Going - Remembering Winnipeg Movie Theatres [2012]

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[00:00:13]When I arrived in Winnipeg in the early '7s, coming from a small village just outside of St. John's, Newfoundland, I thought I'd landed in movie heaven.

[00:00:23]There were almost a dozen theaters within walking distance of my room in the Woolsley area, each with its own distinct architecture and ambience.

[00:00:32]Shows change frequently, and I would see four or five different movies every week.

[00:00:39]Within a few years, the scene began to change. The first multiplex arrived in the form of seven shoe boxiz screening rooms at Eaton Place. Then the town 8 was built at the corner of Notre Dame and Princess.

[00:00:52]The Garrick and the capital added extra screens, but gradually the downtown theaters began to close.

[00:00:59]By the end of the 80s, Winnipeg movie goers, like those in most cities, were largely limited to a choice of suburban multiplexes.

[00:01:10]When I learned that the old Metropolitan building was finally going to be saved from two decades of neglect and decay, though unfortunately not as a movie theater, I began to think about the nature of the experience which had disappeared with all those lost theaters. I wondered whether there were other people who missed them as much as I do.

[00:01:29]I quickly found out that I wasn't alone as I met people like Oolie Alto who recalled spending all day at the movies on Saturdays in the late 30s and early 40s. Gene Morton and her brother Andrew Ostrander whose father managed the legendary Uptown Theater on Academy Road. Dave Verdnick, who at 12 kept an obsessive record of every movie that played in every theater in the city.

[00:01:53]Ruben Helman, who grew up in the North End, a couple of blocks from the Palace Theater, and whose first job out of school was in the Warner Brothers office on Film Exchange Row on Colony Street.

[00:02:05]I met with and spoke to dozens of people eager to share warm and passionate memories of going to the movies from the 30s through the 80s. people whose families owned theaters, people who worked in theaters themselves, and people who, like me, just loved sitting in the magical dark, absorbed by the fantasies playing up there on the big screen.

[00:02:26]>> Winnipeg had a lot of theaters. Every neighborhood pretty well had their theater. It was a different era. It was a different time. There was color. There was character. It smelt different. You know, it appeased all your senses.

[00:02:43]your imagination.

[00:02:46]>> My dad came to Winnipeg in the 40s as a teenager. He moved in from little town Binscar, Manitoba. And that was all he did, he said, was he went to a movie every day.

[00:02:56]>> The theaters were packed uh for the Saturday matineese. I don't know where all the kids came from, but certainly wasn't a big money maker. Uh they didn't kick you out at the end. You could stay if you wanted for the longest time.

[00:03:12]>> It was wonderful. It was a, you know, getting out of reality and getting into a makebelieve world, which is what movies are.

[00:03:42]What I didn't realize back in the 70s when there didn't seem to be enough time to see all the movies that came through Winnipeg was that the city's theaters were already in decline.

[00:03:52]In their heyday in the 30s and 40s, there were almost 50 theaters running in the city.

[00:03:58]Along with the downtown palaces, every neighborhood had its own theater or two, and everybody seemed to live within walking distance of the show.

[00:04:08]It was a Saturday ritual back in maybe 1935 to 1940.

[00:04:17]I was about 8 until um 13 or so. I lived on Elgen Avenue about uh five blocks from Main Street. And every Saturday morning, my chums and I, we would always meet out on the street and walk down Elgen Avenue to Ross Avenue. We'd cross the tracks and we get to uh Logan Avenue about two blocks from Main Street. There were a bunch of trees on this vacant lot and every Saturday morning about uh 9:00 or thereabouts, we'd be playing in the Tarzan trees. We didn't have watches, but something would say, "Hey, we better move. We've played enough." and we'd go down to Main Street and we'd start at the the Regent Theater because it was 5 cents until 10:00 and at 10:00 it went up to 10 cents to get in. Uh sometimes the movie had already started. It didn't matter. We didn't have to be there for the start of anything. We'd just get in there and uh start to enjoy the movie.

[00:05:28]I grew up in the north end and the two theaters I was allowed to go to that were close enough to home was the Times and the Palace. So I'd look every Saturday to see who had the thing I wanted to see. I went by myself. I think some of it for me was an escape. I think I I kind of could live in the movies even though I I didn't have a horrible life but my parents were not very cultured or educated. I think that gave me a lot of um extra things uh about life and so on. Even though I mean I knew that things were not real. However, it gave me some more insights.

[00:06:14]I was only probably two blocks away from the Palace Theater, which is the one we went to. And I always had a bag of sandwiches with me and a bottle of pop.

[00:06:25]So I don't starve to death for the few hours that I spent upstairs in the theater. Usually from 12:00 noon until your mother or your father came to get you out of there about 5:30,4 to 6.

[00:06:38]My mother made me salami sandwiches.

[00:06:42]And the pop was a bottle of wine. That was a 12 oz bottle made by the Boritzky family on Sulkerk Avenue. And you could smell the second floor always had the smell of garlic or onions. So you knew the people that were up there were basically European.

[00:07:02]When you went to the theater, it was five cents and you would get a comic book with the top half torn off, which I'm assuming was those that came back from the stores that couldn't sell them, they would give them to you at no charge. But that's what you got for 5 cents.

[00:07:23]We had no idea what was playing except perhaps maybe the cals.

[00:07:30]Cowboys and Indians was the theme at that time. And they'd start off and they'd they'd give you maybe a 10 or 15 minutes of this movie and it end up hanging on a cliff and then they'd say, "And next week, be sure to be here for the continuing saga of, you know, Thunderhead and his whatever." And certainly the news reel was on. uh had no idea how old the news reel was. But we would watch the news reel and then uh keep on going until the movie is over until we got to the part where we came in and then if it was really good we might stay a little longer. If not, bang out we'd go and we'd run across the street uh to the Oak Theater. That was the newest one uh that were that last one built that as I recall. Uh it was on the corner of Logan and and Main Street.

[00:08:26]Uh very narrow theater, not as big as the Regent as I recall. And it had the very same thing except the movies of course were different. And uh by that time it was oh maybe 2 230 and then we had to rush back across the street to the Colonial. It was right I think it was right next to the region the day that it was increased to 10 cents.

[00:08:58]Uh I couldn't get in because Mr. Miles was at the uh at the door and I went home to tell my mother that the price went up to 10 cents while my mother almost had a kitten. First of all, she didn't believe me. She thought I had lost a nickel and she was ready to take it out on me. And I kept yelling, "I have a nickel in my hand if you wanted to see it." She grabbed me, dragged me down to the Palace Theater, pushed me in to the theater, and told m Mr. Miles in certain language that she was not told about the increase and refused to pay it. But she would give it give him the nickel for the day that I came. Gave me a comic book, pushed me, and told me to go upstairs and have a good time. I don't know what happened after that, but I went to the show. The next week, of course, it was 10 cents.

[00:09:50]>> My memory is that I got a quarter, which got me in and got me popcorn. And in those days, they didn't have any of those machines, printed tickets or anything. Just the um like that big roll of tickets with the numbers. I'd like to go early. I like to stay late. I used to pretend to my parents that I fell asleep and I had to stay for the beginning of the next show. And I always pushed the time envelope about how long I could stay.

