I once helped run a movie palace in Staten Island, the St. George Theatre, that contained, beneath its gilded proscenium, a single viewing screen arguably the size of a small playing field. What a wonder, that such behemoths were once the norm, or that people ever gathered together in the dark to watch a one-and-a-half-story tall Katherine Hepburn kiss an equally mammoth Spencer Tracey. Watching YouTube on an iPhone has become routine, so screen size may seem irrelevant now, but it was once a subject of conversation. As when, in 1976, MGM finally released Gone With the Wind to television — first to HBO and, in November, to network television (NBC). It became, and remains, the highest-rated television program ever presented on a single network, viewed — in relative miniature — by 65 percent of television viewers. I watched on a portable Sony Trinitron at a lunch counter in Florida, as Rhett carried Scarlet up what seemed, at the time, like a dollhouse staircase.

By then TV had been eroding the habit of movie-going for a couple of decades, a back-and-forth struggle. In 1963, the fledgling American Multi Cinema (AMC) Theatres — originally Durwood Theatres owned by Stanley H. Durwood — opened the two-screen Parkway Twin in Kansas City presumably to cut overhead, but also to steal back some of the viewing audience, by offering a choice of titles. Viewers — used to their Zeniths, Sonys  and Motorolas — didn’t seem to care about the relative smallness of these screens, and the trend caught on. A very American crisis ensued: by 1976, there were actually too many screens for the product that Hollywood offered; a sudden 7.5 percent decline in movie theater attendance sent the movie business into a panic.

The average single-screen movie theater operator — most often located in a crumbling downtown area — couldn’t hope to compete for scarce film offerings.

We were that operator. Our unofficial anthem at the St. George Theatre, during the dark winter of 1977 — a parody of an American Airlines ad then running on TV — went something like this:  “With our big screen to the north and our snack-stand to the south, we’re the St. George Theatre, living from hand to mouth.”

​The St. George ended its days as a movie house with our departure in 1977, the same year the Loew’s Kings in Brooklyn went dark (happily restored a few years ago as a live venue. A number of other great old palaces went dark or were torn down that year, including the Albee in my hometown, Cincinnati, wrecked, then replaced by a Westin Hotel. Right about that time, the St. George went dark; and not too long after our departure, our luminous — if grape soda-stained screen, burned up in a backstage fire that would have taken down the house if the theater’s protective asbestos fire curtain hadn’t fallen and stopped the progress of the blaze. The St. George has survived, a home, these days, for live entertainment, hearkening back to its origins in Vaudeville; so for our theater, a dedicated single screen, with its carefully-preserved curvature to allow for distortion, is probably a thing of the past.

It’s sad, but several generations have grown up never knowing the effect of films like Ben Hur, The Wizard of Oz, or The King and I in widescreen processes such as Cinerama, CinemaScope, VistaVision,  or Todd-AO. William Paul argues that “Both the architectural screen and the technological screen have changed...in ways that directly affect our perception of the movie image.”  He also notes, “The screen itself might have influenced the development of film style.” (1996, Screening Space: Architecture, Technology and the Motion Picture Screen in The Movies: Texts, Receptions and Exposures, eds. Laurence Goldstein and Ira Konigsburg, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 245-6).

In an age when more and more households don’t even own a TV (given its battle with movies, the final irony) hardly anybody knows what watching an epic on a giant screen actually feels like. Still, there are exceptions. In New York City, the venerable Paris Theatre (with balcony seating) still boasts a pristine single screen. And, Lordy, you can always go to L.A.:  they have so many restored big screen theaters in that town, you should plan to stay for a year. Check out The Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Blvd., the Vista on Sunset Drive and  perhaps the all-35-mm New Beverly, lovingly curated by owner Quentin Tarantino), just for starters. Seattle’s Cinerama Theater is, I’m told, a wonder. 

There are scads of single-screen houses listed in Cinema Treasures. How many of them boast a screen big enough to do justice to Lawrence of Arabia (Super Panavision 70) is anybody’s guess, but I remain, as always, optimistic. Meanwhile, teens are suddenly going out to the movies in much greater numbers, and some of them are fans of the 35mm experience, another reason to smile.

Afterthoughts:
It has occurred to me that a recent post serves as a perfect example of a single-screen theater being rehabilitated, NOT in L.A. or NYC, but in Streator Illinois. Hurrah for the Majestic! We’ll have to revisit it when it opens again for movies.

