Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 24, 1995 TAG: 9501240078
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A vintage theater restored to its former grandeur is being touted as one more drawing card for visitors to places like Pulaski and Blacksburg. That's the future part. But there is also the nostalgia factor, because some of those supporting restoration ventures remember many happy times in those now-closed movie houses.
The Friends of the Pulaski Theatre brought in architect and theater consultant David A. Lowry last month to get an expert opinion on what is needed to restore that structure on Pulaski's Main Street.
In Blacksburg, the Lyric Council Inc. began forming a board of directors to work on preserving the Lyric Theatre on College Avenue.
It has been two years since the Pearisburg-based Young Adults Preserving America's Heritage held a music show in that town's Pearis Theatre, but there has been interest in restoring that one, too.
The same is true for the Rex Theatre in Galax and the Lincoln Theatre in Marion. They all want to follow the example of the Paramount Theatre in Bristol which was successful in its restoration and has been having live entertainment on its stage for several years now. However, the Paramount was located in a city with ties to two states and got a big boost in its fund-raising program from the Tennessee legislature. None of the theaters in this part of Virginia can tap that source of revenue.
The Pulaski Theatre, which opened as the Elks Theatre in 1911, began as a live theater. When vaudeville shows died out, it was converted to a dry goods store, but reopened as a movie theater in 1938. It closed after New Year's Day of 1992, and has been donated to Pulaski County which designated the Friends of the Theatre as its agent in dealing with the facility.
The 64-year-old Lyric closed as a movie house in mid-1989, and served for a time as an extra lecture hall for Virginia Tech and a showcase for second-run and art movies for students.
Even new movie houses have their problems. The Wytheville Cinema, operated most recently by the same folks who run the theaters in the Radford Plaza Shopping Center, closed last September and is being converted to an Advance Auto Parts store.
Most of those working on restoring the Pulaski, Lyric and other theaters see a future filled with musical shows, live theater, lectures and that sort of thing rather than offering first-run films again. It is hard to convey, to those not old enough to remember life before television, how much fun those larger-than-life images on the big screens could be in even the most formularized B-picture.
In the New River Valley, movie buffs do not have to settle for the old-movie channels on cable TV. There are still the equivalent of Saturday matinees, although they have been moved to evenings.
Film collectors gather to show their movies to one another on the first Saturday of each month on the campus of Radford University and on the third Saturday at the Christiansburg branch of the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library. The screens are not as big as the ones many of us remember (although as movie houses divided themselves into multitheater rooms, even their screens have gotten smaller), but they do beat the TV screen. And what's more - no commercials!
Paul Dellinger is a New River Valley bureau staff writer.
by CNB