Request help w/historical info on 1958 theater running Simplex projectors!

[Emiel de Jong]

Quite recently I got a small collection of those regular 8 Castle monster movie digests. For me those carton boxes still hold the promise of adventure... Owning the whole movies on blurays doesn't change that either. I have a bluray of Tarantula! and in fact every time I watched it I also watched afterwards both the "8mm" and "super8" versions in the extra's menu: 2 and 8 minute digests. Much lower image quality, jumping titles instead of sound, and still... you can almost smell the 8mm projector lamp ;-) My own obsession with film projection probably also began during my primary school days: each year, to celebrate the birthday of the headmaster, a 16 mm print was rented and shown on the purple colored 1970's Hokushin projector. Film would break, projector wouldn't start, sound wouldn't work, etc. etc.: it was nerve wracking for the teachers involved and I loved it. I was just as much looking at the screen as turning around to see this mysterious machine working. In my last year on that school, on the headmaster's birthday, we were suddenly placed around a television set: the school had bought a video cassette player. I was deeply disappointed. But some years after I bought that purple Hokushin from my old school!

[Alan Adler]

The smell! I forgot the heat / smell of that old Bell and Howell untl you just reminded me of it. The warmth of the machine under my hands. I used to put the 8mm projector about a foot from the white wall and focus for the sharpest of possible detail. It really opened up the frame to me, even though the projected image was the size of a playing card. Those Castle boxes were terrific. Every one! I have the small 50' digest from War of the Planets (This Island Earth) on my shelf to remind me of those days. I wish I had a dollar for every time I ran them. And yes, there was a loss when things went to TV - From the hot medium to the cool, as McLuhan might say. Thanks for you stories! You brought back some important sense memories I had forgotten. Alan

[Leo Enticknap]

I would probably hit the front of the machine where the lens is, destroying the lens. (A replaceable part.)

Yes, but in some cases, not in time to avoid losing a lot of shows and a lot of money.

At a small chain I worked for in England in the early '90s, the manager at another site was fired after she was caught renting the place out privately for midnight screenings without head office knowing about it, and pocketing the proceeds. She'd been doing this for over a year, but was only caught because she became overly confident, and did it with a high profile blockbuster (Terminator 2) on the opening weekend. Local residents in the houses surrounding the theater complained after 250 loud and drunk customers came streaming out of the place at 3am, the police were called, and she was busted. Per the theater's license, the last show had to end by 11. The company was fined heavily by the council, and narrowly escaped that site being closed down.

The day after she was fired, the projectionist called me (I was working at another one of the company's theaters, about 100 miles away) in a panic - ads and trailers should be playing, but there was no picture. We discovered that her parting shot had been to cover the front of all the lenses in all the booths with several coats of black, automotive (we suspected) spray paint.

One of the auditoria needed unusual lenses: it was a long, thin, shoebox house. If memory serves me correctly, the lenses were something like 150mm for flat and 185mm for scope. Replacements had to be specially made, and that house was down for over two weeks.

[Alan Adler]

Wild story. I haven't heard one old projectionist story I haven't loved. You guys have opened my eyes to what goes on behind the scenes. Thanks! Alan

[Frank Cox]

Not exactly a projectionist story, but there is my last wish show from some years back that I wrote about here:

http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f5/t002788.html

[Alan Adler]

Wonderful story, Frank. I mourn the loss of an audience around me during this covid madness. Your story does make me want to have my own funeral service at a theater. Maybe show my favorite movie, Forbidden Planet, afterwards for the die-hard (pun intended) fans in the group. Alan

[William Uhlhorn]

Oddball stories? I can;t make this stuff up. A friend of mine who owned a theater wanted to put in a bigger screen. It was a single screen with a large proscenium. We went from a 20'
wide screen to a 35' screen. Keeping in mind this was a union operated theater and my friend did not want to pay the operator overtime. As soon as the last show of the day was over we went to work on building a new frame and installing the screen. I reground the aperture plates and all was well. The best part is the operator came to work the next day and never said a word about the bigger screen.

Same theater, second verse. The viewing portholes in this theater had no glass and it was noisy in the theater. The operator always stuck his head out the porthole to check the sound level. One day my friend put glass in the portholes to stop the noise. The operator not noticing the glass, hold on to your hats, stuck his head thru the sheet glass. He had a pretty good gash on his head and went to the hospital.

