An Encore for Old Movie Houses

by Alan Ross

The marquee on the old movie theater grimly clung to the words Outrageous Fortune. Some of the letters dangled, hanging by a thread, ready to complete the fall into oblivion, much like the structure itself. The once-proud National Theater in Graham, Texas, a town of 8,716, was wrapping up a show—a 68-year run—its glorious past poetically slipping like movie film one last time through projector sprockets onto a take-up reel. Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap.

That was in 1988. Little did anyone know at the time, but some local champions were riding to the rescue.

What David and Pam Scott have done since then to restore the National to its former regal self is a story of dreams, grit, exhaustion, patience, and… outrageous fortune.

“That was the last picture that played here before the theater closed down,” recalls Pam Scott of the movie starring Bette Midler and Shelley Long. The Scotts still shake their heads at the serendipity of it all; at their own outrageous fortune that connected them with the theater purchase in 1989.

But it wasn’t all box-office hits, popcorn, and Milk Duds at the outset. The old National never even had a concession stand, and film companies shied away from offering first-run blockbusters, knowing the state of neglect and disrepair the theater had been in prior to the Scotts’ acquisition. Obstacles lay before them like a minefield.

A porous ceiling allowed water to collect on the floor and ruin the seats. The burlap-covered walls had to be torn down, a task handled by the Scotts. Muriatic acid was required to clean decades of chewing gum from the floor. Because of the enormity of work that lay ahead, much of it needing to fit historic preservation guidelines, no contractor would touch the project—so they oversaw the work themselves.

Of even greater potential peril, the Scotts were divided in their opinion on how to proceed. “I wanted to gut it,” David remembers, “but my wife is a historian. She’s got that nostalgic tear in her eye.”

They decided to find mentors in the business and located one in Ed Alcorn, who had been a force in helping restore the Majestic Theater in Eastland, Texas.

“We walked into the Majestic, and it was like we could see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Pam says. “We could see what we could do with our own restoration. That was the turning point.”

Still, seven arduous months of backbreaking renovation lay ahead for the couple before the National would glow again on the night of Nov. 16, 1990—the third grand opening in its history.

One of a kind

Back in September 1940, 20 years after it originally opened, a fire brought down the National, leaving only a skeletal shell and a few metal seat frames. But irrepressible founder/owner M.W. “Pic” (for “picture show”) Lamour rebuilt the theater, gaining encouragement from luminaries the likes of actress Rita Hayworth and others, who sent telegrams of support from Hollywood. The theater was redesigned in the moderne/art deco style and reopened in early 1941. In its heyday, from the 1920s through the 1940s, when movie houses were the reigning royalty of family entertainment, Graham reverberated with the hum of growing commerce. It wasn’t unusual, claims Pam, for airplanes to be parked outside the theater for big events back then, or for the town’s huge downtown square to overflow with motor vehicles parked back-to-back and side-to-side for up to half a mile away.

One who remembers that era is Jim Lamour, Pic’s son, now 74, who was on his father’s payroll at the National for 48 years, beginning in 1940. Jim did everything over the years, from janitor work to relief operator to projectionist, beginning at age 14. “Probably just got in my dad’s way,” he quips about his early days.

Movies make lasting impressions, and Lamour easily recalls parts of the first picture he ever saw at the National (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, with Will Rogers in 1931). “And I’m not sure that I remember The Jazz Singer, but I think I do,” he adds.

Fun abounded at the old theater back then. Young moviegoers added their own brand of entertainment, rolling empty Coke bottles down the slightly graded theater floor, sometimes clanking off the metal seat-row frames all the way down to the front. Organized games such as Showball, a Bingo-like invention by Pic Lamour, and drawings for prizes also helped create “a one-of-a-kind social event,” Pam says.

‘This is the time to preserve them’

But television began to enter American homes at the outset of the 1950s, and the long run of bright lights for movie theaters began its slow, downhill fade toward the dismal neglect of the 1970s and early ’80s—a time when the National and its fellow movie-palace brethren were starting to crumble and close. Then came the restoration resurgence of the late 1980s and ’90s, led by people like the Scotts, in towns all over America.

“This is the time to preserve them,” says Ross Melnick, founder of Cinema Treasures, a website (www.cinematreasures.org) dedicated to posting and receiving information on old movie palaces. “But restoring a theater is a lot bigger job than many people think.” A fact not lost on the Scotts.

“It has to be a Ma and Pa thing to make it work,” insists David, a full-time dentist whose livelihood, in addition to several loans, supports the couple’s theater venture. “It’s quite a financial burden, but it’s become part of us. We probably make money three to four months out of the year and lose the rest of the year.”

In Graham and towns like it, massive theater chains are formidable competition to the independent theater owner with an eye toward restoration.

“Both private citizens and public officials have to take an active role in making sure that the place you grew up in, the place you want it to be, doesn’t become one giant shopping center,” Melnick notes. “Historic movie theater preservation is ground zero for that kind of support on a local level.”

Indeed. Only recently, the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed old movie theaters as the No. 1 most-endangered building among existing historic architecture in America. “AMC is a good example of a theater chain that respects the history of movie theaters,” continues Melnick. “They moved the old Empire (in New York City) down the street and it became the lobby of their new 25-screen multiplex, with beautifully restored murals and the outer façade left largely intact. There is a way we can all work to save the past.”

In some instances, cities themselves are buying up the old palaces. Lapeer, Mich., (The Pix Theater) and Duluth, Minn., (Norshor Theater) are among those restoring the luster to their once-grand movie houses, turning them into multipurpose venues that serve as a focal point for local arts and community activities.

Even the Scotts, in an effort to make their undertaking commercially viable, added a second and third theater to the National. “We realized early on we had to build that second theater as soon as we could,” remarks David, who quickly learned that first-run films in a small town run out of viewers long before the film’s two-to-four-week contract is fulfilled.

Yet, because of the Scotts’ labor of love, which in 1993 earned the National Theater a place on the National Register of Historic Places, Graham residents no longer must trek the 60 miles to Wichita Falls to catch a movie.

And the town’s downtown square is alive with thriving business once again, also a credit to the couple’s resurrection of the National and their subsequent diversification into a handful of businesses bordering the theater.

Still, it’s not uncommon that Graham’s outrageous fortune hunters turn to a most familiar diversion when time and recreational travel permit. “For the longest time,” laughs Pam, “we would visit other theaters.”

Alan Ross is West region editor for American Profile.

first appeared: 9/23/2001