Oh, my God, I’m home! You maniacs! You blew it up!

I recently saw Planet of the Apes (1968) on the big screen at the local cinema as part of the Fantom Events partnership with Turner Classic Movies. This has apparently been a popular series, with several releases every year for the past few years, bringing the novelty of classic film viewing back to the big screen.

This is part eight of our year-long monthly series on the current state of the classic film fan.

Though I regard a 1968 film as “too new” to be a classic, in this respect, I think I was not alone: the age demographic of the audience surprised me. I had expected a larger audience of young male sci-fi geeks. Instead, there were mostly middle-aged and senior citizens, I would say equally divided as to gender. Along with a younger couple that brought a few kids, the total audience numbered probably 25 people. 

It was a fun experience, and Ben Mankiewicz’s interview with “Dr. Zaius” before and after the movie made me laugh.  Except for the crack about Dr. Zira going to Smith College, which brought a few chuckles from the audience (Smith College is in my neck of the woods), I think I was the only one really laughing my head off through the whole thing. A rather dour mob. New Englanders. Probably brooding over the winter to come.

The other thing that surprised me was how the themes in this much-parodied pop culture movie-turned-“franchise” have remained relevant: the ape council’s rejection of science because it threatens the power of a fundamentalist government, the refusal to acknowledge truths that are not politically convenient, the cycle of prejudice and subjugation. Rod Serling wrote the script based on Pierre Boulle’s novel, and Serling's introspective and intellectual imprint is all over this movie.  There is a late 1960s feeling of the exhilaration of rebellion, without all the tired dystopian bilge we are beaten over the head with today.

When Charlton Heston comes upon the half-buried Statue of Liberty and screams his last lines, I’m sure all in the theater were quite familiar with the end of the movie, but there was still an awed silence, then the audience erupted in applause.  Though I enjoyed Mr. Mankiewicz’s and “Dr. Zaius’” vaudeville act at the end, it sort of wrenched one out of the really stunned moment at the end of the movie.  I think I would have preferred the TCM studio-filmed epilogue played straighter and not for laughs at this point, maybe an interview with someone connected with the production.

I have seen the other “apes” films, including the newer ones that are really nothing but CGI, lightweight and without the, forgive me, “human” feeling of the original series, and missing the theatricality of the original.  I can remember seeing one of them where computer animated characters bounced through a traffic jam of cars on a bridge, and the image was so irritating – like someone flicking something in your face to grab your attention – I closed my eyes. I like being able to explore the screen, drink in the image, and not have to flinch at constantly flashing images created by people who apparently have attention deficit syndrome and must think I do, too. 

I don’t.  Knock it off.

They are meant to appeal to a younger generation where video games are the main entertainment, and who apparently have a fondness for gray tones.  And revenge.

I wonder how many other people in the audience were regular viewers of TCM? Were any of them wondering who this guy was interviewing “Dr. Zaius”? Would the teen and twenty-something male sci-fi geeks whom I had expected to be there have any familiarity with TCM? Would they understand that I could enjoy the novelty of seeing a movie from my childhood nearly 50 years ago, on the big screen, and yet not call it a classic because it was too new?

How many of you have attended any of these Fantom Events series of classic films in your local cinemas? What did you think?

My local cinema is actually in another town.  My town once had some four or five second-run movie theaters, favorite haunts of three generations, small quaint palaces of enchantment, and all gone now.  We had a drive-in, too, once, but gone now.  I drive back across the river to my own town without any movie theaters.  (“Oh, my God, I’m home! You maniacs! You blew it up!”)

Just the word “Cineplex” depresses me.

Not that I mind watching classic films on TV; that’s where I first discovered them.  I think I’ve mentioned here before that when I was a very young child, I imagined what would be my perfect old movie watching experience: I would have a big cardboard box where there would be a screen inside on one wall, and a little low seat inside for me to sit and watch.  A door I could close.  I could press a button and watch any movie in the world I wanted.  There would be another button to push that would dispense any kind of candy.

I think I came up with this idea when that inevitable sadness overtook me after watching a movie to the end credits and knowing I might not ever see it again.

What strikes me is that I seem to have envisioned something like a VCR-function of this box to play movies at will; and that I apparently created what would be a solitary environment, though there were many movies (like the Three Stooges shorts) that I preferred to watch with my twin brother.  I could never have imagined watching them on a big screen with many other people in the audience, like in the old days.

The candy angle to my invention needs no explanation.

