The Orpheum Theater

I suppose I got my love of movies from my dad. He would take my brother and I to the Orpheum Theater on Saturday nights. There seems to be an Orpheum theater in most cities. The name "Orpheum" for an entertainment hall comes from the Greek myth of Orpheus, whose music and poetry were so compelling that even the Gods were mesmerized. The word "Orpheum" means "house of Orpheus" or"place of Orpheus." Our Orpheum Theater in Oxford couldn't exactly be called an entertainment hall or mesmerizing - but it was the only choice we had other than the Starlite Drive-In - also a popular name for outdoor theaters.

My first memory of a movie was King Kong, the original black and white version. When I was growing up it wasn't uncommon for movies to recirculate, thus about once a year we'd get movies like The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, and King Kong. All I remember as a boy of four or five was the gorilla's head filling the screen. I was so frightened that I got down out of my seat and hid behind the seats in front because I thought Kong was going to break free of that screen and come inside the theater and eat us. My younger brother laughed at me cowering on the floor. You probably think it's funny too.

The Orpheum was segregated when I was growing up. Blacks viewed movies from the balcony. They had their own entrance and were denied the use of the bathrooms, which happened to be located upstairs. There was one toilet for the men and one for the women. The doors were secured by a latch that had obviously been kicked out several times because the wood was torn and you could actually see if someone were inside the bathroom through the crack. I would hold it until I could pee in the alley once the movie was over.

The Orpheum offered one size of popcorn and one size of soda. The popcorn came in a box that was probably filled the night before; and the drink choices were limited to Pepsi, 7-Up, or orange soda. There was a bigger variety of candy than you find in theaters today. We could even buy pea shooters - a straw and a bag of small beans, which we'd use to shoot other kids and black people in the balcony. They had the advantage of height though and we'd spend a lot of time dodging spitballs and beans.

On Saturday afternoons when my mom was tired of having us running around screaming and getting in the way of her work, she'd send my brother and I uptown to my dad's store where he would give us each fifty cents for a movie. That half dollar would pay for a child's ticket, popcorn, soda, and candy. Adults had to pay $.35, so we always lied about our age once we turned 12 and were subject to the cost of an adult ticket.

The Orpheum only had one show per night during the week, plus a matinee on Saturday and Sunday. There were three employees: The owner who sold concessions when he wasn't running the projector, and two teenagers to sell tickets and concessions while the owner was upstairs in the projection booth. Sometimes the owner would open the theater on a weekday when a new Disney movie would open. I think it did it just for our school, which was an orphanage. We'd march the four blocks from our school to the theater. Since I was a 'town' student and didn't actually live at the orphanage, my mother would give me a quarter to pay for my ticket. But since the owner didn't know me from an orphan, I'd use that quarter for candy and popcorn.

It was in the Orpheum theater that I first saw 101 Dalmations, Bambi, Old Yeller, and my favorite Disney movie, The Swiss Family Robinson. I would daydream about being shipwrecked on a tropical beach, eating bananas and coconuts, and running barefoot through the sand and surf. As I grew a little older, I looked forward to the teeny beach movies starring Annette Funicello and Bobby Darrin. And since I was a huge Elvis fan, I never missed one of his movies, starting with his Love Me Tender western up through his beach movies in exotic locations like Florida, Hawaii, and Mexico.

The Orpheum is where I saw my first naked lady - Pussy Galore painted in gold in Goldfinger. James Bond became my hero - the girls, the guns, the money and exotic locations. I had other heroes in movies as well: John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Audie Murphy, Jimmy Stewart, Elvis Presley - all American heroes in my book.

By the time I was drafted into the Army, the Orpheum was playing movies like Midnight Cowboy, The Wild Bunch, The Good The Bad & The Ugly, Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, Billy Jack, Walking Tall, Alice's Restaurant, and The Love Bug. This was during the Viet-Nam War and blacks were demonstrating their equality by sitting downstairs with the white folk. Lots of whites would leave the theater if a black sat in the white section, but times were changing. So was the theater.

The manager's hair had turned white by now. The teens who used to sell tickets and concessions were still there, they were just older as well. White kids started sitting in the balcony so they could shoot spitballs down on the blacks. Ticket prices had risen to fifty cents, popcorn was a quarter - for the same size box. The fire escape on the side of the building collapsed under the weight of several town drunks hiding in the alley between the theater and the Nationwide Insurance building.

I left Oxford for the Army in 1971. It would be two years before I would return, after my tour in Ethiopia and subsequent stationing at Ft. Bragg. The theater was closed for rennovation; but it would never reopen. For years the building stood empty and neglected and residents would have to travel to Durham or Raleigh to see a movie. By then there were cineplexes - theaters with two or even three auditoriums.

Today the Orpheum sign still sits above what used to be be the entrance to the theater. Now the Orpheum has been divided into offices housing lawyers and real estate agents. Not many citizens of Oxford remember the Orpheum in it's glory days, with neon lights and light bulbs that lit up half a block on Saturday nights. I wish I'd been around when they tore out the seats to make room for the new tenants. I'd like to have had that wooden seat behind which I hid from a roaring giant gorilla.