Silent Screens: The Decline and Transformation of the American Movie Theater

Description

The single-screen movie theaters that punctuated small-town America's main streets and city neighborhoods since the 1920s are all but gone. The well-dressed throng of moviegoers has vanished; the facades are boarded. In Silent Screens, photographer Michael Putnam captures these once prominent cinemas in decline and transformation. His photographs of abandoned movie houses and forlorn marquees are an elegy to this disappearing cultural icon. In the early 1980s, Putnam began photographing closed theaters, theaters that had been converted to other uses (a church, a swimming pool), theaters on the verge of collapse, theaters being demolished, and even vacant lots where theaters once stood. The result is an archive of images, large in quantity and geographically diffuse. Here is what has become of the Odeons, Strands, and Arcadias that existed as velvet and marble outposts of Hollywood drama next to barbershops, hardware stores, and five-and-dimes. Introduced by Robert Sklar, the starkly beautiful photographs are accompanied by original reminiscences on moviegoing by Peter Bogdanovich, Molly Haskell, Andrew Sarris, and Chester H. Liebs as well as excerpts from the works of poet John Hollander and writers Larry McMurtry and John Updike. Sklar begins by mapping the rise and fall of the local movie house, tracing the demise of small-town theaters to their role as bit players in the grand spectacle of Hollywood film distribution. "Under standard distribution practice," he writes, "a new film took from six months to a year to wend its way from picture palace to Podunk (the prints getting more and more frayed and scratched along the route). Even though the small-town theaters and their urban neighborhood counterparts made up the majority of the nation's movie houses, their significance, in terms of revenue returned to the major motion-picture companies that produced and distributed films, was paltry." In his essay, "Old Dreams," Last Picture Show director Peter Bogdanovich recalls the closing of New York City's great movie palaces—the mammoth Roxy, the old Paramount near Times Square, the Capitol, and the Mayfair—and the more innocent time in which they existed "when a quarter often bought you two features, a newsreel, a comedy short, a travelogue, a cartoon, a serial, and coming attractions." While the images in Putnam's book can be read as a metaphor for the death of many downtowns in America, Silent Screens goes beyond mere nostalgia to tell the important story of the disappearance of the single-screen theater, illuminating the layers of cultural and economic significance that still surround it. "These photographs and the loss of which they speak signal the passing of a way of being together." —Molly Haskell List of Theaters by State Alabama • The Lyric, Anniston • The Martin, Huntsville Arizona • The Duncan, Duncan Arkansas • The Avon, West Memphis California • The Town, Los Angeles • El Capitan, San Francisco • The State, Santa Barbara Connecticut • The Dixwell Playhouse, New Haven • The Princess, New Haven Florida • The Gateway, Lake City Georgia • The Judy, Hartwell Idaho • The Ace, Wendell Illinois • The Pekin, Pekin Indiana • The Rem, Remington • The Ritz, Rensselaer Kansas • The Cameo, Kansas City Kentucky • The Crescent, Louisville • The Ohio, Louisville Louisiana • The Madison, Madisonville • The Sabine, Many • The Jefferson, New Orleans Massachusetts • The Strand, Westfield Michigan • The Liberty, Benton Harbor Mississippi • The Magee, Magee • The Star, Mendenhall • The Mono, Monticello • The Park, Pelahatchie Missouri • The Star, Warrensburg Nebraska • The Grand, Grand Isle New Jersey • RKO Proctor's Palace, Newark New Mexico • The Lux, Grants • The State, San Jon New York • The Hollywood, Au Sable Forks • The Broadway, Buffalo • The Lovejoy, Buffalo • The Senate, Buffalo • The Jefferson, New York City • The Little Carnegie, New York City • The 72nd Street East, New York City North Carolina • The Colonial, Chesnee • The Alva, Morganton Oregon • The United Artists, Pendleton Pennsylvania • The Lawndale, Philadelphia • The Rex, Philadelphia • The Spruce, Philadelphia • The York, Philadelphia • The Capitol, Williamsport Tennessee • The Park, Memphis Texas • The Royal, Archer City • The Strand, Chillicothe • The Gem, Claude • The Mulkey, Clarendon • The Texas, Del Rio • The Bowie, Fort Worth • The Chatmas, Hearne • The Queen, Hearne • The Palace, Henderson • The Alabama, Houston • The Almeda, Houston • The Crim, Kilgore • The Gulf, Robstown • The Clinch, Tazwell • The Winnie, Winnie Virginia • The Earle, Big Stone Gap • The Home, Strasburg Washington • The Pasco, Pasco West Virginia • The Ritz, Ansted • The Alpine, Rainelle

