The Pandemic has shuttered theaters everywhere, which, among so many other things, I find unspeakably sad. And still, in our minds and hearts the show goes on. 

So here’s a day in the life of a movie palace, in another troubled year. 1977... First, some perspective:

​In November, 1976, Jimmy Carter won the White House. We were in the middle of the Seventies recession, with unemployment at at stubborn 7.7 percent, worse in New York City (current U.S. unemployment stands at 6.7 percent). NYC had narrowly avoided bankruptcy in 1975. Vietnam was over; Nixon had flown off in a helicopter, after praying for forgiveness on hands and knees, with his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Gerald Ford, who succeeded him saw fit  to forgive him, prompting comedian Robert Klein  to remark that he wanted, “the Nixon punishment,” for anything he might do that violated the law. So here’s our theater in 1977, one of the coldest winters in NYC history...
 
“We’re saved!  We’re saved! There’s some people here who want to shoot a movie!” I appeared, breathless, from the auditorium of our 2,672-seat movie palace, the St. George Theatre, which I’d been showing to three women who had walked in off the street. Dean, my impresario husband, whose noble enterprise running the theater largely was, perked up immediately. Fantasies of Brian de Palma or Martin Scorsese briefly interrupted his usual despair.  
 
Business was in a nose-dive. We were involved in a heat war with the landlord. We needed a miracle — perhaps this was it. “Could be thousands of dollars!” I chirped on, enthusiastically. The women appeared from the auditorium. One of them smiled and gave Dean a card. “Are you the manager? We’d like to rent your theater for an afternoon.” Dean sighed then tried to disguise his disappointment. “You’re shooting a spot, right?” 
 
They were — for an upholstery company, it turned out. We settled on around $850. On the appointed day, bin after bin of lighting equipment rolled in. “This is going to cost at least two hundred in electricity,” I mused, glumly. But the inside of the theater had never seemed so luminous; despite myself, I rejoiced. “Is it always this quiet?”, the production coordinator wondered. “Any interior sounds? Banging heat pipes, that kind of thing?” 
 
I chuckled — “Well that won’t be a problem! ” — then I explained about the landlord and the heat.
 
The shoot was a wrap by 4 PM, and we returned to our role as movie palace. By 11 PM we’d raked in around $127 in concession and ticket sales. Concession was the greater part of this haul, on account of the hot coffee and fresh warm popcorn that made it possible to watch a movie in an unheated palace. The day’s take was, even in those days, peanuts, but when I added in the $850 (forgetting the probable bump in next month’s electric bill), I could pretend we’d made a grand.
 
The following day, Dean got two phone calls. The first was from Local 306, the projectionists’ union, demanding we add another 6-hour shift, at $13.75 cents an hour, because we had used the booth, even though the projectionist (had he been around) would have been useless. The second call was from Local 1. How many stagehands had we employed? We hadn’t, of course, but they had a right. Answering the phone, “You've reached the St. George Theatre, located in beautiful downtown St. George...” Dean pretended to be a kid working the box office. He’d pass the message on — he promised — to the manager.  Day in the life. 
 
The St. George Theatre has been featured in movies and commercials over the years, among them School of Rock and the TV series SMASH in which it played a role as a theater in Boston. It’s a living! Or it was...
 
Afterthought:
I ran an earlier version of this post four years ago in January. The post was originally the result of a back-and-forth in the comments column of the previous post, “The Mysteries of Movie Theater Management,” (January 5, 2016). Once again I’d like to thank reader Josephine Scherer, for reminding me that we ever DID rent the theater for an upholstery commercial.
 
In her first comment, she recalled the projection booth, as it was in 1977, with phenomenal accuracy. In her second, she went on to describe said commercial! You can look it up in its entirety, but here’s the better part of what she had to say:
I remember the St. George well! We used it as a location for a commercial shoot. And what a projection angle! The booth was scary—if I recall correctly, Century SA's on top of RCA 9030 sound heads, with big Ashcraft rotating positive carbon arc lamps... on five-point bases with railroad ties under the back end to get enough tilt-down! Good thing earthquakes don't happen much in New York!! 

Now for her comments on the long-ago commercial, and a little more besides:
​...It was for a chain of fabric stores. We had this wonderful actress who could do a bang-on Judy Holliday impression (we had previously used her in a commercial for a Broadway musical). We start tight on her face, as she says: "My boss said I could re-cover all the chairs in here," and goes on to say that the fabric shop had so many great patterns and colors she couldn't choose just one- "...So, I did one of each!" Then we zoom out, and we see it's a huge theatre, with every seat covered differently.  
 
Helen, our prop lady, had a ball making all the slip covers! 
 As director of photography, I was usually able to get a print of the spots I did, but unfortunately this was one I couldn't (it may have been finished by an out-of-town editing service). If I had it, I would have been delighted to send you a video copy. At any rate, it was an honor to shoot in your beautiful theatre! 
 
