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http://gotriad.news-record.com/content/2012/10/24/article/documentary_focuses_on_carolina_theatre

Documentary focuses on Carolina Theatre

Independent filmmaker Paula Damasceno produced a short film on the Carolina Theatre called “Carolina 85.”
Credit: H. Scott Hoffmann/News & Record

WANT TO GO?

What: “Carolina 85” screening and 85th anniversary celebration of the Carolina Theatre
When: 7 p.m. Oct. 29. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Where: Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro
Admission: Free. Refreshments will be provided.
Info: www.carolinatheatre.com
More: Watch a preview at thecarolina85doc.blogspot.com

Thursday, October 25 (updated 2:23 pm)

By bruce buchanan

GREENSBORO — In 2012, the Carolina Theatre is a vibrant cornerstone of a growing downtown Greensboro. In any given week, the grand old movie house on Greene Street will host concerts, live theater, film festivals, beauty pageants, even wedding receptions and high school graduations.

During its 85-year history, the theater has endured major changes, historical milestones and dramatic turning points, both joyful and sometimes painful.

The theater served as an inspiration during the Great Depression, endured and overcame segregation and survived a downtown downturn that left the theater in peril of disappearing until ultimately it surfaced as a vibrant performing arts center.

Brazilian filmmaker Paula Damasceno has captured the 85-year history of the Carolina Theatre in “Carolina 85,” a 30-minute documentary that will premiere on Monday at the theater. The free screening is presented in partnership with Elsewhere and the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. The North Carolina Humanities Council contributed a grant.

Discovering a historic gem

Paula Damasceno, an independent documentary filmmaker, came to Greensboro in May as an artist in residence with Elsewhere, an artist collective and museum in downtown Greensboro. Initially, she was interested in doing a film on historic movie theaters, but she found the story she wanted to tell in the Carolina Theatre.

In recent months, the team of Damasceno and local artists and filmmakers Graham Holt , Ben Boyles and Christopher Martin have conducted and filmed interviews, poured over hundreds of old photographs and combed archived news footage to create “Carolina 85.”

One discovery led to a half-dozen more, which made the research even more compelling, Damasceno said.

“One of the most beautiful parts of making a documentary is that things find you,” she said.

The early years

The Carolina Theatre opened in 1927 with no small amount of fanfare. Dubbed “The Showplace of the Carolinas,” its ornate interior molding, massive crystal chandelier and multiple tiers of seating made it one of the finest movie houses in the Southeast. The theater housed both movies, often accompanied by a live orchestra, and live vaudeville shows.

The theater often ran five shows a day, filling the 2,200 seats (roughly double the present capacity).

“The Carolina Theatre really flourished during those early days, said Betty Cone, perhaps the theater’s most passionate advocate.

“The people who built it realized they were in the business of making memories. It took your mind off your cares and worries.”

Carolina Theatre President Keith Holliday says Greensboro is fortunate that the theater was built in 1927 during the silent film/vaudeville era, which required a full-size stage with dressing rooms. But once “talkies” came along in 1929, theaters were built to show movies only.

“If it had been built two years later, we couldn’t do all of our performing arts here,” Holliday said.

The Carolina Theatre remained a popular destination for moviegoers throughout the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. Cone says that her mother recalls seeing “The Wizard of Oz” at the Carolina Theatre during its initial theatrical run.

A segregated theater

Segregation at movie theaters during the Civil Rights movement was common throughout the South, including the Carolina Theatre. For the first four decades of the theater’s existence, black patrons were forced to sit in the upper third balcony. Segregation also extended to entrances, concession stands and restrooms. Even some of the vaudeville shows during that time portrayed racial stereotypes.

“The social situation outside of the Carolina was reflected inside the Carolina,” said Damasceno, whose film touches on the topic.

The success of the Greensboro sit-in at Woolworth’s prompted changes throughout downtown. A movement, which included Jesse Jackson, then a student at N.C. A&T, worked to desegregate other downtown establishments. In the face of public pressure, the Carolina Theatre officially desegregated in 1963, a year before federal law ended Jim Crow.

Hard times, new hope

By the early 1970s, the Carolina Theatre looked and felt its age. “It was old and dirty, but it had good bones,” Cone said.

It also had stopped showing first-run films. Instead, it picked up movies on the cheap — films that already had been shown in theaters or low-budget offerings with limited appeal.

“There were a lot of kung fu movies here back then,” Cone said.

Downtown Greensboro itself was struggling. Cone said that as in many other cities, retail was moving out of the downtown area to shopping centers. There was a perception that the downtown streets weren’t the safest place to be at night.