If you think you recognize aspects of this post, you’ve got a good memory. An earlier version appeared roughly two years ago under the same title. For another post that touches on screen size, you might want to check out A Two-Story John Wayne on this blog.

Don’t forget to like Starts Wednesday on Facebook, and check out the Treasures of New York documentary that aired on local PBS stations a few weeks ago...

​There were perhaps fourteen very steep stairs up to the projection booth, at the top of the balcony, of the St. George Theatre, six floors above ground level. I remember them as narrow and precipitous. But before you could even get to those high risers, you had to have wrestled already with the deadbolt on the door at the bottom of the stairs, using a key so badly matched to its lock, that opening the scuffed door was a rough equivalent to safe-cracking. A jiggle to the left, then a quick turn to the right and press hard on the back of the key. If you were lucky, it would open. Nine, even ten tries often didn’t get it, but thankfully the projectionist was almost always there, and you could call in advance, for entree to his sanctum sanctorum. This is how it went at our 2,672-seat movie palace, back in the day (that day was 1976), when a group of us took a shot at single-screen theater management (and occasional live entertainment). You might say we’d joined the circus, a circus of our own devising.

It’s the booth that suddenly commands my memory, the highest habitable point in our theater world. Once up there, you could step out of a side door onto the Catwalk, a metal pathway that led directly into the dome. Defunct TVs were dumped there (they shouldn’t have been there at all, since TVs were strictly forbidden by union rules). Projectionists snuck them up the stairs anyhow, and watched them while waiting to change reels, often as not  missing the change-over, the most important aspect of film projection. To compound things, a television, however mute, somehow competed in an audio sense with the movie, thanks to the theater’s excellent acoustics.

What do I remember about the booth? The cacophony of the place: a tinny speaker, hanging on the wall from its cord, transmitting the movie audio from the auditorium, the working projector grinding away, one bent take-up reel rubbing against something in the works, bell sounds for change-over, the crackle of the carbons. It was a machine shop hovering over a library. The auditorium was a library, in a way. You’d never talk above a whisper while the show was on downstairs, but in the booth you had to shout to be heard. No wonder Gabe, hard of hearing anyhow, turned up the audio on the TV!

Last week an old friend, for the better part of his life a white-glove projectionist from Radio City Music Hall, contributed to this column one of his many stories about booths he has toured, in his long and exceptional life. He reminisced about the booth of the Pantages in L.A., which, by happenstance, he’d toured in the early seventies. Bob Endres has been in projection booths all over the USA — and the world. “That’s an interesting specialty,” I thought, wondering how many other people collect projection booths, or trips to those booths. Gee, how many people even know what a projection booth is — or was?  Fewer and fewer, which is, perhaps, why I’m suddenly drawn to write about them.

On this side of the Atlantic, a projection booth is called just that, but in the U.K. it’s a “projection box” (“bio box” in Australia, if you cared to know). In the infancy of film, projectors occupied the backs of  darkened rooms full of movie watchers, but film in those days was highly flammable (nitrocellulose), resulting often in theater fires, some of which were infamous enough to cause major fire safety legislation. Because cellulose nitrate contains oxygen, nitrate fires can be very difficult to extinguish, once they’ve started. So beginning roughly in the 1920’s theaters in the U.S. were required to segregate the business of projection from the pleasure of movie-watching, in order to protect the audience from the flammability of film itself. An added advantage to the booth was the separation of projection sounds from the experience of movie-viewing. In 1952, Kodak solved the flammability issue by introducing Safety Film (with an acetate, rather than nitrate, base layer), but until recently nobody has tamed all that sound. Enter digital projection.

With nearly 100% of all theaters equipped in 2017 for digital according to NATO, booths either don’t exist anymore (with the operant equipment suspended from the ceiling of an auditorium, ironically reminiscent of early movie days) or they exist, with piles of rusting antiquated equipment in their corners.

Wax nostalgic for a moment with me. Here’s a snippet of a recent interview on NPR with Bob Mondello (Backstage Pass, July 18, 2017). Before he became a film critic, Mondello worked for a chain of movie theaters; so he knows a lot about projection booths:

...The purr of a celluloid film strip running through a projector, a purr that is actually 24 clicks per second, one each time the shutter closes so that another frame of film can advance. Each frame has to stop briefly in front of the light source, or all you'd see when you look at the screen is a blur. This is how film was first projected by the Lumiere brothers in 1895 and how everyone saw film for the next 104 years. It's been the subject of movies, from a silent comedy where Buster Keaton plays a projectionist who dreams himself up onto the screen to the Oscar-winning "Cinema Paradiso," where a little boy falls in love with movies in the projection booth. 