Sadly, this was around the time your fine upstanding landlord put the vicious dog in the furnace room so you couldn't turn the heat on... So unspeakably sad.

On January 25, 2017,  I ran the following blog post, with one alteration, and the following title, “Something to Think About in Our First Post-Obama Week.” Now that we’re heading into the post-Trump era, I thought it oddly appropriate to run the post again, which also happens to reflect on the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., who, in 1977, had only been dead nine years. Would he think we’ve made much progress in this new century? An interesting question. At any rate, the dedicated Black/White staff of the St. George Theatre, a 2,672-seat movie palace I was struggling to keep open in ’77, was, after all, our shining success, despite what was turning out to be a blazing business failure. Some things are more important than “the bottom line.”

I’ve made only a few changes in what is becoming my “inauguration special.”

​                                                                                      *   *   *

On Sunday evening, January 23, 1977 — forty four years ago — what were one hundred and forty million Americans (half the population of the U.S.) doing? From personal experience, I can assure you that hardly anyone had gone to the movies; and it wasn’t because Jimmy Carter had just been inaugurated only a few days before. Only one very lonely man had bought a ticket to see Rudy Ray Moore in the Blaxploitation flick, The Human Tornado. It was the A-movie, along with The Muthers, that we were showing as part of a double feature, at the St. George Theatre that night. Well, if the post-Nixon era wasn’t the reason our theater was empty, what was?
 
For eight consecutive nights, from the 23rd to the 30th of January, Roots, the most widely-watched miniseries in American television history, had everybody who owned a TV chained, metaphorically speaking, to the glowing box. I’m one of a minority of Americans alive in 1977, who failed to watch that night, or any of the subsequent seven nights, even a single episode of the series, based on Alex Haley’s best-selling novel, Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The book followed several generations of enslaved African Americans, beginning with the capture of a young man in West Africa, Kunta Kinte reputedly Haley’s ancestor. Roots changed the way many White Americans thought about slavery, while at the same time legitimizing the family chronicles of many Black families. Despite the fact that I missed the experience of viewing it as it aired, it affected my life — and the business I was failing at — profoundly.
 
Television, ironically, achieved over the course of those eight nights what we in our grand old movie palace had failed to do. We’d been trying to bring our White suburban and Black urban audiences together to watch movies — not an easy feat in a neighborhood which resented upscale whites, some of whom were afraid to drive to our side of the island. It didn’t help that, after winter set in, our beloved St. George Theater had no heat, thanks to a landlord who was actively trying to evict us. Then, in that most desperate winter—for eight long days, while Roots aired — we were completely vacant. Our scant winter audience, those few brave souls accustomed to sitting in their hats and coats in a cold auditorium, had stayed home in front of their own televisions. 
 
VCRs existed, but many people didn’t have one, so when a program aired, you watched it — or missed it. And everyone knew that Roots was not to be missed, a game-changing event. The last night set a nationwide Nielsen Ratings record for the largest audience ever to view a televised show. That record would not be bested until 1983, when M*A*S*H aired for the last time. Roots was obviously the ultimate triumph of television over movies; that had been coming for some time, but it’s impact was much larger. Except for me, the managers and skeleton crews of other theaters (most of which had the good sense to simply close), and whoever else was unlucky enough to work nights, everyone watched, as the forbidden story of slavery unfolded. 
 
A scandal some years later, would call into question some of the details of Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tale; was it fiction or non-fiction? Inaccurate or not, it was a story that needed to be told.
 
Roots opened the door to a lot of African American genetic research. In the aftermath of the television broadcast, more than 250 colleges and universities began offering courses on the tracing of African American genealogy and the history of slavery. Although sequels have been made, as well as a recent “re-imagining” of the original production by A&E—which is extremely moving—it was the original that flipped the table on the American saga of slavery, finally making Gone With the Wind not just stale, but a major squirm for many people.
 
I was glad, the afternoon after each of those eight long nights, to hear our staffers, Black and White boys and girls who loved and trusted one another, some of whom had been off the previous night, buzzing about this new phenomenon, ancestry. It took some of the sting out of going broke.

"As a veteran movie-goer, whose childhood played out in the movie palaces, drive-ins and small neighborhood houses of Cincinnati, and whose young adulthood found me (1976) attempting to keep open the doors of the 2, 672-seat St. George Theatre in Staten Island, I feel estranged. 
 
I am tired of sheltering in place, sick of the stream being broken because too many of my neighbors are making the same demands of it. Most of all, I’m weary of not sitting in the dark with strangers, gazing up. I will always miss the big big screens of my youth, when Technicolor was in bloom. But even the diminished screens most theaters before the Pandemic offered are beginning to seem as exotic as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. 
 
