Historian - May 2007

I’m sure you’ve been to Hampton Falls, and you may even have been through Eaton, NH; but have you ever heard of Eaton Falls, NH? If you have, you probably saw the movie – The Whistle at Eaton Falls.

Produced by Louis de Rochemont in 1951, The Whistle at Eaton Falls was filmed on location here in Portsmouth and along the New Hampshire Seacoast. It starred some pretty big names including Lloyd Bridges, Ernest Borgnine, Anne Francis and Dorothy Gish.

The movie was set in the fictitious town of Eaton Falls, a small New Hampshire mill town that resembled Dover, Exeter and Portsmouth. As the movie opens, the Granite State Shoe Company is closing down and the factory’s whistle (similar to the Shipyard whistle) is removed and installed at the only other factory in town – Doubleday Plastics – makers of buttons, combs and toothbrushes. The movie is about how this company works to survive in the fiercely competitive business environment of the early 20^th Century.

As the movie progresses, Doubleday’s share of the plastics market quickly dries up as its customers place orders with competing factories. In order to regain its prominence, Doubleday’s management decides to try something innovative. They identified and adopted several new technologies, installed modern machinery, and implemented new work processes. In essence, they figured out how to improve their production line throughput and lower their overhead costs. Unfortunately, a natural outfall of this change was a need for fewer employees. To make matters even more challenging, the employees who were allowed to remain had to be retrained on the new processes and many of them had to work at multiple work stations. As you can imagine, that situation excited the local Plastic Workers Union. The Union leadership at Local #145 protested and the workforce walked out.

The situation was pretty bleak. The company didn’t have any orders and even if they did, they didn’t have workers to fill them. After company management changed hands and concessions were made that resulted in workers returning to their posts in the factory, Doubleday Plastics became an attractive buyout opportunity. As the movie begins to wrap up, a nationally known company arrives on the scene and makes a generous offer for Doubleday. So sure of their potential to make future profit, management declined the offer. Undaunted, the national company placed an order for six million plastic television knobs. As a result, Doubleday Plastics was back in business and working three shifts per day – all begun and ended by the blowing of the Whistle.

So how does this relate to us? Well, in addition to the famous actors mentioned above, there was a lesser known actor in the cast, but one that is familiar to us. Reverend Robert Hayes Dunn played the character Rev. Payson in the movie.

Rev. Dunn was born on November 21, 1896 in Freeport, Illinois. He graduated from Princeton University and from Union Theological Society, and he was ordained a Priest of the Episcopal Church.

Throughout his life, Rev. Dunn served in many roles – from spiritual leader to Hollywood actor. Among his many credentials is that of author, having written the book – Old St. John's at Portsmouth and Her Distinguished Colonial Flock. Perhaps his most important credential though is that of Freemason; for you see, Rev. Brother Dunn was made a Mason in North Star Lodge, No. 8 in Lancaster on March 24, 1925, and he affiliated with St. John’s Lodge on August 5, 1942. He died here in Portsmouth on February 11, 1960.

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