Funny he should mention Cinema Paradiso, which ends in a fire, involving nitrate based film. Perhaps nostalgias — of all kinds — are volatile! Meanwhile, count me in on missing the sounds of the booth, although the purr he’s describing probably came from a Xenon projector, not the already-outmoded Carbon Arc projectors in our St. George booth. But well and fondly do I remember the machine-shop aspects of the place, once I’d huffed and puffed my way up those projection stairs.

A determined coalition of directors and organizations such as Cinema Conservancy help make sure that at least 20 theaters coast-to-coast still project film. Is this just one more example of our nostalgia for analogue everything (vinyl records, manual typewriters, the 1950’s dial telephone in my living room, actual books)? Or is it proof positive that again and again technology persuades us, often hastily and to our detriment, to throw out some lovely babies with the most recent tub of bathwater?

Afterthought:
Check out this YouTube video.  
Also, this technological cry-to-arms.      
 
By the way, I always forget to mention this, if you follow Starts Wednesday, don’t forget to LIKE US ON FACEBOOK!
 

A hot day in June, 1976. Jaws was on the marquee, and I was cleaning the poster cases, preparing to mount that classic shot of the shark, rising to attack a clueless swimmer. On the other side of the foyer, Dean, my husband and partner in our desperate venture of running the St. George Theatre, was working the box office, making  a few phone calls. A tall mustachioed man came through the center door and cut a diagonal path straight to the small barred window. In a quiet voice, he inquired,

“Is it possible for me to see the manager?” 

“You’re lookin’ at him,” Dean quipped. They were instant friends.

“I’m a projectionist,” the stranger offered.

“We already have two, one worse than the other...” Dean replied. “The union gets to pick them...”

“Well, said the man, rising to his full height, “I’m the Chief Projectionist at Radio City Music Hall...”
 
 We were awed into momentary silence.

“...and I’m a member of Local 306. My name is Robert Endres,” the stranger continued, offering his hand through the bars. “All I want to do is look at your theater. I admire old theaters — collect them in my head...” 

You may have already read the post that begins with this glimpse of my introduction to Bob. In the days that followed his arrival in the lobby of the St. George, he took a number of shifts in our booth. He was the only projectionist I ever saw who wore white gloves to touch film (the others barely washed their hands). Bob also ran spot for us, firing up the carbon arc spotlights for a live disco performance, making the sequins on those dancers’ shifts appear to liquify the stage.

The other day he wrote to say my post on the Pantages Theatre  in L.A. reminded him of a trip to that city in 1970. Bob’s been in more projection booths from coast to coast than any single human being. Here’s how he came to view the internal workings of that notable L.A. theater, back in the day:

I was attending a Society of Motion-picture and Television Engineers’ conference in L. A. when I managed with the help of some of my fellow members to wangle an invitation from the Head Projectionist at Disney to tour their projection facilities. The conference was being held near Century City just off the Fox backlot. To get from there to Burbank where the Disney studios are located I had to take a bus — not an easy thing in L.A., but doable. I got up early and had breakfast at the hotel and then started my trek. After about an hour, having had several cups of coffee, I began to realize that it would be really handy to find a restroom. I was beginning to get a little worried about this, when I saw the marquee of the Pantages.

The management had extended an invitation to all SMPTE members to visit the theatre and catch a show. I hopped off the bus thinking I’d duck into the Pantages, use the rest room and continue on my way; but when I presented my SMPTE member card at the box office, the cashier said, “Oh, just a minute” and then made a call to the manager’s office. Out came the manager and the assistant manager to personally welcome me to the theatre and invite me in to see Tora, Tora, Tora. Not only had I seen it in 70mm in its roadshow engagement in New York, I’d just finished running it for four weeks in my theatre in Kankakee, IL. 

All I wanted was to use the restroom! Now I was trapped, so I let them usher me into the theatre, where I grabbed a seat until they went back to their office. Then I snuck out to the restroom. But after such hospitality, I didn’t want them to see me leaving, nor did I want to watch the picture yet again. 

I managed to find the staircase to the booth. It was beautifully equipped with Norelco DP70 projectors. The projectionists were most hospitable too: they gave me a tour, including the sound mixing booth which had the original equipment from the theatre’s stage-show days.