[00:10:21]>> So we had uh 246, we had six movies, three cereals, and it was about a 9-hour day that we put would put in on that Saturday. The last movie starting at 3 lasted a couple of hours. I guess it's 5. Um got to play in the trees on the way home.

[00:10:43]Uh then we got home. Supper time. Boy, what a day that was. That was Saturday.

[00:10:54]At the turn of the 20th century, when it was a major North American transportation hub, Winnipeg was the third largest city in Canada.

[00:11:03]It was also a major entertainment center, one of the prime stops on the North American Vaudeville circuit.

[00:11:10]So, it's not surprising that the movies took hold here as quickly as they did in other major cities. First as special attractions at fairs, incorporated into live variety shows, and in storefront Nickelodeons.

[00:11:24]In the city archives, I found a letter to the council from the police chief giving audience statistics for 900 p.m.

[00:11:31]on the evening of Saturday, November 29th, 1913.

[00:11:35]The total across the city was 13,000 just for that one time.

[00:11:44]Some theaters survived for decades.

[00:11:48]Others came and went quickly.

[00:11:53]This one, located on Osborne Street, where the Masonic Memorial Temple now stands, was built sometime around 1911 or 12 and lasted until 1921 or so.

[00:12:04]This photo given to me by Donna Fumeton was taken sometime in the teens by her great aunt.

[00:12:14]While the big downtown theaters were built in the 20s by large companies like famous players, many of the neighborhood houses were family businesses.

[00:12:24]Roa Campbell's father, Irwin Triller, owned the Apollo in Transcona, while her uncle and grandfather owned several others. Muriel Chunki's family living in St. James in the 30s owned and ran the Princess Theater in Morris just south of the city. Sheila Strifler's uncle Sam Rosenlat after some success with a rented theater built his own in the north end.

[00:12:50]My uncle in 1935 decided to build his own theater and he built the Tower Theater on Mountain and McGregor with a partner.

[00:13:06]After four years, the partner decided to uh sell his share and he sold it to Jake Miles who owned many, many theaters in Winnipeg.

[00:13:24]After a short time, Mr. miles made my uncle the supervisor of his chain of theaters which was called Western Theaters.

[00:13:43]My father owned and operated the Apollo Theater in Transcona.

[00:13:50]And then my uncle owned and operated the Dominion Theater on Portage and Maine.

[00:13:56]And the Furby Theater on Furby, my uncle Misho at one time. And my grandfather owned that. And of course the most important thing I guess was my grandfather Moat Triller who had the first theater in Winnipeg on Selkerk Avenue and Main Street and it was called the Queens.

[00:14:18]My parents ran a theater in Morris, Manitoba and I grew up in that theater.

[00:14:25]We lived in St. James at the time and we drove out to Morris every Saturday and for a period of time uh we went Fridays and Saturdays didn't stay overnight because we had to get back in the holidays that was another exciting time for me because I went with my mother to do the booking we went to three or four different film exchanges and the the booker uh he had oh I remember this big book about yay wide and that high and he'd flip through the pages. Oh yes, Mrs. Todd. He said, "You can have that on such and such a date." Or my mother would say, "No, that won't do. It has to be over here." And so I was right there watching and taking it all in. You know, he would always take me with him to the film exchange. He'd go once a week to the over to get the film and that used to be where the art gallery is now.

[00:15:32]I knew everybody at the film exchange and I'd sit on the desk and they all had suckers for me and I would talk to all the fellas and everything. So that was fun. We got to know I got to know all of them. This must have been at the film exchange when they had the Mickey Mouse picture on the wall. My father took me and there I am at three or four standing and very thrilled with Mickey Mouse and uh the fellas would get the film and bring it and bring it out to the show and he used to put the pictures up in front of the show of what was playing.

[00:16:03]They'd change them Monday and Wednesday.

[00:16:07]They really didn't have too much of a social life because my uncle worked every night. I mean, his times were like from five o'clock till 10 at night as the supervisor.

[00:16:22]So, their social life was kind of curtailed, you know, because of that.

[00:16:28]They enjoyed it and they they had a life around it. They had friends that all owned theaters in Winnipeg and they were all very friendly and uh they had the motion picture picnic. I believe it was every spring, April or May, probably May. And there was a whole group of people that were all involved in this.

[00:16:50]My father was a member of the Motion Picture Pioneers, Canadian Picture Pioneers, J. A Todd, James Alexander, over a quarter century of service. And that was from 1949.

[00:17:07]And there's a picture of my father when he was at um motion picture pioneers meeting. And this is my father here, James Alexander Todd. They say I look a lot like him. And who's the these gentlemen are? I have no idea. I I wouldn't know.

[00:17:26]As an organization, the pioneers, they got together. They had their meetings to discuss business and theaters in the in general the movies. And then they had always a big banquet and uh my mother and dad used to go and sometimes I'd go to the banquet and that was really nice.

[00:17:50]There were very few neighborhood theaters still operating when I arrived in the city in 1973.

[00:17:55]Most had closed in the mid to late 50s, unable to survive the arrival of television.

[00:18:03]Two that held on that I occasionally went to were the Kings in St. James and the Highland on North Main.

[00:18:12]The Kings, which survived until the mid '90s, is now a skateboard shop. It had a reputation in the 60s for running big musicals like The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady for more than a year at a time. But my earliest memory of it is of Last Tango in Paris being seized by the police on opening day in 1973.

[00:18:32]I had to wait until the courts cleared the film before I could see it.

[00:18:38]There was times when mom and dad figured I was better off to stay at home. So they would get my grandma Delor, this is my mother's mother, to come and stay with me. And I was about I don't know 10 11 maybe something like that. And of course busman's holiday I wanted to go to a movie.

[00:19:01]And my grandma she was a little short lady. She was only about 4 and 1/2 ft tall. And uh very cheerful and quite old at that time. And I said grandma we go to a movie. Oh yes we go to a movie. So, we went to the King's Theater, which was just a street over from where we lived.

[00:19:23]And the King's Theater was really a nice place to go. We It was handy, and we went there quite often. So, we went to see, and I I'm a little fuzzy on this, but I think it was called The Return of the Zombies.

[00:19:41]And my grandmother would sit through that horror picture and we'd laugh and laugh and we'd walk home and laugh about these zombies and try to walk like the zombies did. So yeah, it was fun with grandma and we'd go home and have some hot chocolate.

[00:20:00]The Highland, formerly the Deluxe on North Main and now a synagogue, didn't last as long as the Kings, closing in the early 80s. But I did go there occasionally in the late '7s for midnight horror double bills.

[00:20:14]I imagine that the party atmosphere at those shows was similar to an oldtime kids matinea.

[00:20:21]It seemed that the mothers wanted to get rid of their kids on Saturday so they could have time off. So they they sent him off. I mean we went by oursel. I must have been maybe 8 to 10 years old and we walked to the movie theater uh the deluxe on Main Street and uh it was just like a zoo in there. Their kids were screaming and yelling and there was a husband and wife, a Jewish couple that owned it. And they had this big big opening into the movie theater and when the theater was full, uh they stuck all the kids in front of this frame and uh gave us a ticket and we had to wait till it was our turn. If somebody left the theater and we got our number called, we would go and take that place. So they played about 52 cartoons in an hour and then came the movie. So there were kids coming and going and it was like a it I I'll always remember that because the the lady the the lady that was running it there was no they couldn't afford to pay ushers or anything. So she was running the whole show. She was giving out the tickets and then she'd go down the aisle with her flashlight. She would go CHILLING IT. CHILL IT IN. QUIET.