I’d settle in comfortably now...just to rub shoulders with strangers. I wonder if at least some of our unrest, civil and otherwise, could be quelled by this simple act of communion? — sitting down without fear of contamination, together in the dark. 
 
Theaters are suffering, and so are we. They’re closed, and we’re home. Even Trader Joe’s has”senior hours.” Restaurants have it hard, but at least they can offer carryouts, or lean-to’s on the street where you can sit  spaced apart. You can go to Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side, bundle up and order salmon, while watching fellow New Yorkers soldier on. Two weekends ago, we did just that, and while we were sitting in Barney’s chrome chairs, and I was musing, “...this is almost warm enough to be Key West!” a man walked by, masked of course. He had a Schnauzer on a leash, and I kid you not the dog was also wearing a tiny white mask! You have to take your theater where you can get it.
 
Before last March we would have gone to a flick after bagels and lox. It’s that same thing we love, and we need – sitting shoulder-to-shoulder for several hours with no windows or doors open – that has led to all those touching messages on marquees. 
 
So we keep on with our old episodes of What’s My Line (we’re up to 1960 now, having watched several hundred) and binge watch The Queen’s Gambit and The Crown. And Colbert, of course. I was stunned and pleased Friday when he completely anticipated what I’m feeling about going to the movies. Not a movie, just, well...movies.
 
You’ll find a link shortly. You have to watch the whole show to get the segment I’m talking about, but here’s why you should watch it:
 
(Colbert introduces)
 
“...Warner...Its 2021 Films will arrive in theaters and streaming on HBO Max simultaneously including The Matrix 4!
That’s so exciting!  I can hardly wait to escape to a.. a fantasy world where all human contact is virtual and we’re kept immobile while consuming high-calorie sludge!
Everyone’s wondering when we’re gonna go to the movies and when we’ll feel normal again...”
 
Amen, I say.
 
(Image of a generic marquee)
 
(Colbert  presents) “the most anticipated film of the year.”
 
(Clips that resemble a preview mash-up)
 
(Woman’s voice) 
“...a movie really any movie in a theater would be great!”
 
*a romantic comedy
*a spy thriller
*or another Marvel thing
*I would even sit through one of those movies where a dog teaches a family the true meaning of Jesus. Or whatever.
 
(Man’s voice)
“...Together we’ll have to sit through 20 minutes of ads before they even start the previews.”
 
("Finnegan’s Fish Loaf:  a mutiny of flavors in every bite...")
 
But it’s not the movies that bring it home. It’s the faces, the boredom, fear, delight, a hand reaching into giant popcorn. The light on these faces, all facing the same direction. And what I’ve neglected is the Chyrons, of which I’ll tease just one: “...THE ONLY DEADLY PATHOGENS ARE ON EVERY INCH OF THE FLOOR. Now that’s nostalgia! And speaking as an ex-theater manager, you have no idea.
 
Don’t miss the whole segment! Here’s the link to the complete show, which was really, really worth watching, from beginning to end. 
 
Afterthought:
Can’t resist; here’s the last bit:  
 
"This film is not yet rated, as the future remains a dark enigma."
 
Amen, again.

The June 1947 issue of International Projectionist features a eulogy for 15-year-old Marion Shea, who lost his life in a theater fire.

Film — the real thing, with sprocket holes, that runs through a projector — is rare these days, but in 1976, when we ran a 2,672-seat movie palace, the St. George Theatre in Staten Island, it was plentiful and thankfully not explosive. This didn’t keep the fire inspectors from fining us if fire buckets in the projection booth weren’t precisely 12 inches off the floor, a regulation that dated back to the bad old days of nitrate film. Almost all movies, certainly major motion pictures, were on a nitrate base before the late forties and certainly after 1952, when Kodak finally stopped making the volatile stuff, and switched entirely to a variation of acetate, the base they’d been using all along for home movies. In the heyday of the movie palaces, going to the movies, let alone working as a projectionist, were risky activities. Theater fires as dramatic as the one depicted in Cinema Paradiso were, before 1952, common, if not somehow likely. 
 
How likely? A 1936 issue of International Projectionist estimated that one American projectionist died, on average, every 18 days, probably not of a heart attack. Nitrate often simply exploded. 
 
And get this: while projectors were carbon arc (which we still had at the St. George in seventy-six), nitrate film, whose base is essentially a solid form of nitroglycerin, had all the aspects of a bomb (fire, volatile material). 
 
The very existence of  projection booths in theaters had been established early in the silent era, largely as a safety feature, an attempt to contain anticipated fire. Should a fire begin in the booth, the wax that lined the projection ports — if not a fuse of some sort — melted, and flame-proof shutters sealed the booth from the theater, like a tomb, which, as a matter of fact, it might become. Case in point, the June 1947 issue of the aforementioned International Projectionist eulogizes a fifteen-year-old — presumably breaking into the craft of projection — Marion Shea, who lost his life in a theater fire. 
 
