Silent Screens: The Decline and Transformation of the American Movie Theater (Creating the North American Landscape)

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Summary: REMEMBERING AMERICA'S MOVIE THEATER HERITAGE
Review: "Haunting, edgy, black-and-white photos . . . accompanied by commentary on love, loss and change by Larry McMurty, Peter Bogdanovich, Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell, Chester H. Liebs and John Hollander."-Publishers Weekly

From the 1920s to the 1960s, almost every town and city in America had at least one cinema where people congregated every week to see the latest Hollywood fare. Whether humble storefront theater or grand movie palace, the cinema was once as important a landmark on Main Street as church, barber shop, and city hall, helping to shape the daily rhythms of urban life in America. As television emerged as the new mass medium and movie attendance plummeted in the 1950s and 60s, and as more and more Americans abandoned city life and moved to the suburbs, these monuments to fantasy and escapism began closing. Some were converted into drug stores and discount clothing houses and churches, while hundreds more were either torn down or boarded up indefinitely. Recently, there has been renewed interest in restoring the grandest of these movie palaces, but for most it is too late.

In "Silent Screens," photographer Michael Putnam has captured the sad fate of America's movie theaters across the country in stunning black-and-white images. His beautifully composed and undeniably haunting photographs of abandoned and converted cinemas across America serve as an elegy to a nearly extinct touchstone of cultural life in mid-20th-century America. From the forlorn Crim in Kilgore, Texas, and the decrepit beaux-arts Jefferson in New York City to the imaginatively restored Alabama in Houston, Texas (now a bookstore), and the stark Rem in Remington, Indiana, the cinemas captured through Putnam's lens each recall another era of movie-going and, according to contributor Molly Haskell, another "way of being together." Accompanied by original essays by director Peter Bogdanovich, film critics Haskell and Andrew Sarris, and Main Street historian Chester Liebs, as well as by excerpts from works by John Updike and Larry McMurtry, Putnam's photographs document the passing of an era in American history nearly forgotten in today's age of soulless multiplexes and Blockbuster video stores. Film historian Robert Sklar (Movie-Made America, City Boys) provides an introductory essay that explores the history of small-town and neighborhood movie theaters. A valentine for cinephiles, "Silent Screens" will delight everyone who counts among their favorite moments the hours spent in the darkened paradise of a movie theater.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderfully nostalgic book
Review: A couple of months ago I decided to take photos of all the old and forgotten movie theaters in San Juan (the Cinerama, the Riviera, the Radio City,the Paramount, the Rex).All these places were such a part of my youth that I wanted to capture them before they were torn down. So it was wonderful to see a book of photographs taken by a person with a similar frame of mind. You will love the pictures of neighborhood theaters in Texas, New York. It will make you long for the days of single screen theaters and will bring back some amazing memories. The text written by various movie critics is excellent. I really recommend this book.

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Summary: Superb photos, a true inspiration
Review: As a projectionist, I felt it my duty to research my trade in as many ways as possible, and one way was to learn about the movie palaces and hometown theatres that made my job exist.
I actually cried as I read this book. The photos made me wish I had been around to experience these theatres in their prime.
This book helped me to understand and respect the movie industry's history, and the history of the American hometown, far better than any factual history book ever has.
This book also inspired me to support my local historical theatres and those around the nation. Mr. Putnam did a wonderful job on this book. The photographs are all of superb quality, and the Demolitions and Conversions Noted sections are extremely interesting. While the photos of the decaying cinemas are depressing, they also inspire one to save the historic theatres that we have left and to learn about their history.

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Summary: Great Photos
Review: I saw this exibit at the Smithsonian and loved it.

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Summary: A Class Job...
Review: This is a wonderful book. The thick, glossy paper really sets off the photographs-there is real beauty and passion here.

Rating:
Summary: A Class Job...
Review: This is a wonderful book. The thick, glossy paper really sets off the photographs-there is real beauty and passion here.