[00:21:31]CHILLING IT IN. CHILLING IT IN. and the kids would list and they're throwing popcorn around and uh then my sister and I would hide upstairs after the the kids movies were over. We'd go upstairs where the projection room was and we would uh wait until all the kids left and then we'd sneak back into the theater and and watch some more movies which was were for the adults. And so we we would be there all day and get home in the evenings. We'd be walking at night and my mother never never said anything. I think she was glad to get rid of us for a while. And we did this for I don't know how many years.

[00:22:10]The big theaters like the Met, the Capital, the Garrick, the Odon were elegant buildings in the tradition of legitimate theater.

[00:22:20]The local houses were less ostentatious and more informal.

[00:22:26]By the early 60s, most had finally closed their doors permanently.

[00:22:30]But in earlier decades, it was here that kids who seldom travel beyond their own neighborhood discovered a form of entertainment that opened up whole other worlds of experience.

[00:22:46]>> It was not uncommon for for kids to go to movies by themselves. Either they'd be dropped off at the movie uh theater or or they'd get there on their own.

[00:22:58]So, this is an adventure. forget this is something else. We're we're talking Huckleberry, Finn, Tom Sawyer, you know, pushed up to the 1950s and60s. It was great. Perhaps throughout the week, you may have had the opportunity to hop on a bus or be driven in your parents' car, you know, and you're going past the theater, and you'd always be looking, always be looking to see what did they change the uh the marquee, did they change what's coming, you know, oh, it's finally here. uh you know, taking a look at at the still shots and and the posters and oh, you know, you had to go, you know, you had no option.

[00:23:40]I mean, it was just part of growing up and and so you make your way down to uh to Windsor and inevitably there would be a long lineup, but if you got there early enough, you got a good position in line and no cutting in line. That was the rule.

[00:23:59]But of course, the bigger guys, you know, and their friends would cut in line. There wasn't too much you could do about it. But as you got closer and closer and closer to the door, you get more excited, you know, and now you're up to the posters. See, underneath the marquee, they'd have these huge posters plus some still shots of the movies that were up and coming and uh the movie that was showing.

[00:24:24]There was, you know, space movies, there was horror films, the Frankenstein, the Boris Carlos and Vincent Prices movies and everything else. I mean, we were all kids back there and we we this was How do you beat this?

[00:24:38]This was great.

[00:24:42]>> I seem to recall going to the Windsor just once when I saw Mesh in Second Run in 1973, but that might be wrong as one source says that by that time it was showing nothing but adult movies.

[00:24:56]First job I got was the Windsor Theater in St. Vital as a dorman almost like a one-man operation there. There was just the manager, the cashier, the candy girl and the dorman and one usher and the projectionist and we ran the whole thing. You know, we played all the not first run but uh close to it and sometime we played a lot of the risque movies. All kinds of movies that was frowned upon when you played in the theaters.

[00:25:26]>> The Windsor closed permanently in 1974, eventually becoming a chapel before being replaced by a meat market.

[00:25:37]The Gary on Pemina Highway at Point Road had closed 13 years earlier in 1961.

[00:25:44]>> I was about 5 years old. There was a theater on Pemina Highway called the Gary and I would go with my girlfriend and her brother and my little sister and go to the afternoon Saturday afternoon movies. And often we would first go to the Lion's Pool down the street, go swimming there for a while, and then make our way down to the theater in our wet bathing suits and pay your 15 cents, as I recall, and go in and sit for the whole afternoon where you'd have a short and a cartoon and a featurelength movie.

[00:26:19]And you would never know what the movie was going to be, and I don't know how appropriate any of them were, but it was just pure entertainment. And it was full of kids, full of popcorn and drinks and noise.

[00:26:30]>> The Palace Theater was pretty noisy.

[00:26:33]Okay. Uh cuz everybody liked to talk and nobody listened.

[00:26:38]I I guess you know as children uh uh you do stupid things and you don't think they are at the time you're doing it.

[00:26:45]Uh, the palace Theater had a balcony and if you got up got there early enough, you were on the edge of the balcony so you could either drop paper or spit, you know, and then you'd move back so they wouldn't figure out who it was.

[00:27:01]But those were stupid things that all kids do, I would assume. I know I did it.

[00:27:06]>> I remember my sister and I, we were 10.

[00:27:08]I remember that age. We were 10 and we were in the tower theater and we're waiting in line and we had rollers in our hair, those plastic things.

[00:27:18]My mother sent us there with rollers in our hair. Don't ask me why. And we got into a fight and we were on the floor and we were pulling at each other's hair and everybody surrounding us and cheering and nobody broken up. Like there was nobody in the theater who cared. They We finished arguing. We'd watched the movie. There were no ushers.

[00:27:39]It was only run by the people who owned it, but we had good time. It was It was It was fun.

[00:27:46]>> I was the always been a dreamer, so I I used to like to enjoy the the the fantasy movies uh with lots of action.

[00:27:54]So, we'd look through the papers uh and see which theaters had John Wayne movies, for example, whether they were westerns or war movies. And you have to understand that uh in in my neighborhood, the the the kids sort of used that as the escape from whatever might have been bugging us during the week at school. And for a few hours, we became John Wayne. Uh and and a lot of that carried over into the playtime that we had when we weren't at the movie theaters. My bicycle became John Wayne's Corsair flying over the South Pacific in the Flying Leathernecks.

[00:28:34]Uh so those kinds of things carried on uh for me in in in the intervening time between movies.

[00:28:42]The people that ran it, there were an elderly couple, mind you, when you're a young young child or young kid, everyone's older, but I seem to recall that she had uh silvery gray hair and and some round glasses. She wasn't all that tall, but what a presence she had. Now, I believe her name may have been Mrs. Johnson. Her and her husband, not only did they they uh do the box office, they they ran the projector, they ran the the con concession stand, you know, selling the popcorn and the drinks.

[00:29:22]But Mrs. Johnson's uh was notorious because see you got to remember we we were an unruly bunch. We had a lot of ingenuity like we discovered that the bo the box of popcorn because popcorn at that time came in boxes these red boxes.

[00:29:40]You'd eat the popcorn then you flatten the boxes and what you had was the predecessor to the Frisbee.

[00:29:50]Now, >> if there was a particularly boring part in the movie, let's say there was a kissing part.

[00:30:03]>> Well, all the guys would just whip these things at the screen and and all of a sudden you'd hear Mrs. Johnson coming down the aisle. You know, you you heard her because she had this wooden baton which oh it may have been a ruler or something and she go whack whack. You kids be quiet, you know, or else I'm turning on the lights and sure enough, you know, as soon as we we flung those things, oh come the lights.

[00:30:33]What a memory.

[00:30:35]It was fabulous.

[00:30:37]They used to show westerns, old westerns, Gene Autri and Roy Rogers and Hoplong Cassidy.

