The Oneonta Theater

Item

Title

The Oneonta Theater

Description

Many people in our community have vivid memories of experiences and events at the Oneonta Theatre. Although the theater has been providing live and film entertainment to local audiences for 122 years, most people’s memories span from the 1940s to the present time, when the theatre was both a live venue and a major movie theatre. The building has a grand history of its own. And it also figures in the cultural, economic, philanthropic and civic life of Oneonta, entertaining us since the days of vaudeville. As always, the history of the theater is a work in progress. Many thanks for this marvelous discussion go first to Patrice Macaluso, former Chair of the Drama Department at SUNY Oneonta and driving force behind the Friends of the Oneonta Theater (FOTOT). Also contributing are Kevin Herrick, Liz Morley and Bob Brzozowski and Gary Wickham.

Contributor (Interviewer)

Alan Donovan

Date of interview

2019-07-14

Duration (Extent)

1H01M40S

Type

Sound

Subject

history

Transcript

Duration:"01:01:40"
July 14, 2019

Alan Donovan: OK, welcome to another edition of kitchen table conversations. I'm joined with my longtime colleague, Gary Wickham.

Gary Wickham: Nice to be here.

AD: Thank famed of radio history here in town and today. A special guest, Patrice Macaluso, who at one point in time was the department chair of the drama department at SUNY Oneonta.

Patrice Macaluso: Mhm Theater

AD: Actually, she tells me earlier I had a part in getting Glimmerglass off the ground, and I'm going to ask Patrice to give some comments about the Friends of the Oneonta Theater and the last decade or so of what's what's going on, but let me let me start. And by the way, I I drew much of my comments from the wonderful exhibit that's here. It gives a great history of the of the theater itself. A lot of people have vivid memories of the theater and events, and although audiences have been looking at the theater and going there for 122 years, most people's memory span from the 1940s to the present time when the theater was both a live venue and a major movie theater. And as you may remember and know, the theater itself has undergone numerous renovations, major and minor, in response to rapid changes in live performing arts, movie technology, distribution and operations. But the current exhibit focuses not so much on the building itself, although that's very important, but also on the building's owners and managers, and on the forces uh that came to bear on these people as they brought this building to life. And so in that sense, the program is a celebration of the past, not just of the building as I said, but of the people who took care of it, changed it, preserved it, and to the best of their abilities, presented the latest entertainment to local audiences. As I came to the exhibit itself, I found it interesting that the story of the Oneonta Theater is intertwined with the cultural, economic, philanthropic, and civic life of Oneonta itself. So it has a lot of strings that reach out to the history of the town.

1897 the big year 1897, the birth of the theater. In April, there was the beginning of the planning for the theater, and it was located opposite the Windsor Hotel. And who knows what is there now in the Windsor Hotel? NBT bank, right across the street. July was groundbreaking in articles of incorporation.
September, they let the contract for the building, now this is gonna strike you a lot, for $19,000, $19,000 and just by the way, if I recall correctly, when they were starting to build Old Main for SUNY Oneonta about a decade earlier, the cost for that was about $45,000. So there you go. The stage was designed by a famous theater architect, Leon Lempert, and it had an unusually large theater and stage or the stage itself as part of the theater was unusually large. Tada! January 31st, 1898 the grand opening ‘The Sporting Duchess’, starring no less than Helena Modjeska, who had a candy named after her, a perfume named after her, and even, I gather, a mountain named after her. Absolutely crucial to every part of the endeavor was a gentleman named Willard Yager. He was a Cornell and Harvard Law School grad, a newspaper editor who retired in 1894, but then spent the rest of his life helping civic endeavors in Oneonta. He led the fund drive, he supervised the construction, he helped to start the Yager Museum at Hartwick College, and then he also helped to champion the building of SUNY Oneonta. Going ahead a little bit, in 1819 - 1919, there was $50,000 spent on remodeling the theater, including enlarging the stage. The Golden Age of vaudeville - we’ll talk a tiny bit about that - which is said to be from 1898 to 1919. The the Windsor Hotel across the street was of course a great location for actors, technicians and support staff. They would stay there, and also other economic benefits for the community. Restaurants, ads and transportation.

Vaudeville. As you may remember, consisted of short acts, skits, singers, dancers, magicians, and animals. There was a special program that I got a kick out of being a Rotarian called ‘Womanless Weddings’, and this is essentially during the age of vaudeville, sometime I’m going to guess, in the 1920s. It was really men in drag sponsored by Rotary and Kiwanis. As a fundraiser the men dressed up as brides, flashing their hairy legs and their garter. That was the that was a neat part of the exhibit I must say. Then movies began, beginning around 1919.

The early phase, 1919 – 1933, and the initial presentations were by a company named Vitaphone. Then along came management by the Shine theater chain from 1933 until about the sale of the theater in 1966. They ran the theater, did the marketing, scheduled films. Couple neat films in the 1940s. The mark of Zorro in 1940. Who starred in that anybody know? Tyrone Power and then Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. There was a long legal battle with the Shine Theaters I guess about monopolization and things like that and when the settlement came about, it resulted in a sale of the theater to Harold DeGraw. DeGraw managed several other theaters in this career. I think he ………. his career down in Maryland and then he also built the Showcase Cinema cinema. And I, as I recall, the Showcase Cinema was entered by going up Elm Street and taking a left or something like that, and that was back, but.

PM: Yeah it’s right where Silks and Treasures

AD: OK alright what?

PM: Silks and Treasures

AD: OK. Where Silks and Treasures is now. Not a very big theater, but also ran at the same time that
we had the Oneonta Theater. DeGraw was active in civil life. He was on the boards of Fox Hospital and Hartwick College and then he managed the theater from 1966 to 1988. In 1988 the theater was sold to Phil Colone and Peter VanWert. Interestingly enough, along the way there were other uses of the theater. It housed part of what was now what is now the Huntington Library beginning in 1904 and then of course, the library itself moved to the Huntington Mansion in 1919. Then the Oneonta high school then located on Academy Street held is graduation ceremonies at the theater for almost 60 years. About the same time as the theater was then sold to Terry Madison, who actually was a longtime employee of the theater - I believe that was around 2002 - the theater was put on the National Historic Register. In my 30 years plus here, I can remember going to events like concerts both upstairs and downstairs, and there were two parts of the theater, and then movie nights were sponsored by UCCA - Upper Canfield Center for the Arts. Now, I'd like to turn the discussion over to Patrice Macaluso who can tell us what was happening in 2008 and afterward. Patrice, fire away.