The upstairs visit took just enough time. After my tour and some shop talk, I was able to exit the Pantages unobtrusively and continue on my way to the Disney studios, much relieved in more ways than one.
 
Afterthought:  If you remember fondly some or another projection booth, I'd like to know. Booths that contain real projectors of any kind (carbon arc, platter) are becoming scarcer and scarcer...

What does it feel like to hear that an old movie theater, one you treasure, and are involved in on a volunteer basis, will go dark if you don’t show up that very evening and take the place over? You’ve had no training, don’t even understand the workings of the popcorn machine, let alone the importance of box office reconciliation. It’s like that cliche dream of appearing onstage at Carnegie Hall with a violin in hand and no prior experience.

Exactly that happened to Katie Troccoli, at the Majestic Theatre in Streator, Illinois, where she works as a real estate agent and theater owner. I find her story enormously compelling, in part because it reminds me of 1976, when, along with my husband and a group of friends, I learned (by doing) how to run (and, unfortunately, how not to run) a 2,672-seat movie palace, the St. George Theatre, in Staten Island. Such is the life of those of us bitten by the bug of theater entrepreneurship. Here’s Katie’s story; as she says, it’s “Not glamorous or pretty.”

If theater management were swimming, I guess you sort-of jumped in and then learned how to keep afloat...
We met the projectionist Bill Sramek at the building at 5:30. The movie was Drag Me To Hell. It had been delivered to the Hardware Store next door. Bill put the 35mm film together. Jim took on the snack bar.  I took the box office. We had to call my daughter and ask her how to make popcorn. (She had worked concession at the park pool as a lifeguard). I didn't know to write down the ticket or meter numbers so I’d know how many people went to which movie. We had people show up to protest the movie. [There are a lot of people who are religious in the area, and the title Drag Me To Hell sounded satanic to some of them!] That's how my career in theatre started...    

We learned as we went....I did real estate by day (which was very depressing at the time, as the market had bombed and foreclosures were everywhere) and ran the theatre by night...Being in real estate, I'm not shy. I eventually started booking the films and basically learned all the ins and outs of the theatre business.
 
The whole family pitching in reminds me of 1976. My partners weren’t my actual family, but we were family in another sense, living in the same house just up the hill from the St. George. But we were dedicated entirely to our Quixotic project. I respect Katie all the more, for surviving the double-whammy of movie theater operation and a busted real estate market.
 
What was your first experience of the theater?
My first encounter with the Majestic was 1995 when a friend of a friend referred a [real estate] client for me to represent...who was interested in the [building’s] purchase. It was cold, dark, there were icicles hanging from the ceiling on both sides of the auditorium. I told the person who was viewing the property I wouldn't enter a building like this with someone I didn't know. It's too dangerous.
 
Icicles! That really would make a theater into a cave...I’ll never forget the day the arts council came to investigate giving our theater a grant; it was, alas, raining, and those perfect acoustics only made the drip, drip, drip from the dome seem more obvious. (We didn’t get the grant).
 
The Majestic, like so many American movie theaters, has had a rocky time of it in the last forty years. All those openings and closings. What was it like watching the rising and falling fortunes of the Majestic?
I am not from Streator. I live in Ottawa, IL...22 miles North, so I was not aware of the building until I got involved in the real estate transaction. I did watch Tim [the owner] open it (with different people as managers) and close it. He worked in the industry in Los Angeles. He would take his vacations at the Majestic, and invite my family to the building.

We got to be good friends. I picked him up at the airport, watched his son Ted, brought food and drink, helped him work on the building. I never planned on owning the building or running the theatre. The things I did were to help my friend. My husband and other friends also pitched in.

Business takes time to build, but Tim wanted it to happen immediately and be profitable. We did a few live shows in the Majestic together. We had Head East, The Lovin' Spoonful, and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Cathy Richardson, who played Janis Joplin on Broadway. We had fun, but didn't make any money. The press didn't cooperate: they ran a story after the event happened. 

Tim leased the property to some friends of his, who moved to Streator from Arizona. They did a lot of work on the building, and operated the theatre for two or three years. He threw them out and hired a manager. Then he asked me if I would get involved, but I told him I had a full time job and a family. I didn't need another job....

The manager lasted about 6 weeks. I got a call from Tim about noon at my real estate office. That was June 12, 2009. He told me he had fired the manager and Jim (my husband), and I would have to run the theatre or it would go dark.

