Strand Theatres

I attended Grinnell College from 1958 to 1960. At that time there were two theatres in town. The second theatre was on the same side of Main as the Strand on the same block, at or near the corner of 5th Avenue. It was a much larger, more impressive building that was built during the era of cinema palaces. But it was closed. The Strand and a drive-in were the only venues to see movies. The Strand, needless to say, was a single screen theatre at that time. (It isn’t that big and I can hardly imagine how it was made into three screens.)

In my second year there, I took over the college advertising for the theatre. This consisted of making weekly 8 ½ x 11 ditto posters and putting them on all the bulletin boards in the college. For this I got five freebies to the theatre a week, which I later negotiated to four free tickets and a pass for me to go as often as I wanted (shows changed three times a week). A showing of Ingmar Bergman’s THE MAGICIAN resulted in a special discussion at the college with English professors debating its merits, which was very well attended.

I would have discussions with the manager at the time. My 48 year-old memory is that he said his family used to own the other theatre in town. A big chain came in town, built the Strand and with access to better product because it was a chain, drove his family out of business. He then became manager of the Strand as an employee.

I’m glad to see on Google that the town bank, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is still there and still beautiful. I loved to go in there. At that time, believe it or not, no name or account number was on the checks; the bank employees applied the check to the correct account by signature alone. Local stores had blank checks that you could use to pay, if you’d forgotten your checkbook.

Here is another photo. Doesn’t look too hospitable there in the winter.
http://tinyurl.com/yj5oot5

I had the pleasure of being working at the Cinema (under George Mart who was essentially just a figure head at the time and passed away a year or so after I started). I began as the first male concessionaire. A dubious distinction no doubt. I was promoted to projectionist and then projectionist/assistant manager of both the drive-in and hard top, as we referred to the Cinema (aka Strand). At the time, the Cinema, though only about 6 years post remodeling showed signs of age. All sorts of rumors abounded about things that happened in the basement (where amongst the storage areas for popcorn, posters, etc oddly enough there was a mattress on the floor. All in all, it was a great first job. I worked there with many great people and this job ultimately lead me towards a film career, wherein I worked as a producer of TV commercials and other content.