What is it, or was it, about nitrate film stock? A US Navy instructional movie about the safe handling of celluloid/nitrate film includes footage of a full reel of the stuff burning underwater. Water, in fact, is the worst thing you can add to a nitrate fire: it only encourages dangerous gases.
 
Beginning in the thirties, the fact that practically the whole history of movies as an art form was laid down on unreliable stock that might explode spontaneously, meant that a number of archives were destroyed on hot summer days, in storage vaults that lacked ventilation. Everything Fox ever made before 1937 went up in an archive fire that year, requiring seven fire companies to extinguish.
A similar calamity happened to MGM’s archives in 1965.  
 
We hardly show movies on nitrate anymore, except in rare circumstances, which still doesn’t solve the problem of preservation of rare reels, because, over time, in the presence of the kind of heat you experience in a hot car in a parking lot in July, these films will either explode or bubble and degenerate. 
 
This leads me to the anecdote that started off this post. My friend, Robert Endres, now retired from his long-time job as Chief Projectionist at Radio City Music Hall, reminisced recently about his attempts to save some archival footage of the Center Theatre’s opening. The Music Hall had, in those days, vaults for the storage of nitrate film, and Bob was trying to get the fragile newsreels converted to acetate before they disintegrated altogether.
 
One of my great regrets was that I couldn’t save newsreel footage of the opening of the Center Theatre. There’s very little documentation about it, and I had the footage in our vault.  It was nitrate and when I opened the can I noted that it had started to bubble. Our Chief Operating Officer suggested taking it to Technicolor and having the Lab director take a look at it. I did. When I walked into his office, he closed the blinds over the inside window. He opened the can, took one look, and said, “Get it out of here!”  I said, “Can’t you do something?” and he repeated, “Get it out of here!”  I picked the can up and put it under my left arm, and he said, “No, put it under your right arm. That way if it blows up it only takes a lung and not your heart.” Needless to say, I took it back to the Hall very gingerly!
 
I couldn’t resist asking  Bob what happened after that...to which he replied,
 
I held the can out at arm’s length most of the way back. I took the subway and I’m sure violated a number of rules of the Fire Department and the MTA in doing so, although they probably wouldn’t have known about the hazard of nitrate film by that time.
 
Nitrate film seems to be a perpetual hot potato. Michael Zahs’ collection of early Miele films, which he kept in a shed on his Iowa property for many years, were nitrate; this didn’t keep him from mailing a number of them to the Library of Congress, which duplicated them and mailed them back! 
 
You might be wondering why, if Kodak had acetate as far back as 1909, which it happily sold to amateur filmmakers, it kept producing nitrate materials to sell to the studios? The myth surrounding nitrate’s beauty, the dense blacks and luminous whites, is probably the answer. To which I say, what price beauty?
 
Afterthoughts:
 
Here are a few more hot potato anecdotes from Bob Endres, and one other afterthought besides;
 
Bob’s comments:
 1. We actually had a nitrate film vault at the Hall complete with two sets of doors. My boss discovered that it wasn’t cooled in the summer and had some of the film brought down to my office in the booth. Since you’re not supposed to have more than a few thousand feet of film outside of a fireproof container at one time, this startled the city inspectors when they came to check the booth, particularly since one of the cans on top had a big red label saying “Nitrate” on it. There was quite a bit of nitrate footage stored in the nitrate vault still, when I started there. Our Head of House Operations knew about it and when he saw Towering Inferno he said we should get  it out of the building. 
 
2. I...didn’t want to destroy the documentary footage that we had on the history of the Hall. Since it was operated by RKO, there were a lot of RKO newsreels that contained Radio City stories.  We also had a “March of Time” episode that featured the Hall. I made a deal with MOMA [Museum of Modern Art] that they could have the footage if they would pull acetate prints for me, thus enabling me to show footage that I didn’t want to take a chance with when it was on nitrate. A stagehand and I filled a shopping cart with reels of nitrate film and wheeled it up 6th Avenue to MOMA.

​3. We did a tribute to Myrna Loy at Carnegie Hall with a film retrospective. I got a call from an editor wanting to know if we would run a clip on nitrate film. When the editor said she would take the clip out of the 2000’ reel in was contained in, I said O.K.  She brought the three-minute roll to New York in her purse on a plane.
 
Final notes: 
1. Acetate (“Safety Film”) is no optimal medium either, not volatile like nitrate, but imminently perishable. Check out “vinegar syndrome.”
2. This blog post, which necessitated a deal of research, of which I’m quite proud, first ran in its intirety on 1/30/19.