Magic Lantern theater to close for 4 months

BRIDGTON – The Magic Lantern, whose wooden floors, player piano and Tiffany-style lamps evoke movie theaters of the 1920s and ’30s, will be going dark for the first time in more than 20 years.

Owner Frank Howell plans to close for four months this winter to cut heating costs and give him time to look into building a replacement theater.

Customers reacted with gloom to the news that the Magic Lantern, a key element in this Lake Region town’s modest nightlife, will shut down in mid-January.

Howell also owns and operates Downeast Manufacturing on the first floor of the theater building. The business makes high-end buckles, straps and other gear for the military. The theater, which barely breaks even, represents about 5 percent of his business.

He said the theater’s building, which dates to the 1920s, will have to be demolished before long because it is sinking into a bog.

Howell plans to move the manufacturing operation into a barn-like structure out back. He hopes to build a new theater nearby, but not right on the site of the existing one.

He said the costs of heating the theater made it difficult to justify keeping it open in the dead of winter. The savings, he said, will help with plans to build the new theater, a project he hopes to undertake in late 2003 or early 2004.

“We really do care. We love it, we love doing movies,” Howell said. “It’s an important part of who we are. We don’t take this lightly.”