If you had your druthers, and could watch a classic film in any format, what would you like?  A subscription service where you could pick your choice out of hundreds of titles?  Watching on your computer, your iPad, your TV? Do you prefer Blu-ray, or DVD? Is large screen, or portability more important to you?

Would you attend classic film festivals if they were smaller, less expensive, and closer to your hometowns? What would you like to see programmed at these festivals?

Or would you just rather sit inside a cardboard box and watch Manhattan Melodrama (1934) in complete solitude, with any kind of candy you want?  Do you want to do the programming?

Past posts in this series here:

Part 1 of the year-long series on the current state of the classic film buff is here: A Classic Film Manifesto. 

Part 2 is here: Cliff Aliperti’s new book on Helen Twelvetrees.

Part 3 is here: An interview with Kay Noske of Movie Star Makeover.

Part 4 is here: Evolution of the Classic Film Fan.

Part 5 is here: Gathering of the Clan at Classic Film Festivals.

Part 6 is here: John Greco’s new book of film criticism: Lessons in the Dark.

Part 7 is here: Tiffany Vazquez, new TCM host.

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Come back next week when we continue our series on the depiction of fascism in classic films with Keeper of the Flame (1942).

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My audio book version of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star., narrated by Toni Lewis, is now for sale on Audible.com, and on Amazon and iTunes. 

A Winner and some other stuff...

AND THE WINNER IS.....

Congratulations to Janet, who wins the paperback copy of my latest novel, DISMOUNT AND MURDER, the third in the "Double V Mysteries" series.  Thanks so much to everybody who entered the contest.
___________________________________________

SOME OTHER STUFF....

We visited the Leavitt Theatre in Ogunquit, Maine, here in this post. Recently, a drive has been started to help the Leavitt adapt to the new digital projectors that are so costly, and without which many small independent movie theaters, like the Leavitt, will go out of business.  Here's the press release that was sent to me.  I thought you might like to have a look, and help out if you can.
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As many as 10,000 movie screens in North America could go dark by Dec 31st, 2013! http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/how-digital-conversion-is-killing-independent-movie-theaters-20130904
LEAVITT THEATRE KICKSTARTER: http://kck.st/HhQ8MO

Hello.

By Dec. 31st Hollywood will cease distributing films to all movie theaters on celluloid reels in favor of digital prints. America's movie screens have been forced to buy digital projectors that can cost as much as $100,000. An estimated 10,000 screens – one in every five screens in North America – will go dark because they can't afford to convert.

Over 1000 independent old-school, mom-and-pop-owned movie palaces in small towns are struggling to come up with the price of conversion. They lack the cash and resources of big chain cinemas. And to make matters worse, the film companies are helping subsidize the large multiplexes' conversions but not the single screen movie houses.

The Leavitt Theatre in Ogunquit, Maine (est. 1923) is one of these theaters. A beautiful, classic, independent, family owned movie theater that has been showing first-run films for 90 years, they must go digital by Dec 31st or go dark!

Please click on the link below to find out more about a new KICKSTARTER drive. The Leavitt Theatre has just 25 DAYS (until Nov 30) to raise $60,000. They need help!
KICKSTARTER:http://kck.st/HhQ8MO

 Please spread the word, even if you are unable to donate.

Thanks everyone!

Article:
http://retroroadmap.com/2010/07/29/the-leavitt-theatre-ogunquit-me-youll-love-it/

Also on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Leavitt-Theatre/99336197126?ref=hl

Arcade Theater - Springfield, Mass.

This is the Arcade Theater in Springfield, Massachusetts. I think it must be 1933, you can see the marquee listing “College Humor” which was released that summer. Bing Crosby, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and our old pal Grady Sutton.

The theater was on lower State Street. The trolley ran all the way up the hill and out to the residential neighborhoods. The Springfield Armory is up that hill. George Washington established it after scouting the site himself, Dan Shays and his men attacked it, and its skilled machinists helped save the Union during the Civil War, smashed the Axis in World War II. It’s a National Park, now.

You can’t see all the ghosts that walk this street in the photo. You just see the old Fords and trolley tracks. And now, they are ghosts.

It was a “second run” theater in its day, opened for business in 1931. You can see by the ad that Maurice Chevalier got things going with “The Smiling Lieutenant” (1931). Claudette Colbert, directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

According to the Cinema Treasures website, the theater accommodated over 1,000 patrons, even with no balcony. I first heard about it from family members who used to go there.