PM: Ah, is it only 2008, which is 11 years now? Yeah so, Terry Madison decided to sell the theater the theater. The Wilbur Bank was involved, there was a lot of discussion about how to keep this thing moving forward and how to move it to a nonprofit. So, I had gotten involved with a number of citizens who were on to create the nonprofit that might run this thing. So we formed a nonprofit to see what we could do and then we're discussing with various parties how to purchase the theater when Tom Cormier brought the theater, and I met him the week he bought the theater. He wanted it for his business. He he installed satellite dishes and certain alarm systems and technology like that and he wanted a a ground base for his business and he wanted the building that's in front of the Oneonta Theater that is attached to the to the theater itself. So he bought that and put his installed his company, did all kinds of things to the theater. He's a fixer upper kind of guy and then decided, and meanwhile we had agreed to operate the theater part to rent the theater from him and to operate it as a nonprofit. So

AD: Friends of the Theater,

PM: Friends of the Theater. So we had worked with UCCA to get a season together. We had put together the movies, the movie season, we had worked with musicians about certain concerts, people had booked all kinds of things. We were getting ready to publish the brochure, had all the licenses for the theater, all the movie things, and all that when Tom decided that he had met a partner, John.

AD: Weiss,

PM: Weiss, who was up from Brooklyn and thought it would make a great kind of rock club, gentlemen's club kind of a venue. So they said UCCA’s out, you know, Friends of the Oneonta Theater, thank you ladies, we'll take it from here. So that was pretty hard to deal with, but we helped them then clean up the theater because there was a lot of ripping out of stuff and cleaning and that sort of thing, so the volunteers and a number of community members and students helped do the cleaning up in the theater.

AD: and Gary Wickham. was part of this effort,

PM: Gary was there. There were many people there,

GW: very minor part of that effort,

PM: but it was, it was

AD: who were some of your colleagues in those early days. Of the Friends

GW: Carol Halter was big, Carol Halter at that time. Rosalie Higgins was in it, Michelle Gardner, Janet Lampo. Mark Simonson was in the original group, I'm I'm sure I'm missing somebody.

AD: Good crew,

PM: Yes, so a number of people have been in and out, some have stayed with it. I got involved fairly early on and was immediately voted President, which I am ill-suited for, but I will, you know, I I have been that since well, we have, because it's important to have a nonprofit engaged in this activity. So our major thing through all of this, even through the ownership of a private owner, is there ought to be a nonprofit associated with it, because the only successful operation of such a thing is a nonprofit operation

AD: And good for fundraising
.
PM: So there are things that you can only access with a with a nonprofit. So like the study that you know that we were able to partner with because we're a nonprofit so you know it has been useful, but it has been tricky because you know Tom did things to the theater that preserved the theater. That's important, you know, cleaned out that wet basement. I was with them through day one to now to see how that thing has come along in terms of just how you take care of a building for whatever purpose and that one is in pretty decent shape. There's a little leak over the stage, but other than that, you know much better than it was, but we're at a crossroads again. So that's why when the DRI came along - the Downtown Revitalization Initiative - Bob Brzozowski and I had had discussed that we needed to have a study done about if we were to save the theater, what would that look like, and is it a good idea? So, having talked to all these different people who have done this in their own communities, we were able to work through the DRI, which was arduous to get to you know, a grant, so that we could do the study about the Oneonta Theater.

AD: Just a quick question is the theater part of the historic district of downtown I don't know whether.

Bob Brzozowzski: It's on the National Register

AD: National register. OK,

PM: it's on the National Register, OK.

BB: But I don’t believe it’s part of the downtown historic district contiguously.

PM: Yeah, but being on the National Register, the only protection that gives you is you can't tear it down with federal funds. That's the protection. So you could let it deteriorate to until you had to bulldoze it, you know, but those things happen all the time, but that's the kind of thing that… So anyway, to get back to it, Tom had run it, he ran it through, did some very interesting programming. And what was also exciting for me, is to watch somebody who worked entirely in a social media platform. Tom had very little. He didn't put ads in the paper, he didn't do all that stuff, he is right, he was running a digital operation in that building, which is the future. It's the present and the future, and he was doing that out of his hip pocket out of his phone. So what's interesting to me is to watch, as a person who has been involved in theater management my whole life, to watch this amateur put together a really interesting way to connect with his audiences and with the events and to book events and to do all of those sorts of things. It's a digital native who doesn't know a whole lot about running theaters, so that was very intriguing to me, to watch that because he got concerts there that I know many people in the community don't know happened there, but were really, you know, bringing in the crowds of young people, bringing in various groups there, there was some very interesting things going on.

AD: What was his partner John Weiss doing in and along the way?

PM: He was in and out pretty quick. Came in and then they, you know, it's out again. Tom's not a partner kind of person. Tom’s a, Tom’s a, Tom’s a 1 off. Kind of that.

GW: I wanna back up a little bit to 2008 when Terry decided to sell the theater. Those of us that spent a Lot of our youth here remember that there was a Palace Theater, which is where the Wilbur Bank is now, or Community Bank.

PM: That’s right the new bank.

GW: And of course the Showcase Theater, and of course and Harold built the upper the upper theater and at Chestnut St.

PM: Harold also ran the Palace Theater and the Oneonta Theater at the same time.

GW: In when the Southside Cinema opened, it became apparent that the little stadium theaters over there could operate a lot more efficiently than the size of the Oneonta Theater, and he may originally made the, initially made the decision, Terry did, uh to not do first run movies.

