June 14, 2006

There was a time when even villages had a movie theater. Boonville, for example, had the Franjo. Now there are cities without a movie house.

The City of Rome had and still has a great one, the Capitol Theatre. A few Sundays ago the Capitol's director, Art Pierce, was a guest on the television show I host on WUTR at six o'clock on Sunday nights, assuming a sporting event doesn't run long.

Anyway, during the show we talked about theaters in general and the Capitol in particular. The Capitol has occupied a prominent spot on W. Dominick Street since 1928.

We talked about the Capitol's history and what's happening there now, which is a lot. The Capitol is the venue for stage productions and for silent movies, accompanied by the Capitol's original Moeller organ, a treasure.

We talked about theater architecture, old movie chains operated by families such as the Kallets, of which the Capitol was once a part, and other movie topics.

But we ran out of time before I could bring up something I wanted Art Pierce to talk about: ushers.

Unless you were going to movie theaters in the 1950s, you probably don't remember ushers. The mid to late 1950s is when ushers - real ushers - started to disappear.

It had to do with cutting costs. People were spending less time in theaters and more time in front of television sets. Theaters had to save money.

The ushers I remember worked at Utica theaters, including the Olympic, Avon and Utica, three theaters within one block of each other, which shows how popular going to the movies once was.

Ushers wore uniforms - something like you might see on a bellboy at a fancy hotel - and were armed with flashlights. Someone older than me remembers when ushers even wore white gloves.

Ushers had two basic jobs. The first was to help people find empty seats, not always an easy thing to do. Before television, before there were so many entertainment options, before people got so busy, movie houses were the places to go, especially during the summer when theaters had something new called air conditioning.

The usher found empty seats and showed you to them, flashlight pointed on the carpet so you could see the way. "Enjoy the movie," he said.

I say "he" because I never saw a female usher. Ushers were male, high school or college age, courteous and professional. Many of them were movie aficionados. Watching movies at work was a great usher perk.

The second part of an usher's job was to enforce theater rules, of which there were several.

Talking above a whisper brought the usher down the aisle. Finding the offenders, the beam from his flashlight zeroed in. Being illuminated by an usher's flashlight produced instant quiet.

And don't even think about putting your feet up on the seat in front of you.

Even worse was taking a soda to your seat, thus creating the possibility of spilling it on the carpet. Soda in your seat was a major offense, one that could get you removed from the theater. If thirsty, you gulped down a soda in the lobby and got back to your seat fast as possible. Only in recent years did management realize that people would buy big and expensive sodas if allowed to drink in their seats.

These days there are young people who take tickets, sell popcorn and clean up between shows, but no real ushers. You won't see an usher inside the theater unless there's a water balloon fight between the people in row 12 and row 20.

And don't get me going about using cell phones in theaters. Where's an usher when you need one?

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Joe Kelly is the editor and publisher of The Boonville Herald & Adirondack Tourist and THE GRIFF.