Photos favorited by JohnnyM

  • <p>This painting depicts Elvis Presley’s very first appearance in St. Petersburg, Florida, which was at The Florida Theatre, on August 7th, 1956.</p> <p>Although none of Elvis Presley’s 143 stage shows in 1956 were the same, his final 83 shows that year had a lot in common. Starting with his afternoon show in St. Paul, Minnesota, on May 13, and ending with his year-end performance in Shreveport, Louisiana, he toured under the banner of “The Elvis Presley Show.” The Colonel Parker designed and promoted format included an hour-long variety show, followed by an intermission leading up to Presley’s 25 to 30 minute appearance. No other “name” performer appeared on the bill, and Elvis sang a standard playlist that usually began with “Heartbreak Hotel” and always ended with “Hound Dog.”</p> <p>While Elvis performed his standard show over and over in dozens of arenas in 1956, thousands and thousands of fanatic and curious people in each city were seeing him live for the first time. Those audiences gave a unique character to each of Presley’s 1956 stage shows. The unpredictable crowd behavior and each spectator’s personal experience made every Elvis stage show a one-of a-kind event.</p> <p>The following is a profile of one of those crowds. Over 6,500 tickets were sold for Presley’s three shows in St. Petersburg, Florida, on Tuesday, August 7, 1956.</p> <p>The following account is a composite of accounts published in the  St. Petersburg Times about the audiences for the 3:30, 7, and 9 p.m. Presley shows that day.</p> <p>Clare Carter and Donna Bemis were first in line at 4:15 in the morning, over 11 hours before the 3:30 p.m. opening show. All the $1.25 advance tickets were general admission, so the best seats would go to those at the front of the line when the doors of the Florida Theatre opened. Clare and Donna, armed with soft drinks, newspapers, and an Elvis fan book, laid claim to the first spot at the corner of First Avenue South and Fifth Street.</p> <p>At 4:45 a.m., they were joined in line by Elvis fans Anne Muncy and Nila Shea. The two blondes were disappointed to see Clare and Donna ahead of them. “We were the first in line to see him in Tampa and Lakeland,” one explained, “but this time we missed out.” Among others claiming spots near the front of the line were Glenda O’Brien and Donna Wyman, who arrived at 5:30, and Nancy Harper, Lin Peters, and Joy Cliett, who settled on the pavement at 6:10. By 9 o’clock those headed for work in the downtown area noticed a sizeable line of people snaking down the sidewalk away from the theatre. Made up mostly of teenage girls, the crowd seemed at its peak when a downpour hit at 11:50. The heavy rain started the line surging toward a small awning along the sidewalk. Most got drenched in the half hour shower, but none gave up their places in line. Times columnist Archie Dunlap noticed how the estimated crowd of 2,000, mostly girls and a few boys, stood its ground before the hard rain. “There must be something about Presley to have such a violent effect on teenagers,” he thought.</p> <p>• An orderly queue … until the doors opened Uniformed police officers kept watch over the waiting crowd, especially where it lined an alley where Elvis’s car was expected to arrive. The crowd remained orderly through the morning, but as entry time approached, excitement started to build. Chants of “We Want Elvis” began, and police reserves were called in when retraining ropes gave way under the pressure of the compacting crowd. Later in the day, police intercepted 14 teenagers trying to climb a fire escape to reach Presley’s dressing room. (One elderly woman back in line appeared ill and was allowed in early so that she could sit down. She chose a front row center seat, from where she could be seen cheering wildly when Elvis appeared.) The doors opened early due to the rain, and the crowd stampeded in, shoving and pushing to reach the seats closest to the stage. Police Captain “Robbie” Robinson took the rush in stride. “It was just like any bunch of kids all trying to get into the same place at the same time,” he observed. After the 2,500 seats in the theatre were filled, recordings of Presley’s hit records were played over the theatre’s sound system to sooth the excited nerves of his fans. Only occasionally did they clap or yell “We Want Elvis.” Any slight motion or sound from backstage brought shrieks of anticipation from the audience.</p> <p>• Some adults in the crowd A visual sweep of the audience prior to the opening acts revealed an unexpected number of adults scattered among the sea of teenagers. “I brought my 17-year-old niece,” explained Mrs. Frank Dickie. “She didn’t want to come by herself. She’s visiting here from Michigan.” Mrs. George Saunder and Mrs. M.A. Stewart professed to be there strictly out of “curiosity.” A couple of other adults came clean. “I’m getting a kick out of all this, too,” admitted Tex Bobbitt, who came with his son. Mrs. Frank P. Caldwell Jr. confessed, “I’m thrilled to be here simply because he’s famous.”