The Arcade closed in 1971, and was demolished in 1972 to make way for the Springfield Civic Center. That rather ugly cement colossus is now a renovated arena and convention center called the MassMutual Center. The Springfield Falcons hockey team play here. They need a lot of room, more than Bing Crosby or Ernst Lubitsch.

Have a look at the Cinema Treasures website not only for information on historical movie theaters, but for the comments readers contribute with their own memories.  Look up an  old theater you remember, and you may find others remember it, too.

Warner Theatre - Torrington, Connecticut

JT Lynch photo

Northwestern Connecticut is mostly rural farmland dotted by small factory villages on narrow rivers, but the glamour of Hollywood found its way here on Main Street in 1931 when the Warner Bros. Studios expanded their chain of theaters. A typically beautiful movie palace of its day, the Warner was sold by the studio in the 1950s when all the studios were forced to divest themselves of their theater circuts.

Then the 1955 Flood wreaked havoc in the area, including much damage to the theater (see this previous post on Rosalind Russell’s precarious hometown visit in Waterbury during the 1955 Flood).

The theater continued operating through its years of decline in the 1960s and 1970s, and was due for foreclosure in 1981, demolition in 1982.

JT Lynch photo

 

But the Northwest Connecticut Association for the Arts, Inc. was formed by citizens to save this theatre.

A couple of decades of fundraising and restoration, and today the Warner Theatre continues to grace Torrington as part of a performing arts center. Have a look here for a roster of events, and for more on the history of this historic theater.

Oriental Theatre - Chicago

(Photo by JT Lynch)

The Oriental Theatre in downtown Chicago now hosts live musical theatre productions, but it started out as a grand movie palace. It has a special place in the history of classic films for two other footnotes. In “Auntie Mame” (1958) the shocked faithful servant Nora brings little Patrick, fresh from Chicago, to his Auntie Mame’s custody and discovers the entryway to her apartment festooned with burning incense and a bas relief dragon on the door. She remarks, “Like the ladies’ restroom in the Oriental Theatre!”

The Oriental Theatre also gave us “Judy Garland”. It was here in 1934 on the vaudeville circuit young Judy and her sisters, then still called the Gumm Sisters, arrived to see their names on the marquee misspelled, again. This time they were called The Glum Sisters. Audiences, met with funny variations on the name, often mistook their harmony singing for a comedy act. Comedian George Jessel intervened at this moment and suggested they change their surname to “Garland”.

The Oriental, with its Asian-themed décor, was an opulent menagerie of large seahorses and goddesses under a domed ceiling. It was built in 1926, replacing the doomed Iroquois Theatre (later Colonial), which had suffered the tragic 1903 fire in which several hundred lives were lost.

(Photo by JT Lynch)

The timeline for the Oriental follows a similar pattern of other great downtown movie palaces -- its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, and then a decline in the 1970s. It was closed in 1981 and left vacant until the early 1990s when plans were underway to restore the theater. It reopened in 1998. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is now called The Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre. For more on the Oriental, have a look here.


Notes:
"Life Story of Judy Garland" article by Carlton Cheney, syndicated in The Milwuakee Journal, September 26, 1940.

"A Garland of Roses for Judy" article by Hedda Hopper, syndcated in The Pittsburgh Press, December 17, 1944.

Luft, Lorna. Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir (Pocket Books, NY, 1998), p. 25.

The Chicago Theatre

The Chicago Theatre, so grand and magnificent a building it was dubbed “the Wonder Theatre of the World” at its opening in 1921. The first of its kind, it became a prototype for a generation of “movie palace” theater construction. It stands today as a reminder of that era of remarkably beautiful buildings.

French Baroque, the theater features murals, a replica of the Arc de Triomphe sculpted on its State Street side. The grand lobby, five stories high, is modeled after the Royal Chapel at Versailles. The grand staircase is reminiscent of the Paris Opera House. One wonders if anything on stage could be half so diverting as the venue?

Movies were the order of the day, and “The Sign on the Door” was the debut flicker with Norma Talmadge on October 26, 1921, accompanied by a 50-piece orchestra in the pit, and a thundering Wurlitzer pipe organ.

A showcase not just for movies, live entertainment shared the auditorium with bands such as Duke Ellington’s and Benny Goodman’s.

Then, as we have noted with so many of these theater histories, the 1970s came. Then the 1980s. They brought disuse, decay, but this theater managed to escape the third D - demolition. The Chicago Theatre was restored and reopened in 1986. Frank Sinatra performed at the gala reopening, and the future for this theater finally seemed as bright as its past.