[00:30:43]>> Uh these were uh in black and white of course and they had the same stock footage, chase chase footage uh film after film, but but we didn't notice even for the time. These were old. These were uh largely made in the early 40s.

[00:31:02]Uh the most common star was a guy named Johnny Mack Brown but they also featured the Durango Kid Lash Laroo Whip Wilson among others and u I I don't know where they got the policy that it still bothers me to this day that you couldn't stay past and see the the first run movie and they had good ones then but you had to leave. I don't know I understand that now. you know, they would hurt us out about 4:30 and uh some of us would approach the manager, Mr. Ostrander, and say, "Hey, uh, Mr. Ostrander, uh, you know, think if we're quiet, we could stay for the, uh, the feature presentation."

[00:31:47]And he'd say, you know, "Oh, I don't know, boys." But sometimes he's let us stay. And we were hoping for a a steamy melodrama. Um maybe with Gloria Graham in her slip or or Dan Durier hitting the bottle.

[00:32:04]When I think of it now, I mean it almost sounds like child abuse. You're letting fiveyear-olds taking their younger brothers and sisters and walking up to the highway. But even then, I mean, traffic wasn't the same. And I I guess we didn't know about predators or anything like that. So, you know, again, such an innocent time. Bye, mom. It's noon. You know, come back home at supper time and it's what everybody did. So, it wasn't really considered scary or risky at that time.

[00:32:34]Although close to the heart of downtown, Main Street, just north of Portage, had a disreputable image as it pushed towards the poorer North End with its largely immigrant population.

[00:32:46]Just blocks away from the elegant firstrun picture palaces, the Met, the Odon, the capital, were more than half a dozen Main Street theaters, which were shunned by many from more affluent parts of the city.

[00:32:59]As a 9-year-old kid, I assured my buddies that I would attend all 44 of the uh theaters in the city.

[00:33:09]Uh the downtown theaters were were simple, but then things got tough, really tough between uh Logan and Higgins on the west side of Maine. Uh this was the era of the hardrinking white man. Uh there were drunks all over the streets as people from that era will remember. And uh so I had to tiptoe around the drunks. Uh went to the Starland and the Fox which were marginal. Uh the regent was pretty scary.

[00:33:44]But by the time I hit the colonial later the state between uh Henry and Higgins, it was just terrifying. It was just a just a hole in the wall. But the biggest challenge was the oak. The oak was so tough that it was is reputed that you would get in for half price if you took your own apple box to sit on. So fully equipped, I uh jumped on the cresant bus, arrived at the oak. Admission was 20 cents. I annied up a dime. The cashier said, "That'll be another 10 cents, please." And I said, "Well, I've got my box."

[00:34:27]And there was a pregnant pause that I said, "Well, everybody knows that you get in for a half price of the oak if you bring your own apple box to sit on."

[00:34:37]Uh the manager was summoned and he assured uh assured me that this was not the policy of the Oak Theater.

[00:34:44]It's where Mitchell Fabrics is now. That was called the Oak Theater. And there was a story, I don't know, you know, uh urban myth. We didn't have that term then, but there was a story that when you went to the oak, you had to bring your own apple box to sit on. And those are the days when apple boxes were wood.

[00:35:04]I did later in my life go to the oak once just to see to see if it really didn't have seats or something, but it had seats.

[00:35:14]>> Um, inside the oak lived up to its reputation. The washroom did not have a door on it. The toilet did not have a seat on it and was completely black inside and there was a crude sign saying don't flush.

[00:35:31]So, of course, I flushed it immediately and uh uh a waterfall uh ensued running across what passed for the lobby. So, uh what could I do? I I went to the manager and complained.

[00:35:46]Uh the Oak Theater closed uh uh uh a couple of months uh later forever.

[00:35:54]My husband grew up in North End Winnipeg and in the 1950s they were living on Uklid and every Saturday he and his father would get all dressed up, his father in a suit and white shirt and tie and they would walk down to Main Street and they would catch the street car and they would go down where they would have the choice of seeing the Starland, the Regent or the Colonial. So they would walk up to each of these theaters where outside there would be one of those uh wooden display boards and they would see what the matinea was going to be.

[00:36:32]They were newly come over from Europe and my father-in-law's um English still wasn't very good. He was Polish by by birth. But that didn't matter. It was the whole experience of going to the movies on Saturday afternoon with his son. And so they would decide which theater they were going to attend based on these display boards and they would go in and it cost 15 cents to go to the show. And my husband said he remembers that some of the theaters they had double curtains. So one curtain, one velvet curtain would roll up and the other set of uh velvet curtains would pull to the side. And once the show started again, my father-in-law um his he was only developing his understanding of English. And so most of the show he didn't understand at all.

[00:37:26]And eventually then my husband would explain to my father-in-law what the movie was all about. And then during the intermission, girls would come down the aisle and you could buy snacks and candies.

[00:37:40]They had very little money at that time.

[00:37:42]So this was a huge expenditure. And my husband distinctly remembers having these wonderful ice cream bars out of these snack trays.

[00:37:54]The Region Theater had been built as one of Canada's first movie houses in 1912 as the Rex and renamed in 1923.

[00:38:03]By the time I went to it just once in the late 70s for the famous Saturday Midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show event, it had been renamed again as the Epic.

[00:38:14]Like many old theaters, it stood empty for two decades before being demolished to make way for new development.

[00:38:25]Other theaters, although not demolished, were repurposed, turned into bars, supermarkets, and even bowling alleys.

[00:38:42]For years, I've gone past the picturesque uptown bowling lanes on Academy Road, aware that this was once a movie theater, and certainly the most architecturally distinctive neighborhood house in the city.

[00:38:53]But I only found out recently what a special place it held in the history of moviegoing in Winnipeg.

[00:39:00]Gene Morton and Andrew Arstrander's father managed the theater from 1945 to its conversion in 1960 to the still thriving bowling alley.

[00:39:12]>> My mother and father met at the uptown and that would have been in 19 45 or so.

[00:39:19]>> She was a cashier. He hired her as a cashier and that's how they met.

[00:39:22]>> He managed other theaters before the uptown and uh he was managing the uptown I guess when we well before we were born. You know, River Heights was built as a organized neighborhood when it was built and there were a lot of rules and there was a covenant about what you could and couldn't have and you could not have a theater on Academy Road or any businesses on Academy Road. And I understand there was quite a lot of civic controversy when the owners of the theater wanted to build it because there were also people known to the cashiers who got to come in free. These were the people who had been the among the most strong opponents of building the theater there. And part of their I don't know reward or pay off whatever was to get free admission to the theater. So they they would be let in for free.

[00:40:10]It was always magic for me when I drive there with my father. We'd go down Academy Road and watch and watch in the distance and suddenly this Murish Palace would appear.

[00:40:23]I didn't know the words for it then, but now I know that the Uptown Theater was built in the style of a Moish Palace.

[00:40:29]It's Moish architecture on the exterior.

[00:40:33]And I remember going there and uh we had sort of the run of the place and there were tunnels that you could go into towards front of the theater and you could go underneath and underneath the uh where the audience sat and come up at the back of the stage. I remember getting in trouble once cuz I popped up behind the stage and my shadow was showing.