</p> <p>Another adult set a bad example for the impressionable teenagers there. A mother and her teenage daughter had taken seats in a row close to the stage. Before the show started, the daughter went out to the refreshment stand to get something to eat. While she was gone, a gray-haired woman forced her way into the girl’s seat, even after being told the seat was taken. When the girl returned, the woman wouldn’t budge. An usher summoned by the mother failed in his efforts to get the bandit out of the stolen seat. Then a policeman came and spoke with the woman. When she still refused to leave, the officer moved away, unwilling to create a scene.</p> <p>• “Kill the Square!” Before the live opening acts started, a short, musical film featuring bandleader Louis Prima played on the theatre’s move screen. It drew some jeers of “kill the square” from the audience. The crowd settled down and sat patiently, even applauding politely, for the singers and comic-magician who then paraded across the stage. Last before intermission, the Jordanaires received the most applause among the opening acts. While the audience in the theatre endured the long stream of performers, a 20-year-old female reporter for the Times made her way backstage to interview Presley. After admitting her to his dressing room and answering all her questions, Elvis kissed her and showed her to the door. She didn’t realize that an open dressing room window gave her fellow reporters a full view of what happened from the newspaper building across the street. When she got back to the office, the city editor suggested she write a story on her impressions of kissing Presley.” She blushed … then responded, “I’d better not.”</p> <p>• Hands outstretched in worship When the sleeve of a kelly green sport coat through the curtains signaled Elvis’s arrival, the entire audience rose to its feet with the girls screaming en masse. While the girls tore at their hair, the boys looked about in awe. Those who had waited from early morning for the “privilege of leaning across the rail at Elvis’ feet” were engulfed by a wave of others rushing up from behind. “All hands were outstretched as though in worship of a pagan god,” observed 17-year-old Times writer Sally Simmons. She was then knocked in the head by cluster of girls tumbling backwards and yelling, “take it off, Elvis, take it off!”</p> <p>Microphone problems on stage rendered Elvis silent for a while, but the uproar from the audience continued. Just seeing Elvis was enough for them.  City police officers, both in uniform and plain clothes, were tasked with controlling the crowd and keeping Elvis from being swarmed over by fans. “I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it,” a 15-year-old girl yelled at Patrolman Jim Krupp. “I can’t stand it either,” he responded. Firemen treated six girls for “heat prostration and fainting spells.” Fire Marshal John Gidley declared, “I hope we never have anything like this again.” After about a dozen songs, Elvis made his usual quick exit, but it took some time for the pandemonium inside and outside the theater to subside. Police were kept busy calming down hysterical girls running from the theater. When a teenage girl begged Patrolman Jim Liddle to let her go backstage to get Elvis’s autograph, he gave her the one he had gotten earlier for his sister. Late on the evening of August 7, 1956, the Florida Theatre was empty and locked up. The crying and moaning sounds had faded from the surrounding downtown streets of St. Petersburg. A throng of 6,500 had taken home memories of having seen Elvis Presley on stage. Many of them would have a chance to rekindle those memories 20 years later, when a much different Elvis Presley returned to St. Petersburg for another show on September 3, 1976. — Alan Hanson | © August 2015</p>
  • <p>This acrylic painting pays homage to the now defunct Pheil Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida,</p> <p>The Pheil Theatre was located at 424 Central Avenue.</p> <p>This was an interesting theatre. It was part of the PHEIL HOTEL building and you entered under the screen. The projection booth was built out over an alley.</p> <p>The story told by even members of the IATSE local was that when the booth equipment was delivered, the workmen wanted to know if the booth equipment should be delivered to the booth. When asked that question the response was, “Booth ? What booth ?” Because the theatre had no projection booth and that was why it was built hanging out over an alley.</p> <p>The Pheil Theatre opened February 20, 1919. Allegedly it had a domed ceiling with cherubs. It was demolished to make way for a bank building in 1959.</p> <p>Here is the Pheil Theatre in 1932, screening “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (Paramount, 1931). Admission was 15 cents for adults, 10 cents for children, and 50 cents for box seats.</p>
  • <p>The Metro Cinema had midnight showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” on Friday and Saturday nights, beginning in the late 1970’s. This acrylic painting, by Jonathan Morrill, depicts such a summer’s eve.</p>
