Searching for the Cape's old movie theaters

It's a 30-mile drive from his home in East Falmouth to the Cape Cinema. Kind of a long way for a part-time job, but being a projectionist is in his blood, Chip Gelmini said.

The steep climb up the iron stairs to the projection booth is more ladder than stairs, especially when carrying a 40-pound box containing six reels of 35 mm film. The void between rungs is like a frame of film, each with its own bedraggled winter spider web and drab brown occupant, a Chaplinesque tramp surviving on slim pickings.

The air in the projection booth is thick with the toasted incense of 70 years of popped corn. Built like a pillbox with slits for windows, cement walls and a heavy fireproof door, it's a reminder that, not so long ago, highly flammable film threading through the projectors was illuminated by an open flame, a bright arc like the intense white heat of a welder's torch.

The heavy metal door, with its movie poster framed by strips of masking tape bearing the names of films gone by, was designed to seal off the booth until a fire went out on its own or help arrived.

Still, it wasn't fire that doomed the Cape's many old movie houses. Once dubbed movie palaces, they were the focal point of almost every Main Street.

Boxy, sometimes fronted by outsized garish facades, these buildings once drew sold-out audiences to see their dreams writ large, in black and white, and then color.

"It was definitely something that you went to every Friday or Saturday night. It was almost like a religion," said Cape Cinema manager Eric Hart.

Whether you remember a larger than life Betty Grable or Faye Dunaway, or you just recall the bubble gum that plastered the bottom of the seats and the fossilized soda that plastered the floors like a tar pit, going to the local movie house was a shared experience for many growing up in the years before TV.

"In the winter, it was the only thing we had," said Falmouth resident Eric Turkington, 64, a former state representative, of the Elizabeth Theater. "I remember occasionally there were live local acts appearing there. Do recall a lot of bubble gum under the seats and the sticky floor, but to us it was a palace."

It was entertainment for the masses, and Cape towns, like many across the country in the years leading up to World War I, became a little less isolated. Between 1914 and 1922, 4,000 movie theaters were built in towns and cities across the U.S., including many that linger in the memories of Cape moviegoers.

"That was the place to go," Mary Sicchio of the Falmouth Historical Commission said of the Elizabeth Theater, now a clothing store.

It's not ancient history we're talking about here. Even with the advent of television in the 1950s and VCRs, most of these theaters — like the Elizabeth, the Tudor-themed Summer Theater on Main Street in Hyannis, the Port Cinema in Harwichport, the Orleans Cinema on Route 6A and others — were still in operation in the mid-'70s, early '80s. Corporate ownership, and the decision that audiences preferred brand-new multiplexes to the threadbare movie palaces, spelled the end for many.

For some, their size and interior space proved amenable to retail. Chatham's Orpheum, the Orleans Cinema and others became CVS stores. Others met a harsher fate, demolished like the Port, or the Idle Hour, which opened in 1911 on Main Street in Hyannis and was destroyed by fire set by vagrants in 1972. There's still an empty lot still where it once stood.

But a new appreciation for the village cinema seems to be taking hold. Last week, a committee dedicated to bringing back Chatham's old Orpheum Theater announced they had collected more than a million dollars in pledges and donations for a proposed $2.7 million purchase and renovation after a CVS store recently moved out.

A 2010 survey of Orleans residents and homeowners found that nearly 60 percent wanted to see a movie theater back in the center of town, the highest consensus rating of any project. The Orleans Community Partnership does want some kind of theater venue as part of its plan to revitalize the downtown, but may be leaning toward a performance center that shows movies and can host live performances, said partnership spokesman Steve Bornemeier.

"It would be great to have some of those theaters come back," said Paul Schneider, a television and movie director and producer who teaches film at Boston University, "but it's tough to compete with things like 3D."

Both he and Hart agree that film quality varies widely from one 35 mm film copy to the next, depending on how they've been handled. Digital and other newer technology projectors at least promise consistency, but can be difficult to squeeze into old theaters, Schneider said. Hart thinks there may be a market for smaller theaters that run both commercial and more artistic films, but Schneider cautioned against banking on nostalgia.

"Younger audiences don't have any nostalgia whatsoever. They are interested in the best quality, 3D, whatever," he said. "Alternative theaters like the Coolidge Corner (theater in Brookline), there will be allegiance, but I don't think it will be easy."

Gelmini, 51, knows the days of film, and of projectionists, may be drawing to a close, but he remains enthralled by his craft.

"If I'm not careful, I'll feel it," Gelmini said as he threw a series of copper-colored knife switches that pre-dated fuses and modern breaker panels and turned on the electricity in the booth. Fans connected to dryer vents that snaked to the ceiling drew the heat away from the xenon projector bulbs that recently had replaced the old carbon arc lamp. His afternoon was spent in a strictly timed and choreographed routine, switching projectors, threading new film, rewinding the spent reel, then cleaning and oiling the projectors and the film, if necessary.

If he was doing his job right, the audience would never know he was up there.

Hunched, peering through small panes of glass at the screen far below, the bulky 1942-vintage projectors will soon literally be pushed aside, moved a few feet over to make way for a digital HD projector whose films arrived as portable hard drives.

"I'll keep them around for another couple of years," Hart said.

Gelmini started out working in the small community movie theaters in the '70s, just as their stars were fading. His taste in film betrays his allegiance. Until "The Artist," a movie about making silent movies, pushed it aside, his favorite was "Grease," the first movie he ever showed.