[00:40:51]>> The interior of the theater was even more magical. Built as the interior of a murish courtyard and it was uh it was fantastic. It had balconies on the left and the right as you face the stage held up by pillars with spiral fluting.

[00:41:09]The most incredible feature of it was the ceiling which was a black blue sky with winking stars which rotated such the moon rose and set and then a white plane would fly over from time to time.

[00:41:26]is one of the a beautiful theater because you could see the stars glistening in the in the ceiling. It was a high ceiling, very grandiose just like uh it was the Cadillac of theaters just like uh like like the Lysium was the a Chevy and the Uptown was a Cadillac.

[00:41:48]A unique feature of the Uptown was the so-called sneak preview on Thursday nights, known simply as the sneak to all the comfortable burgers of the area.

[00:42:03]Basically, it was a film that was coming to either the capital or the Met and it was it was a secret. Now, this was the hottest ticket in town and uh the crowd would be buzzing in anticipation uh as showtime approached.

[00:42:17]Um the movie critic of the time with the free press, a fellow named Frank Morris would make a grand entrance and uh some of the fathers would embarrass the hell out of us by approaching him and ask him to reveal the movie.

[00:42:32]At one point I was perhaps 12 years old or something. I was allowed to go to a sneak preview because my father knew what was coming on and he knew I would like it. But I got the big lecture before I went about I had to be quiet and act grown up with the sneak preview.

[00:42:46]They were a big social occasion and >> and they had the loge seats which you would pay more for because it was quite a classy event to to attend.

[00:42:58]>> Uh unfortunately at I remember one Thursday night in 1957 my Oh, that was a terrible experience because I saw Bernardine with Pat Boon.

[00:43:09]We walked home and then uh this is a vivid memory because actually when we got home got a phone call from my grandmother who had a heart attack and she died that night. So forever more that's locked in my mind is seeing Bernardine with Pat Boon.

[00:43:31]The number of theaters declined rapidly in the years after the introduction of television in the early 50s. But it wasn't only neighborhood theaters which closed. Downtown also lost a number of movie houses in the late 50s and the early 60s.

[00:43:46]The Beiju and the Beacon on Maine.

[00:43:50]The Dominion on Portage Avenue East.

[00:43:55]Two of the longest running theaters, the Province built in 1916 and renamed later as the Rio and finally the Grand and the Lysum built in 1912, had long since undergone a decline, ending their days as triple bill grindouses.

[00:44:14]>> The Lysium had horror movies a lot. Uh, The Blob and the Thing and The Tangler and The Pit and the Pendulum. I don't know why I remember those more than the other movies. I liked horror movies then. I don't anymore.

[00:44:29]>> There was I think it was called The Tingler and I can't remember. I think it was at the Lysium Theater where it was uh it was shown where um whenever the the creature was uh was running rampant.

[00:44:43]uh they would send a a minor electrical charge through the seating area and you'd feel this tingling uh on your rear end and up your spine for two weeks. I was dormant at the Lysium Theater on Portage Avenue was during the flood, the 1950 flood. I had just left university and we're going to head out to Vancouver for a vacation, my chum and I and his parents in his little Austin.

[00:45:11]And he said, "We need a a doorman at the Lysm Theater. U would you would you be interested?" I said, "Sure." As it was the only theater left open during the flood because very few of the toilets were working on Portage Avenue or Main Street. Most businesses were closed and many were pumping water out onto the street. But the Lysium uh still had the toilet working and I believe Child's Restaurant still had the toilets working and they were probably the only two places open. Anyway, the the movie went on, but my job as the doorman, about once every hour, I would get a can of flit and I would walk down the aisle with some perfume stuff in us, spraying the uh the theater up one aisle and down another and up and down the aisle for about five minutes just to make it a little sweeter smelling cuz sewage doesn't smell good, especially when you're watching watching a movie sort of thing.

[00:46:27]>> Many people recall that from the 30s through the 60s, neighborhood theaters as hubs of community activity offered more than just movies.

[00:46:36]There was interactive entertainment for the kids and promotional drawers and bonuses for their parents.

[00:46:42]They would bring us up on stage for birthday parties and they'd have games like musical chairs and yo-yo contests.

[00:46:52]>> Some stage of my life, it became my Saturday duty there to help my father and I would go up as the first uh show was about to end and I would uh participate in setting the stage up for the intermission contest. the uh projectionist would close these sheer curtains and I think I pushed the button to bring the big stage curtains across and then I there were foot lights uh alternating blue, red, yellow all across the front of the stage and I would push the buttons in order. First the red, then the blue, then the yellow. I think that's what it was. And I was a kid in the audience when I was it was magical again. It was just seeing this these colored lights come up, you know, that was kind of magic moment for me.

[00:47:38]>> They would have a host on the stage. Uh I remember I knew him. He's he's his dad now, Freddy Glazerman. He was a character and he would wear this little purple usher suit and he was on the stage and I remember once they gave uh as a prize they gave away one of Lassie the real Lassie's pups and this this kid on our street named Douggee Robertson he won and he named the the pup Chips. So Chips was Lassie's pup. And so yeah, so that was pretty uh fun.

[00:48:15]>> And I do remember the Rialto uh they'd have an intermission and and you would you would have portion of your ticket and they would read off the numbers and and if it was the numbers your ticket, you you won a prize. And and lo and behold, and I do remember this movie, it was a Sinbad the Sailor movie. And I was sitting there and it was intermission time and out came the manager who was dressed more like a used car salesman than than uh what you would imagine a manager would look like. And he drew my number. He called out my number and my number one won me this huge box of popcorn.

[00:48:50]I was ecstatic.

[00:48:52]Here I am. No money to get popcorn and I have just won a large box of popcorn.

[00:48:58]And uh I remember running up onto the stage and he looked at my ticket, gave me the box of popcorn and I went back to my seat and uh the movie started again and I was sharing my popcorn with all of these kids around me that I didn't even know them. You know, I I had no idea who these kids were, but we were all it it just seemed that we were all in the same boat. It's a really wonderful memory. It was uh it was a great thing. As much as a Lush pop box popcorn isn't much, but to me at that time it was a lot. Meant a lot.

[00:49:32]>> If it happened to be your birthday, then you were invited to come up onto the stage and there would be musical chairs and then the person the last person left sitting would either get a small prize or your entrance for the movie that day was um free. Well, one of the problems with the uh with the kids matinea birthday uh birthday feature, they'd invite people up for having a birthday, but of course everybody was having a birthday that that that day and it became chaos.

[00:50:06]I I went up on the stage because it was my birthday and I felt I had a right and the contest was drinking Coca-Cola as fast as possible and I really wanted to win cuz the prize was a white hamster and I don't think my father wanted me in the contest at all and I don't think he wanted me to win at all but I drank that Coke the fastest and to my mother's horror I brought home a white hamster.

[00:50:32]When we got into the theater, most times it was dark, so I I never really knew how much of a stage there was until this one theater. And I think it was the regent. They they would have in the summer months contests.

[00:50:47]Do you remember a thing called the yo-yo? Well, there were yo-yo contests put on by the Cheerio people. They would have some of their professionals come in and play this yo-yo. That's the little wooden um cylinder with a string on it.

[00:51:06]And they would do all these tricks with these yo-yos.

