Check us out on social media!
Starts Wednesday: A Year in the Life of a Movie Palace
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact

Movie Palace Archeology

9/14/2016

0 Comments

 
PictureVintage photo of Fox Cinema in Hanford, CA
On a long-ago trip to Paris, I was shocked to hear the cab driver say, waving dismissively as we passed a long line of elegant (if shabby) buildings that pre-dated the Revolution, “It is all merde — trash from the 18th Century!” New construction in other parts of the world would inspire awe in America, where we treasure the Hollywood sign and where “ancient” (beyond merely “old”) is a church built around the same time as those shabby apartments in Paris. And so, thankfully, we treasure our movie palaces, because palaces themselves are relatively rare here, not to mention ones that were built to serve our great grandparents before there was television or the net or social media. One such people’s palace, the St. George Theatre in Staten Island, which I was fortunate enough to help run in 1976, was where I first fell in love with the grassy smell of ages-old popcorn, which, in the “older” theaters, penetrates velvet drapery, thick wool carpet and plaster. Unlike most structures built in North America, the palaces were built to last, their smells and gilding part of the sanctuary they still offer.

Thankfully, a movement to preserve and restore theaters is afoot nationwide, growing stronger by the year, as people in towns and cities across America revive spaces that started out as theaters and morphed temporarily into supermarkets, tile warehouses, basketball courts, even parking garages.

Several years ago, I attended the League of Historic American Theatres’ national conference in New York City, keen to pass out cards and chat with people from all over the U.S.A. who have gone to the mat for one or another imperiled older theater. As I noted the day after the conference,

“The new theater partisans I sat with...were older and wiser than I was when my friends and I (in our mid-twenties) signed on the dotted line to lease a 2672-seat theater in New York City, expecting to support ourselves from the enterprise. In most cases, the people I met...were less aspiring entrepreneurs than volunteers who had kept their day jobs, even if they did raid the 401K to keep the local Rialto from becoming a Red Lobster. That hypothetical Rialto, is these days likely a not-for-profit, eligible for grant money and tax abatements. As my husband (a former partner in our long-ago misadventure) is quick to point out, “We were a not-for-profit — we just didn’t know it!” 

It’s important in this tear-down culture to celebrate the salvation of lovely old buildings (even if that Parisian taxi-driver might consider them recently-built merde). A successful theater restoration project at the Fox Theatre in Hanford, CA deserves attention. On March 20, 2014, that theater’s once magnificent ceiling collapsed. The man behind the restoration effort, one Dan Humason, walked into the theater and thought a bomb had gone off. “Every chair in the 1,055-seat theater was covered in white powder and debris....” Two years and four million dollars later, the theater and its ceiling have been restored, the original electric stars shining — lit, these days, by LED technology.

Humason is, apparently, a go-to kind of guy: “If I run out of projects,” he told the Fresno Bee, “I’ll die.” He confesses that the theatre “owns me,” a sensation I recall from my theater management days forty years ago, while I had the privilege of locking and unlocking the St. George Theatre. With its 2672 only partially broken seats, its tar-stained chandeliers and leaking dome, the St. George held a group of us hostage — at the very least as servants, at best, as freelance archeologists. Humason makes a connection to archeology too, something about a lost ring under a seat. Spoiler? Nah — read the Fresno Bee! 

There are all kinds of theater mavens. I’d like to close with a nod to Matt Lambros, a remarkable photographer whose passion for old theaters shines through his work and words making him, in a way, a visual archaeologist. Here’s a paragraph from his blog (After the Final Curtain), so gorgeous I couldn’t resist sharing it: “As I write this I’m sitting in the audience in one of my favorite abandoned theaters, waiting for a 15-minute exposure to finish. The air smells faintly of stale popcorn and wet paper, and the brightest thing in the room is the finished photograph on the screen of my camera. It’s warm spring days like this, when the contrast between the living and the dying is so stark, that I’m reminded again of the startling beauty of decaying buildings.” 

Stale popcorn, oh yes.


Picture
FLASHBACK FORTY YEARS:
Wednesday, September 15, 1976

Mother, Jugs & Speed 
plus
W.W. and the Dixie Dance Kings
"All Seats, All Times, $1.50, 
Children 90 cents."
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Victoria Hallerman

    Author

    Victoria Hallerman is a poet and writer, the author of the upcoming memoir, Starts Wednesday: A Day in the Life of a Movie Palace, based on her experience as a movie palace manager of the St. George Theatre, Staten Island, 1976. As she prepares her book manuscript for publication, she shares early aspects of theater management, including the pleasures and pain of entrepreneurship. This blog is for anyone who enjoys old movie theaters, especially for those who love the palaces as they once were. And a salute to those passionate activists who continue to save and revive the old houses, including the St. George Theatre itself. This blog is updated every Wednesday, the day film always arrived to start the movie theater week.

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Ambler
    Audience
    Candy
    Fire!
    Harlem
    History
    Inwood
    LHAT
    New York City
    Projectors
    Restored Theaters
    Roots
    Technology
    Television
    Tour
    VCRs
    Washington Heights

    Archives

    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014

    Recommended

    • St. George Theatre
    • LHAT
    • NYC Go