  • <p>Amongst the patrons of the fabled Twilight Drive-In Theater in Louisville, Kentucky, is a roster of monsters of the infamous American International Pictures. They include the fiends of such box office delights as “It Conquered The World” (1956), “The She-Creature” (1956), <br> “I Was A Teenage Werewolf” (1957), “Invasion Of The Saucer Men” (1957), “I Was A Teenage Frankenstein” (1957), “Blood of Dracula” (1957), “The Screaming Skull” (1958), “How To Make A Monster” (1958), “War Of The Colossal Beast” (1958), “Earth Vs. The Spider” (1958), “Attack Of The Giant Leeches” (1959), and “The Angry Red Planet” (1959). This painting was first revealed at the Halloween Art Show at the Tonga Hut in North Hollywood, California (October - 2013). The alternate title of this piece is “Baby-Boomer Breeding-Ground”.</p> <p>From the private collection of Beth Stelter.</p>
  • <p>Front Doorman Jonathan Morrill welcomes guests to the El Capitan Theatre during the Christmas Season of 1996, when the theatre had it’s first run of the live-action version of “101 Dalmations”.</p>
  • <p>A 1963 advertisement for a Halloween Spook Show at The Playhouse Theatre.</p>
  • <p>Jonathan Morrill was a Theater Manager of The Director’s Guild of America, in Hollywood, when HBO’s “The Young and The Dead”(2001), a film that he is featured painting an original portrait of Rudlph Valentino portrait in, made it’s premier at the very theater that he was managing; DGA Theater One.</p>
  • <p>Bernard,Francis and Rudy Santos in front of the Provincetown Movie Theater.</p>
  • <p>Here is a Retro-style poster that didn’t exist in it’s time, but resurfaced in 2019, thirty-three years after the fact. “Multi-Color House & Friends, Live at The American stage Company” is a digital collage, incorporating still video images from the raw footage of the live concert of the same name.</p> <p>The Internet Movie Data Base (imdb.com) has an entry on this title, with the following synopsis: ‘Multi-Color House, a St. Petersburg, Florida-based band, performs three sets, live, at The American Stage Company. The event was billed as “Multi-Color House and Friends”, and was performed on two consecutive nights; Friday, July 18th, and Saturday, July 19th, 1986. The sets are separated with short films and videos, produced by Jonathan Morrill, and live performances by area bands and musicians, including Frank Sherman, Lance Rodgers, and The Marked.</p>
  • <p>The Provincetown Theatre, at 239 Commercial Street,<br>in Provincetown, Massachusetts, was built in 1919.<br>It had 614 seats, 441 on the main floor, and 173 in the balcony.</p> <p>In May of 1941, it was listed as mainly a venue of MGM productions, and was Provincetown’s only venue for motion pictures. That would change into the 1950’s, as other cinematic theatres opened, and The Provincetown Theatre would screen productions from other studios. Collected information from various recollection of townies reveal that Universal Pictures screened many of their famous classic monster films there, including, “Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man” (1943), “The Creature From The Black Lagoon” (1954), and later on in the 1960’s, United Artists screened The Beatles first feature; “A Hard Day’s Night”, at The Provincetown Theatre.</p> <p>By the 1970’s, the theatre was an independent art house theatre, known as “The Movies”, with Monte Rome managing. “The Movies” would screen classic films, as well as foreign films, and a cult film at midnight. A classic Warner Brothers Looney Tune or two would be screened before the feature.</p> <p>On various summer evenings over the years in that 1970’s and 1980’s, I was fortunate enough to have watched more than a couple of classic Marx Brothers films at “The Movies”, and others as well, including Roman Polanski’s “MacBeth” (1971),<br> “The Story of O” (1975), Mel Brook’s “Silent Movie” (1976), and Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian” (1979). The most memorable experience I had at “The Movies”, was seeing David Lynch’s 1977 Cult Classic “Eraserhead” at a midnight screening. The psilocybin mushroom’s that our party ingested before the screening were completely unnecessary. If you haven’t seen it, “Eraserhead” is already like watching a hallucinogenic trip, and a disturbing one at that. The internet movie data base’s brief description of “Eraserhead”, is “Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.”</p> <p>“The Movies” had stopped operation by the mid-1980’s, and on February 10th, 1998, a fire at Whaler’s Wharf destroyed the entire building. The old Provincetown Theatre sign now rests, in a pile of pieces, on the shore of Provincetown Harbor..</p>
  • <p>June 18th, 1976 ‘Portsmouth Herald’ newspaper advertisement for the Ioka Theatre' screening of “Grizzly” (1976).</p>