[00:51:11]I remember a few of the names. There was Rock the Cradle, Walking the Dog, Around the World, and the competitions were pretty keen. Um, every once in a while you might get lucky and you'd win a sweater or you'd win a special yo-yo.

[00:51:30]And the same with a bolo pad.

[00:51:32]>> That was the paddle with a long elastic on it and a rubber ball on it. Uh, I was pretty good at that, but there weren't as many tricks. The main thing there was to just keep the ball bouncing off of the bat. Uh, and he who lasted the longest um was the winner. sort of thing. And those competitions also went on for a few weeks as I remember. I think I was called back for a couple of weeks and then I failed uh miserably. I looked out for admiring glances and I missed the ball and I was I was out.

[00:52:11]However, that was another little bit of fun.

[00:52:19]For adults, the attraction wasn't just fun. There was also profit.

[00:52:24]Giveaways gave patrons a reason to keep coming back week after week.

[00:52:30]>> They had a piano player up front for the music and at 9:00 everything stopped on a Saturday night and they would give out dishes or carnival glass.

[00:52:43]The idea of the dishes was if you came every week, you got a collection. So you were coming to get your whole collection. You had to get 12 dishes and then 12 cups and saucers and the different sizes. And of course they wanted to finish their set. So they would come every Saturday to get the next dishes. And I think they got two or three dishes every week of one sort. But there were so many different kinds of dishes.

[00:53:07]The Beacon also had gift night. I think every Thursday night they gave away a dish, a cup, a saucer, a plate, whatever, of a whole set. And uh if you went um 30 weeks out of the year, you had 30 pieces of um um flatear that your mother could use somewhere along the line. Well, I think my mother had most of that stuff that we collected back in the late 30s and the early 40s. I think she uh she still had some of it in the in mid50s, maybe even in the 60s.

[00:53:52]>> I don't remember the downtown theaters doing that. I remember it being more the family theaters, you know, the smaller ones, but uh the ones the suburbs needed it more, it seems, the outside theaters.

[00:54:05]>> The neighborhood houses uh attempted to save off disaster by introducing a gimmick called photo night in which attendees had their picture taken and were eligible for, yes, a a weekly uh substantial cash prize.

[00:54:24]Every Wednesday night, we'd walk across the Norwood Bridge to the Plaza Theater.

[00:54:30]And my parents, I think, wanted to go because it was called photo night, and there was a draw for money.

[00:54:38]That was always helpful. Uh, I think it was about $400, which at that time was a tremendous amount of money.

[00:54:50]It's the only time I remember my mom and dad and I going out any place together.

[00:54:56]Um, there wasn't a lot of money and we didn't have a car, nor did anybody else that I went to school with that I can remember.

[00:55:08]I'm not a car owner, so I only rarely went to drive-ins. I think the last time was at the Odon just west of the city where I saw Rambo First Blood Part Two in 1985.

[00:55:21]The Odon held on longest of all the drive-ins, but it too finally closed in 2007 due to lack of business.

[00:55:30]>> Oh, drive-ins. Oh, yes.

[00:55:33]Thought I'd actually forgotten about those. We went in high school a little bit and then when I was first married and I had two young children, there was the whole station wagon thing and my husband and I went to drive-ins and the kids would fall asleep in the back and so on. Yeah. The North Main Drive-In particularly um cuz we were both from the north end.

[00:55:58]My parents would put pillows in the back seat and we'd be in our pajamas in the car and that way I guess once we got home we were ready for bed because it was very very late of course we'd be sleeping in the car on the way. In fact we were five kids so my parents would put a bench in the back seat. There was no seat belts or safety problems, right?

[00:56:19]So they put a bench on the back seat so it was just one big bed so you just kind of roll around on there and look at the movies. I remember being in a sandbox at the front and swings and play center the front of all the drive-ins in front of the screen. So as parents you could come and sit in the car and the kids the little kids would go up and play in the sandbox or play in the play area until the movie started.

[00:56:39]>> I guess I can remember actually when I was young going to the drive-in with my girlfriend and her parents and this was the time when the Beatles had just put out their movies. So Hard Days Night I think was the first movie in it. So we were probably around 9 or 10 years old and we had seen on TV how girls were reacting to the Beatles and of course it was just pandemonium where they were just screaming. You couldn't hear the music and they were teenagers and we were 9 or 10 years old and of course emulating those teenagers. So the movie starts and we on Q my girlfriend and I start screaming from the back seat. Well her parents were having none of that.

[00:57:21]They were just terrified that we started screaming as if someone had entered the back seat or something. So, we were quickly shushed and realized that no, you don't actually do it in the car. It was something of a theater experience.

[00:57:37]>> For the long weekends in the summertime, the drive-ins would do four movies and that would take you from sunset to sun up. And if you wanted to get into those allnighters, you needed to be there very early. So, I can remember uh the the drive-in on um Regent uh lining up to get into that theater for hours and to pass the time, guys would pass the football around and you'd play catch and everything, but you'd be there for hours waiting to get into these allnighters and uh after basically eight hours of movie going, the sun was coming up and and you were heading home if you made it through all four of them.

[00:58:14]>> So, it would start at about 10:00 and it would run four movies. So it would you wouldn't get home until 5:00 in the morning. So there was just a big draw to being able to stay out all night. Of course, >> sometimes when I worked at the drive-in later on, they had five movies. All nighter was five movies. Those movies were like 8 hours long. There's no way it's 8 hours dark enough. So by the time 5:00 in the morning, people are still sitting there. There's still an hour of movie to go and there's no picture going to the screen anymore because there's too much light. I just turned the power off. There's no light trying to send a picture out. And the people got upset and they would come in and say, "I can't see the picture." I says, "The sun is shining above the stream. You're not going to see the picture." But I can hear it, but I can't see it. Well, you're not going to see it.

[00:59:05]>> I had a strange uh experience with a drive-in. I remember when when the movie True Grit was playing at at the drive-in. I believe it was at the airliner drive-in.

[00:59:16]It's the middle of winter. Oh, January, February, must have been minus 30 something. And I'm with a bunch of my buddies and we're in the car, you know, fogged up windows and all, you know, and and a speaker that barely worked half the time.

[00:59:34]But I happened to look over the next car and there was some guy sitting on the hood of his car leaned up against in a t-shirt watching the movie.

[00:59:46]You know, I don't remember the movie as much as I remember seeing this fellow.

[00:59:49]Why would he be doing that? The last time I went to a drive-in, I was still expecting to take that speaker and put it on my window. And uh somebody pointed out, well, no, just tune your radio to the FM station. And I was like, what?

[01:00:05]That drew us back to drive-ins. And then we realized on a nice evening, we would actually take a large ghetto blaster. We would put it in front of our vehicle and tune it to the radio station. And it was just like being at a movie theater. You had the speakers right in front of you.

[01:00:22]You were enjoying the skylight, the starlight, and everything. And now they're all gone.

[01:00:31]No, I I somehow didn't go to drive-ins.

[01:00:36]Um, I think I was shy back then. I think basically drive-ins for more or less for having sex in the car. So, I I don't remember. I was too shy to have sex in a car, I think. So, I probably didn't go to driveins, you know. I actually wanted to watch the movies.

