CRANDELL THEATRE SET TO REOPEN
Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News
07-02-10- 5:35 p.m. - After six months of darkness, the curtain is set to rise at the Crandell Theatre July 9.
With professional cleaners hard at work in the background and the odor of cleaning solutions hanging thick in the air, members of the Chatham Film Club showcased on Friday the work taking place on the historic theater in preparation for the reopening.
The theater is scheduled to open with a ceremonial ribbon cutting at 6:30 p.m. on July 9 and the two showings of a first-run film. Club Treasurer Mary Gail Biebel said the club hopes to open with the smash hit Toy Story 3, but won’t learn what film it will land for the showing until Tuesday. On Sunday, July 11, the Club will restart its Sunday afternoon showings of an art film movie house.
“We wanted to open with a strong message to the community that we will continue to show first run, commercially popular films,” said Biebel. “The only change [from when Tony Quirino owned it] is we will be showing the artistic films twice a month.” |
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A thorough cleaning of the theater by crews from PuroClean Certified of North Chatham is the final step—for now—in the rebirth of the theater, which has been a month in the making. Plumbing, electrical work, sewing, and other activities have filled the hours and days since the Chatham Film Club acquired the theater in early June. The crews were hard at work on Friday scrubbing the floors, cleaning the blades of the decades-old ceiling fans, cleaning the glass of the ornate entrance way and even the ticket booth. Earlier volunteers from the Film Club had emptied of mountains of trash, ranging from boxes and broken chairs to old Coke machines and more from the basement and the orchestra pit.
“They never threw anything away,” said Biebel of the previous owners.
Asked if any treasures were found—such as antique movie posters—Knakal said answered with a disappointed no.
Also in preparation for the opening, the Film Club ordered a new curtain for the mammoth screen, after determining it would be impossible to salvage the original curtain and and bring it up to code. "It wasn’t fireproof, and they told us that the process of making it fireproof would destroy it,” said Film Club President Sandra Knakal. “We would have loved to save it, but it wasn’t possible.” The new curtain will be the same red as the original and will match the upholstery of the theater, she said.
Officials also proudly announced that they had located replacement lights for the marquee, and that, for the opening, the theater will be lit up like a Christmas tree with the red blinking lights that historically adorned the marquee. Knakal and Biebel plan to replace the lights—approximately 80 of them—bulbs this weekend.
A New Chapter
With the assistance of Chatham philanthropists Judy Grunberg and Lael Lock, the Chatham Film Club acquired the theater in June from Sandra Quirino, the widow of longtime owner Tony Quirino. Quirino passed away unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm in January, and as a consequence of his death, the theater was closed for an extended period for the first time in decades.
The Crandell Theatre has been a fixture on Main Street in Chatham since the 1920s and was in the Quirino family for 50 years. For this writer, as well as for his children and his father, the Crandell was the first place they ever saw a movie.
Friday’s tour of the theater was a trip back in time, a trip into an area he could only imagine as a child. The small projection room was cluttered with large film reels and two large projectors—a rarity in today’s era of digital films. On the walls is decades’ worth of graffiti. Particularly poignant was graffiti left by Tony Quirino’s father, known as Anthony Quirino, who purchased the theater in 1960. “Anthony Quirino X-MGR 1960 Ha Ha Now Big Owner Ha Ha.” Another scrawl, perhaps left by Tony Quirino as a warning to one of his workers, states: “If there are two people in this booth, one shouldn’t be.”
Hidden behind the massive screen is a backstage fire protection system left unchecked in ninety years. The system was simple, as the metal signs point out: In case of fire, cut rope. The rope, with weights affixed to the end, would fall to the floor and open the Superior Automatic Gravity Ventilator—essentially windows in a skylight—that would allow some of the smoke and gases to escape the theater.
In front of the screen sits a piano, which is a throwback to the era when the movie house was first opened and silent films were just being replaced by “talkies.”
Throughout the theater are intricacies never to be found in the massive multi-screen movie theaters of today: ornate lamps along the walls, an antique ticket collection box, hand-carved wooden features, and vaudeville windows looking out on the house from either side of the screen.
The Future?
With the orchestra pit, backstage area, and dressing room still in place, Biebel said the theater could someday serve a dual purpose—showing movies at night and providing a stage for readings or performances during the day. “It would be great for readings,” she said.
Biebel praised the community for its support of the Film Club—support which is key to the theater’s reopening. “The people have been great. The village has been great. Everyone has just been so very, very supportive,” she said.
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