By 1973, Greensboro leaders launched a comprehensive plan to tackle some of the city’s biggest challenges. One of those tasks was to address the need for performing arts space. That’s where Betty Cone’s four-decade involvement with the Carolina Theatre began.

Cone was president of the board of the United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro, which had been tasked with addressing the arts portion of the community plan. Cone and her team realized that the decaying theater could be the answer to Greensboro’s need for a performing arts space. They spent the next couple of years raising money to buy the property from Jefferson Standard, which owned the building, and the fixtures from ABC Southeastern, which operated it as a movie theater.

At one point, ABC Southeastern shut down operations and a pornographic movie distributor was interesting in taking over the lease. Cone quickly rounded up enough money to assume the lease instead, and her team eventually raised $550,000 to buy and renovate the theater.

“There was a huge sentimental feeling for the Carolina Theatre,” Cone said. She noted that many local residents at the time still remembered the National Theatre, another vaudeville-era movie palace on Elm Street that once hosted Elvis. But the National was torn down in the late ’60s and Cone said that local residents didn’t want the Carolina to suffer the same fate.

Cone and other volunteers completed much of the cleaning work themselves. Retirees, arts patrons, students, even jail prisoners working off some community service came in to assist with the clean-up.

“Everywhere we turned, we had help,” she said. “That’s how we stretched our dollars.”

Today, the Carolina Theatre is open more than 240 days a year with nearly 90,000 patrons visiting annually, providing both a valuable center for performing arts and a link to Greensboro’s past.

“Paula wanted to know why we saved it,” Cone said. “Because we needed to.”

Contact Bruce Buchanan at brucebuc@bellsouth.net

• • •

Carolina Theatre through the years

1927: Halloween Night marks the opening of the 2,200-seat vaudeville theatre. Part of the Keith Vaudeville chain, early programs feature live performing acts, the Carolina Theatre Orchestra, the Carolina News Newsreel, an audience sing-along and silent films accompanied by the Robert Morgan theatre pipe organ. It is the most monumental structure of its type ever built in Greensboro.

1928: Vitaphone sound speakers are installed and the Carolina Theatre transitions to a premiere movie theatre.

1952: Circle K Club begins weekly Saturday entertainment for local children. Generations of Greensboro residents grow up attending the theatre every week until 1965.

1963: The theater ends practice of segregated seating.

1970: Downtown Greensboro and the Carolina Theatre begin to decline as suburban retail businesses and small movie theaters attract citizens away from city activity.

1976: The United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro, with community support, raises $550,000 to save the fading theater from demolition.

1977: The United Arts Council purchases the Carolina Theatre and begins renovation.

1978: Theater reopens as a community performing arts center.

1980: The Carolina Theatre presents “A Christmas Carol,” produced by the N.C. Shakespeare Festival.

1981: The Carolina Theatre closes for repairs and restoration following a major fire.

1982: The refurbished Carolina Theatre reopens in September with a performance by Ben Vereen.

1983: A new sound system is installed .

1984: The Carolina Theatre receives its first allocation from the Arts Fund as a newly funded member of the United Arts Council. Carolina SRO, a support group for the Carolina Theatre, is organized with funding from NCNB.

1985: A historical architectural study is commissioned for the Carolina Theatre. Theatre Consultants Inc. is hired to develop renovation plans.

1987: The United Arts Council launches the Renaissance Campaign, a $5 million capital fundraising campaign, to help expand and renovate the Greensboro Arts Center and restore the Carolina Theatre to its original grandeur.

1988-1989: Renovation and expansion of the Carolina Theatre begins.

1990: The Carolina Theatre’s renovation is completed with $3 million in capital improvements and becomes available for receptions, meetings and performing arts events.

1991: The theater reopens in January with refurbished dressing rooms, new sound and light equipment, a large second-floor banquet room (The Renaissance Room), new restrooms, modern concessions and office space. Larger seats and a new sound booth bring seating capacity to 1,075.

1993: The Carolina Theatre installs a new marquee.

1994: Restoration begins on the Carolina Theatre’s historic Robert Morton pipe organ.

1999: The Robert Morton pipe organ restoration is completed as a volunteer project of the Piedmont Theatre Organ Society.

2003: The United Arts Council initiates transition of the Carolina Theatre to operate independently. Carolina Theatre Building, LLC, is created as sole owner of the theatre building. Carolina Theatre of Greensboro Inc. is created as a new entity to govern the theater.

2006: The United Arts Council passes the deed to Carolina Theatre of Greensboro, granting its independence, on March 1, 2006.

2007: The Carolina Theatre begins its 80th Season.

2008: The historic Carolina Theatre names Keith Holliday, former Greensboro mayor and longtime Carolina Theatre supporter, president and CEO on April 2, 2008.

— Timelone courtesy of The Carolina Theatre