[01:00:58]The Metropolitan Theater, built as the Allen on Donald Street in 1921, was one of the best loved and most elegant in Winnipeg.

[01:01:07]After it closed in 1987, there were many efforts to save the building, but it stood empty for two decades before Canadins began to restore it a couple of years ago.

[01:01:19]I can remember sitting at the far back of the balcony to watch Quest for Fire and almost getting vertigo from the altitude.

[01:01:28]>> As a teenager, I worked part-time as an usher at the Metropolitan Theater on Donald Street across from Eaton's department store. Um, my job was to try and I don't know, help the crowds into their seats and and theaters were typically crowded anyway. Um because I was ushering in a movie theater, I saw movies that I probably wouldn't have been able to get into. Um so the I don't know, I had the guilty pleasure of combining work and film viewing. Um I saw some wonderful things.

[01:02:08]I worked there for Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, A Street Car Named Desire, an adult film being viewed by uh this innocent kid.

[01:02:21]>> Most of my movie fair was uh westerns or war movies. Um, and then when uh the B-grade uh Japanese science fiction uh/horror events came along, uh that took up a lot of our time as well. Things like Godzilla and and uh Rodan the flying monster and Van the Unbelievable.

[01:02:44]And yes, you could see the the funny uh stop motion animation and the guy in the rubber suit and the whole thing, but uh just kind of a lot of fun. The Vincent Price kinds of things were another story. Those were a little straighter.

[01:02:58]And I can remember going to the Metropolitan to see uh the original version of The Fly with Vincent Price and kind of ducking down behind the seat in front of me when the man with the fly had uh had the bag ripped off his head.

[01:03:13]Uh cuz I dreaded the thing that was coming. And yet so you want to keep one eye over top of the thing so you don't miss it. But you really didn't want to see it uh with that kind of mixed reaction.

[01:03:26]>> The closest thing to a palace that I was ever in downstairs was kind of strictly business, but once you rose one of the two um staircases, got to the second floor, it was all red damusk wall covering and ornate plaster work and looked like something out of the movies and was meant to. It was a gorgeous theater. And on the second floor, on the mezzanine floor, they had a woman's washroom, which was like something out of a Hollywood movie set with the the mirrors and the little stools and uh soft lighting and tissues, and it it was quite a miraculous place.

[01:04:12]some movies didn't really have my attention that much and and I would start to explore and one day while I was in the Metropolitan I was seated up in the balcony and I decided that I would go exploring like a lot of young children would do and I found a door at the back of the balcony and to me this was a mystical thing and I I opened the door and I went in and there was the staircase.

[01:04:42]Well, needless to say, I had to go and explore and find out exactly where it went to. And down the stairs I went, and lo and behold, when you entered the Metropolitan, there was a huge marquee. And that's where they would post the movies that were coming uh up and coming. And it was actually a door and this was a fire escape. So, as I got to the bottom, I pushed on the door and it opened and I was on the main floor by the concession stand.

[01:05:11]the manager wasn't very impressed with me and uh I I did get a lecture and had to leave the theater, but it's just one of those uh one of those wonderful moments that that you you know that you'll you'll cherish for uh forever.

[01:05:26]I remember that one New Year's Eve special attraction at the Metropolitan was a showing of an American in Paris, the spectacular MGM musical film that won a Special Academy Award I think in perhaps 1951. Uh at which time I would have been uh 16 possibly. Nothing would would have prepared me for it. Absolutely nothing.

[01:05:52]I'd never seen dance. I don't think I'd heard orchestral music. Um except occasionally on the on the little radio from New York. Um and then we had this wonderful score and the American and Paris ballet with lights replacing water in those fountains uh in the plastic comp. Um wonderful movie alto together. I'll never forget the close-up of the rose that closes the uh the ballet sequence and uh and the rose gets closer and closer to the camera lens, shimmering and amazingly beautiful. And when I think that I was on the verge of going into fine arts at the University of Manitoba without really art education, I can realize how important being steeped and that's what happened on the job. uh being steeped in a film like An American in Paris did for me uh what an art education might do for other people um in a school or private lessons at an artist's home or whatever. Um I was getting a grounding in the dramatic arts in the visual arts in the musical arts even um all at once.

[01:07:12]Of all the theaters which have disappeared, the one I personally missed the most is the magnificent 2,000 seat capital, which was located on Donald Street from 1921 until it was demolished in March of 2001.

[01:07:28]But by then it had been left empty and rotting since 1990.

[01:07:36]I uh grew up in Winnipeg. I came here when I was 8 years old cuz my dad was transferred here from the Capitol Theater in Regina to the Capitol Theater in Winnipeg. He was the manager there. I remember going to the theater with my mom and my little sister and brother to visit my dad at work. And uh I have these really good memories of of going into the theater with this beautiful colored red carpet. I can't remember the pattern, but I just remember it was red and patterned. And it was really exciting cuz we would head to his office, which had manager on the door and his name, and we'd go inside, and he'd be sitting behind this big wooden desk. I remember the wood was really shiny and dark, and we'd, you know, be playing around in there like kids do.

[01:08:24]And and uh um it was just I felt really special being there because my dad was the manager.

[01:08:31]>> No question about it. My favorite year was a Capitol Theater. Maybe because it was the first theater that I have gone to on my own, but I think more because of its beauty. I used to just love that domed ceiling. It that was that was really pretty incredible.

[01:08:51]I didn't know until recently that the capital, although located on Donald Street, originally had an entrance on Portage Avenue.

[01:09:00]patrons after buying their tickets had to climb stairs in order to cross the back alley and entered the theater on the balcony level.

[01:09:09]I applied and trained for to become a licensed projectionist for theaters in Winnipeg. And in ' 74, I went over to the Capitol Theater and I was training as a projectionist there. And the manager of the theater uh needed an assistant and I worked there from 74 to 76 as a assistant manager and training as a projectionist. That's when they had crowds and when they're playing certain movies really blockbuster like Greece, we played the movie and the lineups was from the capital theater doors all the way around Ellis and it met with the Garrick theater lineup. That's how long the people were lined up and waiting to come for the next show.

[01:09:51]I can remember lining up for over an hour on a freezing winter Friday to get into the first matinea showing of the exorcist.

[01:09:59]I might even be somewhere in this photo.

[01:10:04]All around me, people were psyching themselves up to be terrified.

[01:10:08]Personally, I found myself laughing all through the movie.

[01:10:12]>> The Exorcist played there for about 4 months. And during that four months, every weekend, it was sold out. 1500 seats, three times a day, sold out, in and out. It was fantastic. And we were warned. The film company said some of the people in on Toronto and that they were passing out. They were fainting or they were throwing up in the on the aisles because when they got to the scene where the blood shoots up to the ceiling. So we were all prepared and we all had smelling salts. So we no I mean we just took it for granted maybe they will faint. So the ushers were all at each aisle and when that scene came on we'd make sure we'd be watching. Sure enough, there's always people that oh, they'd get up and they'd start waddling.

[01:10:54]I mean, walking, waving to the back and then and some of them would faint. They just pass right out in the middle and like people like I saw one guy, he must have been like 6'2 and you just boom on the on you have to go to a smelling salt, wake him up and bring them out to the lobby.

