Theaters I Have Known
by J. Hamilton
In 1931 my father saw Frankenstein at the Seminole theater in Seminole, Oklahoma. Four years later, he watched Bride of Frankenstein at the same location. The Seminole passed for a “theater palace” in that small town, but Main Street had two other theaters as well: the Rialto, and the State. Before Father joined the army in 1940, he had worked in all three theaters — first as an usher, and then for several years as a projectionist. So maybe love of theaters runs in my blood.
In any case, eight decades after my father (and a continent removed from that small-town theater), I also got the chance to experience Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein on the silver screen for the first time. Thanks to Turner Classic Movies’ Event Series, I watched them last Wednesday in a doubleheader at the Edwards Cinema Theater in Valencia, California.
Of course I had seen both movies several times on television. In October of 1957 Father made me sit down in our front room and watch Frankenstein on the small screen. I remember I liked the monster’s panic and sorrow when the girl drowned. Since then I have seen Colin Clive shout “It’s alive” on television clips more times than I would care to count, but I had never seen either movie in a theater.
The theater makes a difference — even if it is a modern multiplex with wall decorations that look like oversized cardboard cutouts. The old-style theater, whatever else it had, had class — a design that promised its attendees they had entered another world — a world of fantasy and reward. It seems that as the years passed, interior theater design diminished, cheapened until we reach the stage of cutouts and padded seats with broken drink holders.
The experience was still worth it, though, because of the darkness, the size of the image on the screen, and the joyful participation of the audience — which clapped when the movie began, and gave a standing ovation when the features ended. I have never understood clapping or standing for dead electronic images representing even deader actors, but when the crowd responds, I respond (at least in my heart) — we are herd animals, and emotion communicates. When Elsa Lanchester’s face and hair are many times bigger than I am, she has authority. The experience gains magnitude. The darkness and the large, empty space — it’s like a well-imagined story being told by the campfire.
Wednesday’s crowd was adequate for a 7 o’clock showing on a weeknight, though TCM isn’t going to be lighting new cigars on the way to the bank. Extended families, carrying drinks for all and several large tubs of popcorn, arrived and spread themselves across many seats. Young couples scattered through the auditorium. More than a few singles dotted empty sections in the audience. Mostly, though, the elderly — meaning old enough to have watched the movie on television in 1957 — made up the bulk of the viewers. We came to see our small-screen memories writ large.
The restored film exaggerated lack of focus on some of the shallow-depth-of-field shots, but that’s a quibble. Frankenstein was written, directed, acted, and filmed well enough to raise itself almost to the level of art. Bride of Frankenstein was like watching Evil Dead II immediately after seeing Evil Dead I. The production team pulled every stop camping it up. Most importantly, we all got what we hoped for — the genuine experience.
I have always loved a real theater. When I was ten, and my father attended summer graduate classes at the University of Oklahoma, I watched a double feature at the Sooner Theatre [sic] — an old movie house located on Norman’s Main Street that remains to this day, but no longer shows films. I had walked downtown by myself on a Saturday afternoon and had the quarter it took for admission. Can you imagine the luck? The theater had a double bill: The Public Enemy (1931) starring James Cagney and then Little Caesar (1931) starring Edward G. Robinson.
Alone in the dark, I watched Prohibition begin, gangsters commit murders, a man shove a grapefruit-half into a woman’s face, and heard Edward G. Robinson say: “Is this the end of Rico?” I lack the skill to describe the impression made on me by the experience. I might have enjoyed both movies on a television screen, but nothing could compare to the darkened theater, the tense, shared breathing with the audience as the stories unfolded.
The theaters of my youth in Gary, Indiana, were the Palace Theater on Broadway, the Tivoli Theater on West 5th Avenue, and the State Theatre [sic] on West 7th Avenue. The Palace was a faux Moorish fantasy world with dark red carpets and swirly columns designed and built in 1924 by John Eberson, the great theater architect — that theater truly was a palace. The Tivoli had opened in 1928 and was only a little downstream in grandeur from the Palace. The State opened in 1937 — modern design, which means no grandeur at all — somewhere along the way toward the more recent metroplex theaters. But I loved them all, even the Pix in Fort Worth, Texas — a neighborhood place destined to become a small jewelry store — where for a dime I could watch Saturday serials in the summer of 1948.
In 1953 I stood with my father in a long line snaking down Broadway from the Palace to watch House of Wax starring Vincent Price — a 3D remake of a horror movie, Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). Afterward, my father said the earlier version had been better — and 3D soon disappeared. In 1957 I wandered into the State to see one of the great films of my life: Paths of Glory, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas — I was alone in the dark and drank it in. In 1963 my girlfriend and I ditched church to see Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant — I wore Cary Grant clothes for the next several years.
We need the theater — the empty space, the living crowd, the huge figures on the screen. We really don’t see a movie if we sit on a couch and watch at home. Traveling to the theater with your wife is a date; staying home on the couch is just another evening at home. Sharing the anticipation that fills the swarm surrounding the box office, and leaving with an excited crowd afterward — why, it’s a shared joy, a pleasure to be repeated as often as possible.
Turner Classic Movies brought Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein to your local metroplex. We owe the company thanks. On November 15th they will bring To Kill a Mockingbird. Come and see it — sit in the dark, breathe and react with every turn of the story, join the audience’s shared pleasure — I know I will.
