March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Back to the future> Pittsfield theater rebounds to profitability by showing movies for the whole family

It’s ironic that what almost wiped out the Pittsfield Community Theater in 1975 — the glitzy, modern, multiple-movie cinemas in the cities — is exactly what has saved it.

If you drove to Augusta to see “Twister” this summer, you paid at least $7. It was only $3 in Pittsfield.

And popcorn is still less than a buck.

Unable to compete and nearly put out of business when the big cinemas exploded in Waterville, Bangor and Augusta, the Pittsfield Community Theater now packs the house. Patrons can watch first-run movies for just 50 cents more than they can rent a video.

The Pittsfield Community Theater, called the Bijou back in 1975, is a curiosity — it is the only town-owned, taxpayer-backed theater in the state and likely the nation.

For years, the theater ran in the red, with taxpayers picking up a few thousand dollars in costs each year. But in the past decade (despite home videos), the mystique and lure of the big screen has brought back the crowds. At a recent children’s movie showing, the admission line stretched the length of Main Street and a second week of showings had to be scheduled.

Today the theater not only doesn’t take from the tax coffers, it turns a profit for Pittsfield. In 1995, the theater brought in $78,000.

What’s the secret? Family movies.

The story of this little theater and how it was saved is best told by Glenn Wheaton, who sold the movie house more than 20 years ago to save not only the theater’s life, but also the way of life in Pittsfield.

Wheaton, a thin, bent man with heavy glasses and a quick smile, doesn’t look like Hollywood’s version of a hero. But he is. He considered virtue more important than a buck, morals above profits. And in the process of trying to save his theater’s soul, he saved its life.

Weaned in the glow of the silver screen, Wheaton got his first job at the Millinocket Theater on June 24, 1940 at the tender age of 11.

“I passed out handbills to get free admission,” he says. He even remembers the movie: “The House of Seven Gables” with Vincent Price.

He says he got “my start up the theater ladder” when he was promoted to closing the door behind people, and then quickly moved up to folding the popcorn boxes. Eventually, Wheaton became theater manager.

“It wasn’t a living for me. It was my way of life,” says Wheaton.

When the Millinocket theater closed in 1962, Wheaton came to Pittsfield and bought the Bijou on Main Street. It had been built in 1915, one of two theaters in town.

He loved it. From working the ancient, huge projector to sweeping up popcorn after a matinee, Wheaton was in heaven when he was inside that movie house.

“Doesn’t everyone remember the excitement and joy of attending their first Saturday matinee, of being allowed to go to the evening shows as they got older, and finally taking their own children to the Disney movies they saw as youngsters?” he says. “It was where you had your first experience of being on your own, your first date, often your first kiss.”

But less than 20 years later, the future of the theater was in jeopardy. Wheaton began fighting for wholesome films in the late-1960s, when Bangor and Waterville theaters, as well as a local drive-in, switched to X-rated movies. Companies distributing X-rated products pressed Wheaton to do the same.

“I didn’t want to,” he recalls. “Everyone in life likes to feel that they’re doing something to better their fellow man. I wanted to feel that I was doing something good for the town. I wanted to run a decent theater where people could come in for a couple of hours of good entertainment and forget their problems.”

With financial woes too difficult to surmount, Glenn Wheaton knew he had to sell the theater by 1971. But “I felt a moral obligation to give family entertainment,” he said, adding he was afraid that if he sold the theater, the new owners might show X-rated movies, as many other theaters had begun doing to build up attendance.

So Wheaton had decided to close the theater rather than sell it, in an effort to keep “dirty” movies from the children of Pittsfield.

Pittsfield, however, was a community that cared, and townspeople weren’t about to let the theater disappear. Maine National Bank and Cianbro Corp. each kicked in $6,000 and absorbed the theater debts. They then donated the movie house to The Pittsfield Community Theater Association, a nonprofit group.

Originally, it was expected that a large portion of the townspeople would purchase memberships to keep the theater afloat. But that didn’t happen, and the debt for renovations and equipment wasn’t reduced. After two years, the association still had a debt of $18,000.

In May 1977, the theater directors first proposed the facility be sold to the town.

PCTA President Willard Lehr urged the Town Council “not to think of the facility as just a movie house, but rather as an auditorium with uses as broad as the imagination would allow,” and in July 1977, the town bought the theater for $24,000.

In the first year, manager Susanna Ventura attempted to bring all types of performing arts to the theater: from avant garde to the traditional, rock ‘n’ roll to bluegrass. The idea behind a community theater is to offer a varied program that will appeal to everyone’s interests. Ventura used a $400 grant from the Maine Arts Commission to book “acts.” Poetry festivals were held, and storytellers and bluegrass bands brought in. The theater even sponsored shows outside at Hathorne Park. It was gaining a reputation as a quality performing arts center.

Within a year, however, Ventura was disillusioned when Pittsfielders did not show up for live entertainment.

“People from Portland, Brunswick and Camden paid more attention to the innovative, headline performers at the Pittsfield theater than the Pittsfield people,” she said shortly after she resigned, less than two years after taking the position. Ventura complained that Pittsfield people weren’t making arts an integral part of their life. She said the PCT needed three things to be successful: an amateur theater group, an amateur children’s theater group and a local mailing list. At the time of Ventura’s resignation, she said the possibility of a touring circuit between Pittsfield, the Hancock County Auditorium (now the Grand) and Bath’s Chocolate Church was developing.

For the next 15 years, the theater limped along, deeply hurt by the large, flashy cinemas in bigger places. But as movie budgets exploded and theater prices steadily rose, movie lovers once again discovered the little theater in Pittsfield.

Today the theater not only shows first-run movies, it also retains that small-town flavor in both operation and attitude.

Located in the center of what’s left of Pittsfield’s once-bustling Main Street, the theater posts the time that the movie will let out so parents will know when to pick up their children. The theater closes for a week every August so as not to compete with the town’s major event, the Central Maine Egg Festival. And most Pittsfield students can remember walking from Manson Park School to the theater to put on their annual play.

The theater hasn’t changed much in 81 years of operation, except now movies can be shown on Sunday. (Before 1940, Maine’s so-called Blue Laws prohibited Sunday showings.) The lobby is immaculate, and the concession area, actually a little kitchen, is as neat as a pin. Candy boxes are lined up with corners in a row. All your favorites are there: Mike ‘n Ikes, Twizzlers, Dots … but paper bags of popcorn and a soda — a “combo” — is the best deal.

Before the movie, Elvis is likely to be wailing the hits of a former generation from the sound system while children and parents pick out the best seats. A gold, crushed-velvet stage curtain hides the screen, placed at the back of the wide stage used for live productions. The theater lost 50 seats when renovations put in the stage in 1975, but on a Friday night (traditionally “Kids Night” — Parents, don’t even THINK about going) it’s still pretty hard to hear yourself think.

Wheaton says Friday night was always the traditional night for kids to kick up their heels.

“We called it the Friday Night Miseries. We used to have two men on patrol that booted out troublemakers,” he says. Now, there is Marilyn and her flashlight.

Marilyn Morse has managed the theater for 13 years. The kids call her “Spotlight Lady” behind her back. Misbehave and you’re out, is her motto, banning kids for a week or two, depending on the infraction. Most of the kids have learned, though, that an apology can get them back in for the next Friday’s showing.

And what’s playing this week? “Courage Under Fire,” with Meg Ryan. Don’t miss it.


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