Hi! Fort Theater! Now showing thru Thursday...

Photo from the collection of Vern Zech.

That was the beginning of every outgoing message on Fort Theater's answering machine in the 70s and 80s...

The superlative Madeline Kahn

... followed by such classic titles as: "Young Frankenstein, starring Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, and Madeline Kahn..." or "It's Only a Paper Moon, starring Ryan O'Neal, Tatum O'Neal, and Madeline Kahn..." or how about "Neil Simon's The Cheap Detective, starring Peter Falk, Ann Margaret, and Madeline Kahn..."

Seems like every movie of the seventies featured "... and Madeline Kahn." And thank goodness for that. She was an amazing comedy actress, may she rest in peace. Of course, the Fort Theater was there long before the seventies and eighties, but I wasn't old enough to go to the movies until probably 1970. I remember some friends of mine went to see the original movie version of M*A*S*H there, but it was rated R so I never got to see it until years later. Same with Blazing Saddles.

Computer-generated photo of how I remember the Fort Theater... TjH photo.

Apart from all the Madeline Kahn and Mel Brooks movies, I recall seeing Back to the Future here, Jaws 1, 2 & 3, many live action Disney films, such as That Darn Cat, The Love Bug, Son of Flubber, The Apple Dumpling Gang, The Shaggy Dog -- by the way, I'm talking about the original versions of these movies. I just realized as I was listing them that most of them have been re-made with people like Eddie Murphy, Lindsay Lohan, and Christina Ricci. No, no, no! I saw the Dean Jones versions! The Joe Flynn versions! The Tim Conway and Don Knotts versions!

I think the movies were 2 or 3 bucks in the 1970s. Once in awhile, over the winter holidays, they would have a Drop-Your-Kids-Off-For-A-Free-Movie-While-You-Shop-Downtown double-feature on a Saturday morning. They'd usually show older movies on these special occasions, probably films they had lying around in canisters in their basement, like The Absent Minded Professor, or Born Free, or The Adventures of The Wilderness Family or some other G-rated fare from Pacific International Enterprise Films!

Black's Jewelry, Fort Theater (er, Theatre) and The Arcadia, circa 1983. Now Showing: Risky Business.
Photo from the collection of Vern Zech.

If my memory serves me right, The Fort Theater closed in the early 1990s. The last movie I ever remember seeing there was a thing called Soul Man -- I was the only one in the auditorium -- and according to iMDb, that came out in 1986, so I'm guessing the theater closed shortly after that. Notice in the above photo that Black's Jewelry store no longer has the castle-like tower above the door (btw-how many jewelry stores today have a wooden door?) Also notice the neon sign on the backside of the Arcadia building's roof, visible above the theater (seen in reverse): "BOWLING" could be seen from the north end of Main Street half a mile away.

The old Fort Theater as it stands today. A shell of its former self, but a classy facade nevertheless.

The building itself:

Comparing the two photos above, the top one from 1983, the lower one from 2013, you can see that the front of the building -- which is all that remains -- is made of new red brick. Does anyone know if the whole building was demolished and rebuilt or if they just re-bricked the facade during restoration? When I was a kid in the sixties and seventies, the front was covered with an atrocious green tile made of either sheet metal or plastic and it covered the front about halfway up (see top photo). The second floor, where the projection room was located, looks pretty much the same, but the brickwork is new. I recall old black and brown bricks with a rough texture. What they call "rug-face" brick with vertical grooves carved into it (see left). I'm assuming the old brickwork was so crumbled and damaged underneath that ugly green tile that the decision was made to re-surface the entire building with new bricks. Perhaps that's why the green tile was installed in the first place, to cover up crumbling brickwork. I may be wrong. The ornamentation on the front of the building, however, has been retained: the spiral columns flanking the center window and the mosaic tile arched above it. (Note: the two concrete circles above the smaller windows were anchors to which the cables that supported the marquee were once attached.)

As you see in the newer photo, the building now stands alone in the middle of a parking lot, but in its operational days the sides of the building were not very visible. Black's Jewelry (run by the same family that ran the theater for many years) was directly to the West of Fort Theater. The small building was literally about two feet away from the theater. (I remember a skinny kid named Tim once squeezed himself between the two buildings because he found a dollar bill in there). Black's Jewelry was a cute little castle-like building made of white brick with enamel surface and black tile trim (I sure seem to have a memory for bricks for some reason. What a nerd I was/am!) The Black's Jewelry building was originally, I believe, a White Tower Hamburger stand (circa 1930s?) or some such White Castle knock-off, of which there were many back in those days. Notice in the photo to the right, the little building still retains its castle-like tower above the door. This was demolished for some reason many years later. This photo of Black's Jewelry comes from the collection of Vern Zech. Check out his slide presentation on YouTube.

