Women were integral to the development and rise of the motion picture industry into both entertainment and economic powerhouse in the Twentieth Century. The fledgling field welcomed women, immigrants, and people of color eager to contribute at a time when dominant industries failed to recognize the huge potential of moving pictures. Women’s contributions were desperately needed, first to give the industry respectability as movie attendance skyrocketed when middle class audiences fell in love with films, and then to produce enough output to keep up with booming demand.

Besides their vital role in creating and producing films, women also greatly participated in presenting them to the public. Many mom and pop theatres across the country employed an untold number of women selling tickets, creating publicity, projecting films, and accompanying them. Some of these workers were trumpeted in their local newspapers, but the vast majority labored anonymously behind the scenes bringing films to the public.

Thanks to the digitization of entertainment trades, fan magazines, and newspapers, many stories of female pioneers appear, providing evidence of how important women’s contribution to moving pictures has been. In a 1921 Moving Picture World story about C. H. Webster and E. Kuhn’s International Film Company’s contributions to early cinema in supposedly creating the first reversible film and the first tinting, are reports that Webster’s wife reportedly served as the industry’s first female projectionist in in the late 1890s when she replaced her ill husband and organized and projected the show, but for the one time only.

Eva McCormick is one of many unrecognized female pioneers, working tirelessly to decades to help support her family and because she also enjoyed the work. She could perhaps be the first actual working theatre projectionist in the country, becoming a moving picture operator in 1909 and working for over 30 years projecting films to the paying public.

Little is known of her early life, but Eva documented her life as what she called a “moving picture operator” for Moving Picture World and Exhibitors Herald in 1918 and 1929 respectively. Born in 1890 in Illinois, she attended school through eighth grade before leaving to work. Eva married Thomas McCormick circa 1908 and the couple ended up in Gaylord, Michigan where they purchased a moving picture theatre. As she stated in the 1929 story, “As was the custom in those days, we gave a lengthy show of one reel and an illustrated song. We did much better than we expected financially, though, and in a short time took over the opposition theatre. Projectionists were scarce, and they found themselves in a lurch when one of their operators quit to join a circus band.

In a lurch, McCormick took a crash course in learning to operate a projector. “Well, being one of those strange animals that could not appreciate closing up the show because there was no one to run the projector, I got extremely busy and with a few (I’d not like to say just how few) hours instructions I went into the ‘operating’ room that night and did almost as well as was expected.

I suppose that almost anyone finds it difficult to express just what it is about any particular work that fascinates him – or her – but the fact remains that while we were looking around trying to get an ‘operator,’ I was badly bitten by the bug and still find myself suffering from the effects of it.” The couple enjoyed working in the bustling new field.

Just a year later, they sold their two theatres and moved to Sheboygan, Michigan to work for a short time at the Vaudette and Princess Theatres owned by a Mrs. Fairchild, with Mr. McCormick serving as singer and Eva as projectionist. The couple opened the fancy Idlehour Theatre with opera seats and other high end decorations in 1910, much too elaborate for the small community in which they were located. As Eva wrote, “Well, we lost our socks and everything else. So endeth the first lesson.”

The couple moved to Toledo, Ohio in 1911, where McCormick found it difficult to find work as a projectionist before W. C. Bettis of the large Colonial Theatre “took a chance” on her. Employees worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week for $12. Projectionists attempting to organize a union felt threatened by her presence, and reported her to the state for working more laws than allowed for women in the state. Bettis hired another projectionist and lowered her hours to keep Eva working.

Of course, the operators soon decided to unionize the house since it possessed the greatest number of projectionists thanks to McCormick on staff. As typical for the time, they welcomed the men to join the group, but as she stated, “gave me an honorary card which entitled me to all the privileges and benefits, but allowed me no voice or vote (Tough on a woman – that “voice’ thing).”

For almost the next 20 years, McCormick served as projectionist at the Princess-Paramount, Priscilla, Alhambra, Bijou, Diamond, Ivanhoe, and the Savoy Theatres as she worked her way through health issues that sometimes led to hospitalization. She moved among the theatres for greater opportunity and because they desired her work. As McCormick relayed in her 1918 Moving Picture World article, “In my nine years of projecting pictures I have been been discharged, never held up opening time one single minute, never been drunk on the job, never smoke cigaretes (sic) or anything else in the operating room – not such a bad record, is it? I love my work so much that it never becomes tiresome or monotonous. Therefore, I am on the job sixty minutes of every hour that I am on duty. “

Her recollections are pretty much the same in the 1929 article, except going on to state, ”…and have the sincere friendship of every manager or owner for whom I have worked….In November, 1918, my brother projectionists thought that I had proved myself a loyal unionist, and a projectionist with ability enough that I wouldn’t cause them any trouble, as they made me very happy in giving me a regular membership card. To say that I value it as one of my most precious possessions does not half express it. And the VOICE and vote – Oh Boy! How I value that is nobody’s business.”

McCormick continually worked to improve, reading and studying all she could in the trades and books to learn and advance her skills, especially with the coming of sound. She was ambitious and determined, especially knowing that she needed to be the most knowledgeable and experienced operator due to her sex. “I have waded through innumerable volumes to find maybe one or two paragraphs that gave me some needed help in solving to my satisfaction some kink in lenses light rays, or any of the thousand other things used in our work. I marvel day after day that most ‘operators’ can work year in and year out and not display the faintest interest in learning all there is to know about the different angles of our work. I wonder that they can be so bored and blase about it all. With synchronized pictures booming up with the magnitude they are, it must be a biind projectionist indeed, who does not see the handwriting on the wall.”

After more than 30 years of marriage, the couple divorced. Perhaps McCormick continued working for a few years, but illness appeared to have returned as well. She died in Toledo’s St. Vincent Hospital on August 12, leaving behind her daughter Ruth and a sister.

Eva McCormick demonstrates the unending competence of women running and operating theatres tin cinema’s early years while also displaying great passion for her work, offering a great role model for other women trying to succeed in male dominated fields. May other stories come to light, helping give voice to all the many women who provided the labor in making motion pictures some of America’s greatest entertainment.