For more on the Chicago Theatre, including detail and photos on its spectacular interior, have a look at this website.

Town Hall Theater - Woodstock, Vermont

This is the historic Town Hall Theater on the town common in Woodstock, Vermont.  First-run movies, state of the art screen and sound equipment.  An unlikely venue in a small town?  Maybe, but why build a cineplex when you've got a perfectly good Historic Town Hall?  That also serves for live performances. 

And the maple syrup popcorn is probably not coming to a theater near you.  You have to come here.

Bogie on the Big Screen

Florida Overseas Highway - JT Lynch photo

 

A few years ago I drove the Florida Overseas Highway from the mainland out to Key West where Route 1 stops and we could go no further. At this point, Cuba is closer than Miami. A stunning scenic route unlike any other. For the motorist, a sense of freedom mixed with a strange sense of risk taking. I loved it. One of the reasons I always wanted to take this trip was the opening sequence of “Key Largo” (1948) where we see Humphrey Bogart’s bus venture out on a thin ribbon of cement over the immense ocean, the bus growing smaller and more vulnerable in a long shot. It represents escape and adventure at the same time. Freedom and risk taking.

Recently I went to see “Key Largo” on the big screen, and this scene on the highway over the ocean -- seen on the big screen -- seems to take the viewer down the road with the bus, rather than as a distant observer. The big screen embraces us, and we become isolated, too.

I love to read about other bloggers’ experiences seeing classic films in theaters, but this was a first for me. A few impressions:

I had seen “Key Largo” many times on TV, so every bit of dialogue was familiar, and yet I was fascinated by close-ups of Bogart and Edward G. Robinson looming down on me, which expressed power and power struggle that I had not noticed on the small screen. A downward glance from either seemed to fix me in their gaze. Facial flaws magnified, and greatness magnified as well. What was merely ugly became grotesque, and what was merely appealing became heroic.

The final scenes where Bogart is taking the gangsters to Cuba on the fishing vessel, and the fog seems to envelop us as well. We are not watching the boat; we are on the boat.

Claire Trevor’s breakdown, so brittle and yet so resilient, and Lauren Bacall’s open curiosity about the stranger Bogart, her telegraphed attraction. The doomed deputy’s face-off with Robinson, and the sheriff’s face-off with the captive, frustrated Lionel Barrymore over the Seminole fugitives. It seemed like a new movie to me, and, perhaps naively, I found myself thinking, “So, THIS is what John Houston meant.”

Other bloggers who’ve written about watching classic films on the big screen often remark on audiences who are sometimes less than appreciative, or openly ridiculing. The theater I attended was the Amherst Cinema, a small college town venue in rural central Massachusetts. Most of the audience appeared to be middle aged or older, with only a handful of college age kids that I could see. School hasn’t started yet, so I imagine there would have been more younger people were this shown in the fall.

Amherst Cinema, Amherst, Mass. - JT Lynch photo

It was converted from an old livery stable in the 1920s and has served as a movie theater for many decades before closing, and then re-opening after renovation about five years ago. It is not a “restored” period movie house, rather is it a modernized facility housing a couple of theaters in the building, small and modern, stadium seating. (The land upon which the theater was built was once the site of the 19th Century Amherst Academy, where Emily Dickinson attended school in her pre-recluse days, and also young Sylvester Graham, who gave us the Graham cracker.)

There were only a couple of chuckles from the audience over the gangsters, but I’m not sure if it’s because their speech sounded corny, or if the audience was just getting a kick out of film which was as familiar to them as it was to me. A little of both, maybe.

The only moment of audience reaction that really bothered me came from a couple of women sitting behind me, who were older than me, and bust out in guffaws when Lionel Barrymore described a hurricane that devastated the Keys. The gangsters are nervous about the approaching hurricane at this point in the film, and they ask him how bad the storm could get. Lionel describes trains wrecked and bodies tossed out to sea, and for weeks afterwards corpses drifting into the mangrove swamps.

These ladies thought that was an absolute hoot. I admit, I was ready to turn around belt them. It ruined an otherwise intense moment in the film.

Then I realized that because Lionel Barrymore holds the whip hand in this scene, they probably thought he was making it up, telling tales to scare the bad guys, since it was the only power he, an older, frail, wheelchair-bound man, had over them. It makes sense, and if that were really the case, then I agree the scene would be funny.

