The Capitol Theatre In Antigonish: Among The Last Of The Movie Palaces
By Phil Milner
1050 words
The Capitol Theatre is wedged between the Chevy-Olds dealership and the Dooly's pool room parking lot, across the street from the ESSO station. Since the Antigonish police don't make you feed the meters at night, there is plenty of free parking.
You push your $7.50 ($4.00 on Tuesday nights) through the slot, and walk into a lobby dominated by a clattering popcorn machine with a stove pipe protruding from the top.
Inside, look up at the high ceiling, and you see nine slowly turning fans hanging from the ceiling on long poles. Look down at one of the two carpets that run from the entrance to the exits down front and you see two rows of tiny lights embedded in each carpet. A thousand points of light, pizzazz, a touch of class to brighten our lives. Two huge curtains flank the screen. I've never seen them closed.
That is one reason we go to movies. Watching a VCR or DVD in your living room is the way most of us see most of the movies we watch, but it is an empty experience compared to "going to the movies." There are people in Antigonish I only know one thing about. Like me, they like to sit in this dark theatre and let a movie wash over them.
I'd rather watch a movie with a Capitol Theatre on Main Street audience than with any other. One night the Capitol is full of high school kids. On another night it is old guys in ball caps, some with their wives. I most enjoy watching a movie with a house full of university students. Students like to laugh; give them a funny or pretentious movie and they will see funny things I wouldn't have seen if left to my own devices.
It has no web site, but if you dial 863-4646, and are prepared to work your way through some menus, you can find out what is playing. The best way to find out is still the old-fashioned way; look at the posters as you walk by heading for the town office, or barbershop, or clothing store.
The Capitol is old, but not ancient. It burned down in 1965.
Dr. Patrick Walsh, former Antigonish professor-playwright-historian-basketball game announcer and town councilor, was in town (launching a prayer book, of all things) while I was writing this essay. When I asked about the fire, he sent me to page 276 of his illustrated History of Antigonish, where I found a picture of the burning Capitol Theatre.
Then Patrick did what he has done for me throughout my professorly career. He gave me a story that contained splendid facts theretofore unknown to me, and a big idea that explained a lot about history in the Little Vatican. Patrick took his son to the movies the night before the fire. They bought their popcorn, and watched the Julia Andrews, as Mary Poppins, fly in on her umbrella and charm London with her sweetness. They left the Capitol as the signs for Mary Poppins were being taken down, and the signs for the next movie, Antigonish's first porno, Fanny Hill, Memoir of a Woman of Pleasure, were going up. The Capitol was consumed by fire the night before its first pornographic movie could be screened.
"I guess Fanny Hill was too hot for Antigonish," Patrick said. Contrary to Antigonish mythology, the C.W.L. did not start the fire.
As He does occasionally, God had intervened in the history of the Little Vatican. I decided to get a second opinion on the fire from the other Antigonish historian, Ronald DD MacDonald. He cautioned me on the danger of too quickly conflating the dates of the fire and Fanny Hill.
I reminded the judge of that great western movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, which would have played at the Capitol a few years after the fire. Jimmy Stewart, a famous Senator who might become the next president, owes his success to the fact that he shot the notorious outlaw, Liberty Valence. Actually, John Wayne, a hard-drinking cowboy who lost the woman of his dreams to Stewart, shot Liberty Valance. When given a chance to debunk the myth, the newspaper editor refuses.
"When the legend is greater than the truth, print the legend," the editor explained.
Patrick had also given me a large idea that explained modern North American life, recent Catholic Church history, and Antigonish.
"Go three years forward and three years back from the fire in 1965," Patrick asked me, "What have you got?"
He arched a huge eyebrow. Three years before the fire was Vatican II. It moved the altar front-and-center, introduced guitar masses, and English language religious services to the Church in Antigonish. Three years later, 1968, you have the StFX student strike, the closing down of the university, the mixing of the sexes in campus residences, and, at the Capitol theatre, the screening of genitals, female breasts, mayhem and violence.
The old movie theatres -- with names like The Palace, The Rialto, and The Granada -- were homes to stars and movies that were bigger than life. Gods and goddesses, my movie-teaching colleague, Professor Nash, calls the old actors like John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Jean Harlow, and Humphrey Bogart. They were giants of the silver screen. We don't feel that way about the actors we watch in the multi-plexes or on our television sets. Who cares if J. Lo or Ben gets married or divorced, plays queens or cowboys?
"I'm still big, it's the movies that got small," Gloria Swanson, said in Sunset Boulevard. That was a half century ago, and the movies are still getting smaller. Most movie fans don't see movies in theatres at all. There is something splendid about the old, single-screen, theatres.
Lately, when I want to see a movie, I am likely to turn on my computer, and hit the Empire Theatres bookmark to see what is showing 50 kilometers down the road. at the seven-screen multiplex at the Aberdeen Mall in New Glasgow. Once inside, I'd might as well be at the nearly identical theatres in Truro or Halifax.
I like the Capitol Theatre, and I love the way a big single-screen theatre has endured into the 21st century. But you cannot argue with Surroundsound, bright projection bulbs, a sharp picture, and seven movies to choose from.