PM: No, what happened was. I I didn't explain well enough the significance of that lawsuit. That lawsuit that broke up all those theaters. The reason they broke up the Shine network, which had I think, over 400 theaters at some point, was that they had deals with the movie producers for exclusive first run. That's how that first run thing started, so they would get not only first runs, they'd get the stars to come out. They would get, you know, lavish kind of production deals that they were able to put together because they had 400 theaters. They were directly in touch with Paramount and all the various movie theaters, so when they were forced after a 17 year battle to divest themselves of all those theaters, what went with it is the ‘Here’s first run’ because there's no relationship. If you're going to sell these to individuals, you know that's that unintended consequences that they're dealing with now discussing Facebook and that sort of thing. They're saying when you have a monopoly that does something that everyone is so engaged in and they like it, you still have to break it up. And the monopoly of these movies theaters meant that only Shine. I mean, Harold Degraw worked for Shine for 20 years before the breakup of Shine made him buy the Oneonta Theater to save it from what happened to so many other theaters. And this had answered the question that I have had for years. Why did so many theaters decline after the 1960s? And everyone says, well, it's TV and I'm thinking it's not just TV, something happened, and it was the management system for that network of theaters just was broken up by law and there was nothing to replace it. So when Harold Degraw came in, he had 20 years of being inside the Shine system and he already was managing the Palace. The Palace was bought by Wilbur Bank. To to but the palace was only a movie theater, it was built in 1922 or something like that.

GW: right.

PM: So he he said Palace can go. I'm going to step in as, I think he was head of the Chamber of Commerce, stepped in and said I'm going to buy the Oneonta Theater. And there's drawings on that wall where the plans were to level the Oneonta Theater for a parking lot and build a 9 story building where well where Bassett is now. That building was originally designed to be 9 stories high with parking for as far as you could see around it and the Oneonta Theater was that, so he stepped in and said no, I'm buying this thing, you know, at the lowest point in movie making, moving, you know that whole thing. So he bought that, but he was also building - he had already designed and was ready to build - the Showcase Cinema. So he built, built, built them at the same time.

AD: Let me just say add one historical fact that I think I'm correct in remembering, that Sid Levine came to town to manage the Palace Theater.

PM: he did, he did.

AD: I can't tell you when it was.

PM: 1921 he was the first one,

AD: That that was before he became the major Domo.

PM: And he was succeeded by Harold Degraw.

AD: And Oneonta Sales

PM: that's right he went over to over to Oneonta Sales. And everybody that I've ever met seems like they've worked at the Oneonta Theater or at the Showcase. But I think it's one of those.

AD: Yeah, you sold popcorn didn’t you?

GW: I ate popcorn, I don’t remember actually selling it. But I did eat popcorn there.

PM: But it was a very interesting. He's right, he designed that theater. He had also run theaters he ran the Sidney Theater. You know, when he puts his his marquee up on the marquee, which, by the way, the city of Oneonta forced him to tear down the existing marquee and build that one at his own expense to comply with design standards. You know, the new modern, you know we're competing with the malls design standards so. But to get back to this, break up. If you have a movie theater in a mall, you now can have enough because you have all the room and you only need one operation. You can build as many little tiny theaters as you want. When that model came in it was on top of. They could not have done that until the Shine things were broken up. See what I mean?

AD: Was there another chain besides Shine that was doing this.

PM: There were chains all over, but Shine’s were the biggest most famous because of because of the, you know the notoriety of it, and it was also, what was cool is that what they bought early on was a little small town theaters. Yeah, because that was that was the network. They had some hundreds in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, I think a couple in Rhode Island. But they had tremendous clout with these,

AD: So you're saying that we would not have gotten the mark of Zorro? Had not

PM: exactly

AD: OK.

PM: You not only got the mark of Zorro, you might have had the guy who played Zorro come to town.

AD: Tyrone Power Coming to town? That's what I mean. Well, no, there's a couple of pictures where the star of a movie, and I'm always saying, why would they come to Oneonta? Because it's part of a circuit that they're on, just like vaudeville is a circuit movies are a circuit, so the breakup of the circuit and and this this decline of theaters happened across the country. So that break up and that kind of thing to me as a theater operator, I’m like theaters operate in a network environment, which is also now, there's a network environment. It's all that's built and it's humming along the network of theaters that this theater could plug into, that's what I mean, is that the the larger picture of what theaters are as conduits of culture is an is an interesting crossroads, but the question is whether you want to do it or not. So yeah, so that's where we are……

AD: So tell us more about the Friend's activity leading up to the DRI survey and and the whole survey thing if you care to tell us about that.

PM: Mostly it was trying to find the funding to have the survey done because in the time between Tom buying it and now or you know, probably four or five years, I decided that because I'd spent my whole life working in theaters, I didn't actually know how physical theaters work. How does that happen? Because I know that I, as a contractor, work for a theater or I work for a nonprofit, but how does the actual building get operated? So I went around and visited dozens of theaters that are operating now, and several of them, the first one, which is who I already knew was Philip Morris at in Schenectady, and he said I could talk to you, but you really should join the League of Historic American Theaters .

AD: Yeah, I think it's granted I think they still have the grant program by the way, I think

PM: Is it? He's a great mentor and a great friend, yeah, and um a great friend because he's friend to everybody, but he's in the in the system. He is a real connector of people, so I did join that. I did go to many, many conferences on my own, I'm just educating myself, taking myself to a conference. And they were housed in different cities, and they were usually meetings with the people who run the building, the local arts network, and the economic development team to discuss how are these theaters used as an economic development tool going forward? So that became very interesting because I never thought of theaters in their system as an economic development piece and to visit all these different places. And these the people who come to this conference run theaters in those communities: they're not academics, they run these things.

AD: Are these older theaters you've visited?

PM: Historic theaters.

AD: OK,

PM: Historic American theater, you're in.

AD: yeah, OK.

PM: So and they're fascinating, and there's tremendous support. So they also say first thing you gotta do is get your study done. And you really need the business plan study, you need you need your financial feasibility study, and you need to really an architectural study, engineering study to know what you're up against. So that was what the Friends had decided, we will go after that, because without that information, how can we even talk about it? So we're there.

AD: So then you approached Mayor Herzig, I believe.