Islamadora Monument to victims of 1935 Florida hurricane - JT Lynch photo

Except the hurricane he describes really happened. The 1935 Florida hurricane was what we now think might have been a Category 5. Several hundred people were killed, including a trainload of World War I vets who arrived for promised relief work with the WPA during the Depression.

There have been generations of risk taking on this route.

Islamadora Monument to victims of 1935 Florida hurricane - JT Lynch photo

At one time, the only link from the mainland all the way out to Key West was not an overseas highway, but an overseas train route. After this horrific hurricane, what remained of the railroad tracks were paved over for the highway. That thin ribbon of cement we see in the opening and closing scenes of “Key Largo” was built (at least in part) because of the hurricane Lionel Barrymore describes.

This is another example of why a classic film will have much more meaning for us if we take the trouble to understand the context of the era. You’re not going to “get it” if you have no concept of what was going on in the real world at the time the film was made.

It’s like driving someplace in the fog. So, these women, surrounded in their own fog of ignorance, laughed.

But, you just can’t stand up in the middle of a movie theater and give a lecture on the 1935 hurricane, can you? Even if you’re struggling to suppress an asinine urge to give a history lesson.

That’s why I blog. I get so much off my chest. And you are the unfortunate victims.

At the end of the movie, however, everybody applauded, which I suppose was why they were there at all -- to share their appreciation with others who felt the same way. Even the ones who laugh at mangrove swamps full of corpses.

For another Big Screen Bogie experience, have a look at this great recent post by The Lady Eve at a stunning and unique presentation of “Casablanca” in her neck of the woods.

Key West, end of Route 1 - JT Lynch photo

New Book on the World Theatre - Kearney, Nebraska

“Kearney’s World Theatre” by Keith Terry, is like that long, familiar walk down the carpeted aisle, the descending incline of a movie theatre from the back of the house to the orchestra seats. You look all around at the grand old movie temple, and anticipation builds to claim your seat. Then the magic. Even if you have never been to the World Theatre in Kearney, Nebraska, you’ve got a stake in this theater and this book.

An “Images of America” book recently published by Arcadia Publishing, this treasure trove of photos with captions takes us on the timeline from the theater’s opening in November 1927, through its heyday of the 1930s until 2008, when it closed.

But that was not the end of the story. In 2009, community efforts began to restore and reopen the World Theatre, fundraising which continues today. This book is part of those efforts, to raise awareness of the cultural significance of this theater, and to aid in the fundraising. Half of the author’s royalties will be donated to the restoration of the World Theatre.

The author, Keith Terry, is a faculty member in the Department of Communication at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He is the author of two other books on Nebraska history.

We’ve discussed many classic movie theaters on this blog, and sometimes we are lucky to find one that’s in the process of being revitalized. This time, however, we actually get a chance to help out ourselves in a very simple way. Please have a look at “Kearney’s World Theatre” by Keith Terry on the Arcadia website here, and consider purchasing a copy. The pages of photos, memories, posters and memorabilia, though centered on a small theater in a town in Nebraska, on another level is about everything readers of this blog love about old movies and preserving them.

Posters for a Clara Bow movie. The time a person dressed as The Tin Man standing out front to advertise “The Wizard of Oz” (which didn’t need much help, as it pulled in such big crowds the movie was held over).

The ushers and the live acts, the war bond drives. The theater ghost (every good theater has one). The ever-changing marquee. Most of the photos and the memories were supplied by the patrons, so there is an intimacy in the book that you feel from looking at a family photo album. It’s their theater, but the memories and experiences are universal and were shared by a few generations of millions of other Americans.

Then the demise of a theater, and an era. Now, the rebirth. Claim your seat as the curtain draws open.

“Kearney’s World Theatre” by Keith Terry is available online here from Arcadia Publishing.

(Disclosure: A copy of “Kearney’s World Theatre” by Keith Terry was supplied to me for purposes of reviewing on this blog.)

Vaudeville Hangs On in 1943

The Death of Vaudeville gets mentioned from time to time in movies of the 1930s, but here in Holyoke, Massachusetts (and not a few other places) in 1943, vaudeville hung on as a supplement to the movies. The war brought round the clock working shifts and a round the clock demand for entertainment.

Here at the New Holyoke Theater we have six “headline” acts: Rex Webber, “a vocal allusion”; Senna and Dean in a skit; comedian Ted Leary; dancers Gavin and Astor; acrobats the Winnie Dolly Trio; and singer Joe Martini, three shows a day.

