The Armstrong Picture House

Story told by Genevieve Gatcomb Smith (Around 1900-1920’s). Written up by her son Raymond Smith

A major attraction in Vanceboro was the movie theater. Pooch Ross¹ and Stillman Armstrong started the theater in Armstrong’s old moccasin factory where I had worked. The theater was on the second floor of the building one block south of the railroad tracks at the intersection of Water Street and Holbrook Street.² This was just about the center of town and just across the street from the Hunter’s home. The railroad station was one block north and one block west.

My brother Frank worked for Mr. Ross and one of his jobs was to run the movie theater. Later, he bought it from Ross and Armstrong and ran it until talking pictures made the old silent movies obsolete. The movies were on Wednesday evening and Saturday afternoon and evening. The Saturday movies were the big event of the week. The town wouldn’t have been the same without them. There were very few radios in town in the early twenties and the roads out of Vanceboro were gravel. In the spring, they were virtually impassable because of the thaw and resulting frost heaves and mud. As unrealistic as they were, the movies gave us a touch of the outside world.

I sold the tickets except on Saturday afternoon when Mama took over the job. They were ten cents for children and twenty-five cents for adults. Frank ran the projector which was powered by a generator run by Frank’s car after the powerhouse fire. He simply jacked it up and attached a drive belt from the rear wheel to the spindle of the generator. Since the movies were silent, there was a piano on stage to the right of the screen and a pianist played the music which had been scripted to the film and sent with it. Maude Dickinson, the piano teacher, was the first person to hold this job. She taught Flo to play the piano and tried without much success to teach Ray. Lucy Farnum took over the musician’s job at the theater after Maude left and then Florence.

The movie consisted of several individual reels so Frank always had slides to show while he was changing the reels. The movies would start with a slide showing a lady with a huge hat and the title, “Ladies, please remove your hats.” That would be followed by a slide or two of oncoming attractions. First there was a comedy short followed by some advertising slides while Frank rigged up the next reel. His advertising slides were sometimes hilarious because Frank made them himself and was a terrible speller. He might have something like, “Holbrooks Store For A Fine Gift Of Julery.” After the comedy, he would either have a news reel or a serial episode. The news might be two months old but to us it was news. Today’s soap operas are an outgrowth of the movie serial. The average movie consisted of four reels.

Ralph took the tickets and when Frank put on a local stage production, he was one of the lead singers. Ralph had a wonderful voice. He and Flo were the musical ones in the family. Les and Ray sold cracker jacks and popcorn, which we popped at home. I can still see them between reels, walking down the isles with their wares in a box supported by a strap around their neck. Les and Ray also cleaned out the theater. After a show, it was an awful mess. One of Frank’s slides that went up after every reel read, “Please Don’t Spit on the Floor!” That was a waste of time because there were lots of tobacco chewers and they spit copious amounts of Spearhead juice during the course of a movie. It was especially bad in the back row.

There were certain regular customers who insisted on the same seat each time. They would come early to get them and surprisingly enough, on the whole, people would honor their unwritten desire and avoid taking, for example, Mrs. Crocker’s or Mrs. Hunter’s seat. In fact, there was usually a jostling to get a seat near Mrs. Crocker. If she happened to be a bit late, her favorite spot would be open and all the seats around it taken up. Keep in mind that the movies were titled as the action went on but not all adults could read. Allie Crocker was in that fix, but she loved the movies and got very vocal and excited. She was a fairly good yard stick on which to measure how good a movie was. If the villain would sneak up behind the heroine to grab her, Allie couldn’t contain herself and might shout, “Watch out! The bastard’s right behind you!”

If someone missed a show, they would want to know what Mrs. Crocker told the actors.

There wasn’t a toilet associated with the theater so every one had to hold their water. Some of the kids would pee down the steam pipes by the walls. There was a combination of individual seats and long benches. So, on the benches, you could always get a seat by just squeezing everyone a bit more. On the whole, the crowd was well behaved because they were truly interested in the films. The children loved Tom Mix, Jack Hickox, Ernest Torrance and the westerns. The adults drooled over Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks or William S. Hart and everyone went wild over Charlie Chaplin.

The silent movies gave the children a great incentive to learn to read. Some adults like Fred Mills couldn’t read, so he needed a reader. Elmer Swaney sometimes read the words for Fred that appeared on the screen. Fred was very smart in other ways. He worked on the railroad and knew the number of every train that came in just by the looks of it. This encouraged the kids even more to want to read.

Footnotes:

1. Pooch, a Vanceboro nickname given to George W. Ross, the town’s deputy sheriff, perhaps because he was a short squat man with ample white hair and sideburns or maybe because of his dogged determination. ↩︎
2. Holbrook Street, in this reference, is now Route 6, known historically as Railroad Street, The Old Codyville Road and The Lambert Lake Road. ↩︎