PM: Yes, well, I have gone through 3/4 city managers, 2-3 mayors, 2 mayors and four city managers putting in a CFA grant from the city through to the Mohawk whatever, working, underwriting the grant and filling out all the stuff and giving it to them to say, let's do this! So I had been familiar with trying and align that it aligns with the city with the city's desire to move things forward, but it didn't get funded. So I thought, OK, let's try to fund it in a different way, because the DRI is all about planning, and I thought this is a very much a planning and what I like about, what I found interesting, is that what we asked them is don't plan for the the people we hired. First of all, top of the line, and they also say we're not here to tell you ‘Oh great, good job, do your theater’. We're here to tell you what you're up against, and what your environment looks like, and what the bigger environment looks like, you know, we're here to tell you what we see. And I said - so we tried to have foothills be partners in this study. When they refused it, I said then will you, will you allow us to include your and your operation in their environmental scan study so that we understand where the Oneonta Theater might fit in such a picture, and they agreed to do that. So that was the premise of the study and they were, and that what they did address was because we're such a small town, what’s your downtown kind of entertainment, you know. Meeting, civic center kind of a scenario?

AD: Who did you get to come and do the survey? You said that a couple people.

PM: This is a, Duncan Webb is a well known - the business planning of getting a theater up and running is a very specialized field - and he's top of that specialty field. He did Proctors, four projects with Proctors where they describe here's the pros and cons of doing this, this is what you're up against, this is what I'll you know there's there's all these things into it. So they were recommended by a number of people and they knew upstate New York, you know which is important. They're not from California or whatever, so. They did the business plan and we incorporated under that the architectural plan. So we asked the business planners, could you find us the best theater architects who deal in historic preservation, because they're in Manhattan. They're in New York. They will work around the world. Can you get us the best one to sub sublet a section of the study to be about the architecture of the building, not engineering, because that would be too much for us, but just the architecture, and while you're at it, address how it relates to the architecture of the other performing arts area, you know buildings in the area, so that became part of the project.

AD: What you're saying is. That this resembled other towns who have historic theaters theaters that need rejuvenation or redirection.

PM: Yeah. Historic American towns. And there's a lot of support for that, and there's a lot of evidence that it's working in many communities, so that's why I think that it it has it has legs as a as a an approach to a larger community development plan, and it's, you know, it's on a main stream thing. It kind of, it it meets a lot of standards for different grant programs, and that sort of thing.

AD: So what what did the folks that did the survey tell you?

PM: They said that they the business side said you have an interesting challenge in your town. Full of arts, full of people who want to do things, high preponderance of young people, but you have a lot of lower income people. Not a lot of, you know, the kind of depth of of the, the philanthropic infrastructure that might support this. That's something to look into, and it's infinitely better if you partner with another organization like Foothills and/or the colleges, the college because they say it just will make that much - you know it standalone is really hard. Anything is is easier to just, you know, work within a larger, you know, in a larger network, and particularly the Foothills idea is because you often want to have a sit down dinner and then a presentation. You know when you're doing a conference to have multiple spaces is to say, you know what we're going to do the the awards dinner is going to be over here and then we're going to go and we're going to go watch a blah blah blah. So you know the the the experience that you can give people to coming to your conference is magnified by having that many rooms under a conference operation and and they they layer on top of what a theater
standalone operation would be so it's more cost effective to run versus one -

AD: So this - I'll call it the smaller building - part of Foothills is used quite a bit as a Conference Center.

PM: Yeah, there's a lot of great spaces in there actually that - you know I'm not a knocker of foothills. I just see that, I can see that the direction of trying to make it a replacement for the Oneonta Theater is a is no go and that is what both of the consultant teams said, that's just a non-starter, you're never gonna get that with that. And you know even if you tore it down and started over again, this is certain thing in the particularly in acoustics that if a building has it from the 19th century, you want it. That's before electricity. If it's a good acoustic building and that's to me-

AD: That's what you get with the Oneonta Theater.

PM: Excellent acoustics, yes, so you know, and acoustics are really tricky for theaters to get right and modern buildings 9 times out of 10 the acoustics are not good. That's why when you're in a Broadway house, which are all built, actually after the Oneonta theater, but before 1945. That's the window of excellent acoustics in houses. Once you get to the 1960s and on, it's become very difficult. That's what I mean by the architect at Glimmerglass is a world-renowned architect of theater spaces, so he gets the space right and the acoustics right using minimal materials.

AD: But different materials, I take it, than if you're building just an auditorium that was not.

PM: All kinds of different, but it's the you know, where's the orchestra? What's the angle of the orchestra to the to the pit? What's the angle of the? You know, all those sorts of things about what makes a theater a theater. There's a deep lore about what works, and acoustics are particularly tricky, so the acoustics in this thing are excellent. The acoustics at Foothills are terrible, and you can throw all the money you want to it, it's not going to fix it. It's in the bones of the building, the acoustics. So that's my opinion, that's the architect's opinion, that's the you know, but there's there's quite a lot of activity in the world, for that doesn't make it not a theater. Because, you know the shed that just opened in New York City? Do you know about this building? There's a new building down at the end of the highline, and it's a multi-use space with, you know, multiple ways to use something. So, I would look at a flattened bettiol theater as a giant black box, which is a very exciting thing to have. As you know, our black box got heck of a lot of use up on campus

AD: up at the college.

PM: up at the college, It's constantly in use because it

AD: That can turn into a Shakespearean theater.

PM: You can turn it to anything you want. That's what I mean, is that Foothills with a flat floor, and maybe some dark walls, and some curtains, and some good lighting, that becomes a true asset. And that's not very expensive, so that's one of the recommendations that the architect said, said you don't have to spend a lot the the flat floor poor, and some you know paint, and. And you know just one of the great things you can do for acoustics if you're not worried about sharp acoustics, you want to deaden, is just put a lot of curtains up. So that kind of space would just have curtains galore, you know? So that's what I mean, but that's the the conference room concept, yeah.

Liz Morely : Is that what they were talking about? Black box where the theater part the big old…?
PM: Yeah. So imagine, this is just sort of an imagination cause, people who work in theaters, there's certain kinds of ways that the buildings function, and that kind of a flat floor space. I mean, now you walk into it, it's fast. It has the show, you're walking around like this little shallow thing with seats in a sea of white, which is also a no-no in theaters, it's just too white in there. But: it has a shallow rake, not deep enough to make really good sightlines, not, you know, it's nothing special and it's just a, It's just a weird environment. And it's stage space, there's no way, you know, I mean the stage, so it's a difficult space. And also there's no way to get from the house to backstage. That's a number one numero uno, you know this is amateur hour to me so, but.