As you can see, they were an addendum on the bill to the film “Johnny Eager” with Robert Taylor and Lana Turner. In this ad, the movie seems almost like an afterthought. Tommy Reynolds and his Orchestra also appeared, at jacked-up wartime prices of 55 cents and 25 cents for kids.

The Biograph Theater - Chicago

The Victory Gardens (Biograph) Theater in Chicago has a unique history and owes as much of its longevity to real-life as to reel-life circumstances.

Probably most notable of which, is this is the site where gangster John Dillinger was killed by FBI agents in 1934.

Designed in 1914, this neighborhood movie house, typical in the extravagant design of the day, is now on the Register of Historic Places. It enjoyed a decades-long history as a movie theater, even during the 1960s and 1970s when many such movie palaces were falling into disuse or the wrecking ball. There was a period of transformation into a modern movie multiplex with the interior gutted under various owners.

The Biograph became the Victory Gardens in 2006 and found new life as a live stage theater. It’s traditional-looking marquee you see in the photo above is actually the result of another movie, “Public Enemy No. 1” (2009), which used the site in location shooting and restored the marquee for that purpose.

That movie is, of course, about the infamous John Dillinger, whose bank robbing exploits in the 1920s and early 1930s made him a Depression-era celebrity of sorts. He came to the Biograph on July 22, 1934 to see a movie -- “Manhattan Melodrama” (1934) with Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy. We discussed that movie here. Wonder what he thought of the film?

The suspicious figure in the pinstripe suit is, I believe, neither John Dillinger nor FBI agent Melvin Purvis.  Her fedora was crushed by a passing "L" train.   

Have a look at the new Victory Gardens Biograph website here.

Palace Theatre - Manchester, New Hampshire

The Palace Theatre of Manchester, New Hampshire was modeled after the Palace in New York City, and like that famous theater, brought vaudeville to eager audiences from its 1915 opening to about 1930, when “the talkies” replaced vaudeville as the most popular entertainment.

An elegant theater in a grand age of theater construction, the Palace boasted “air conditioning” when fans blew over large blocks of ice placed under the stage. Some of the performers who played that stage were Bob Hope, The Marx Brothers, Harry Houdini, Red Skelton, and Jimmy Durante, as well as the resident stock company The Palace Players.

Then movie era lasted until the early 1960s, and after that as with many theaters of that era, the decline began. At one point, X-rated films were shown. Then, closed to the public. In the early 1970s, the community took action, and renovations were made. The Palace opened again for live theater.

Have a look here at the website, and this season’s schedule. It takes a village to save a theater, and sometimes it really happens.

Colonial Theatre - Canaan, Connecticut

When this photo was taken in October 2010, the Colonial Theatre of Canaan, Connecticut was in its last days of operation. It’s currently closed and up for sale.

The wood frame construction is not as flashy as, say, Art Deco, but its staid Georgian-inspired columns and respectable gray clapboard with white trim is certainly an example of what the closest thing to a “downtown” would look like in a remote New England village.

Built in 1923, this old movie house is on the National Register of Historic Places. Weathering the decades and changes in film, and audience, the Colonial was closed in 1997, but later re-opened to include live theatre as well as movies. Have a look here at this website more photos, including the nifty interior, and at this website for more history on this theater. Hopefully somebody will see possibilities for the future while respecting its past.

Victory Theatre - Holyoke, Mass. - A Tour Before Renovation.

This time not off topic, but certainly off blog. Another in our series of old movie houses takes us to the Victory Theatre in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The Victory was built about 1920 and showcased both silent films and vaudeville, until the early 1930s when it switched exclusively over to sound movies.

Like so many downtown movie houses of the day, the Victory has been closed and shuttered for decades, but it has not been demolished. There has been an effort, slow moving and complicated, and of long duration, to restore this theater.

Recently, our friend Tony of “In the Valley” took a tour of the Victory on a rare open house day, and includes fascinating pictures on his blog of what the interior of a nearly 100-year-old theater looks like when it’s left alone.

A strange combination of eerie, depressing, and intriguing. You can’t quite see the future possibilities of greatness for this house, but neither do you have quite a grasp on what the past might have been. It is stuck in a kind of limbo. It is in filthy disrepair, from the balcony to the stage, to whatever lurks under the stage. But, the architecture, of a grandeur we no longer see in our utilitarian theaters, shows a tantalizing peek at what has been.

Have a look here at the tour of the Victory Theatre at “In the Valley.”

