Smoke and fire billowed in the sky, and the full moon of two days past seemed to hang in the branches of the tall elm trees that lined Main Street. The date was April 7, 1961, and the Edgartown Playhouse was on fire. Starting in the back of the building, the fire destroyed parts of the roof and took the stage below. The heat was so intense, it burned the backs of the theater seats, and thick smoke made visibility very difficult, as a heavy, acrid smell filled the air. Three hours after the blaze began, despite the efforts of firefighters from three towns, the building was destroyed. The front of the theater, however, suffered little damage, and its façade was an eerie sight to behold.
The Elm opens
On land that’s now a grassy little park between the Edgartown Deli and Edgartown Books, a movie house called the Elm Theater, named for the large elm trees lining Main Street, opened its doors in the summer of 1920. Although moving pictures had been shown at the town hall, Richard L. Colter, whose family owned the Kelley House, felt strongly that a movie theater was needed in Edgartown. This idea did not sit well with some of the town’s more conservative citizens, but in time they were won over, and building commenced.
When completed, the two-story jewel of a building seated about 550 people, and there were box seats on either side of a horseshoe balcony. Colter’s wife, Jessie, played the piano for the silent films. One memorable stormy evening, when the power failed and the audience was getting fidgety, Jessie took matters into her own hands, tickling the ivories with popular songs of the day, and turning the evening into a community sing-along.
Although the Elm Theater was a very popular site, other Island towns had their theaters also. In Oak Bluffs, the Eagle Theater presented movies and plays; the Tivoli was a popular spot with variety acts, boxing and wrestling matches, dancing, and moving pictures; and the Rice Playhouse on East Chop did summer stock. In Vineyard Haven, the Capawock was a gathering site for movies and traveling country-and-western groups, and the Masonic Lodge on Church Street, now the site of the Vineyard Playhouse, enjoyed traveling groups. Virtually any location with a stage was up for grabs as an entertainment site. Traveling acting groups and musicians had long come to the Island to perform, and there was never a lack of shows.
Renamed the Edgartown Playhouse
In the late twenties, the Elm Theater became the Edgartown Playhouse when it was acquired by a business group led by Alfred Hall (whose descendents today own the Capawock Theater in Vineyard Haven and the Island and Strand theaters in Oak Bluffs). Sound in films was introduced in 1929, and it was heralded in the Vineyard Gazette this way: “The talkies have come to Edgartown. Following the installation of Vitaphone equipment in the Edgartown Playhouse, which has been in progress for several days, the theatre will present its first talking and singing pictures. The reason...is said to be that silence is no longer golden. O tempora! O mores!”
The first movie with sound to hit the screen was Lucky Star, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. The actor had been a classmate of Alfred Hall at Boston University, and the men had kept in touch through the years. When talking movies were first introduced, the sound was played on records, and any disturbance in the street outside could throw the synchronization of the sound off; a man’s voice might come out sounding like a woman’s or vice versa, or lip movement of the stars might not match up with their words. According to Benjamin “Buzzy” Lambert Hall Sr., his dad, Alfred, prided himself on being able to glance at the record and screen, know exactly where the problem was, and fix it instantly, much to the relief of moviegoers.
Many celebrities and other prominent people vacationed on the Vineyard in the thirties and forties, and people filled the theater for each show. Lines started forming long before the scheduled time, and summer evenings would find people socializing while waiting for the movie to begin. Such cinema and theater greats as James Cagney, Katharine Cornell, Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Islanders, enjoying the chitchat and declining the privilege of jumping the line.
Memorable moments
When Janet (Avery) Norton was a youngster of nine or ten, she was only allowed to attend matinees on the weekend, and she and her friends would wait anxiously for Saturday to arrive. During the week they would collect bottles in back of stores on Main Street, and they cashed them in for the ten-cent movie fee and for candy.
Janet says the ticket collector was strict and when the kids misbehaved, he would grab them by the collar and throw them out. Try that today, and see how far you get. One of the first evening movies she recalls seeing there was a thriller, which made for a scary walk home in the dark. Her house was on the corner of Pease’s Point Way, but to a twelve-year-old, still a bit shaky from the feature, it seemed like a long way home.