LM: And what did so did they go back and tell foothills all these thoughts?

PM: Yes they did, but they have a plan that they've worked out with their board and with their supporters, and they're like, no, we we will will continue on our plan, but they did, they had a close meeting with our architects and planners with their board. Not me, not any of us, just them and the architects to tell them what they saw, because one of the things that I had made in the deal with the board of Foothills is to say, you will get as much information as we get and you'll get it directly. You'll get a copy of the thing, you'll get all the data and all the information that supports, you know, how to think about, you know, doing your events. I am going to give it all to you. And John Appechan said, then if you're going to give it to us, why should we partner with? And I said well, then there you go, you're gonna get, if you're going to.

LM: Say that again, what did he say?

PM: I shouldn't get repeat that because the idea being, why do we have to partner with you if we just gonna get this information? And I think why why not, whatever it's gonna be, you'll get the information as long as we have access to you know we have a free flow of information through this whole process, which I think we achieved. I think the process went off well, it was long but it worked.

AD: So so the the people who came in on the consultancy gave a path forward including a partnership with Foothills in some fashion.

PM: Yes, that was one of the suggestions that gave us a path forward and they also give you a five year projection of an operating plan with your unearned income target, and that was another consideration. They would say working, you know, after five years this thing is all working, here's what it what you pay people, here's how much you're going to take in. You need to make up $350,000 a year on top of that.

AD: Were they talking about opening up the theater again as a movie theater?

PM: Both. All of it, all of the same thing.

AD: OK then concerts, movies, things like that.

PM: All of it yeah,

AD: And they talk about maintaining the upper levels as they are now.

PM: No, they would talk about restoring it to a full theater. That's 1200 number is important in theaters.

AD: It's a number of seats right?

PM: Yeah, number of seats, yeah, you know, it's a, theaters are ranked by their number of seats. So, for instance, Woodridge Theater has 497 seats. You will never say 500 plus because royalties jump at 500 plus OK, so 498 you know.

BB: How many are there really?

PM: There can be 4 up to 502 with wheelchairs because I put in a lot of wheelchair seating, but I've never seen them full, so I just say you know, but but that's the kind of thing. So 1200 is one of those break even numbers and you know that's a that's a standard number and

AD: I think Foothills is about almost 700 or something like

PM: Something like that, OK, well yeah, so you know there's there's all kinds of interesting things, and so we're sort of at a digesting and thinking about standpoint here and trying to see what

AD: a work in progress so far,

PM: possibly

AD: yeah, Yep, but yes,

LM: I had another question,

AD: this is Liz Morley.

LM: I'm just curious because I know, I you know, I've been to the Proctor’s Theater in Schenectady. What kind of condition were they in?

PM: Ohh horrible

LM: were they being used for anything prior to when they were you know, upgraded you know, all redone?

PM: I know quite a bit of this because I met Phillip when he first got there and I called him up. I someone sent me a clipping from the Schenectady, Gazette or whatever about this new guy who came to town so I called him up because I'm a theater nerd and said show me the theater show me that theater, that old theater in Schenectady. So in the first month or so that he was there, I walked through that theater with him. What a dump, what a massive dump. I mean, huge water infiltration. The there's plaster work that was just crumbling, and it's massive! It has, like almost 3000 seats in that thing, it's so it's huge. But he and he told me then, he said: I was hired from - he had done a very successful job in the Adirondacks, I believe, of reviving a theater, a smaller theater in a in a rural community, so he had been called in. But he said it's so central to the downtown because of that walkthrough, you know that there's almost like a street that runs through alongside Proctors, and it has stores and things like that. He said when I got here, Phillips said, everybody was angry at everybody, everybody hated each other, you know, place is is just a wreck, but everyone felt like we need to do something to preserve this theater, because if it goes down, that's a massive hole in the center of your town. So he came in and what saved them was the this is where we're talking to the developers of the local. First of all, the the what I did learn at the league, is that you deal with your issue - your theater - regionally, not by city. Because your theater serves a region and your and and your county is more likely to be a place that you do your work because the city's always got the city things that are going on, but a theater lives in a county, lives in in a broader area. So when, oh, what's the name of that tax? What's the tene…? The Schenectady county.

AD: Probably economic development or something

PM: It is, but it has a special name, the name of this thing. They decided that economic development monies was available for a certain kind of economic development in in blighted areas and Philip went to them and said, I want some to develop this theater. And the guy who was, Ray, who was the they're the the head of that economic development thing said, I thought it was a real gamble, but I thought well, what the heck? Why not you know, if he fails, we'll just we'll give him a little money. But he said, now I'm totally sold because it created like a spark that then all this economic development happened around. So you know it it it it it was a county level 8th of a cent tax that was divided among economic development things and they gave them a grant, you know, for a certain number of years to say

AD: how long has he been there? I mean, how long is it taking him to?

PM: How long has he been there?

AD: Work a miracle

PM: Not as long as you'd think. Yeah, like 15 years, 12 years. Not only is he working a miracle, this is what I mean by it's Phillip, but it's also that network. Not many people know that the Palace Theater in Albany is also a Proctors theater. So is is another theater, is it Capital Rep? And they're just doing a new theater that opened this year in Schenectady, that old meetinghouse there's like a music, it's it's just like an old meetinghouse space that's been renovated but is now being run, being run by the Schenectady by the Proctors consortium.

GW: That’s the one down on Stockade?

PM: No it's right on Main Street. It's a, it's president, has a long name, something something Preservation Hall. But it was a building that needed to be preserved and then run as a venue, and they were operating that and now Capital Rep in Albany is getting a new building and they're managing that. They're moving down the street and building a new building and Proctors also runs that, so that's what I mean by there are consortiums you can lock into where you're run by, kind of like the Shines, run by you know, something that is larger than you and not local, but it has multiple theaters because that's really the only way that they're that they're run.

