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Gertie Becomes Respectable . . . Well . . . Sort of!

Gertie Lovejoy, one of the most famous of Dawson's dance-hall queens during the gold rush era. She got her nickname after having a diamond inserted between her two front teeth.

Years later Lovejoy inadvertently gained respectability when she married C.W. Taber, one of the town's leading lawyers, a prominent Conservative and a friend of commissioner George Black. It was the presence of Taber's wife--and her shady past--at a dinner party in the commissioner's residence that roused half the town to righteous indignation.

The event was immortalized by author Laura Berton in her autobiography 'I Married the Klondike'. Berton--who attended the same party--wrote: "The Blacks were always loyal to their friends and I am sure that Mrs. Black got added enjoyment by breaking the accepted social code that former dance-hall girls were beyond the pale.

"Gertie was a demure little woman, quite pretty and very self-effacing. She had little to say, but when she did speak, the famous diamond could be seen glittering between her two front teeth. Tongues wagged furiously the next day."

Archival Gold Behind Diamond Gertie's Dance Hall

In 1978, Dawson City was being rebuilt as a tourist destination recreating its former self, a boomtown gripped by gold fever at the turn of the last century. Excavating behind a former gambling den, Diamond Tooth Gertie's, workmen struck archival gold, over 500 reels of 35mm nitrate film from 1903-1929.

The Dawson Amateur Athletic Association started adding films to their regular theater programs by 1903. But, Dawson City was the end of the exhibition line and shipping was expensive. The studios didn't want the films back anyway, in the days before revivals, tv and video. So, the films were shelved in de facto cold storage in the basement of the library. In 1929, an open air swimming pool that was flooded for winter skating was going to be filled in permanently. Presumably, the skating season was longer than the swimming season. All the films were used as fill, dumped in, covered with dirt and boarded over.

The 510 reels discovered by the construction crew were in different states of decomposition, and all were damp. The National Film Archive of Canada rescued them, salvaged what they could, which came to about 425 reels, and began transferring the survivors to safety stock. 190 reels of US productions were transferred to the Library of Congress for conservation. With so many silent films lost, each reel is an invaluable piece of the puzzle that is film history.

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