Leeds Center for the Arts, the great Winchester entertainment venue, celebrated its 100th anniversary last year and continues to regale the community with fantastic events like the current show Shrek, The Musical.
It’s interesting that the theater opened just one year before that other great Winchester institution, Ale-8-One®, came to market.
The theater has been a Winchester scene only a few more years than me, and I began thinking of the memorable times that I had there.
My first memory of seeing a film in Leeds was the 1946 movie The Beast with Five Fingers. I was six and attended with my sister, who was three years older. Thinking back on it, it may seem somewhat odd today that a six-year-old would be viewing a horror movie. At the time, movies were not rated on the system as they are today, even though a system existed for censoring movies before release. Such censorship was applied almost universally to sexually explicit content and “cussin’.”
The movie-going nation was horrified when Clark Gable uttered the word “damn” in the Gone with the Wind scene with Scarlett.
In 1951, I went alone to view The Thing From Another World. I had to go after school because I really loved sci-fi movies, but this one was playing during the week and would not be available to see on a weekend. It was winter and sunset came early — and the movie didn’t start until about 3 p.m.
My favorite seat was about halfway down on the left side, just under the front of the balcony. The black-and-white movie was a bit scary from the very beginning, when an Arctic scientific crew first finds a spaceship buried under the ice. The accompanying music really made the scene more eerie.
But about halfway into the movie, the lead actor, played by Kenneth Tobey, opens a door only to confront The Thing, played by James Arness.
The scene was so intense that I gingerly moved from my halfway-down seat back to the last row of the theater where I could also glance out through the lobby and watch as the day ended. I had to walk home alone, and this movie made me not want to do so in the dark, so I made a hasty retreat as soon as the movie ended, with daylight waning.
All through the 40s and 50s, Saturdays were usually the busiest theater days. Not only were all the kids out of school, but many farmers were in town on Saturdays, often unloading their kids at the theater while they conducted business elsewhere.in town.
And Saturdays were filled with movies targeting the young crowd: Abbott and Costello (and then Abbott and Costello meet the Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein or the Invisible Man), the Bowery Boys, Dagwood and Blondie or, quite often, Saturday “shootouts” to determine whether Roy Rogers or Gene Autry was the most popular.
The longtime manager of the theater was Mr. Frazee, a nice man who nonetheless ran a “tight ship.”
I don’t recall the name of the lady who sold tickets at the outside booth, but she must have known every kid and how old each was. Up until age 12, a kid could get in for 15 cents. It was a quarter after that. I managed to get in a couple of times after turning 12 for 15 cents, but she finally asked me one day if I wasn’t 12 yet. I was a pretty honest kid, and I admitted that I was.
In the 40s and 50s, it was common for the Saturday fare to include a cartoon, a newsreel, and a double feature. And once you were in the theater, you could stay and watch the movies as long as you wanted. I always thought it was quite amazing how newsreels could be so current; they depicted events just days after they occurred, and since this was before widespread television, the movie newsreels were the best way to stay current other than radio newscasts.
In 1969, a British movie titled Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? was shown. As you might judge from the title, it was a comedy. But two local ministers sought to have the film removed because of a single underwater scene in which a couple was seen swimming in the nude.
I think the effort only served to make the movie more popular.
While I have enjoyed numerous other events in Leeds since its renovation, perhaps the most memorable later one for me was the opportunity to see The Kingston Trio live a number of years ago.
I have been — and remain — a faithful fan of the group, and seeing them in person, even though only one was from the original group, was a great joy. Their music lingers.
Leeds has many years ahead of it and many great events to bring pleasure to Winchester. I can only hope that the generations that follow will have as many fond memories of the place as I do.