AD: So a couple of items of commonality. You have these historic theaters that have served a purpose in a certain way. And they need rejuvenation,

PM: right.

AD: And then that's also seen as part of economic development. Yep, you know, bringing the downtown back like like Bob Brzozowski’s done with the Historical Society, for example.

PM: Well, you know, activity. I Remember when I was working in Boston on a on the this task force around the combat zone: Does it get leveled or does it get restored? All these theaters 15 theaters in this neighborhood in downtown Boston in advance of the Big Dig. So there was going to be money, and as usual, there's enough money to tear it down, but there's no money to build, so you know, think about what you're going to do before you tear it down. So I was on a task force about these theaters and I remembered hearing from a Parking Commissioner and Safety in Boston and he said from our point of view, you can throw as much of police to on a street as you want, but nothing beats multi ages of people walking on the street until late at night. He said that patrols your streets for you, you know? People behave better when there's more people of different ages walking on that street. And I it always struck me because I thought: that foot traffic is one of the things that theaters bring, and even though they don't, you know, they're only partially funded by the events that are there, they're bringing foot traffic. So you go across the street for a beer, or you go have a wine, or you just, you know, you do something else in that town. So it's that kind of a thing the way that they think about it. But the question is whether we want to do it that way. I mean, it's an uphill battle, but I think it's a - I like the road map they laid out because it's very clear and they've had a lot of successes and they give you people to talk to, to say, you know, we want to look at a place where this partnership happened and they say, ‘oh, you should go to talk to so and so and such and such.’ So it's a very person to person network of people who have successfully done this in communities like ours.

AD: Thank you so much. We're not we're not done yet, but that gives us a whole bunch of.

PM: Yeah, it’s a lot to

AD: It's a work in progress, and who knows where it's gonna end? Let's talk about some memories. I know we have one gentleman in the audience, if you could just shout out your name and then talk about your memories.

KH: I will, my name is Kevin Herrick and I'm an Oneonta native and was employed by the Oneonta Theater,

AD: Oh, OK

KH: from 1977 through the early 1980s. Actually was was was discovered, so to speak, by Mrs. Harold DeGraw, known as Alice DeGraw. I was helping my mother at a garage sale that she was having and Alice who came to the sale, and I must have impressed her somehow because she said to me, would you like? Would you like a job young man? And I said, sure, what are you offering? And she said my husband owns the Oneonta Theater and I said, oh, that would be cool. I was a rising junior I think in high school she said, well, why don't you go down and talk to him? I'll call him and and let him know that you'll be there, and I said OK fine. Much like a lot of relationships, probably mine included, I think Alice was really the the the strength behind that behind that couple. Nice folks, nice folks. So Harold hired me and as a concessionaire and I worked there off and on all through my finishing my high school career here when I would come back to to town from college. But just a just a couple of anecdotal stories that I think might might you might find of interest. To go back to something Patrice was alluding to, when I started in 1977, I started after the summer of 77, so the summer of 78 was the first summer that that I was employed there. Of course, the big movie release of that year was a movie by the name of Grease, OK, major blockbuster movie. Well, as it turns out, I think Harold DeGraw probably called in some of the dibs that he had with with the distribution companies, because he had, along with several other well, dozens of other theaters in the country. He had the world premiere for the movie Grease here at the Oneonta Theater.

PM: Mhm, that’s consortium.

KH: Now this was you didn't realize this was back before DVD's, this is before all of this mass media. The movies were movies were a big thing on Saturday nights in Oneonta, and to get a world premiere for such a hyped movie as Grease was really something. He suggested that we all that that the crew that was working that night arrived probably an hour, an hour and a half earlier than our normal time to start popping popcorn and preparations. So sure enough, if, I believe that the the first show is scheduled for 7:00 o'clock that we arrived around 4:30. There were already people lining up for the movie and the line actually stretched before we open the doors all the way up Chestnut St past the what was then the the.

PM: Gas station

KH: of the church the

PM: Christian Science church

KH: Christian Science church all the way up to what was called then the red apple convenience store and downs Watkins Ave that I mean it was a huge huge

PM: Wow that’s a lot

AD: who who was

KH: I Was getting petrified? I mean, you're a lot of folks that were gonna have to deal with

AD: Who was in Grease who are the actors in that?

KH: I’m sorry?

AD: Who was in Grease? I can't remember

KH: Olivia Newton John and John Travolta. OK. And ShaNaNa, who was the crooner there? The 50s crooner? Because the poster is actually over there. Ohh he sang, he sang Beauty School Dropout

LM: …. Frankie Avalon.

KH: Frankie, Frankie, Frankie Avalon. But we got through it and and and it was sold out, I believe we did turn people away. That was when the balcony the original balcony was still in operation and we filled the balcony as well. What was interesting about Grease is it ran for many many weeks. If memory serves me right, it might have been 13 or 14 weeks that Harold actually kept that movie going and people would wonder why, you know, why keep the same movie for so long? Well I found out: for the first several weeks, Harold made not a cent from the production company for that movie. The entire money that he would make would be concession sales and then as the weeks progressed he would begin getting a percentage of the gate. And they would actually send a representative of the distribution company to watch over the box office to make sure that there wasn't any shenanigans going on, and that if there were 500 people there at $2.00 a ticket that there'd be $1000 in the box, and that's what the check would be that Harold would have to write out for that show. But as the weeks went on and obviously the the population, the numbers, would decrease a little bit. Then Harold's cut would would increase, which is why you kept it for 13 to 14 weeks. By the 14th week it was probably making 75% of the box office in addition to his concession sales. But if I remember correctly, concession sales those first couple of weeks would be nearly $1000 and this was in 1978. That was real money, real money.

AD: How much were the theater tickets in those days?

KH: Good question. Priscilla Welch was the was the cashier long standing, she was in the trust department at the local bank for years. Priscilla, nice, nice lady. I honestly think it was 2 or 2.50 something like that. I was making $1.90 an hour when I started, remember that. People were outraged at the prices of candy, I think at the big box of dots might have been $0.50.

AD: Well tell me about the price of popcorn that that's the

KH: Well, the cheapest you could buy a box of popcorn for quarter the little the little 8 by …..

