Lyric Cinemas

LouRugani on January 13, 2024 at 12:25 am

The Lyric Theater: A reminder of an age gone by (Paul S. Peterson, Managing Editor, originally published in the Dec. 17, 1975 edition of the Daily News) —- The Lyric Theater is a reminder of an age gone by, a time when the motion picture was the social event of a Saturday evening and the last word — and only word — in the land of make-believe entertainment for youngsters. Today, the old theater is a victim of a different culture and the movies themselves, as well as the building, reflect the change. So do the audiences. “We are getting a lot younger audience than we did years ago,” says Ray Bowen, who just recently retired after more than 50 years as operator of the Lyric’s projectors. “And the audience doesn’t seem as concerned with the plot or with the acting as it did 10 or 15 years ago,” he added. Whether it is because of the change in the make-up of the audience today or simply because of the impact of television or simply because people are more inclined toward out-of-door activities, the Lyric Theater is a far cry from the Lyric that is remembered from the late 1950s. Even as late as 1960, the Lyric was playing to good-sized audiences during the week and to full houses on Sundays and for the two shows on Friday and Saturday nights. Today, the Lyric is barely keepings its financial head above water. Rod Grams, who resigned as the theater’s manager earlier this year to become director of Dial-A-Ride Transportation in Ludington, said it takes a gross income of $1,000 a week to keep the Lyric out of the red. “Right now the theater is breaking even and actually will show a profit of about $5,000 for the year,” Grams said. “If this continues, if the theater doesn’t fall into the red, then it is possible some repairs may be made soon.” And most important repair to be faced in the immediate future is to the boiler, an item of no small expense. “I really don’t know if Butterfield (Butterfield Theaters, Inc. of Detroit) will authorize the repairs or not,” Grams said. “If things keep going the way they are, it is possible Butterfield will OK it and the theater will continue to operate. If not, the theater will have to close.” The decline of the Lyric is not unique among movie theaters in small towns. The income is no longer there to make the Lyric the movie palace it once was. Costs continue to rise; the staff has been drastically reduced; there is little chance of getting good release dates for quality films and the building is having aesthetic, as well as mechanical, problems. “When I started there,” Grams said, “We had two doormen, two ushers, a person to handle the concession stand and the manager on duty all the time.” Now the manager doubles as ticket-taker and there is usually just one other employee to handle the rest of the work during an evening. And the cutback in personnel shows up in a hurry when the movie begins. Patrons at times are fortunate if they can hear the sound or escape being trampled by kids running up and down the aisles. And the theater itself is far from a “sparkling movie palace,” as it was once billed. Grams’ daughter, Mrs. Sally Taylor, is the new manager — and only the fourth — and she and her skeleton crew can only do so much. But she has received permission from Butterfield, the moviehouse chain that owns the Lyric, to hire special police to help patrol the theater during Friday nights in particular. So if this is the Lyric Theater today, what was it like in its heyday? It was, in an understatement, an altogether different place. The Lyric, as we know it today, was opened to the public on Oct. 28, 1925. Its predecessor was the Opera House, which later become known as the Lyric Theater, and was located right alongside the present Lyric. The Opera House was the scene of numerous performances of the legitimate stage. Traveling troupes came to Ludington at regular intervals to perform many of the top plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With the arrival of the silent films, the Opera House, which by that time had become the Lyric Theater, underwent the necessary modification so that such pictures at James Oliver Curwood’s “The Trail’s End,” could be seen. On Feb. 15, 1922, one of the all-time great silent films came to the Lyric for a three-day stand. It was “The Sheik,” starring Rudolph Valentino and Agnes Ayres. Shortly after World War I, Ludington opened its second movie theater, the Kozy — Shrine of Silent Art. For the next 35 years or better, the two theaters operated in the city, each drawing its own special audience. By 1925, the popularity of the motion pictured had increased to such a pitch that certain movies earned a front page story in the Daily News. Early in 1925, the Ludington firm of Fitzpatrick & McElroy Co. decided to go ahead with plans for the new Lyric Theater and on April 18 of that year construction on the building began. It was completed six months later, on Oct. 25, 1925. The Daily News carried a big front page story about the new theater. The headline read: “New Lyric, Fire-Proof, Artistic, Rich in Coloring and Commodious, Opens to Ludington Folk Thursday.” With Frank W. Hawley as its manager, the Lyric opened amid a gala celebration that included organ and violin solos. The following is the text of the front page ad on Oct. 23 that told about the first movie, a silent film, to be shown in the new theater: “Monte Blue in ‘Hogan’s Alley,’ thrills, comedy, pathos, drama, romance. The heartbeats of genuine folks throbbing through a thrilling story. Matinee at 2:30 p.m. Special children’s matinee at 4 p.m. All seats on opening night will be 30 cents. No children will be admitted at evening shows without their parents; baby cabs will not be permitted to be brought into the new Lyric Theater.” The day after the opening of the theater, the Daily News front page coverage was headlined “Auspicious Opening At Lyric Theater.” Organ and violin solos by Miss Marie Litka and Mrs. M.F. Mangrum helped making opening night a smashing success. The theater itself was described by the Daily News in the most glowing terms. The article said, in part: “Entrance to the large lobby is gained through French doors on either side of the ticket booth. Two hand-wrought circular chandelier in bronze, with crystal decorations, furnish light for the lobby. On one side of the lobby is the ladies’ waiting room, a daintily furnished room, a tribute to feminine vanity. The walls are blue while the woodwork is oyster white. Pretty tables and a writing desk, all of French design, and two floor lamps give a homelike touch to the room. Between the lobby and the foyer are French windows and the doors of mirror glass.” That hardly sounds like the Lyric Theater today. The year the Lyric opened, Hawley formed a company with Butterfield Theaters as joint owners and operators of the Lyric and Kozy theaters: It was at about this time that Ray Bowen began working at the Lyric. “That was, of course, still during the time of silent movies,” Bowen said. “And we had to crank the projector by hand. The big thing about doing it by hand was to make sure you kept the frames moving at a uniform speed or else the picture became jerky.” But the first big improvement in the Lyric’s equipment came not too long after Bowen started work. During the spring of 1929 Frank Hawley installed the equipment necessary to bring the “talkies” to