Montgomery's Theatres Lost...A Lament
by Dr. Jim Vickrey
At first I was disappointed. After all, my parents had met working there. And I first went to the movies there myself -- in utero. I was disappointed that "The Empire" (not to be confused with the new "Star Wars" installment!), would soon be torn down. The Empire first opened in 1918 as Montgomery's first and one of its finest movie theatres until its close in 1979. With it's demise, it would join The Carver, Charles, Grand, Highland, Martin Twin, Montgomery Mall, Pekin, Ritz, Rogers, State, Strand, and other such theatres on the rubble-heap of Capital City cinema history.As soon as I learned, however, that the Montgomery Street site of The Empire was to become the location of the Rosa Parks Library and Museum of Troy State University Montgomery, my disappointment turned to delight. After all, the patron saint of the modern Civil Rights Movement was arrested on a City bus in 1955 in front of the theatre, an historical moment commemorated by a plaque on the sidewalk. Since then, the facility had fallen into embarrassing disrepair.
There is no more perfect place in the world to build a facility in honor of the Lady who touched off the Montgomery Bus Boycott because she was too tired to move farther back in the bus she was riding home from work. And I commend TSUM President Glenda Curry for her vision of so fitting a memorial and for her dedication in making it a reality.
But, my film fan's heart still aches that so many Montgomery movie houses have been demolished. Indeed, only two are left -- and only one of those still shows movies: The Capri in Old Cloverdale (called The Clover when it opened in July, 1941, with Art Deco detailing). It is the last of the three indoor neighborhood theatres that once graced Highland and Fairview Avenues. The Capri, given its present name when it was remodeled in 1962, now shows nightly excellent examples of serious contemporary cinema, thanks to the dedication of manager, Martin McCafferty, and the Capri Community Film Society, whose members reopened the theatre in September 1983, after its closing the same year. Were it not for them, film fans would be unable to see annually classic movies and critically acclaimed motion pictures that Carmike Cinema chooses not to screen, unless, of course, major Academy Awards are won and the films are re-released.
The other theatre still in use is the old Paramount, from its opening in 1930 as the "Birmont" through the '60s, Montgomery's grandest "Movie Palace." Thanks to Troy State University and a gift from the former Mrs. Tyne Davis, it has not only been preserved; it has also been restored to a luster I never knew as a boy, when I frequented it. In the fifties, I regularly rushed to see such glorious "A" pictures as "Singin' in the Rain," "David and Bathsheba" (my 11th birthday movie party choice), "River of No Return," "Shane," "The Robe," "Giant," and many more. The Paramount showed the products of MGM, Paramount Pictures, and 20th Century Fox (especially after Cinemascope became the rage). Today, The Davis/Paramount only hosts "live" cultural and civic events, although consideration has been given, I am told, to adding a pull-down screen for special showings of movies.
The Empire, my favorite theatre because of my personal relationship to it, was wider than it was long and was said to be the first air-conditioned theatre in the country. It tended to showcase Columbia and Universal Pictures. There I saw Randolph Scott and Audie Murphy westerns as well as Les Barker and Gordon Scott as latter-day Tarzans -- and eventually my all-time favorite feature film: "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Such Warner Bros. films as "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" then played The Charles, along with re-releases of such Universal classic horror films as "Frankenstein," "The Mummy," and "The Wolfman."
Most of my movie going in the late forties and early fifties was focused, however, on the "B"-picture movie theatres. For white boys at the time, that meant The Strand, located on Court Square, southwest of the Fountain. There, for a dime, I, and every boy I knew, rode the pre-TV Western range every Saturday afternoon. We rode with Republic Pictures and other studio stars such as Gene Autry (who ended up with Columbia after WW II, where Charles Starrett worked as "The Durango Kid") and Roy Rogers, who died within weeks of each other last year; Allan "Rocky" Lane -- after RR my favorite movie cowboy; Wm. "Wild Bill" Elliott; Hopalong Cassidy; and oh so many more. When The Strand was killed off in the early fifties by the competition from similar television fare, we followed the B-westerns not on TV down Commerce Street to The Charles. There, we enjoyed the exploits of our old favorites (for $.25 after we turned 12), as well as such late-comers to the B-western film genre as Rex Allen, "Lash" LaRue, and Jimmy Wakely.
Next to The Charles was the then-infamous Rogers Theatre, which showed risqué film fare and documentaries. I had the nerve to see only one movie there: the story of Howard Hill, the Shelby County, Alabama, archer who performed the hazardous arrow shots in such magnificent motion picture adventures as "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938), starring Errol Flynn and Olivia DeHavilland, a long-time pen pal whom I finally got to meet when she was honored in Birmingham recently as a "Woman of Distinction."
Montgomery has been diminished by the demise of its movie theatre heritage. There would be no such heritage left to see if TSUM and the Capri Community Film Society had not stepped in to preserve, respectively, the Paramount and the Capri. The cineplexes now dominating movie-going experiences in the Capital City lack the charm of the facilities we used to enjoy and one wonders whether, in the future, anyone will lament the closing and destruction of any of them. Nevertheless, I take some comfort in the words of Tennyson's King Arthur in "Morte D'Arthur":
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfills himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
I lament the loss of the original "good custom" of movie going in Montgomery.
Sigh ....
(A native Montgomerian, former college president, lawyer, and a university professor, Dr. Vickrey has studied, written and lectured on the movies for more than a quarter-century. A film fan since the late '40s, he currently hosts "Cinema and Society" on Friday mornings at 9:05 on the Southeastern Radio Network (89.9 FM))
Published June 1999, Alabama Prime Times
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