AD: those days are gone forever.

KH: But if you want butter on it, that would be extra and it wasn’t butter it was some sort of a horrible greasy thing and poured out of a plastic container. Yeah yeah,

GW: That’s a $10 box today.

KH: but it was, it was not I think $1.50 might have been the most expensive concession option, and boy did he Harold was a stickler for details. There's no doubt about that. I mean that concession would shine at the end of the night, and if it didn't, you'd hear about it. And I remember being reprimanded a few times over my career if the if the windows of the of the pop the glass popcorn machine weren't completely streak free, you'd have, he'd have a comment to say about that. ‘You in a bit of a hurry. Last night, weren't you?’ And I said, yes, Sir, I'll do better next time. So you're going,

PM: How was he to work for?

KH: I'm sorry.

PM: How was he to work for?

KH: Harold was a Taskmaster, there's no doubt about that. But now that I own my own business, I I find myself probably being a similar kind of boss that he was. And I mean, if you want to run a successful business, you want to be hands on, you want to know the intricacies, and and and sweat the details. And he certainly did that, there's no question about that.

AD: What was your impression of the Shine Corporation now we're saying,

KH: Well, he was not. This was this was an after

PM: This wasn’t Shine, this was post Shine years

KH: the Shine years

AD: Right. Excuse me,

KH: He was no longer but I think he still

AD: trained by Shine

KH: Still held reputation in the movie industry, and because of that he was able to to pull these to pull these chips in to get and to get first run movies. And Grease wasn't the only one he would get. He would get really good movies here in little Oneonta which I mean, I'm sure other towns similar size, Geneva, Ithaca, Auburn, you know, would would die for the movies that we were getting first run. And then, because and the distribution wasn't nearly as much then as it was later on. Got to think back now movies, the movies, came in 20 minute reels they would be delivered by a by a courier and if you had a 2 hour movie, that would be 12, 12, 20 - 46 reels, and they're heavy! They were probably about that big. They would have to be spliced together, usually in 40 minute reels, sometimes 60 minute reels and they would be spliced together. That was usually Terry's job ,Terry was working for him who was working with me at the time, although I learned to do that later, and and they would be spliced together. If you were if you ever watched an old-time movie at the theater, you would see a little indication in the lower right hand corner of the film would be a little a little flash, or a little a little circle, which would be the splice marker, which would mean that 10, 10 seconds later you would need to splice those two 20, 20 minute reels together. That's how the the person that that was putting the film together would know how to splice the movie, and the splicing is like a, it was almost a surgical procedure using tape and a

AD: razor blade

KH: little cutting tools.

PM: Razor blade, I did that…

KH: Very pretty interesting to watch. But the movies would come in these reels later on and and and that that technology changed, that leads us to something that Gary was talking about when the Southside Cinema opened, the technology had changed, and they were using then a platter system where you could actually run the entire movie. You splice the movie to entirely together on a platter and all the the the the movie projectionist would have to do would be to push a button and it would it would completely run the entire movie. Here, you since you were running this on two different projectors, upstairs in the projection booth you would have to be up there to make sure that the changeover went smoothly. Sometimes it didn't! Make sure that the between the projectors would run smoothly. And you also mentioned the Sidney Theater where I worked a few times. The Sidney Theater at that time still had what they call carbon arc projectors that you had to actually ignite.

PM: Did you?

KH: Mhm

PM: I have done that, that’s very dramatic.

KH: It was very dramatic and and scared the crap out of me.

AD: Yeah, sounds like Cinema Paradiso.

KH: We actually found some of the old carbon rods in this theater when we were exploring it.

PM: I used carbon rods at SUCO

GW: Speaking of, speaking of your your your days working for Harold was that your first opportunity to really go through the theater and see the things that normally people didn't see? Talk a little bit about that.

KH: That was neat going back into the dressing rooms. Yeah, some of the doors still had stars on them so there were still vanities and makeup mirrors and things in some of the rooms. Actually, I think if memory serves me that we're still old powder, you know, powder jars and things like that on some of the vanities and things back from the back from the days when when it was a natural theater, a legitimate the stage theater. There was a third balcony, which not a lot of people know about, over the second balcony there was this a third balcony, which went by a very, at that by a very derogatory name, which I won't, which I won't mention, but I think Gary knows what I'm talking about.

AD: How would Gary know that?

KH: Oh, Gary knows stuff

GW: We, Kevin and I go back a way,

KH: But it was just it was just literally, think of a think of a very traditional New England church, was a basic wooden church pew with straight back and and there might have been 10, maybe 8 or 10 rows of these of these just wooden.

GW: They were steep and

KH: very steep, extremely steep.

LM: That wasn’t always open was it?

KH: Hmm?

LM: The 3rd balcony wasn’t always open

KH: Was never open,

GW: Was never opened, no well we've been there,

KH: But you have to go up through the 3rd balcony to get to the projection room which was located behind the third,

AD: Did you have newsreels ahead of the main feature, like they used to have

KH: I’m sorry, what?

AD: newsreels? Probably not

KH: no, no. not in the 70’s

AD: previews, probably.

KH: It would be it would be previews

PM: Previews, Trailers

KH: I don't even think there were cartoons. There might have been a cartoon

GW: every now and then there was a cartoon

KH: A short what they, what they call a short before the feature

GW: I do remember doing those reels there, path 8…

KH: I'm sure there were, but I don't think in the 70s, I think that had gone that had gone the way.

AD: Was there another movie, you know, presentation that you remember there was as big as as Grease?

KH: Other movies that,

AD: Well that got as much crowds.

KH: I mean, Grease was just such a such a major powerhouse.

LM: There was, I remember my son my son,

PM: there’s Star Wars that people were camping in,

LM: he was in the setting for Star Wars

PM: that was after you were gone

LM: and he ended up sitting right on my lap because they were out of seats and

GW: I actually remember blazing saddles. Huge draw.

AD: Titanic was big in the 90s I think.

KH: Yeah that was after my time, actually, Harold, also during the 70s and 80s had what they, what he called a night owl feature. Remember the night owl?