And so it went.

[Alan Adler]

We often hid something hard when we stick our necks out! Good stories. I feel like I've been in all these theaters! Alan

[Randy Stankey]

The smell! I forgot the heat / smell of that old Bell and Howell until you just reminded me of it.

That's, pretty much, how I started showing movies.

My father made 8mm home movies and I would project them while he sat in his easy chair and everybody else was gathered around.

There was an 8 ft. Da-Lite, rollup screen mounted to the living room wall that he pulled down like a window shade. The projector would be on the dining table, across the room. I ran the projector and he sat there, drinking a beer, smoking a cigarette. When one film was over, he'd say, "Run another one." That was the evening's entertainment.

In school, in the early 70's, most educational multimedia was still on 16mm film. Video tape was still mostly reel-to-reel and hard to come by. Most of the teachers had a hard time running films but, by the time I was in 6th grade, I had been running films, every Saturday evening, for a few years. Like a fish in water. It wasn't long before the teacher would sit at the desk while I ran the projector. When one film was over, the teacher would say, "Run another one."

In high school, I was in the A/V club. I would spend my study hall periods taking projectors and movies to the teachers that needed them and running the movies. One teacher, Mr. Hansen, would order a stack of Pink Panther cartoons to play on Fridays... providing all the students' homework was done. It was only supposed to be one film but the teacher would often fall asleep at his desk and, when one cartoon was over, the kids would quietly turn around and whisper, "Run another one."

That's how I got started showing movies... I miss those days.

[Alan Adler]

Your story pulled one up from my long lost memory from about 66 years ago when I was 6 - Back in those days the TV's would go black for the want of some little tube that would go out - There used to be a repairman you could call and he would come in a truck - had that big suitcase of tubes that opens up - and you were fixed. When our TV went out, my father would pull out his 16 mm projector. Might have been a Keystone. Daddy had a big ole screen he'd set up in my parent's bedroom and he'd play sound 16mm Castle films - one was a color Woody Woodpecker cartoon and that thing blasted out that crazy laugh of Woody's like you were in a big time theater. My father also had my kid films and from somewhere some silent stuff - he bought a 16mm Revere camera when I was born and shot footage of me about 20 minutes after I landed in this world. People didn't do that much in 1948. My father loved movies and would brag that during the depression when he didn't have a job he would go to 5 movies in a day. Later when he had a ladies dress shop, he'd take off work and drive me 30 miles to Greensboro to see a monster movie. Never met anyone who loved movies more. Alan

[Randy Stankey]

I remember the TV repair man, a guy by the name of Lee Silverthorn, coming to our house to fix the TV because us kids were playing with magnets near the TV and we put a big bar magnet against the screen to see if it would stick.

Imagine the fun of watching the picture swirl around as the magnet moved over the glass!

Then, imagine the fun of listening to your father holler at you because the picture STAYED distorted after the magnet was pulled away!

Lee came the next day... with his big case... and also brought a large degausing coil about two feet in diameter. It was pretty cool to watch an electromagnet, that big, make the picture swirl. Then, with just the right flick of the wrist with one hand and perfect timing of the on/off switch, the picture snapped back to perfection!

After that, we weren't allowed to play with magnets in the living room, anymore.

Years later, I learned that I could have done permanent damage to the CRT tube if my magnet bent the shadow mask, inside!

We had a few cartoons to play on 8mm film. There were some Mickey Mouse & Donald Duck films. We had a couple of "Little Rascals" shorts, too. Mostly, it was home made films.

My father was an animator of some sort before I was born. I never learned the exact details because, by the time I was old enough to understand, alcohol had already started to take over his life. However, he was still a good photographer and he knew a lot about making movies... at least home movies, anyhow.

Every family picnic, vacation, holiday and birthday, when I was a kid, was filmed in detail. There was also a lot of other stuff that's just too hard to explain... My father owned a bar and there was a lot of stuff shot in the bar. Let's just say "Those were the days!"

Somewhere, around here, probably in my basement with all my other photography stuff, is a film that my father made of "Snoopy and the Red Baron." He took some model airplanes and a "Snoopy Flying Doghouse" and suspended them on fishing line to make them look like they were flying. He put title cards in like, "Curse you, Red Baron!"

