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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: goodbye to an old friend
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Carl King
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 199
From: Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 07-14-2000 10:25 PM
I'm a little depressed. The old single house that Istarted my career in is falling to the wrecking ball. A sad day indeed for me and my family. My late father managed that particular theatre for 40 years before his death. I was a year old in 1952 when he started there so I grew up in that theatre. At 17 I went on the payroll as an usher and 3 years later went to the booth. Two of my three sisters worked in the theatre as did my Mum and a cousin or two. The company I work for sold the building a few years ago after building a beautiful new multiplex. A couple of local entrepeneurs tried to find a use for the old girl but no luck and now it is coming down.It was great old theatre in it's day. 653 seats including 200 in the balcony. Until this week it was the oldest cinema in Canada. I don't think I will watch it come down. That would be a tough thing to see. You know, we can't stop progress nor should we want to but once in a while let's stop to remember things from days past. As we do our work today we are standing on the shoulders of all those people who went before us. The next time your having a beer raise your glass to the fine old theatres of days gone by and maybe, just maybe, somone will do the same for us someday. Good bye old friend, I'll miss you
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-15-2000 01:57 AM
I know how you must feel. Alhough I never worked at the place in its heyday, the old Warner Theatre in my town is starting to fall apart.When I was 10 years old, I used to go ther to watch movies like Herbie the Love Bug. I used to spend more time trying to find/sneak into the booth than watching the picture. I've probably been tossed out of the balcony 100 times! The local civic center authority has control of it now and they use it kind of like a "civic auditorium". They bring in small rock concerts and stuff. They've got a set of Norelco AA-II proj in there and nobody ever touches them except when I go in once or twice a year to give them a little "exercise". (To keep them from rusting apart, etc.) They seem to treat them like museum pieces, or something. They don't believe me when I tell them that they are some of the best projectors ever made and that there are a LOT of them still running film every day, as if they were brand new. There just doesn't seem to be enough interest in showing movies there anymore. Not even for "special occasions" and stuff. Everybody seems to say things like, "We ought to save the Warner" but nobody ever seems to do anything about it. There has been a movement to restore the place going on for YEARS but just when they say they're going to do it "NEXT YEAR", nothing ever happens! I just resign myself to going there once in a while to dust off the equipment and hope the place doesn't fall down in the mean time. (Sigh......)
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Rick Long
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 759
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 07-15-2000 10:37 PM
Cheers, Carl (putting down beer).I know exactly where your're coming from. Having watched the theatre where I apprenticed (and where my father spent so many nights of his life for so many years) I felt sort of "un-grounded" watching this old palace come down. As a technician, I thought I would no longer experience this melancholia, until I began removing equipment I had installed only 20 years before in some of our smaller theaters that fell "before the wrecking ball". I think that the saddest part, was the memories of the people I had known that had spent so much of their lives in those booths.
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Christopher Barahona
Film Handler
Posts: 19
From: North Conway, NH, USA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 07-18-2000 11:54 AM
I used to go roof-hopping above the Granada Theater and the surrounding buildings in my hometown of Malden, MA. The Granada started as a one screen monster theater in the 1930's and by the time I started going was a two screener, both auditoriums massive making it impossible for me as a kid to imagine it as a one screen.
My father took me to the movies every week and many of them were there. They would still show dbl. features and revival movies like "Bridge on the River Kwai" there. One of my most vivid memories is the comfortable silence my father and I shared before the start of the movie. Him resting his eyes and me staring at the weblike designs on the cavernous ceiling, waiting for the curtain to open. My father took me to that booth and the projectionist let me open the curtain for the film. I was thrilled at the control I had.
Back in 1987 or so they tore it down and I was visiting my dad. I had to go to see it. I snuck into the remains through the gutted roof and walked through the lobby past the remains of the huge marble water fountain and into the theater without a roof where the seats were gone, salvaged.
"Raiders" 13X, "Jaws" 5X, "Star Wars" ???X, "Herbie", "Halloween", "Last House on the Left"-"The Fog" dbl. feature, "Dawn of the Dead", "From Russia with Love"-"Goldfinger" dble. feature. I couldn't help it. I cried. It just came over me like a wave.
Now I work with shoebox cinemas with 16 foot ceilings and a capacity of 166 to our biggest, legroom enuff for Kenny Baker and that feeling I had when I was so young and opened that Granada curtain for the audience only visits me occasionally.
And, definitley Tom, "Cinema Paradiso" was made for us. Everything in that movie is devoted to most of the fine film-handlers and theater employees I have had the pleasure of corresponding with in these forums. When we lose these old theaters we lose the nostalgia of what film used to mean to us.
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John Gordon
Film Handler
Posts: 62
From: Earth
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 07-18-2000 05:57 PM
For those who would like to see some grand movie palaces of old, today, check out
http://www.laconservancy.org Click on the “walking tours” tab for info on the tours of these grand old motion picture palaces:
“The grand movie palaces in Broadway's Historic Theater District are proud reflections of Hollywood's golden years. Tour the largest concentration of pre-World War II movie houses in America, from the nickelodeon to the birth of the talkies and visit the interiors of the Orpheum and others.” To learn more about the individual theatres, click on the “Last Remaining Seats” tab, then click on “About the Theatres.” I would encourage anyone living or visiting Los Angeles to take the walking tour of these grand old movie palaces. Yes, they do not look like they did in the ‘20s (the last Broadway theatre in L.A. was built in 1931) but the feel and atmosphere is there. It can bring back some old memories for those of us who remember going to a movie palace. Highly recommended.
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Josh Jones
Redhat
Posts: 1207
From: Plano, TX
Registered: Apr 2000
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posted 07-19-2000 01:01 AM
Tom,Cinema Paradiso, IMHO is the best movie about film, I cried during that last scene ------------------
"where to they teach you to talk like this, in some Panema City wana hump-hump-bar? sell crazy someplace else. we're all stocked up here" As good as it gets
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 08-02-2000 01:43 AM
quote:
They don't believe me when I tell them that they are some of the best projectors ever made and that there are a LOT of them still running film every day, as if they were brand new.
They're old! They're dirty!
They must be junk!
Our present technical staff doesn't understand them, is too lazy to research or train, & resents that the mysterious projectors are there to intimidate them!
They must be destroyed!
Stick with them. We ought to put together a "Big Brother" program for cool theaters turned into PAC's.
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