Spokane Goes to the Movies

In this second of four monthly lectures based on the theme "Spokane Scandals and Controversies," Spokane author and scholar Richard Sola shares how a local Spokane businessman, Eric A. Johnston, who also served at one time as president of the Motion Picture Association of America(MPAA); Detective Dashiell Hammett, once a Pinkerton detective and author of hard boiled detective novels including "The Maltese Falcon," whose writings about his experiences as a detective in Spokane and elsewhere became the basis for film noir movies; and Poet Vachel Lindsay, the first to write about films as an art form, changed American films forever.