Which is how Katie learned to run a popcorn machine and reconcile the box office. We had a little more time than she and her husband did, to learn these things at the St. George, but in general, the seat-of-your-pants stuff seems really familiar. So does that newspaper’s bad timing — at the St. George our ads got dropped all the time, especially devastating when the local paper adamantly refused to believe Sly Stone would actually show up on our stage (he did).

Not surprisingly, a favorite maxim of Katie’s celebrates the terrors and joys of improvisation,“If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” (W.C. Fields) 

If you’re running a movie theater, it’s likely you’re up to your ears in proverbial bull.

Am I correct in understanding that you are now the theater’s owner?
I ran the Majestic from June of 2009 until August 2013 when Tim decided to board up the front of the theatre and lock me out. 

I bought the Majestic out of foreclosure on October 27, 2016. When Tim boarded up the front of the building, the roof was leaking...First thing I did when I bought the building was get roofing contractors in there to figure out how to resolve the roof issues and stabilize the building. The spectrum of plans and approaches would stagger you.That work has started, but the contractor has been slow to finish the project.

Slow contractors are everywhere: currently the St. George is receiving its long-awaited facelift, a new marquee (the original one has been rusting away since 1976, when we had the place ). Slow work, as winter sets in.

How has moviegoing in Streator changed since the Majestic’s heyday?
Digital projection. [The Majestic underwent digital conversion approximately two years ago.That equipment is stowed off-premises for the time]. And there is now competition from a six screen on the north end of Streator that the City gave a good amount of help to.  Plus, there is the issue of poverty that haunts small towns in the rust belt. 

Am I correct in assuming you want to reopen the Majestic strictly as a movie theater, or would you feature live shows as well?
The Majestic auditorium was built in 1907 for Vaudeville. [On August 17 of that year, as a matter of fact, a couple were married onstage in a cage with lions, part of a local dare, but very much in keeping with the theater’s Vaudeville roots.] The current seating is a little over 500.  The balcony is amazing. There is not a bad seat in the house. Wonderful acoustics....I'm thinking we will do a mix of live entertainment, movies, and special events.  Seeing live entertainment, and movies in the atmosphere of grandeur the Majestic can offer beats a box with a oversized TV screen any day. [You betcha.] The Majestic is a crown jewel. The show begins at the curb with the marquee, the box office, the ticket taker, usher, the snack bar. Showmanship is almost a lost art.  I plan to teach it to those who are willing to learn so the tradition can carry on.  

Keep it alive Katie!

As Marcus Loew said, “People buy tickets to theaters, not movies!”

You may know — or remember — a mutual friend of Katie’s and mine, Robert Endres, formerly the head projectionist at Radio City Music Hall, who grew up in Streator. Bob wandered into the St. George back in 1976, when we were struggling to keep it open, and offered to help, ultimately running our booth for several concerts. He has a particular fondness for old movie houses, especially the Majestic, his hometown theater. Here’s Bob’s first impression:

“I was around nine years old...I had been given a 16mm hand-cranked projector by my uncle and, already a movie fan, I was fascinated by it. I attended a Saturday matinee at the Majestic Theatre... I was seated in the balcony right in front of the projection booth, and stood on the arm rests of two of the theatre seats to peer through the projection port. Not seeing as much as I’d like, I went around to the booth door and was peeking through the keyhole when a manager caught me and ushered me into the booth. I was scared at being caught, but fascinated by the equipment. By the time I was twelve, I was being taught how to thread one of those machines by one of the projectionists”. (I was able to re-enact the experience a couple of years ago and was surprised to see how much lower the keyhole seemed than when I was nine).”

Of course Cinema Paradiso is Bob’s favorite movie!  
 
*   *    *    *

Afterthought:
Support the theater you love that may be in peril—OR support Katie’s efforts at the Majestic with a donation.

Running a movie palace isn’t easy, even (or especially?) if it’s in the basement of your own home. As a former movie palace operator myself, I’m not thinking about those screening rooms with surround sound that people put in their man-caves.The one I’m focused on, in Racine, Wisconsin, Fred Hermes’ Basement Bijou, has  a surprisingly high ceiling, a balcony, approximately 150 theater seats, and a real live theater organ. I only recently learned about it, while researching the fate of the Michigan Theatre in Detroit to which Fred’s home theater is narratively connected.

