Oregon Historical Quarterly

440 OHQ vol. 119, no. 3 itinerant labor — men who had both money to spend and a taste for women and drink. The regulation of variety theaters became a battleground of propriety versus profits. And, for a time, profits prevailed. Finally, the rise of vaudeville as a respectable theater alternative eventually helped shutter variety theaters in Spokane in 1908. The third chapter focuses on how gender roles were defined (manhood was white and womanhood was cloistered), used, and exploited to bring an end to variety theater. The city’s elite — assuming a paternalistic role policing both public and private mores — wanted to uphold white Victorian decorum, yet the public clamored for entertainment. The 1895 barmaid law made the combination of women and alcohol in variety theaters illegal, yet it was not until 1908, with the strict enforcement of the law, that variety theaters in Spokane closed for good. George delves into the organization and realities of the theatrical circuits of the era in chapter four. Mapping out the hierarchies of theatrical circuits at local, regional, and national levels, she fundamentally illustrates how, despite Spokane’s ambition, the city was limited by geography and finance. And, moreover, that “urban hierarchy determined cultural hierarchy” (p. 111). The further out one scoped, the less significant Spokane was on the theatrical circuits. The final chapter presents the theater as a literal stage for cultural transmission and dissemination during the transitional period, with modern values slowly replacing the Victorian ideals of self-control and comportment. While Spokane desired to appear cosmopolitan, the actuality was that some of the theatrical shows from New York and Paris brought modernizing values to Spokane, which conflicted the city’s provincial sensibilities. By focusing on the economic , performative, and spectatorship aspects of the stage, George emphasizes how theater both reflected and then shaped Spokane’s shift from Victorian to modern twentieth-century ideals. George, by focusing on the enterprise and exhibition of Spokane’s theatrical stage, efficaciously demonstrates the complexities of crafting a civic identity as reflected by the difference between what Spokane’s leaders sought and what really was. Meticulously researched, Show Town could have been strengthened if the chapter narratives had been woven together in a sophisticated manner. While the siloed, thematic chapter approach does not hamper George’s overall argument, it does constrain the chronological flow and deeper understanding from a cohesive narrative. Still, this easy-to-read study of the Spokane stage from 1890 until 1920 is a valuable resource for understanding the interwoven relationships between the built environment, transportation, communication, entertainment, boosterism, and global economics. This work is a welcome contribution to discourse about Spokane’s cultural history development. Heather O. Petrocelli Manchester Metropolitan University ERNEST HAYCOX AND THE WESTERN by Richard W. Etulain University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2017. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 184 pages. $29.95, cloth. Although he had acted in some lesser films, John Wayne first appeared to most of the American public in 1939, when he was outlined against the Monument Valley sky, a saddle in one hand and a rifle in the other. His horse has gone down and he has stopped the hurrying stage, even as his image halted moviegoers in their own tracks. Wayne never looked better than he did in Stagecoach. John Ford based the film on the 1937 short story “Stagecoach,” by Ernest Haycox, an Oregonian who had been feeding America tales of the mythic West for almost twenty years. In 1939, story magazines were thriving, and Haycox had published hundreds of stories in adventure and Western pulps and in the slickpaged Colliers. Haycox, a determined writer for money, had studied the successful formulae created by Zane Grey and Fredrick Faust (Max Brand) and was determined to sell to their prototypes — a lone hero beset but triumphant against the expected adversaries of Natives, greedy men, and women who were not blonde. 441 Reviews Haycox had begun to expand his work by writing novel-length magazine serials, and in time, stand-alone novels. Late in his too-short career, Haycox began to scratch against the walls of the formula western. Richard Etulain, an established scholar of Western literature who has produced over fifty books, discusses in...