Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 21, 1992 TAG: 9201210127
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Paul Dellinger
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SMALL-TOWN THEATERS ACT LIKE NOVEL
Larry McMurtry could never have come up with a better title for his book on the changing lifestyles of young people in small rural towns than he did for "The Last Picture Show."McMurtry has become even better known for his Western novel that became the landmark "Lonesome Dove" TV mini-series. He saw an acclaimed movie version of his "Picture Show" story in 1971 and still another, featuring some of the same actors grown older, in the movie version of his sequel, "Texasville."
It was "The Last Picture Show" that gave me my first look at Cybill Shepherd and Cloris Leachman, who won an Oscar for her role.
I had seen the other Oscar-winner, Ben Johnson, in numerous Westerns during my childhood. He played the owner of the last movie theater in a small Texas down of the 1950s and the show, appropriately, ends with that theater showing its last movie. It was "Red River" with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, in case you wondered - a show with a cattle-drive plot not unlike that of "Lonesome Dove."
The Pulaski Theatre has now shown its last picture show.
The movie house in downtown Pulaski, just down the street from the county courthouse, closed the day after New Year's and left its marquee blank for the first time since 1938.
Richard Herring, who leased and ran it for more than a decade, said attendance had dropped by up to half of the previous year's attendance - and even last year had not been much. Even ticket prices as low as $1 did not bring audiences back.
Herring operates a triple-screen theater in Wytheville and said people apparently prefer a multiscreen theater with more movie choices.
At one time, Pulaski had two indoor theaters. The Dalton Theatre, a few blocks away, was built in 1921 and converted to sound movies in 1929. It is now the Dalton Building, with the theater part replaced.
The Dalton started out alternating between silent movies and traveling stage shows (both the magician Houdini and Houdini's son performed there) and, when the Pulaski Theatre opened 17 years later, the Dalton began showing more of the "B" movies - series Westerns, mysteries and such.
In more recent years, young people - including my two youngsters - seemed as happy renting a video for a date and watching it at home (as long as Mom and Dad stayed out of sight). Drive-in theaters, which proliferated in my youth, are now closed and supporting crops of weeds, more standing monuments to last picture shows across the country.
You might as well say Pulaski County has no more movie theaters anymore. Technically, it does have the two screens (usually offering four to five movies, at staggered times) at the Radford Plaza Cinema on U.S. 11. But if you ask four employees at stores in that shopping center - as I did - just where it lies, you are likely to get four answers: "Radford," "Montgomery County," "Pulaski County," "I don't know." The correct answer is Pulaski County, but just by a quarter-mile.
Maybe videotapes are the wave of the future. Maybe the movies are going the way of vaudeville stage shows. If so, I will miss them.
Paul Dellinger covers Pulaski County for the New River Valley bureau.