[01:11:15]>> I remember one time going to see a certain movie there. It was called uh Wait Until Dark with Audrey Hepburn. And that was kind of a scary movie. When I think back on on it now, I think was I too young to be watching that movie at the time that it was out. I think I would have been around 10 maybe.

[01:11:33]>> And that was a really big hit. That that was playing here like 8 weeks, which is considered a long time. For the longest time, that was the greatest film I saw.

[01:11:43]Holy cow, that was an experience because with wait until dark in the last 8 minutes of the movie, they didn't let anybody into the theater and all the lights suddenly went out except the exit signs. That was it. And you're not really aware of how much lighting there is in a theater while you're watching, but there's, you know, these little accent lights and that and lights to make you be able to see your way, you know, to your seat, you know, or at least down the aisle and that. But all those lights went out. And the reason the lights went out was uh Audrey Hepin was playing this blind woman who was being terrorized by Alan Arin who was out to murder her because she had this doll that she didn't know had tons of heroin embedded inside it. So what she does is she smashes all the lights in the place. So she's got the advantage on this because she knows her way around in the dark. He does not. And so as soon as she smashes the lights, then all the lights in the theater go up >> and everything was dark and and uh we I remember screaming and hiding under the seats and everything.

[01:12:53]>> And I tell you, it just sent uh chills through you and quite the experience.

[01:12:59]Even watching it on video now, I I recall that feeling.

[01:13:06]In 1979, as a harbinger of changes to come in movie exhibition, famous players closed the capital for a couple of months in order to transform the balcony into a small second theater.

[01:13:18]>> I was just finished high school and I was working as a as an iron worker for a company by the name of Aesco Steel and uh contract which they got was to go and convert uh the capital into capital one and capital two. I do remember that happening. Um but um it was kind of that time, wasn't it? Like was it the late '7s I believe? And it was, you know, everything was trying they were trying to move away from all the the the good old things to these, you know, kind of cheap new things.

[01:13:56]There was a big flatbed trailer that came to the back of the capital and we had to go and bring in one trust at a time and put one at one end, lift it up.

[01:14:07]We had comealongs that were tied right to the original structure from the ceiling, which were huge wooden beams.

[01:14:14]And we had to lift it up little by little until it was in position. And then we bolted it to the column that was on the side. And the comealong held that truss on one side until we went and we got the truss on the other side up. Same thing in position. We had these two trusses which were huge steel structures. I'm not sure how much they weighed a piece, but they were tons of steel.

[01:14:39]>> What they did is they built from where the balcony ended, they built a floor like a just steel girders or floor all the way to to the front. Now the screen upstairs was a lot smaller screen and it was projected from the projection booth that was already originally up there.

[01:14:57]Then they built another projection booth on the main floor. They took about maybe 10 rows of seats about uh 40 ft wide and then they built two projectors and a projection booth there for the main floor one. It looked terrible.

[01:15:11]>> The space then between the screen and the seats was this white foam layer. A friend of mine said it looked like a disco floor. To me, I felt like I was on the moon because there was this big white in front of us and dome that's almost on my head. The screen became really really small. Also when we saw apocalypse now there became apocalypse new and that was about it cuz the rest was cut off.

[01:15:37]>> Felt kind of sacrilege going and doing this to this building but you know it was a job. So we did it. It was completed and uh it was the beginning of what I guess one might call a a multiplex a small one if that two theaters you know which were you know originally one when they demolished it, I was in a parking lot and uh as it happened, I just looked through the parking lot and they were demolishing the Capitol Theater and I was able to see right into the theater right where the screen was and that was a really special moment for me because to me it was like saying goodbye to that theater and I'm really glad I was there at that moment. because uh that place was very special and dear memories.

[01:16:38]Nostalgia is often seen as an indulgence, a pointless clinging to the past. But is there really anything wrong with having fond memories of an experience that brought as much pleasure as going to the movies in a simpler media age before multiplexes and home video and internet streaming?

[01:16:56]The last thing I asked each person I spoke to was, "What do you miss most about the movie theaters that have disappeared?

[01:17:13]I think I miss the fact that I could walk to a movie theater within an easy distance of my home.

[01:17:20]uh that I think particularly so I miss the neighborhoodness of it >> the freedom uh of that experience. Uh it it was an unfettered social event I guess. uh we just could go as a group of kids and go down to the movie theater and uh spend the little bit of allowance that we had uh uh on some um in some cases very inane enjoyment.

[01:17:51]>> The lights uh were certainly part of it. The glamour of the buildings, the uh sense of occasion, sitting in the dark and and not going to sleep.

[01:18:04]I'll say >> I missed the curtains. It was just a slight touch, but it looked a little bit more elegant as opposed to walking into a theater and you see this white space right in front of you, this white screen staring at you. Here it's covered and now you're watching it like it's a play.

[01:18:27]Uh like it is something very special.

[01:18:30]And yes, I miss the curtains most of all.

[01:18:34]maybe some of those times where we had the whole afternoon matinea kind of experience whereas now it's just sort of sterile. You line up and you just go and sit. No one chats with anyone else or anything. You're just with your people that you're with. Maybe it's that that it was that kind of an experience.

[01:18:52]>> Well, it had a mystique because it was the only game in town. I mean, uh there was no television. So, uh, going to a movie was was really something. You know, you not only got a movie in those days, but you got probably a couple of cartoons, the news, maybe a short or traalog, and uh, when you're young, uh, you know, the this stuff, this stuff was magical.

[01:19:18]the character that each movie house had.

[01:19:22]I think that's what I miss because sometimes you not only would you pick the right movie but depended it it would depend where it was playing because these places were grand.

[01:19:40]You felt important you know you know it I loved it you know. Well, I would say my dad.

[01:19:50]You know, when I think about old theaters, I think about my dad. And he's been gone for 20 22 or 23 years now. And and um it was such a big part of of his life.

[01:20:02]>> Back then, everything was all individual and it meant something. You know, you made a conscious decision. Uh I love this movie. And uh that's that was magic. It was rare because it was going to leave forever or you thought until of course later on with DVDs and all that but you didn't know that back then. So because it was rare you say I have to see and then if you saw it once and you liked it you say oh god I'll never see it again. So then you'd want to go two three times to the same movie and you pay each time and I think that's that's missing from now because it's so available.

[01:20:39]It was it was great all the way around.

[01:20:41]Especially like I told you at 5 cents, how can you miss? You know, reality wasn't quite as tough as they make it today. I mean, you know, to hear the way they speak and what they do, um, I don't know if I could have taken it as a kid, but uh, now it's an everyday thing. The kids coming out of grade two know the same words that I do. So, uh, it it's a change, but I enjoy the movies.

[01:21:16]It's a Saturday, time to make your way.

[01:21:19]Grab your friends and go to the local picture show. Get in line for the Saturday matinea.

[01:21:30]>> Riding rocket ships, interstellar trips.

[01:21:33]Cowboys sing a song. Nail and trade the ride along 10 cartoons at the Saturday matinea.

[01:21:44]>> Reality fades for the price of a dime.

[01:21:50]Will take me back just for a while to simpler times.

[01:22:13]Reality fades for the price of a dime.

[01:22:18]Will take me back just for a while to simpler time.