East Milwaukee Avenue, 1880s, The Arcadia/Lyric Opera House. Rollover photo for annotations.

To the immediate East of the Fort Theater stood The Arcadia. The Arcadia was an ancient behemoth of a building, very barn-like in size and structure, older in fact than the Fort Theater. In it's later years The Arcadia was a bowling alley with a tavern in the basement, Arcadia Lanes and Arcadia Tavern, respectively. In its earlier years, however, it was a Vaudeville showhouse: The Lyric Opera House and acted as Fort's first city hall for some time. I believe the original Fort Fire Department used to keep their wagons (pre-fire engine days) in the lower portion, accessible from Water Street.


In the photo above, you can see The Lyric Opera House in the 1880s. The little yellow building with the red roof to the left of the Opera House appears to be a small home. This would be the location of The Fort Theater. Rollover the photo to see where the Fort Theater stood in proximity to the Arcadia. Note also that East Milwaukee Avenue was a dirt road. The photographer of this postcard photo was facing East, probably standing by the rear of what is now Humphrey's Florist at the entrance of the alley that runs between Humphrey's and the Post Office. You know where I mean? The Post Office and the Dwight Foster Public Library would have been located just out of view to the right of this shot (that is, if they were even built at this time).

Hanging out in front of Black's Jewelry, or White Tower 
Hamburgers, whatever that little white building was.
(circa 1941)

mysteryfile.com

I don't know what year the Fort Movie Theater was built -- I'll check on that -- but it was up and running in the early forties, as the photo to the left suggests: three teenage boys standing in front of the little white castle-like building which would later become Black's Jewelry Store. We can see the original Fort Theater marquee in this photo. Not a very good photo, it was scanned from an old yearbook halftone image (which means it was made up of little dots of ink when printed) but it's clear enough to read the marquee: "George Brent and Martha Scott in They Dare Not Love" which dates this photo around 1941. Notice also that the parking spaces in front of the Theater were angled. Also note that the removable letters on the marquee were of the old glass style: clear glass letters with flat black painted around them so when the marquee was illuminated at night, the light would shine through the letters and you could read what was playing all the way from Main Street (half a block away). The later 1970s marquee worked just the opposite: the marquee background was white plastic, backlit by fluorescent tubes and the lettering was made of opaque black plastic so the light wouldn't show through. You could read it just as well from Main Street as the old style, but there was no glass to break. Just a nerdy little detail. And that's what I'm all about.

Fort's OTHER Theater

The Uptown Theater: "2 Special Features" it says on the marquee, one of which is Boris Karloff in Frankenstein.

Does anyone remember The Uptown Theater? It was on the North end of town (hence its name) right next to what is now the Kit Cho Japanese/Thai restaurant. The above photo looks to be either a painting or a poor photo that has been expertly retouched. I have no idea where it came from; I've had it for years. Either way, it depicts what the 100 block of North Main Street looked like around 1931 (based on the fact that Boris Karloff's Frankenstein was playing at the theater, provided The Uptown was showing first run movies. Sadly, I can't make out what it says below that). This photo also reveals that what is now the Kit Cho Japanese/Thai restaurant used to be an A&P store (Atlantic and Pacific).

The 100 block of North Main Street East, as it looks today.

Notice that the apartment building in the middle -- which used to be the Uptown Theater -- now has satellite dishes mounted to the front of it. So, in a way, this building still shows movies. Imagine if, when I snapped this photo, someone in that building was actually watching Boris Karloff's Frankenstein at that very moment. Stranger things have been known to happen.

And here's another view of 100 block of North Main Street, and the Uptown Theater is still in business almost thirty years later. The car in the foreground is a 1960 Dodge and the marquee on the theater reads: "Natalie Wood, All The Fine Young Cannibals" which came out in 1960, so I'm guessing this photo is from around, oh... 1960? Yathink? (I wonder if the band FYC ever heard of this Natalie Wood movie.) Notice also that the sign above Eat-Mor simply said Eat. (Mor must've come later.)


On that note, enjoy this pleasant YouTube video... (if video doesn't play when you click on it, hit refresh and try again.) (Or contact the nearest usher.) (Those of you under 40, ask your grandparents what an usher is.)

 Stay Tuned... There's More to Come... 

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