After the movies, teenagers would meet at the Edgartown Drug Company or Colonial Drug, both on Main Street. They would sit at the long marble counters, enjoying ice cream sodas while making goo-goo eyes at each other.
During the 1930s, free dishes were offered at the theater as a premium, enticing parents to send their children for a free piece of carnival glass in green or orange. The larger pieces had to be purchased, but many sets were completed that way, and today the glass is very collectable.
The 1940s saw The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham have its premiere at the theater, and Buzzy, a youngster at the time, remembers vividly the special invitation tickets that were sold. After the performance, his dad gave him the leftover tickets, and he made paper airplanes out of them, always centering the words “Moon and Sixpence” on the top of the plane, before sending them on their flight up Main Street.
In 1942, a large variety show called the Victory Parade was staged at the Edgartown Playhouse to benefit the war effort. Tap dancers, musicians, singers, and comedy acts all performed, and raffles were a popular draw, such as dinner for two at LaBelle’s restaurant (located at the site of the former David Ryan’s restaurant). Another special evening, still remembered by some seniors today, was the 1950s screening of The Unconquered, a documentary film on the life of Helen Keller by Nancy Hamilton with narration by Katharine Cornell. Helen Keller herself made an appearance at the theater.
A devastating fire
The night the Edgartown Playhouse caught fire in April of 196l, Jean (Perry) Andrews was working at the telephone company, which was located on North Summer Street. Her date had come to pick her up, and as they went outside they could smell smoke and hear the commotion around the corner. It was soon evident that the movie theater was on fire. She rushed back to the telephone company to help Laura Paul, the only operator on duty. Together they called firefighters from other towns, who came rushing to help. The fire had started backstage, where stage sets, equipment, and paint cans were stored, and was discovered by Buzzy, who lived in a house at the rear of the theater. He had just pulled the alarm when he saw flames burst out of the roof and ventilators. The fire advanced rapidly, and news of it spread across the Island, bringing hundreds of people to watch in awe as firefighters from Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, and Vineyard Haven fought the blaze.
Alfred Hall was in Florida when news of the fire reached him, and he made plans to return to the Island immediately. When the fire was out and it was safe to venture in, Buzzy explored the ruins. It was a sorry sight, but he found the projection booth, sheathed in asbestos, to be in reasonably good condition. A number of lenses and the projectors were also in decent shape, but everything else was gone.
A year passed with just the empty theater shell remaining, and the town fathers asked the Hall family if they could show movies in the Edgartown town hall. Buzzy bought equipment from the old Rialto Theater in New Bedford. Amplifiers, acoustic clouds, draperies, fiberglass walls, and other devices were employed to get the best possible sound.
The Halls had a three-year lease from the town in 1962 and renewed it until the seventies, when another company took over the lease and the movie showings. This lasted until the late eighties, at which time movies had to vacate the premises because of renovations to the town hall that were completed in 1990. There were no movies or playhouses in Edgartown for about twenty years, until the two-screen cinema that now operates above the Main Street Diner opened.
Today’s downtown mini-park
As for the Edgartown Playhouse: “We wanted to rebuild,” Buzzy says, “but had great difficulty getting all the permits together. When finally we had them, they were denied because we did not have ‘conventional financing’ – in other words, it was private funding, not financed through a bank.”
The area had been fenced off for a number of years when the town approached Alfred Hall with a proposal to lease the area as a park. Ralph Grant, who owned the Grant Brothers paving and construction firm, had excavating machinery, and he volunteered his time to fill in the cellar hole and level the land.
The round granite piece that sits on the lawn at the entrance to the park is from the former grist mill on nearby Mill Street. After it was no longer needed, it became a cesspool cover; and when sewers were installed in Edgartown, the stone was moved to the mini-park – recycling at its best.
Today the mini-park is enjoyed by Vineyarders and visitors alike as a restful spot in the heart of the village, and social events are often held on the green. On my daily walks, I sometimes stop and sit on one of the benches. I envision the theater I never saw in person, with its tall, small-paned-glass doors that faced Main Street and looked so inviting. I think of romantic dates shared in the darkened theater, and my mind pictures the huge elm trees that once lined the street and hugged each side of the theater doors, welcoming moviegoers of all ages.
