about the giant building boom after WWI, which helped the city grow. The other thing we look at are the beautiful trees in the state and we learn about how the logging industry works. Overall this is another good episode in the series as we get to hear some pretty good information about the city and of course there's the Technicolor that brings the images to life. The shots of the logging was certainly a highlight as were the scenes showing the incredibly blue waters.

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras under Bob Carney to take pictures of what he calls "One of the world's wonder cities," given that it was a trading post before the Yukon and Klondike gold finds.

Well, maybe. Certainly in the eighty years since this was released to theaters, the city has grown, thanks to a couple of companies called Boeing and Microsoft. However, there isn't much discussion of urban Seattle in this one. More time is spent showing the flower-edged roads, and the logging industry -- with a kind word for the companies that plant new trees as fast as they cut down old ones.

There's a shimmering quality to the colors here that reminds me of British Technicolor. In England, that's attributed to the high humidity. Could be the same cause here.

Traveltalks goes to the state of Washington. After some wilderness and Mount Rainier, the show quickly arrives in Seattle. It's the quiet of a pre-war America. They go to a lumber camp where a tree is taken down by a giant chainsaw. The massive lumber port is impressive from the air. We visit Washington State and their university rowing team. I definitely like the lumber camp the most. It would have been great to see more of the men working. This is a fine slice of time.