GW: I do remember that

KH: and actually showed some rather racey movies

GW: 200 motels by Frank Zappa.

KH: Yes, but that was a little embarrassing because here I was an 18/19 year old kid and I believe some of the movies were actually rated X.

PM: That was very typical of the period.

KH: Yeah,

PM: He had his finger right on the pulse,

KH: So legally I couldn't go to the movie yet, I was the projectionist for it working. I think I must have been 18. I'm sure he wouldn’t have allowed me to be under 18 to do it, but I think at that point you might need it to be 21, I think you had to be 21 to. You were talking about the second balcony and we only usually opened it, like I said, when there were huge crowd., There was one exception that we had to make, remembering that at this time the United States senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan lived on Pindars Corners. Well, Senator Moynihan and his family would often come to the movies on a Saturday night after after going out to dinner when he was home, and I remember this several times he would come up to me if I was if I was the assistant manager, if I was doing the taking the tickets or whatever he would, he would always speak to me. He was great Irish man, but he spoke a little bit of a stammer and he would say ,now you, you youn young young man, I said yes Sir. He says, do do do you know who I am? Yes, Senator Moynihan, I know who you are. I think I think for security reasons, I think it would be best if my party sat in the balcony for tonight. I said that's fine, senator, if you'd like to do that, I'll escort you up to the balcony. So, whenever the senator Moynihan would come to the theater,

PM: That’s where he liked to watch from

KH: he requested that the private balcony.

PM: Front of the balcony

AD: He was pretty tall too.

KH: Eh it maybe that too, but I I think he just enjoyed, enjoyed the the little the little

GW: Privacy

KH: chance of being in the balcony and and showing off a little bit but but that was an interesting story so. Nice man.

GW: And they built the upper theater while you were still there. The the the second, the theater in the balc, the theater in the balcony.

KH: I was there during that conversion, yeah.

GW: And that was I remember seeing the features upstairs was, it gave them the opportunity - of course, again there was limited movie theater availability in Oneonta back then,

KH: right.

GW: So if you had something in the Palace or the Showcase, whatever period of time it was and and something upstairs and downstairs, you had three different movies you could run in Oneonta

KH: That’s right

GW: Different than today with the.

PM: Well, that’s the multiplex. The made a multiplex.

KH: Oh yeah, yeah, the upstairs theater did use the platter system. That was the first time that we introduced that system and the Showcase never transition to that. It was still the the two projector system at the Showcase. The DeGraws lived at the in the Showcase Theater and they had their apartment in the back of that building, so that was that's what they decided.

LM: Yeah they lived here on Deitz St. too, they had that, he did that all over that em, second hand stores that closed.

BB: Silk and Treasures

LM: No not Silks and Treasures, right here on Deitz St, that's right where the wine, you know the wine… The

PM: Yeah, what was there? …

LM: Yeah that they lived upstairs there, they did that whole, I don't know if he owned that section, I think he actually owned that section on Deitz St. and they lived there.

PM: That’s interesting.

LM: He did that all over upstairs. But in and when I was growing up in the 50s, I mean they had all kinds of children’s movies and remember going on Saturdays you know for

AD: Saturday afternoon matinee.

LM: Yeah, they were, you know, when I was one of 10 kids. I mean maybe at a time because, well, they were much younger than me five or six of us going together. My mother used to send us there with our own brown paper bag of popcorn because I mean now,

AD: Because those matinees were usually double features, as I recall, least in my day they were.

LM: I can’t quite remember what I saw,

AD: That's when they when they had the carbon heart

LM: There were cartoons before the main feature

PM: Were there chaperones?

LM: For us, I mean, we were like there

PM: But there was no like person walking around, making making you take your feet
off the cat.

LM: Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah there was.

GW: The usher, yeah, yeah.

PM: Ushers, yeah

LM: Yeah, can’t have your feet on the -

GW: Smoking smoking was a big no-no.

PM: No smoking.

AD: Bah

KH: I'd like to briefly talk about the relationship of the Great Oneonta Historical Society and the theater.

AD: Absolutely.

KH: When Terry Madison owned the theater, GOHS had several fundraisers there to raise money to help him keep the field. And then after after Terry sold it, I remember Angie Nielsen, who passed away earlier this year, she was really keen on the idea of bringing back the family movies and matinee old old classics. We can never work out something with with Tom Cormier to do that, but when the theater, when when Tom closed the theater GOHS began hosting meetings here on a regular basis, pretty much a monthly basis of some of the people from Friends of the Oneonta Theater, other interested people in the community, and city officials to see what could be done to save it, and that, as Patrice has explained, where, that one of the things that came out of that was the the need for this business plan feasibility study. So it's fairly unusual for GOHS to take a position on something outside of our walls, but they did. The board of trustees supported allowing GOHS to be the lead agency in working with …. to make this application for the the feasibility study and the business plan. And most of those meetings that weren't held on site, I guess all the meetings that weren't held at different different performance sites around the city were held here at the at the History Center and the the results of the study are on our website and we try to keep people informed of how things are progressing with updates on on the website and through the newsletter etcetera. So, just my, I , when I came to Oneonta from Milwaukee, ’96, I was part of an organization in Milwaukee that did never took any position on preservation. He was just strictly- historic Milwaukee meant kind of, showcasing different neighborhoods, etcetera, but not you know, something was in danger of being torn down or whatever. They didn't want to get into. …. with political fights, but as you were saying earlier, Alan that historic preservation is part of economic development and as an organization, we need to take those kinds of stands I think. And there's a possibility it might turn off some people who say well, I think there’s greater economic development potential by having that parking lot or having a new building. But I think time and time again, I think Patrice has have shown so many examples of historic preservation as is a major part of the economic development.

AD: This may be a good point to take our conversation and say goodbye, but let's hope that someday down the road when the theater has a grand reopening or something like that, we'll be there with our recorders and we'll let you usher again, Kevin, if you want and Gary, you can remember things on the 3rd balcony or whatever and

GW: Probably better we stay out of that.

AD: Anyway, thank you so much. It's been a wonder and Patrice thank you was special and Kevin that was great. Thank you so much.

KH: Thank you.

AD: A great part of our archive. OK,

PM: Thank you.

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