A look at the history of the motion picture in Napanee By Andrew Minigan
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s part of Greater Napanee’s Culture Days festival, the Lennox and Addington Museum and Archives recently screened a silent film, complete with live musical accompaniment. “Carry On Sergeant” was filmed in Trenton, Ontario, at a time when the small city was known as “Hollywood North.” Released in 1928, the film premiered to great reception, but was mysteriously pulled from distribution after only two months, and all copies of the film were lost until 1990, when a copy was donated to the National Archives and restored. In the wee hours of January 9, 1914, Napanee’s Opera House went up in flames. The January 16th edition of the Napanee Express ran an extensive article on the fire. Photographs in the collection of the Lennox and Addington Archives show the burnt-out carcass of the building, and the Warner Block, which also sustained severe damage. According to the article, “for some time past the opera house has been used as a moving picture theatre.” This is one of the very first mentions in a Napanee newspaper of motion pictures being screened at a venue in town. Early newspapers mention musical and theatrical entertainments being held at various venues around town, such as the Music Hall, the Market Hall (which would become the Town Hall) and at the larger hotels in the area, which sometimes had small concert and performance venues incorporated into the hotels themselves. Napanee could also boast an Opera House, located south of Dundas Street behind Thomas Symington’s store. Unfortunately, this structure collapsed in 1889, possibly indirectly due to a massive fire in 1886 that destroyed several neighboring businesses and may have weakened the Opera House structurally. In the winter of 1889, after a particularly
heavy snowstorm, the walls bowed out and the roof collapsed, crushing the auditorium. In a stroke of good luck, no one was injured or killed in the accident, though the House had been filled to capacity barely an hour beforehand. Within a year however, a new Opera House would be constructed by Brisco and Perry, who had been the proprietors of the old structure. The new Opera House would be located on the corner of East and Dundas Streets, and, when finished, included “ceiling and walls handsomely frescoed” and “thirteen sets of scenery, comprising everything required by a first-class travelling company.” Brisco sold the property to Arthur Mack in 1912. However, barely two years later disaster struck again, and the Opera House burst into flames one winter night in 1914. During this early period, the Town Hall and Armouries were used as performance venues, and the public could also view live performances at the Wonderland Theatre, constructed around 1910 on Dundas St, just south of Market Square. The first films in Napanee were shown not in buildings specifically constructed for the purpose, but rather in traditional theatres, auditoriums and these venues were also used by the Napanee Drama Club for mounting stage performances featuring local actors. As the technology and demand for motion picture screening became more popular and practical, these public entertainment spaces would be sometimes converted to show motion pictures in addition to their regular repertoire of live theatre. It was not long before the motion picture craze caught on in Napanee, and soon the Opera House was retrofitted to allow the screenings of motion pictures as well as live performances. In the wake of this development, purpose-built moving-picture houses began to appear
The Napanee Beaver, August 26, 1936. in Napanee. Advertisements from this early period sometimes refer to the films as “photo-plays.” Early films were of course silent, owing to the technical difficulties at the time of synchronizing sound with motion pictures. To overcome this, silent films would be shown accompanied by music, specially cued to elicit reaction from the audience. The earliest film soundtracks were either put together from pieces of classical music, or were improvised on the spot by live musicians who would play in the theatre during the film. During the 1917-1920 period, the Wonderland theatre was owned and operated by James and Mary Foster. James was a classically trained singer, and would entertain audiences with his baritone voice during the intermissions when the film reels would be switched. The Fosters sold to future MP and Mayor of Napanee, George James Tustin, in 1920. During the Great War, films depicting the exploits of Canadian soldiers overseas were shown at the Town Hall and Armouries. These films of course were not meant to be entertainment, rather their purpose was to strengthen Canadian national pride and martial resolve during a time of global conflict, and convince young men and women to contribute to the war effort. An advertisement from the February 11, 1916 edition of the Express promised a “Thrilling, Inspiring, Realistic Record of our Boys…in Khaki Overseas…And How They are Making History.” One of the first of the new generation of motion-picture theatres in Napanee was the Strand. Named after the Royal Strand Theatre in Aldwych, London, the Strand boasted “Comfortable Seats. Good Ventilation. Everything Clean and Sanitary” in an ad from the Express, dated December 21, 1917. The Strand received a name change at the end of the Great War, becoming the Victory Theatre. Regular advertisements appeared in the Beaver and Express, giving the theatregoers up-to-date information on films being screened.
The Napanee Beaver, July 15, 1936.
On the north side of Dundas Street between Centre and East Streets, is a building that still shows hints of its heritage as
a theatre. The upper floors are devoid of windows, and the ground-floor entryway is arranged in the traditional box-office fashion. This building was once known as the Wonderland Theatre. One of the first references to Wonderland in the newspaper is in 1913, where it was used as a venue for a benefit concert to raise funds to purchase an artificial limb for local boy Bruce Boyd, who was injured in a railway accident. By 1919, Wonderland could boast the capability of showing motion pictures in addition to live stage performances, which placed it in direct competition with the Victory Theatre, only a block away. The October 17th, 1919 edition of the Beaver shows advertisements for features appearing at both theatres, on the same page. Interestingly, the Strand Theatre had changed its name to Victory only a month or so before this advertisement was published. One can speculate whether the name change, in the wake of victory in the Great War a year earlier, may have been done in an attempt to appeal to the patriotism of the moviegoers of Napanee as a way to get a leg up on the competition. Whatever the reason may have been, the Victory Theatre’s days were numbered. On the 1917 fire insurance map of the town, there is no sign of a movie theatre in the location, and by 1923 the entire Rennie Block had been bought up by none other than George J. Tustin, the proprietor of Wonderland, local politician and future M.P. Tustin operated the Wonderland Theatre until 1936, when he sold the business to Ideal Pictures, a chain of movie theatres. Ideal Pictures changed the name of the theatre to the “New Granada Theatre” and operated the business under this name until 1958, when the premises were sold to Beamish Stores, Limited and the space was renovated and converted to retail storefronts. The building, now the Dollar Store, still retains the architectural elements characteristic of an early twentieth-century theatre, including the “boomtown” style roof and unusual windowless upper storeys. This article was researched and written in support of Greater Napanee Culture Days 2015 by Andrew Minigan, Curatorial Assistant, at the Lennox and Addington County Museum and Archives.
October / November 2015 • THE SCOOP
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