Motion pictures came north at The Nickel

Bangor’s first full-time movie theater, The Nickel, opened at noon a century ago yesterday. Hundreds of people jammed Central Street in an effort to see “A Struggle for Life,” “The Fortune Teller,” and “If I Had a Wife Like This.” The papers didn’t bother to mention the actors’ names. Movie stars hadn’t been invented yet. Viewers were usually content if the picture stayed in focus.

In between the movies, illustrated songs were led by Miss Nellie Barron and Grover Lee. He was a popular fellow who had just spent the summer singing at Revere Beach. Herbert Ringwall, a local lad, played the piano and there was “a trap drummer to give to the pictures their proper sound effects.” The whole show lasted about 45 minutes. If you had time on your hands, you could sit through it again on the same nickel that gained you admission.

Peak attendance that first day, Aug. 12, 1907, was at dusk. “Every seat for the first evening entertainment, which began shortly after 7 o’clock, was filled within five minutes after the doors were opened. By eight, a big, good-natured, perspiring crowd was jammed before the entrance. It couldn’t get in so it waited as patiently as possible for those inside to come out,” said the Bangor Daily News the next morning. The crowd blocked the street and the sidewalk. Patrolmen Holmes and Smith had their hands full keeping the mob from bursting into the theater.

“About 8:15 when the first entertainment was over, Central street presented an animated picture – hundreds going in, more hundreds coming out, still other hundreds lined up along the curbing enjoying the fun.” The crowd included “many prominent people including Mayor Woodman, practically every member of the City Council and numerous heads of city departments.” Two days later a new set of movies opened – “The Sham Beggar,” “A Kind Grandfather” and “Genevieve of Brabant” – and the crowds appeared again.

The Bangor papers excitedly tried to explain what the new theater looked like and how it worked in stories in July and August. The color scheme was light green and white. A frieze in white wood above which was terra cotta ran around the auditorium. The 700 seats were made of veneer with iron arms.

In the foyer, wall panels were finished in “leather relief – the same design, in fact, which has been so greatly admired during the past winter in the ladies’ dining room of the Bangor House.” A large wooden nickel set in stucco appeared over the ticket booth. A mosaic floor in which the theater’s name was lettered in color still was being installed in the vestibule.

The shallow stage consisted of an archway in the cement wall. In front was hung a heavy plush green curtain. Instead of a sheet, the 12-by-15-foot screen was the cement, which was painted white. Two Powers Kinetographs projected the movies, while a double-deck, nickel-plated dissolving view stereopticon showed the illustrated songs. “All of this apparatus will be enclosed in a large tin box, absolutely fireproof, inside which the operator will sit,” wrote the Bangor Daily Commercial on July 27.

Much was made of the fact that a “motor generator” would convert alternating current to direct current “thus ensuring greater steadiness and brilliance to the picture.” The electricity would be supplied by the Bangor Railway and Electric Co.’s substation on Park Street. Trolley magnate John R. Graham owned the new building where The Nickel was located and he was also president of the electric company. (The building burned in the Great Fire of 1911, and Graham built a much taller building next door at Central and Harlow, where BookMarc’s store is located today. The Nickel moved to 99 Union St.)

People back then were much impressed by electric lights. The new theater incorporated hundreds of them. There were four chandeliers inside the theater and many lights outside. The name of the theater would be in lights out front on the “marquette of glass and iron” over the entrance. The Bangor Daily News wrote: “The theater will be all ablaze, making upper Central Street as bright as noonday.” It would be “Bangor’s ‘great white way.'”

Security precautions included a deputized doorkeeper, a matron in the ladies room and three uniformed ushers who were University of Maine students. Modern fire safety features like an asbestos curtain were also incorporated.

Eastern Maine was no stranger to movies by 1907. Traveling showmen had been bringing them to Bangor and other towns where they had been displayed in theaters and public halls for several years. Bangor residents had already seen “The Great Train Robbery” at the Opera House, along with other movies showing or re-creating such events as the assassination of President McKinley.

Bangoreans were proud of the amenities that made their town “a real city.” Now, with two theaters (the other being the Bangor Opera House specializing in live stage productions), “Bangor will have arrived at the metropolitan distinction,” declared the Bangor Daily News on Aug. 12. Indeed, movie theaters were sprouting in cities everywhere. The Nickel was part of a line of Nickels owned by the Keith vaudeville syndicate, including theaters in Manchester, N.H., Biddeford, Portland, St. John, New Brunswick, Montreal and Halifax.

The movies were taking Bangor by storm. On Sept. 21, the Bangor Daily News announced another theater would be opening soon. The Bangor Amusement and Bowling Co. planned to remodel Union Hall at 99 Union St., leaving the bowling alleys and pool room and creating a second floor. Vaudeville and moving pictures would be shown. “Bangor is hungering for entertainment of the best sort,” the financial backers had determined.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net Dick Shaw contributed information for this column.