Bangor’s third “picture house” — the Graphic — opened on Exchange Street on Feb. 18, 1909, a century ago this week. The public’s enthusiasm for silent films and illustrated songs continued unabated. Hundreds of people gathered in the icy street outside (at the corner of York where Maliseet Gardens is today) before the 7 p.m. opening. The cashier sold 1,822 tickets — enough to fill the house twice. By 7:15 all the seats were full and by 7:30 there was no standing room. The crowd jammed the lobby and spilled out onto the sidewalk, according to the Bangor Daily News.
Latecomers left for the city’s other entertainment palaces. These included two other nearly new movie theaters, the Nickel and the Gem; a new vaudeville house, the Gaiety; and the old standby, the Bangor Opera House, where one could see the very best of live theater productions from New York and Boston. Another new vaudeville house, the Union Theater, had closed temporarily two weeks before. It would reopen on April 12 as Acker’s Family Theater, part of a Canadian chain.
The Bangor Opera House seemed to be holding up against this onslaught of mass culture, which had been spearheaded by the opening of the Nickel, Bangor’s first movie theater, in August 1907. “The Merry Widow,” an operetta with a cast direct from the Tremont Theater in Boston, had broken all attendance records late in January. Billie Burke and Ethel Barrymore were among the stars promised in the weeks ahead. George M. Cohan’s “Forty-five Minutes From Broadway” was coming as well.
An appearance by Al Jolson with the Lew Dockstader minstrel show had occurred Jan. 25. Jolson was still trying to break into the big time. Dockstader, the famed impresario of “burnt corkism,” gave Jolson a position in newspaper ads second only to the famous Neil O’Brien. Jolson’s picture in full black-face regalia appeared in both daily papers.
The Bangor Daily News, however, spoke of Jolson slightingly as “an unctuous comedian of the Arthur Deming type.” Twenty years later Jolson would utter the immortal words, “You ain’t heard nothing yet,” in the nation’s first popular “talkie,” revolutionizing show business.
The common folk of Bangor could not have cared less about the upscale theatrical events at the Opera House. They wanted movies. “George M. Cohan’s new play is the talk of New York, but the new Graphic is the talk of Bangor,” wrote the perceptive reporter for the Bangor Daily News.
Pullen’s orchestra started things off at the Graphic that night a century ago by playing two marches and two waltzes. Then Harry B. LeRoy, the resident vocalist, sang two songs, “As Long as the World Rolls On” and “Take Me To Your Heart Again.” But the feature event was the six films, including “The Detective of the Italian Bureau,” “Nick Carter’s Doubles,” “Scenes in Strasburg” and “Button, Button — Who’s Got the Button?”
As usual, the actors in these early films remained anonymous. The film quality was more important than the stars. It was “remarkably clear and distinct,” commented the Bangor Daily Commercial. Even the theater’s pianist, Leo Chatney, and its drummer, Harry Burrill, as well as electrical operator Frank Hatfield, got more press than the ghosts on the screen.
As with all the other new theaters, and for that matter most of the new public buildings in Bangor, a good deal of space in the papers was devoted to architectural details. The Graphic’s chief claim to fame was that “there is not a step or a post in the entire building,” explained the Commercial on Feb. 15. The theater was on one level with an inclined plane leading from the lobby to the auditorium and a roof supported by “massive trusses” made of timber and steel and “reinforced with juniper ship knees.” Thus all of the 900 seats, which consisted of 35 rows of folding chairs, offered equal views.
The 14-foot-by-17-foot screen was framed by an intricately designed proscenium arch and on either side was a rostrum for singers or speakers. Of course, much was made of the “eight chandeliers and electric lamps in numerous other styles of fixtures.” The color scheme — “imported cork carpeting of a light sage green color, which harmonizes agreeably with the white of the general interior and the black, red, mahogany and gold of the chairs” — was mentioned repeatedly in the papers. Outside, the marquee hung by four steel chains. It had been made at Bangor’s own Morse & Company, famous for its wooden decorative house furnishings.
Bangor’s theater boom was in high gear, but not everyone approved. As the city’s manufacturing sector slowly declined, some local leaders wondered whether the money could not be put to better use. “[W]hen one considers the large amount of capital involved in these new theatrical ventures, the thought arises whether it would not have been better for the community if a portion at least of this outlay had been invested in productive industry. What our city needs most today is new and promising industries that will give employment to labor and impart an enhanced stimulus to Bangor’s business activities,” Edward Blanding, secretary of the Bangor Board of Trade, said in his annual report as printed in the Bangor Daily Commercial on Jan. 11.
I suspect most of the hundreds of people trying to jam into the new Graphic theater, each clutching a nickel on that frosty night a century ago, would have disagreed vehemently.
Wayne E. Reilly may be reached at wer@bangordailynews.net Jamie Kingman-Rice of the Maine Historical Society provided information for this column.