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Returning to the Capitol Theatre Column for November 7, 2005

As part of the Flint Sesquicentennial Weekend which took place on September 24 and 25, the long-closed Capitol Theatre reopened for the weekend showing an hour of Walt Disney cartoons. There were three showings each day of different cartoons starring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Chip ‘n' Dale. For this special presentation, a Christie digital projector was set up in the projection booth which was connected to a laptop computer with the cartoons stored in its hard drive. Windows Media Player was used to show the cartoons from the computer. The digital projector was set up alongside the long unused Simplex projector equipped with a carbon-arc lamp house. Before the Mickey Mouse cartoons started, I was invited into the projection booth which hadn't been used for many years. <%FloatImg "images/flinn/capitol092505a.jpg", "Old Simplex Projector", "left", "location.asp?ID=840&type=5"%> There were ghosts of two other projectors which were once in place in the projection booth. The previous movie shown at the Capitol Theatre was The Rocky Horror Picture Show over a decade ago. The Rocky Horror showings back then did not utilize the projection booth. Instead, a 16mm projector was set up on the front of the balcony to show the movie. I believe the Simplex projectors were not in operating condition at that time. The projection booth even had a toilet and sink in place for the benefit of the projectionist on duty. <%FloatImg "images/flinn/capitol092505v.jpg", "Upper Lobby Ceiling", "right", "location.asp?ID=840&type=5"%> In the unrestored theater itself, signs of the theater's mothballed state were in place. On the dance floor in front of the stage, two gas furnaces were conspicuously installed. If these temporary furnaces were not in place, the ornate atmospheric auditorium, designed by John Eberson, would have deteriorated further because of the freezing temperatures in the winter months. One of the fire exit doors on the main floor of the theater has two obvious holes in it. During the winter months, lengths of PVC pipes were connected from each furnace to the holes in the exit door to exhaust the carbon monoxide gases from the furnaces. <%FloatImg "images/flinn/capitol092505n.jpg", "Original Outer Lobby Ceiling After False Ceiling Was Removed", "left", "location.asp?ID=840&type=5"%> The 50-year-old theater seats were not maintained for many years and there are missing sections of seats including a section in the middle of the main floor which were removed to make room for mixing equipment during concerts. I recall that the platform for the equipment was constructed partly with old Altec Voice of the Theatre speaker enclosures. The orange seats were installed in the 1950s to replace the old ornate seats with padded wooden seat backs the theater was built with. There are still some old original seats being stored backstage. <%FloatImg "images/flinn/capitol092505g.jpg", "Ceiling of Balcony Stairway", "right", "location.asp?ID=840&type=5"%> Without the big old theater speakers, four smaller JBL Professional EON powered speakers were set up on stage. The speakers were slightly smaller than the speakers on my own stereo system. Despite this, listening to the show from the balcony was comfortable, although the temporary theater sound had trouble competing with crying babies in the audience. So the audio was not as room-filling as it was during the Capitol's glory days before it had to compete with the suburban theaters beginning in the late 1960s. <%FloatImg "images/flinn/capitol092505o.jpg", "Balcony Detail", "left", "location.asp?ID=840&type=5"%> With the rented Christie digital projector, the presentation was top notch on the old screen with has an obvious vertical seam in the middle of the screen. The concession stand was open which sold snacks and cans of soft drinks. There was no popcorn popper or soda fountain in place, but I did see reminders of the old bar which was once in place in the lobby with one mixing dispenser still in place where there were once vending machines in the theater's glory days. The office building entrance was the entrance to the theater. The outer lobby entrance was sealed off in the early 1990s to create a stage in the outer lobby for concerts in the lobby. The entrance to the theater via the office area is wheelchair accessible unlike the old theater entrance which has stairs leading to the main lobby. The theater was not crowded during the three shows I took in to see the different cartoons. Unfortunately, the rest rooms did not have the water turned on. That explains the porta potties in place in front of the sealed off main entrance. As I was entertained by the cartoons, I kept wishing there was a rich benefactor who could easily afford the $20+ million it would take to fully restore the Capitol Theatre which received a partial exterior restoration last year which included repairing the neon marquee. I hope such a benefactor will step forward.

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