The Leavitt Theatre - Ogunquit, Maine

Here is The Leavitt Fine Arts Theatre, a movie house open only in the summertime in Ogunquit, Maine. It looks small, but it seats over 600, and has stood here showing first-run films on Main Street since 1923.

For more on The Leavitt Fine Arts Theatre, have a look at this description and comments on the Cinema Treasures website.

Roz Russell's Waterbury Premiere

Rosalind Russell experienced a very special, but precarious, movie premiere when her comedy “The Girl Rush” (1955) premiered in her hometown of Waterbury, Connecticut. What began as an exciting and poignant celebration of, as the newsreel narration put it, “hometown girl makes good”, ended in a frightening disaster when an unforeseen flood nearly obliterated Waterbury that night.

She wrote in her autobiography, “Life is a Banquet” (with Chris Chase, Random House, NY, 1977) “Nineteen fifty-five was my year for attracting natural disasters.”

Mayor Snyder, Rosland Russell, and Gloria DeHaven.



The festivities were scheduled for August 18th. Roz (as she was referred in the local paper), was due to arrive by train along with her co-stars from the film, Fernando Lamas, Eddie Albert, and Gloria DeHaven (who we last saw in this post on “Summer Stock” - 1950)

According to author Bernard F. Dick’s biography, “Forever Mame - The Life of Rosalind Russell” (University Press of Mississippi, 2006), Miss Russell arrived the day before, visited with siblings and her elderly mother, and prepared to take on the public mantle of hometown hero.

Miss Russell remarks in her autobiography, “Waterbury authorities explained that I was the only motion picture star to have a theatre named for her (I don’t know whether they meant in Waterbury or in the United States or in the entire world, but how could such a declaration not go to a girl’s head?)”

In “Life is a Banquet” she puts us right in the middle of the scenario, “Before the rains came, I rode in a parade in a white satin dress that was all beaded, with a matching little thing that sat on my head, being Princess Grace all over the joint.”

The stars, along with the flock of Paramount newsreel men, the inevitable publicity department, and some 10,000 townspeople straggling on the sidewalks to watch the parade, would be taken from the railroad station to the Elton Hotel, the swank spot in town.

After a luncheon, the Hollywood contingent were then to be whisked away to City Hall where Mayor Raymond E. Snyder, Sr. (who incidentally had bought Rosalind Russell’s parent’s home a couple of decades before and turned it into a funeral parlor, which it remains), would present her with the key to the city. They were also to get a tour of town, including some of the Brass City’s famous industries, and Roz’s birthplace.

Dave Garroway (who is mentioned as having a problem with chimpanzees on the set of The Today Show in this post from Monday), showed up with his Today Show crew to film the festivities live on television from the Elton Hotel.

Roz’s take: “There was a big dinner at the great snob Waterbury Club, and my brother had to make a speech, and everything was to be televised - crews had been there for a week, setting up cameras all over the Waterbury green.”

They were in the right place to broadcast an even bigger surprise story the next day.

The evening of the 18th, they all headed over to the State Theater, which had just been re-named the Rosalind Russell State Theater, to watch the premiere of “The Girl Rush.” The Mattatuck Drum Band and a U.S. Marine Color provided escort.

Roz writes in her autobiography that, “there was a drum and fife corps - that’s very big in Connecticut; they always wear tricorne hats.”

The shots of Roz accompanying this post are all from a newsreel. Here is the plaque Roz unveiled marking the occasion.

Limos downtown, and powerful spotlights sweeping the cloud-covered night sky. Nothing like it had ever been seen in this factory town. Nothing ever would again. By morning, the Rosalind Russell State Theater, like much of the downtown, would be under several feet of water.

That cloud-covered sky. It had been raining pretty steadily all day during the celebrations on the 18th. By late that evening, smaller brooks in the Naugatuck River valley would jump their banks. The mighty Naugatuck itself, which powered so much industry in Waterbury, would morph in the wee hours to a monstrous thing that scraped factories, stores, and homes to rubble before morning, and leave some 30 people dead in Waterbury and over 90 people dead or missing and presumed dead total in the towns of the Naugatuck Valley.

Astonishing was the suddenness of the event. To be sure, Hurricane Diane had spent a couple of weeks sliding up the Eastern seaboard, but it made a sharp right turn out to sea before ever entering New England. It, and Hurricane Connie, dropped more rain than the already sodden ground could take, and what had begun as a gloomy day became a fearful night of torrential downpour, causing destruction no one could have predicted.