Ludington. That, too, was page one news in the Daily News in May of that year. “Lyric Theater Installs Movietone, Vitaphone; First ‘Talkie’ Will be Sunday,” said the headline. The first “talkie,” shown on May 19, 1939, starred the great Broadway tenor, Morton Downey, in “Mother’s Boy.” “When the ‘talkies’ came,” Bowen recalled, “We had records for the soundtrack and we played them on a huge turntable. You hoped to heck you had enough feet of film to go with the amount of sound record you had left.” It didn’t always work out that way. “I remember one time,” Bowen said, “We were showing a film in which soldiers were marching up the ramp to their ship. When they got to the rail, the hero turned to say something and at that moment came the sound of marching feet.” In those days, Bowen said, the reels had 10 minutes of film and about the time you got one projector set up for running the other was about out of film and you had to get that one set up. Today, the reels run 22 minutes. The Lyric and the Kozy continued to share the entertainment spotlight for the next three decades, although in early 1942 the Kozy closed for extensive remodeling. It reopened as the Center Theater on Saturday, June 5, 1942, with Tim Holt and Jane Withers sharing the double feature billing. But the first concession to, and indication of, a different public attitude toward the movies came with the Center. Instead of being a six-day a week operation, the Center would now be open on Saturdays and Sundays. Frank Hawley, who Bowen said ran the Lyric and Kozy with an iron hand, continued to run both theaters until his death on Oct. 9, 1941. During the time Hawley ran the theaters no food or beverages were sold in either theater. “He wouldn’t allow even chewing gum inside the Lyric,” Bowen said. and the tight discipline showed up in well behaved, orderly audiences that probably never though of intentionally damaging any part of the theater. When Hawley died in 1941, Butterfield Theaters took over complete control of the Lyric and Kozy. The firm immediately installed W.C. Green as the new manager of both the Lyric and Kozy. Green, who later was to serve for years as a city commissioner-at-large and member of the county board of supervisors, carried on the strict tradition of Frank Hawley. But in a short time he did make some concessions, allowing a candy machine to be installed in the Kozy and finally bringing in a popcorn machine in the Lyric. As World War II swept the nation, the movies did a great business and the Center Theater soon added Friday nights to its weekend schedule. It was during the early 1940s that the Lyric came up with its major change from the time the theater opened. New seats were bought in 1944, the same ones that are in use today, and a new heating plant was installed. “There were good actors and actresses in those days,” Bowen said. “And movie plots themselves were good. People would even give up their Sunday night radio programs to see a movie and that was a major concession in those days.” But after the war ended and technology that had been born in the war or delayed because of it came into its own — namely television. The Center Theater cut back to a two-day operation in 1953 and on Sunday, March 14, 1954, it closed its doors for the final time. Ludington was now a one-moviehouse town, something that it hadn’t known in over 35 years. But the Lyric was experiencing problems of its own and in 1960 the theater was forced to cut back from three to two movies a week. Green resigned as manager of the Lyric on Sept. 11, 1961 to join the advertising staff at the Daily News. A short time later, Rod Grams became the manager and began the difficult task of trying to keep the Lyric ahead of financial problems. Grams, whose father-in-law, William Griffin, owned theaters in Frankfort, Manton, Lake City and Honor, says that if he owned the Lyric he would make some drastic changes..“I would pull the screen about a third of the way in toward the seats and divide the theater in two parts. That way I could show films geared to youngsters and at the same time have movies designed more toward an adult audience,” he said. “The theater has to take in $52,000 a year just to break even,” he said. “And it is just barely doing that now. The Disney movies, for instance, have a big audience on Friday and Saturday nights but during the remainder of the week they don’t do a thing. And it is hard to get a good release date for quality pictures. Wisconsin theaters may get them ahead of us and ads for them on television are seen here long before we get the film.” Another thing Grams would like to see, if he were still running it and had the authority to do so, would be to bring back some of the selected shorts that were seen years ago. “We dropped the newsreels whenI first took over,” Grams said. “And then they stopped filming ‘The March of Time’ and ‘Pete Smith Specialities.’ I think both of those were very good and should be resumed. The newsreels, of course, no longer have a place in the movie theater.” Now the Lyric is down to one feature film a week and some of those aren’t very good to start with. “Neither Sally nor I have anything to say about what pictures come to the Lyric,” said Grams, who acts as an advisor to his daughter. “The bookings are handled by Butterfield and at this time of the year we are booked about three to four weeks in advance. During the summer we would have the schedule for three months at a time.” A lot of things are wrong with the Lyric today but then a lot of things seem wrong with Hollywood and the type of pictures being produced. Bowen, who has seen more films, more actors and actresses than any other person in Ludington, says it is evident that the quality of movies is poorer. “Look at the background in some of today’s films for instances,” says Ray. “You can’t see much because they want it dark. They don’t want you to see how cheaply they are made. In the old days a lot of money went into making a film but not today.” Bowen said the biggest movie, from the standpoint of the audience, has been “Gone With the Wind.” “It has played here four or five times and is the biggest by far,” he said. “The Sting,” however, is the biggest thing that has happened to the Lyric in recent years. Grams said the theater was packed for all performances every night the show played. “I don’t agree with the emphasis now placed on the amount of money a film makes,” Grams said. “I think the true test of a picture should be the number of people who go to see it, not how much it earns.” Movie buffs, those who remember the “way it used to be” at the Lyric, yearn for the old, simple movie that was entertainment — not a sermon on the ills, real or imagined, that plague society. The man who has seen just about all of them since the birth of the “talkies” — Ray Bowen — still gets his biggest kick out of watching a Western. “The Westerns are my favorites,” he said. “I enjoyed them. They were a lot of entertainment.” And Ray Bowen’s favorite actor? John Wayne. There is strong evidence that movies are making a comeback. But whether their revival will come in time to save the Lyric is doubtful. Just as it it is doubtful the screen will ever again see the likes of Bogart, Gable, Crawford or Davis. But those of us who wept for Lassie and laughed with the Bowery Boys are still hoping. (© Copyright 2024 Shoreline Media Group 202 N. Rath Ave., Ludington, MI)