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Similar books

• 

  Popular Modernity in America: Experience, Technology, Mythohistory

  By Michael Thomas Carroll

  This leads us to consider another popular television format , the talk show , which over the past twenty - five years has gone from " talking heads " to an audience - participation mode established by Phil Donahue and then developed in ...

• 

  雷诺阿

  By 娜莎莉亚·布洛兹卡娅

  皮埃尔-奥古斯特·雷诺阿生活和呼吸着的是一种新的艺术风格,对他来说,第一次印象派画展意义重大,他的画作得到艺术家们的肯定。1873年他搬到了蒙马特并在那里度过了一生 ...

• 

  莫奈

  By 娜莎莉亚·布洛兹卡娅

  周... III.1雷诺阿,H.(1841-1919)—生平事迹 2 油画—作品集—法国—近代 IV.1K835.655.722J233 中国版本图书馆CIP数据核字(2004)第051724号© Confidential Concepts, Worldwide, USA © Parkstone PressInternational, New York, USA 书名:莫奈译者:蔡德崑 ...

• 

  艺术人文

  By 曹莉

  你只有摧残了它的精神,才可能占领它的肉体或者是物质。而精神里面最重要的就是史,就是对国家民族的由来和过程的认识。他说“周之世,官大者史”。我们知道我们一般说中国历史,就说夏商周,但是真正成形的,从制度和文化、典籍上给后代以影响的还.

• 

  開始自己動手畫地圖: 教你學會如何畫出具有個人風格與美學的藝術地圖

  By 漢妮．哈華斯（Hennie Haworth）, 史都華．希爾（Stuart Hill）, 詹姆斯．格利佛．漢卡克（James Gulliver Hancock）

  學習藝術地圖的終極工具書 四位頂尖繪圖藝術家 step by step教你畫出 有故事的個人地圖 記憶中是否有一些只屬於你自己的地方？ 小時候和童年玩伴一起踏遍足跡的小鎮 ...

• 

  Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America

  By Robert Hughes

  Criticizes Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Jessie Helms, and Ronald Reagan, political correctness, academic obsessions with theory, the art world, American infrastructure, and other targets

• 

  O'Keeffe On Paper

  By National Gallery of Art, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Elizabeth Glassman

  Georgia O'Keefe's best water colors, charcoals, and pastels are presented here in a survey of her work on paper dating from 1915 through 1962.

• 

  Douglas Johnson: Southwest Traditions and Modern Icons

  By Paul Strand, Megan Fox, Gerald P. Peters

  Douglas Johnson: Southwest Traditions and Modern Icons

• 

  In August Company: The Collections of the Pierpont Morgan Library

  By Pierpont Morgan Library

  It was orchestrated by Berlioz and performed as ballet music in his 1841 production of Weber's Freischütz in Paris . The work is probably best known today in this orchestral version . It is also familiar to the world of dance through Le ...

• 

  Comic Art of the United States Through 2000, Animation and Cartoons: An International Bibliography

  By John Lent

  April 23 , 1925 , p . 16 . 1793. Holman , Lois Holliday . Rose O'Neill's Kewpies and Other Works . N.p .: Privately published , n.d. 1794. Horine , Maude M. Memories of Rose O'Neill : Creator of the Kewpie Doll . N.p .