Remembering Mount Union Theatre

This column was first published in 2006. The photo is from RoadsideArchitecture.com. 

The curtain is coming down on movies at Mount Union Theatre.

Saturday marks the last night of films at the venerable building, at least for now. Last week, college brass announced the venture wasn’t profitable anymore, citing a squeeze from the home video market that has killed many second-run movie houses.

I was angry when I heard the news, angry the decision makers wouldn’t continue to subsidize the traditional Friday and Saturday night showings.

But I felt guilty, too, like when you learn a good friend you haven’t made the time to see in a while has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The last time I saw a movie at Mount Union Theatre was July 2004, when the main feature was the original “King Kong,” my all-time favorite film.

Blaming the college is like blaming the doctor for making the diagnosis.

I took it for granted the theater would always be there, the marquee blinking enticingly, beckoning audiences to enjoy the well-chosen “Pink Panther” or “Bugs Bunny” shorts, to slurp soft drinks and gobble buttery bags of popcorn while enjoying the anarchy of the Marx Brothers or Bogart telling Bergman they’ll always have Paris.

I should have known better.

The movie industry has changed tremendously since the Golden Age of Hollywood in the ’30s and ’40s, when movie theaters were palaces, almost temples, where one went to worship graven celluloid images projected on a vertical altar at 24 frames per second.

That was a time when a movie could gel in the cultural zeitgeist of its own and subsequent generations, when box office success was based on more than opening weekend grosses. Studios could resurrect a winning film every few years and send it back out to make more money, along the way embedding itself solidly in the culture.

Audiences then had only the sketchiest idea of what to expect from a film, not having been subjected to endless commercials that give away the funny or scary parts, seeing it because performers like Spencer Tracy or Katherine Hepburn had entertained them before and were expected to again.

Television changed things. That ravenous monster required lots of programming to fill its belly, and Hollywood offered up its catalog of films – the good and not so good along with the classics.

There was still a place for the revival house, however, for movie buffs who wanted their films commercial free and uncut by the censor’s axe.

Then came home video – Betamax, VHS, laserdisc, and now DVD. At first, each subsequent technological marvel cost too much to make much of a dent in the movie business. But as prices on prerecorded movies dropped, Hollywood recognized a lucrative aftermarket where it didn’t need to share profits with distributors and theaters. Suddenly, movies came home in a big way, and the window between a movie’s theatrical release and its appearance on home video grew smaller, directly affecting profits at second-run movie houses.

Today, we know if we like a film, we most likely won’t see it again in a theater. Instead, we will own it in less than two months, digitized and shrunk down and jammed inside a box, one more commodity to be purchased for $20 or less and cataloged in our home libraries, to be watched between the constantly ringing phone and paying the pizza guy at the front door.

The cinema gods grew smaller, and because we can pause and fast forward and rewind them, became much less captivating and much more captive.

Some say this is the golden age of movies, that today’s viewers have easier access to almost every important film than at any other time in history. I wouldn’t trade the convenience, or want the home video genie stuffed back in the bottle, but it comes at a price.

Friday and Saturday nights will be a lot less colorful on the little section of South Union Avenue where Mount Union Theatre now awaits its ultimate fate.

This is not the first time the theater has sat vacant, not the first time finances have dictated that no movies unspool across its silver screen. It has bounced back from certain demise before, like the hero who never succumbs to the villain’s machinations, no matter how diabolical.

Perhaps there is still a chance the decision makers will relent, that the theater can still find its niche as a home for the occasional film festival, that the colorful marquee might once again announce the triumphant return of Dorothy’s trip down the yellow brick road or Ray Milland’s harrowing experiences on a lost weekend.

If it did, maybe I and others like me might put aside the convenience of our DVDs and journey inside its dark innards once again, rediscover that movies are meant to be a communal experience, and relive the great shared moments of cinema.

Or maybe those are the kinds of happy endings one finds only in the movies.