The Basement Bijou happens to be built around the rescued Wurlitzer organ that used to grace the Michigan. Fred, now in his nineties, was a young man in 1955, when he purchased the organ for three thousand dollars.He and several friends got it out in multiple truckloads. It has come to rest in the basement of his home, where, in addition to organ recitals, Fred shows the occasional silent flick and a yearly staging of Phantom of the Opera. Referring, perhaps, to his age, he quips, “I’m the Phantom of the Opera now!” The Basement Bijou really does look like a miniature palace built to showcase the the 3000-pipe Wurlitzer, one of the largest ever built. Former patrons of Racine’s no-longer-extant Venetian Theatre will recognize many of the decorative artifacts Fred has assembled there, but the Bijou's interior is a curious blend of many palaces. Because so many were being torn down in the late fifties, the assortment is eclectic: a mustard-yellow curtain from the Crown Theatre in Racine; the motor mechanism that opens and closes it from the Palace Theatre in Dallas; stage lights from Kenosha's Lake Theater; crystal chandeliers from the Piccadilly Theatre in Chicago and  more than 100 theater seats from the Uptown Theatre in Racine keep each other company in the basement. "I got ahold of building records, and they would tell me when they were tearing a theater down..." Fred recalls.

“Mystery” bus tours have been stopping at Fred’s for many years, to tour the theater and listen to Fred, a member of the Dairyland Theatre Organ Society, play. That is, until a retired fireman from out of town who happened to be part of a tour, observed that Fred’s makeshift theater wasn’t exactly up to snuff, fire safety-wise and turned the poor guy in to the local fire department.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I once ran a real movie palace, the 2,672-seat St. George Theatre in Staten Island, New York. So when I read about the fire inspection that closed Fred down this March, I couldn’t help but think I’d been there, suffering the slights of overzealous fire inspectors.

We had at least 13 fire exits at the St. George — I still own a stained glass exit sign bearing that number. Each fire door had to have a working “breakaway bar,” for fast exit. Every fire hose had to be ready to go. Pressure was supposed to be maintained in the standpipe system at all times. And then there was Dean’s favorite absurd rule. It had made sense forty years prior, when film (once actually Celluloid) had been highly combustible. The fire extinguisher in the projection booth was supposed to be 24 inches off the floor and strapped to the wall, in order to be closer to the projectors. One Friday afternoon, ours was observed to be six inches too low, and the omnipresent fire inspector wrote us up. But, unlike Fred, we were actual theater managers.Apparently you don’t have to be in business to be treated like somebody who is.

 “I’ve been holding tours for about 50 years, and I’ve never had a problem,” Hermes states. He disputes the fire inspector’s claims, stating that he has purchased extra fire extinguishers, invested in new emergency lighting and has people sit in the back row of the theater, both because the organ sounds better and on account of the fact that the audience is closer to the exits. He once had a fire drill with about 40 or 50 people, and, according to him, everyone was able to exit the basement within 5 minutes. The Basement Bijou is probably safer than most theaters, including the St. George, in our time. 
 
While investigating movie palaces in Racine, I read up on the sad tale of the Venetian, an Italian Renaissance United Artists palace opened in 1928, torn down in 1977, the year we lost management of the St. George. Fred was in the forefront of the effort to save the Venetian, as this excerpted letter, quoted in the Comments section of the Venetian’s Cinema Treasures entry, attests:

Letter to the Journal Times, Sunday, Aug. 25, 1974 – 11 A Racine. Wis.
Urges Rebirth of Venetian

To the Editor:
Suggestions for helping the Racine Symphony from Mrs. Leo Draves in her letter a few weeks ago were excellent.
One...requirement for good attendance and performance is the necessity of a...home, one which is permanent, and can be shared with the many other fine musical and stage groups of our community. Excellent acoustics are an absolute must, as are good sight lines. All this awaits us in the elegant auditorium of the Venetian Theatre now waiting for rebirth as a performing arts center....
Let us use this beautiful theatre as a civic auditorium for all to enjoy. If we ever lose it, it will be gone forever.
—FREDERICK P. HERMES
1710 Heather Lane
           
Here’s to Fred!  And to the Basement Bijou — in Caledonia, Wis., actually, should you choose to visit — and here's to the organ he rescued. If he hadn’t gone to the trouble, it probably would have been cannibalized for parts like the Wurlitzer that was gone by the time we got to the St. George Theatre. Only its stage elevator survived. The instrument itself, or parts of it, ended up in a Texas pizza parlor.