LouisRugani on October 3, 2010 at 12:36 pm

(Ludington Daily News, April 18, 1926)
FIREPROOF THEATER ASSURED LUDINGTON
Foltz & Co. of Chicago, Contractors, to Start This Week with Local Labor.
MODERN AND ATTRACTIVE BUILDING ON LYRIC SITE

Manager F. W. Hawley Announces New Home for Movie and Legitimate Drama.
Construction of Ludington’s new theater is scheduled to start this week.
Announcement that the contract has been awarded to Foltz & Co. of Chicago was made to The News Saturday by Frank W. Hawley, manager and stockholder.

To Have Large Stage.

Blue prints in Mr. Hawley’s office call for a fireproof structure, 50 feet in width on James street and running west 150 feet. Although to be devoted principally to movies, the new theater will be equipped to handle large productions with a stage 23 feet deep and full width of the building.

“The theater will be constructed as near fireproof as it is possible to make a building,” said Mr. Hawley. “It will be built of brick, stone, steel and concrete, with concrete roof and floors and tile partitions.

“Foltz & Co. are architects and builders of theaters. This firm has built theaters for Fitzpatrick, McElroy & Co. in Three Rivers and Alpena and is now erecting a combined theater, bank and store building for Fitzpatrick-McElroy in Chicago. The superintendent, E. J. Heckel, was here last week and wi11 return to start work this week.

Employ Local Labor.

“All local labor available will be employed.”

The front of the new theater will be attractive. It will have a height of two stories, with face brick and cut stone. There will be a marquise extending across the front over the sidewalk.

The lobby will be 20 by 40 feet. Off one side will be a ladies' waiting room and dressing room. On the opposite side will be the manager’s office and men’s wash room.

Details of the finishing and decorating of the lobby have to be worked out. Mr. Hawley says no pains will be spared to make it beautiful and to develop something out of the ordinary.

Just inside the entrance doors will be a series of boxes. The seats of the theater will be comfortable and roomy. There will be no balcony. The house will seat approximately 1.000.

Pipe Organ Equipment.

The orchestra pit will not accommodate a large orchestra but will have a place for the player of the pipe organ, which will be built with tubes on either side of the house.

Stage dressing rooms, furnace room, coal room, etc., will be located in the basement at the west side of the building. Access to the theater may be had by a 40-foot entrance off Loomis street and a 30-foot entrance from the alley to the south. “The contract calls for the completion of the theater by October first,” concluded Mr. Hawley.

The Lyric was closed March 26, 1926.

steelbeard1 on November 16, 2007 at 5:32 pm

New photos of the interior of the Lyric Cinemas can be seen at View link which shows the carved up cinema treasure 4-plex being used as church. The church took down the wall separating cinemas 2 and 3 to create a sanctuary. The original ceiling was exposed when the tiles on the drop ceiling were removed which shows that the theater is restorable. A news story telling the history of the theater is at View link from The Ludington Daily News.