Spencer 3 closing in August

posted by CSWalczak on July 27, 2010 at 7:45 am

SPENCER, IA — Fridley Theatres will soon be closing the Spencer 3 which opened as the New Spencer in 1941 and became a triplex in 1979. Jeri Lagenfeld, who started working for Fridley in 1978 as a summer employee at one of their drive-ins and who has managed the Spencer 3 since 2004, shares her thoughts in this article from the Spencer Daily Reporter.

Originally, the theater utilized reel-to-reel projecting.

“The projectionist had to flip from one projector to the next and had just a matter of seconds to flip-flop and the movie continued onto the second reel,” Langenfeld explained.

Because the projectionist had to change and manually rewind reels every 15 to 20 minutes, he or she stayed in the booth for the entirety of each film.

Theaters in this post

• Spencer 3 Theater