Broken Dreams, Lost Palaces
Perhaps a zillion popular songs have been written about love lost and love lamented. Because, I assume, we all have faded memories of ancient relationships that have sparked, flared, burned and then were snuffed out by fate or circumstance or our own stupidity, leaving naught but a twinge of nostalgic heartburn. And while I’ve had my share of trampled hearts and regretful moments, the ancient loves that I cherish most are the movie theaters, those lost palaces of my broken dreams, that frame my memories.
My grandfather, Ed Porter, was the Stage Manager at the Opera House in Carthage, Missouri, early in the last century. As time passed and opera houses gave way to movie palaces, he stage managed the Tiger Theater before his eventual retirement. Throughout my childhood, during the summers that I visited our family home in Carthage, my mother and I diligently attended the movies there twice a week (as almost everyone in America did during World War II).
By modern standards it was no great shakes, but the Tiger was the ritziest theater in Carthage, quite nicely decked out and kept clean (by Grandpa, of course), and I can remember Dish Nights and Lotto Nights and the theater crowded with breathless neighbors watching the big wheel go round and round, hoping for the fabled prize of $25.00.
Across the square in Carthage there was another theater, known by all and wide as The Bloody Bucket. Each Saturday just before noon I’d line up there with my friends to spend most of the day gorging on candy and popcorn and watching a triple-feature, complete with coming attractions, a couple of serials, several cartoons, and at least one short subject. The films were always B-pictures; westerns, cheapo mysteries, jungle pictures and entries from the endless Bowery Boys/Dead End Kids franchises. The seats were crappy; the floors incredibly sticky, the narrow threadbare theater itself reeking of unwashed feet and dirty children, but our parents adored it. It got us off their hands from lunchtime until nearly sundown, when we returned to our separate neighborhoods eager to gulp down dinner and rush out to reenact the marvelous tales we’d seen on that great silver screen.
I spent most of my childhood in Seal Beach, California, and can still remember the thrill of watching the Bay Theater go up, cinder block by cinder block, just a half a block from our house. It was there – and in the far more opulent theaters in Long Beach – that I saw most of the films made during the war. And although it was undoubtedly the slushpot wherein the stew of many a young patriot’s fervor was cooked, I have fonder memories of the Torrance Theater (although I’m no longer sure that was the correct name of it) where I got my first job as an usher and marquee boy. It was there that I, by the very nature of my work, got to see films over and over again, and began to recognize and wonder about the finer shades of plotting, lighting, music, cinematography along with the vast range of acting talent displayed before me – both in the balcony (by teenage smoochers) and on the screen.
Much later in live I came across the Dixie Theater in downtown Staunton, Virginia. I was often there in the 1980’s and 90’s when I wrote film reviews for what was then the Staunton Daily News-Leader. It was small, shabby and uncomfortable at the time, but is now going over a complete renovation and will become a cushy film and performance
venue for the Staunton Performing Arts Center. It’s already been turned into an oasis for independent and art film fans in the Shenandoah Valley.
Which brings us to: my current love. Lowes Waterfront Theatre in Pittsburgh, built on the site of a long-gone steel mill (where nothing remains save the 12 enormous smokestacks) is a true cinema palace in the old-fashioned mold. It is mammoth, with 22 screens and vanilla-scented bathrooms, with red and purple and yellow minarets twisting into the slate blue western Pennsylvania sky, with huge concession islands (not “stands” by any stretch of the imagination) and a staff so polite they often ask you, as you’re leaving, “Did you enjoy the film?”
What’s more, they play both first-run blockbusters and selected independent films, and to boot, they actually publish the real starting time of each movie in the newspapers – not the beginning time of all those annoying ads and dozens of Coming Attractions. And as you stroll through the avenue-wide lobbies on the way to your stadium seat, you can glance skyward and read famous movie quotes painted elegantly on the walls near the ceiling. “I’m the king of the world!” is there, along with “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride,” “Phone home, E.T.” and the legend-shattering (but accurate) “Play it, Sam.”