  • <p>In the 1970’s, the now defunct Newington Drive-In Theater, in Newington, New Hampshire, offed a special price on their double feature screenings: Five Dollars Per Car-Load. It seemed like a good fiscal decision to pile as many people into the car, including the trunk, to capitalize on the savings. The problem was, that you needed more speakers to hear the movie, but we really weren’t there for the movie anyhow.</p>
  • <p>This acrylic painting depicts a summer’s evening screening of Steven Spielberg’s classic thriller; “Jaws”, at the Wellfleet Drive-In Theatre.</p> <p>The Wellfleet Drive-In, and surrounding complex, has a long history spanning the decades.</p> <p>The Drive-In was the first part, built in 1957 by principal owners John (Don) Jentz, Charles Zender, and other partners.</p> <p>On July 3, 1957, the first movie ever shown was “Desk Set”,starring Katharine Hepburn.</p> <p>Some other classic features that have graced the screen are:<br>“BEN HUR,” “JAWS,” “STAR WARS,” and “ET.”</p> <p>In 1958 screen supports were installed to help withstand strong Cape Cod winds from hurricanes and Nor’Easters. </p> <p>The original speaker boxes still sit on the poles, though you now have the better option of listening through your car radio.</p> <p>In 1961 the mini-golf course opened to entertain customers waiting to watch the movie, or other families and tourists looking for a fun round of put-put. There have been a few slight alterations to the course over the years, but it largely remains the same as it did in the sixties.</p> <p>The Flea Market then made its debut in 1974 and is most well-known for being run by Eleanor Hazen. Vendors come from far and wide to sell all kinds of antiques, jewelry, apparel, handmade crafts, and collectables that you can’t find anywhere else.</p> <p>The year-round indoor Cinema complex was added in 1986. It features 4 screens and the best, freshest popcorn you can find. Over the years Dolby Digital surround sound and 3D capabilities were added . In 2013 we switched all of our projectors over to digital (Barco Digital Projection).  The advancement was encouraged industry-wide and allows the newest movies and biggest blockbusters tobe shown with the clearest image and best sound possible.</p> <p>Today you can enjoy all the nostalgia from years past, with the comfort and quality of the newest innovations.</p>
  • <p>A church was constructed on Main Street in Newmarket, New Hampshire, in 1871. For a variety of reasons, it closed in 1907, and the property went over to commercial use. The church auditorium was converted into the town’s first movie theater, the Scenic Temple. This later became the Star Theatre. The popular movie theatre was sometimes used as a town auditorium. It presented movies into the 1950’s and was demolished in 1966.</p> <p>In the motion picture; “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, production designer Brian Thomson decided to use Patricia Quinn’s lipsticked mouth against a black background, lip syncing to Richard O'Brien’s vocal, with the picture inverted. Inspired by the Man Ray painting entitled Lips (1966), the opening number (prologue); “Science Fiction Double Feature”. is sung by these disembodied lips, which freeze in place for the credits.</p> <p>As depicted in this painting on the marquee, this song title, and subsequently the two featured film titles, are lyrics from this song; “Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet” “I knew Leo G. Carroll was over a barrel when Tarantula took to the hills” Therefore, this acrylic piece pays homage not only to the only movie theatre Newmarket ever knew, but also to two classic science fiction films, and a cult classic.</p> <p>The Star Theatre was an “MGM” theatre, and it is quite probable that “Forbidden Planet” (MGM, 1956) was screened there sometime in 1956. It is probably unlikely that Robbie the Robot was present outside the theatre at the time. It is also probably unlikely that “Tarantula” (Universal, 1955) was ever screened at The Star Theatre. It is not out of the realm of possiibility that anyone suffering from acromegaly was peeking out of the 2nd floor window, and there definitely was a Gulf gas pump next door.</p>
  • <p>In St. Pete there once was a grand colorful<br>drive-in theatre<br>called the “28th Street Drive -In”.</p> <p>The 28th Street Drive-In opened in 1951, with “The Glass Menagerie”,starring Jane Wyman. It had a capacity for 650 cars. By 1957 it was operated by Floyd Theaters.</p> <p>Back in 1970, the 28th St. had two projectors, each running 2,000 foot reels with RCA supplying all the booth equipment.</p> <p>The 28th Street’s marquee sported colors harking back to the deco era. This painting depicts the artist’s recollection of seeing “The Texas chainsaw Massacre” at the 28th Street drive-In, back in 1982</p> <p>The 28th Street Drive-In closed on June 30th, 2000. The last double-feature on the marquee was “Mission Impossible (II)”, with the second (and officially the last feature ever screened there) being “Rules of Engagement” starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. </p> <p>The property was purchased by the Pinellas County School Board, and in 2005, the site of the old 28th Street Drive-in was a new Middle School.</p>