July 1, 2024
Greetings from the cheap seats,
By the time I began seeing movies at the Palace Theater, it had lost some of its original charm. Years before I was born, it had been renovated from its original turn-of-the-century extravagance to Art Deco. When I saw my first movie there, the theater was fraying, and whatever art or deco there had been, was being dissolved by time and neglect.
I went to the Palace for three reasons. Well, maybe more. First, because of a young woman, with whom, as was once described, I was ‘keeping company’. She worked in the lobby, selling popcorn so buttery it was nearly impossible to hold. Included in our nascent relationship was free admission to the theater. It was not a formal policy, but I dare say one that was replicated throughout the Butterfield chain.
Two blocks away was the sister theater, the Capitol. Imagine a time when first-run movies were so prevalent that a small city could support two theaters in that small geography. I didn’t know anyone who worked at the Capitol theater, so in order to see a movie there, it required a conspiracy between me and my friends. One of us would buy a ticket and then once the movie started, slip up to open the fire escape door to let the rest of us in. All while avoiding the less than determined ushers who walked the aisles with flashlights.
In the early 70’s, when it mattered to me, television had already stolen some audience from movie houses. In Flint, where I grew up, the local economy and other influences were conspiring to seal the coffin on a dying tradition. The response, not one I was aware of as my attention was elsewhere, was for the theaters to specialize in the kinds of movies they showed. At the Palace in this snapshot of time, it was Black films. Or, as they became known, Blaxploitation.
This strategy created a reputation for each of the theaters in the city, and so by the time I was watching films at the Palace, I was often the only white person in the sparsely populated thirteen hundred seats. In the face of the civil rights movement, and the glacial movement to resolve race relations, theaters became like churches: the most segregated buildings in the city.
I was blissfully ignorant of any of this. All I knew was I was able to watch movies and eat popcorn for free, running parallel to my innocent pursuit of the previously mentioned young woman. Which leads me to the second reason for going to the Palace. The movies.
Before I write another word, understand that I was not a film student, or a qualified critic. I like watching movies of almost any kind, but Blaxploitation was a fascinating diversion from what I was accustomed to. Not only were the heroes Black, but the language, and the attitude toward white characters in the movie, was an entirely different experience from what I knew in my narrow middle-class life.
The quintessential movie of the moment was “Shaft”, but I was mesmerized by “Coffy” and “Foxy Brown” all of which were filled with action and violence and no shortage of sexual references, which fit neatly with my raging teenage hormones. I saw “Uptown Saturday Night” at the Palace, and realized, perhaps for the first time, Bill Cosby was Black.
Eventually, I began to appreciate the Blaxploitation films as more than simply loud and colorful, in part because the people around me in the audience saw them differently. About that time, the movie “Wattstax” was released, a documentary depicting the concert in LA that commemorated the Watts uprising. I’m sure I’d never heard of the riots in Watts, and certainly didn’t understand the reasons behind the violence. The movie brought that reality home to me, and introduced me to some of my favorite music.
But I have to confess that racial awareness and social justice was not on the top of my mind. I was only slightly more shallow than I am today, which is to say I was evolving, and am still.
Which leads me to the third reason I liked going to the Palace. After I’d seen the current movie a few times, I spent much of my time in the projector room, which was fascinating. I remember the large reels of film being unpacked from their cans, and loaded onto a furnace sized machine. The film was threaded through myriad wheels and mechanisms and past the giant lamps and lenses, and then the apparatus was turned on. And the magic was poured into the theater.
It still amazes me, which illustrates that perhaps I’m not evolving to my potential. The technology then, while complicated, was rudimentary by today’s standards. But it was awesome to see the workings that turned ideas into living things on the screen. The projectionist, who I barely remember, only paid attention to any of this when it was time to change reels, or when the film ran off the track or melted against the heat of the projector’s lamp. But to me it was like watching a sorcerer at work.
All of this was spun together by time, and so this morning it was like untwisting a troublesome kitchen telephone cord. Some of the details are grayed out in my mind, but the impressions and the emotions are clear. The Palace, and the many other theaters I snuck into, mattered to me. It was not critical, but it made a difference in how I grew up.
The Palace, and other places like it, once held live stage performances. They saw musicals and vaudeville and silent films, come and go. People came and sang along or laughed or jeered together. Theaters were part of decades of living when people went to see movies to be entertained or inspired or simply to escape the ordinariness or the drudgery of their lives. It was an individual experience, because we each saw the movie in our own way, and it was a social thing, a bond of a group of people. We were influenced by those around us. And now that experience has come and gone and been replaced by something else.
I’m grateful to have been around before that experience vanished.
Hope this finds you waiting for the lights to go down,
David
Copyright © 2024 David Smith
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