Rating:
Summary: Great Photos
Review: This is a wonderful, haunting book, which I think at least one of the previous reviewers here has missed the point of. The point is not to show these theaters in their prime, but rather, in pictures of their present state of decay, to hint at the glories that were. If you're looking for a picture book of grand movie palaces, this isn't it. But if you're looking for something that operates on a different plane, the romance of decay, and the melancholy of a world lost, this is definitely it. For all those who want to let their imaginations loose upon the ruins, this book should provide a field day.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful "Screens"
Review: This is a wonderful, haunting book, which I think at least one of the previous reviewers here has missed the point of. The point is not to show these theaters in their prime, but rather, in pictures of their present state of decay, to hint at the glories that were. If you're looking for a picture book of grand movie palaces, this isn't it. But if you're looking for something that operates on a different plane, the romance of decay, and the melancholy of a world lost, this is definitely it. For all those who want to let their imaginations loose upon the ruins, this book should provide a field day.

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Summary: A PICTURE BOOK THAT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE
Review: This is not the first picture book of lost American movie houses, and I hope it will not be the last, but while the photo quality is excellent, the text and background leave much to be desired. It does indeed create a nostalgic empathy for its subject, those smaller structures made so famous by that memorable movie of 1971: "The Last Picture Show", and just as it featured a show house in a small Texas town, so this book favors black and white shots ("plates") of picture shows that stand as shadows of what they once were. No attempt is made to delve into the early life or the circumstances of the demise of these venues, so the photos leave the reader with much the vacant, lost, tumbling-tumble-weeds-driven-on-the-wind feeling of the movie.

To its credit, the book does contain two 'necrologies' of sorts: the first is a four-page chapter called "Demolitions Noted" where several hundred movie houses around the nation are listed as gone, featuring, for example, an eight-page spread of the Pekin Th. of Pekin, Illinois being demolished, yet nothing is shown of it in its prime so that the reader could really appreciate that this was a unique Chinese-styled small movie palace of the 'atmospheric' (stars and clouds) type worthy of preservation. Had the author taken the trouble to locate a copy of one of the foremost books on the American movie theatre: AMERICAN MOVIE PALACES by David Naylor, he would have seen on its page 82 a photo of the Pekin Theatre in its pre-demolition prime, and then his photos of it in demolition would have had more context and impact had he sought to include this photo with his. Any research on his part would have disclosed that the photo was owned by one of the founders of the Theatre Historical Society of America which publishes a magazine of such theatre history: "Marquee", and no doubt that photo and many others could have been obtained, but neither the Society nor its magazine are mentioned in the book. Such research is what sets a quality book apart from others of lesser stature, picture book or not.

The second 'necrology' is the chapter entitled: "Conversions Noted" which is perhaps the least depressing in the book since it shows, within its seven pages of listings, that theatres large or small can have other useful lives. An overlooked conversion was the unusual one which occurred in Milwaukee when the 1920 Riviera Th. was converted to a bicycle emporium cum velodrome with a planned bike racing track to be constructed atop the balcony and around the walls under the old chandelier positions with inverted bicycle frames supporting high intensity up-lights as the new 'chandeliers'!

The comentaries by several notables do little to advance scholarship, something one would have expected from a book published by a university press. When the author/photographer explains in the "Conclusion" that he knew nothing of the documented locations of movie houses (few of these here could really qualify to use the term 'theatre') until someone introduced him to the standard of such guides: "The Film Daily Yearbook", it is obvious that scholarship or any real contribution to the body of knowledge was not the genesis of this work. Even one afternoon in any real library would have introduced him to the many volumes on the subject as well as magazines, and had such limited research been done, no doubt the author would have been able to do more than stumble about the towns of America hoping to find a dead show house; he could have given us some background to the origins of this genre and thus put meat on the bones of the photos, good ones though they are.

The book's 100 some pages in the long format are nicely produced, and they may create a longing for more information so absent from this opus, in which case one is well advised to consult the landmark book which its Forward writer described as the "appropriate epitaph" of the movie house: "THE BEST REMAINING SEATS: The Golden Age of the Movie Palace" by the late Ben M. Hall (several editions available here at Amazon). "SILENT SCREENS" is a clever title, and in some depressing way it is more of an epitaph than the former title, yet it is unfulfilling, unless one is satisfied with a vagabond's jaunt with a camera down so many main streets.