There they are, the lost palaces of my life, all but one slipping away into memory’s dusty cavern. And so pass, as the oft-quoted Romans found, the glories of the world.
My grandfather, Ed Porter, was the Stage Manager at the Opera House in Carthage, Missouri, early in the last century. As time passed and opera houses gave way to movie palaces, he stage managed the Tiger Theater before his eventual retirement. Throughout my childhood, during the summers that I visited our family home in Carthage, my mother and I diligently attended the movies there twice a week (as almost everyone in America did during World War II).
By modern standards it was no great shakes, but the Tiger was the ritziest theater in Carthage, quite nicely decked out and kept clean (by Grandpa, of course), and I can remember Dish Nights and Lotto Nights and the theater crowded with breathless neighbors watching the big wheel go round and round, hoping for the fabled prize of $25.00.
Across the square in Carthage there was another theater, known by all and wide as The Bloody Bucket. Each Saturday just before noon I’d line up there with my friends to spend most of the day gorging on candy and popcorn and watching a triple-feature, complete with coming attractions, a couple of serials, several cartoons, and at least one short subject. The films were always B-pictures; westerns, cheapo mysteries, jungle pictures and entries from the endless Bowery Boys/Dead End Kids franchises. The seats were crappy; the floors incredibly sticky, the narrow threadbare theater itself reeking of unwashed feet and dirty children, but our parents adored it. It got us off their hands from lunchtime until nearly sundown, when we returned to our separate neighborhoods eager to gulp down dinner and rush out to reenact the marvelous tales we’d seen on that great silver screen.
I spent most of my childhood in Seal Beach, California, and can still remember the thrill of watching the Bay Theater go up, cinder block by cinder block, just a half a block from our house. It was there – and in the far more opulent theaters in Long Beach – that I saw most of the films made during the war. And although it was undoubtedly the slushpot wherein the stew of many a young patriot’s fervor was cooked, I have fonder memories of the Torrance Theater (although I’m no longer sure that was the correct name of it) where I got my first job as an usher and marquee boy. It was there that I, by the very nature of my work, got to see films over and over again, and began to recognize and wonder about the finer shades of plotting, lighting, music, cinematography along with the vast range of acting talent displayed before me – both in the balcony (by teenage smoochers) and on the screen.
Much later in live I came across the Dixie Theater in downtown Staunton, Virginia. I was often there in the 1980’s and 90’s when I wrote film reviews for what was then the Staunton Daily News-Leader. It was small, shabby and uncomfortable at the time, but is now going over a complete renovation and will become a cushy film and performance
venue for the Staunton Performing Arts Center. It’s already been turned into an oasis for independent and art film fans in the Shenandoah Valley.
Which brings us to: my current love. Lowes Waterfront Theatre in Pittsburgh, built on the site of a long-gone steel mill (where nothing remains save the 12 enormous smokestacks) is a true cinema palace in the old-fashioned mold. It is mammoth, with 22 screens and vanilla-scented bathrooms, with red and purple and yellow minarets twisting into the slate blue western Pennsylvania sky, with huge concession islands (not “stands” by any stretch of the imagination) and a staff so polite they often ask you, as you’re leaving, “Did you enjoy the film?”
What’s more, they play both first-run blockbusters and selected independent films, and to boot, they actually publish the real starting time of each movie in the newspapers – not the beginning time of all those annoying ads and dozens of Coming Attractions. And as you stroll through the avenue-wide lobbies on the way to your stadium seat, you can glance skyward and read famous movie quotes painted elegantly on the walls near the ceiling. “I’m the king of the world!” is there, along with “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride,” “Phone home, E.T.” and the legend-shattering (but accurate) “Play it, Sam.”
There they are, the lost palaces of my life, all but one slipping away into memory’s dusty cavern. And so pass, as the oft-quoted Romans found, the glories of the world.
posted by Carl Larsen at 2:15 PM
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