Port Henry’s ‘Arctic City’ — Production on a grander scale

Motion picture director turned entrepreneur Charles Miller, backed with local investment, moved forward with his plan to make Port Henry “ a year-round moving picture center.”

Miller and New York City financier Paul Schoppell in March 1921 established Pantheon Picture Corp., which purchased the “Arctic City” movie lot and studio and brought in new equipment.

“Port Henry is soon to be a big spot on the map of the movie world,” the Ticonderoga Sentinel reported on March 10, 1921.

Miller, who had directed filming of movies at Port Henry the previous winter, made Port Henry his year-round residence and moved his business and production operation there.

“A working staff of thirty or forty families alone making their residence in the village will form a very considerable purchasing unit to say nothing of the personnel of the companies engaged in acting in the pictures,” the Sentinel reported.

Miller and Schoppell signed a five-year contract with actress Anetha Getwell, known as “America’s Beauty Queen,” to act exclusively in Pantheon productions.

In late April 1921, Pantheon Picture Corp. was negotiating to purchase a 450-acre abandoned mining property, with two buildings, in Cheever, about two miles outside Port Henry, from Witherbee, Sherman & Co.

Sources: Ticonderoga Sentinel Feb. 24, March 10, April 28, 1921; Essex County Republican, Feb. 18, 25, 1921.

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