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Chapel Hill's First Movie Theaters
by Charly Mann
This is the original Pickwick that stood on the north side of Franklin Street, and burned down in 1922.
Charlie Chaplin was the biggest movie star in the world in February 1928 when this opened in Chapel Hill. Look at competing entertainment in Durham (see Ziegfield Follies ad below) and the Pickwick (just below the Ziegfield Follies ad) the same week and their price of admission.
1928 marked the last full year of economic prosperity Chapel Hill until 1948. It was also a major turning point in the local theater business. The Pickwick Theater had been the mainstay for entertainment in the village from 1909 to 1927. It was originally located in a modest wood frame building on the north side of Franklin Street. In 1922 a fire destroyed it, and a few years later it moved into an elaborate large brick-framed structure across the street. It was there that the community enjoyed vaudeville style acts, jazz band concerts, and the new medium of silent motion pictures. By 1928 movies popularity far exceeded that of live shows in the village. In 1926 a new theater opened, the Carolina, which was specifically designed and wired for showing movies. It also had exclusives with most of the major Hollywood studios to exhibit their films. By 1928 the Pickwick had gone bankrupt, and was being run by a man with no entertainment background. If you wanted to see a first rate live performance you had to go to Durham. Since few people had cars, this meant hitchhiking to the shows.
Ad for the Pickwick in its heyday, 1916.
Pickwick goes bankrupt soon after Carolina Theater opens.
This is for a 1928 vaudeville show in Durham. Note that the ticket prices are ten times more expensive than movie admission in Chapel Hill.
Playing the same week of February 1928 as Ziegfeld Follies in Durham.
The Pickwick Theater closed in 1948. In 1952 the J.B. Robbins Department Store opened in the same location. In the 1970's it was a music club and bar called the Town Hall. Today the building houses a number of merchants including Johnny T- Shirt.
Inside the Pickwick
Announcement of the opening of the Carolina Theater in 1927
Line to get into the Carolina in 1934
This is the Pickwick shortly before it closed for good in 1948.
Broadcast radio also began becoming popular in 1928, and was another cheap alternative to paying for an expensive live show. By 1930, even the luxurious vaudeville theatre in Durham had become a cinema.
Comments:
Expatriate
8:38 PM Sun 8/23/2009
In the photo of the line waiting to get into the Varsity theater, the young man in the light-colored trousers with his left leg thrust forward is the noted Southern novelist Walker Percy, then an undergraduate at UNC. His first novel was titled "The Movie Goer."
Steve
11:52 AM Thu 5/28/2009
Actually, the original Pickwick didn't burn in 1922; the third (and last or post-1915 location) location did in 1924, but it was remodeled. The first and second locations of the Pickwick are still standing, at 103 and 105 East Franklin Street. The Carolina Theater opened in 1927.
Cool post, thanks!
Sam Tatum
4:46 PM Mon 4/13/2009
I think Carrington Smith stayed the manager of the Carolina Theater for more than fifty years. He was also the #1 fan of Carolina football, rarely even missing going to a practice.
John021459
2:20 PM Mon 4/13/2009
Do you know when the Varsity Theater opened? I lived in CH a long time ago, and it had already been around for awhile then.
Guy Harrison
11:12 AM Mon 4/13/2009
This is fascinating. I'm a movie buff, and lived in Chapel Hill in the 1970s.
Jenna Hampton
5:42 PM Sun 4/12/2009
It is funny seeing that almost everyone at the movies in those days were college men. The vibe in town would have been so different then.
Mark Fitzgerald
1:34 PM Sun 4/12/2009
I recall a drive-in in Chapel Hill in the 1950s. Do you know when that opened and closed?
Chapel Hill is located on a hill whose only distinguishing feature in the 18th century was a small chapel on top called New Hope Chapel. This church was built in 1752 and is currently the location of The Carolina Inn. The town was founded in 1819, and chartered in 1851.
What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. or the crisp October nights. No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be, The University of the People.
-- Charles Kuralt
Dark Side of the Hill -- Pink Floyd, the creators of the most popular album in history, Dark Side of the Moon, took the second half of their name from Floyd Council, a Chapel Hill native, and great blues singer and guitarist. He once belonged to a group called "The Chapel Hillbillies".
Check out Charly Mann's other website:
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
There would probably be no Chapel Hill if the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees in 1793 had not chosen land across from New Hope Chapel for the location of the university. By 1800 there were about 100 people living in thirty houses surrounding the campus.
The University North Carolina's first student was Hinton James, who enrolled in February, 1795. There is now a dormitory on the campus named in his honor.
The University of North Carolina was closed from 1870 to 1875 because of lack of state funding.
William Ackland left his art collection and $1.25 million to Duke University in 1940 on the condition that he would be buried in the art museum that the University was to build with his bequest. Duke rejected this condition even though members of the Duke Family are buried in Duke Chapel. What followed was a long and acrimonious legal battle between Ackland relatives who now wanted the inheritance, Rollins College, and the University of North Carolina, each attempting to receive the funds. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1949 UNC was awarded the money for the museum. Ackland is buried near the museum's entrance. When the museum first opened, in the early sixties, there were rumors that his remains were leaking out of the mausoleum.
The official name of the Arboretum on the University of North Carolina campus is the Coker Arboretum. It is named after Dr. William Cocker, the University's first botany professor. It occupies a little more than five acres. It was founded in 1903.
Chapel Hill's main street has always been called Franklin Street. It was named after Benjamin Franklin in the early 1790s.
Chapel Hill High School and Chapel Hill Junior High were on Franklin Street in the same location as University Square until the mid 1960s.
The Colonial Drug Store at 450 West Franklin Street was owned and operated by John Carswell. It was famous for a fresh-squeezed carbonated orange beverage called a "Big O". In the early 1970s, I managed the Record and Tape Center next door, and must have had over 100 of those drinks. The Colonial Drug Store closed in 1996.
Sutton's Drugstore, which opened in 1923, has one of the last soda fountains in the South. It is one of the few businesses remaining on Franklin Street that was in operation when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Future President Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice. First when he was 24, in 1938, he took a law couse in summer school at UNC. He lived in the Carr Building, which was a law school dormitory. At the same time, Richard Nixon, the man he served under as Vice President, was attending law school at Duke. In 1942, Ford returned to Chapel Hill to attend the U.S. Navy's Pre-Flight School training program. He lived in a rental house on Hidden Hills Drive.
The Drive-In theater was out past the “Patio” (behind the Holiday Inn) The parents would put the back seat down in the 57 Chevy station wagon, us kids in our pj’s, with home popped corn in tiny brown paper bags. All kids asleep on the drive home.
The Carolina Theater had two extra wide seats, one on either side of the large center section, close to the back. As kids, we would try to sit two or sometimes three kids in those special seats. I never saw the wide fellow who required it, but my dad knew him.
Some weekends, our parents would drop off all the kids and we would stay in the theater all Saturday afternoon, seeing the feature film several times...most times viewed had to be "The Great Escape" probably a half dozen times! I remember 2001, A Space Odyssey.
And my first kiss was in The Varsity – Lance Van de Castle.