I remember, at the end of the story, when Snoopy crashed his airplane-doghouse, my father put a lit cigarette inside to make it look like the airplane engine was burning.

That was pretty cool!

[Alan Adler]

Wow! Great stories. It's amazing how movies and television intertwined with our lives in the pre-tape, pre-digtal age. You should definitely dig out the family movies and organize a family film festival. In first 8mm films I used Alpha-Bit Ceral letters to make mike silent film titles. Still have that Kodak spool camera I got in 1960 at twelve. I rememer the clack-clack of it at the beginning and end of every single shot. Alan

[Randy Stankey]

You should definitely dig out the family movies and organize a family film festival...

...In first 8mm films I used Alpha-Bit Ceral letters to make mike silent film titles...

...Still have that Kodak spool camera I got in 1960 at twelve...

...I remember the clack-clack of it at the beginning and end of every single shot....

I have been planning to show those old films and record them to video but all the 8mm projectors I have need repair and cleaning. I don't want to run irreplaceable film through just any old projector unless and until I can trust it, implicitly. It all takes time and money, neither of which do I have a lot of.

My father used ceramic 3-D letters to make titles. They were about 1/2 inch tall and they were adhesive backed. He stuck them to a piece of glass and just shot through the glass to make his titles. Somewhere, those letters are still lying around. Probably at my mother's house.


I still have the camera my father used. It's a Minolta Autopack D-4.
http://super8wiki.com/index.php/Minolta_Autopak-8_D_4

It's in my basement, locked in a military surplus ammo box, packed with silica gel granules.
As far as I know, it still runs but it probably needs some TLC. Getting film for it is probably a lost cause.

Like I said, my father was also an animator. Legend has it that he once worked for Walter Lantz. I don't know for sure. He's gone and any other relatives who would know the family history are also gone. Whatever the truth is, I know that he could draw the REAL "Wally Walrus!" I'm not talking about how people can draw Mickey Mouse and make it look kinda-sorta' like the real thing. I mean that you could have taken one of his drawings and held it up to a picture of the "official" thing and it would be the same.

Part of the reason my father used that Minolta camera is because it had a single-frame mode.
He used to draw hand-animated titles for his movies. He built a copy stand, mounted the camera to it and used a long cable release to trigger the camera.

I remember watching him, sitting at his table, drawing pictures with colored magic markers and clicking off frames on the camera. Draw-draw-draw...Ka-Click! - Draw-draw-draw...Ka-Click!

I was totally amazed at how he did that!


I also have a Bolex 16mm camera, too. As far as I know, it works perfectly. Getting film for that is probably easier.
I also have a developing tank for 16mm film, too.

I'd love to get this stuff out and start using it but I work 8-10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week just to make ends meet, right now.
No time... No money... No energy to do anything.

Maybe some day...

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Ahh, yes, memory lane...

I had wondered as a young buck how or where I got my technical and electrical skills from...well at age 11 I found out, thanks to mom.

Her father was, to put it mildly, a genius. Skilled mechanically and electrically, here are a few examples of what he actually did way back then (1930's/40's):

Built his own record cutting lathe and set it up at my parent's wedding, recording the entire ceremony on 78rpm discs; (I think mom lost them at some point many years ago, last time I asked about them around 1990 we couldn't find them).

Built his own sound recorder for their home movies on 35mm while following the developments of optical sound on film (I think he was getting the info from Bell Labs at the time), and made his own unique projector soundhead following roughly the RCA designs.

Built many radios and a few low and high power AM transmitters.

Sadly, when he passed all of the movies and all of his film, sound, radio and other equipment, as well as the family movies (on nitrate stock) went to the Canton Ohio Catholic church, who "lost" ALL of it. When I found out, that and things a friend told me that happened to him ended my following the faith.

He also, like me, had the habit of tearing dad's power tools apart and putting them back together, with the same mixed results I used to get.

And like me, he was also a loner, very troubled and tried to hide it with comedy. He passed from natural causes, or so I was told.

[Alan Adler]

Nothing I ever took apart would go back together. Anything I built looked like it might work but didn't. I worked as an editor, sound man and assisant director, but the only way I was going to be a part of the movies was to write them. So I quit 3 jobs and went to Hollywood in 1978 when Star Wars came out. Gave up everything to learn how to write - better. Still trying - but I can take a sentence apart, put the pieces back and make it shine. Alan