Roz fortuitously left right after the premiere, rented a car with her maid and a driver, and they made their way to New Haven while the bridges were being washed out in Waterbury.

From Roz’s autobiography: “I directed the driver - ‘Go up this hill, go down that lane, I know this town’ - because I realized if we could get to New Haven, we could get from there to New York. There was no hope of driving along the Naugatuck Valley toward Bridgeport; the Naugatuck River had overflowed.”

Her intention was to make it to the next publicity chore, the Ed Sullivan Show in New York City on the 21st, for an appearance with co-star Gloria DeHaven to promote “The Girl Rush.”

According to Mr. Dick's book, Miss DeHaven, however, got stuck in Waterbury temporarily until train service resumed.

Recovery took weeks, months, even years for some people. Some businesses, and people, never did recover.

According to this Cinema Treasures information, the State Theater had at various times, been called the Broadway, the Bijou, or the Rialto. It was torn down a couple decades ago. Currently, it is a parking lot.

This remarkable event was the last time Rosalind Russell ever visited Waterbury. Truly, the dual theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy were worn on this night.

For more on the New England Flood of 1955, have a look at tomorrow’s “New England Travels” blog.

Drive-in Theater, Rhode Island

Not much but the sign of this drive-in movie theater if you’re driving northbound on Route 146 in Rhode Island. But that’s the way it is with drive-ins, you have to enter the inner sanctum to see what’s there. What’s there is just nothing but a big screen, and the big black night sky, and maybe the soft glow from the snack bar.

In the daytime, there’s no magic.

This drive-in theatre, now called the Rustic Tri-view, was opened in 1951 in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. As mentioned in this previous post on drive-ins, there aren’t a lot left in New England, but this one’s managed to survive the decades. It is now the only drive-in movie theater left in the state of Rhode Island.

For more on the Rustic Tri-view (so named for its three screens), have a look at this website, and here.

Paramount Theater - Rutland, Vermont

The Paramount Theater of Rutland, Vermont is another of those splendid resurrections we are fortunate to observe, preserving that great era of theaters. A couple of weeks ago on my Tragedy and Comedy in New England blog, I referred to a recent staged reading of a play of mine by the Vermont Actors’ Repertory Theatre, which uses the Black Box Theater that is part of the Paramount Theater building.

It was once called The Playhouse Theatre, completed in 1913 and opening in 1914. The exterior, as its website notes, is an example of the classic “City Beautiful” movement of the day, and the interior was all lush Victorian opera house, with seating for 1,000 in the orchestra, balcony, and six boxes.

Ethel Barrymore performed on stage here, and Sarah Bernhardt, along with vaudeville acts. Later, it was “talking pictures”, and in 1931, the theater was renamed The Paramount. During World War II, war bond rallies were staged here. But what happened to a lot of theaters in the 1970s happened to The Paramount: their facilities decayed, reflecting perhaps the decline of the film industry. It closed in 1975.

It was empty for a generation. In 1999 restoration began. Theaters were once the heart of communities large and small, and Rutland has proven to have a lot of heart. The Paramount reopened in 2000, due to the hard work and efforts of many contributors.

Today, live stage shows are produced here. Ethel Barrymore and Sarah Bernhardt, and all those vaudeville acts, might nod in appreciation. We can only smile, and cheer.

For more on The Paramount Theater of Rutland, Vermont, have a look at this website.

Your First Movie?

Do you remember the first movie you saw unaccompanied by grownups?

Last week in our post on The Grand Theater of Indian Orchard, Massachusetts, commenter Tony recalled it was the theater where he saw his first film without grownups at the tender age of around 9 years old. The film was “Saturday Night Fever.”

Let us know if you can remember the first film you saw without an adult, what age you were, and where you saw it.

Grand Theater - Indian Orchard, Massachusetts

Here is the former Grand Theater of Indian Orchard, Massachusetts. Indian Orchard is a neighborhood in Springfield, and this movie theater has stood here on Main Street since the days of vaudeville. Closed in the early 1990s, it is now used as a church.

The Grand Theater has special significance for another building across the street, Henry’s Jewelers, where the Titanic Historical Society resides and a very interesting museum on the disaster. Museum curator, Edward Kamuda, whose family once owned the Grand Theater, saw “Titanic” (1953) as a boy here, and his fascination with the historical event lasted a lifetime. For more on the Titanic Museum he created, have a look at Tuesday’s “New England Travels” blog.