Oakland Theater remembered

WARWICK - A piece of Warwick’s cultural life vanished on an otherwise pleasant Saturday night 35 years ago when the staff at the Oakland Theatre switched off the popcorn popper for the last time and shut the doors forever. The Oakland had a storied six-decade run. But with the closing on Oct. 1, 1972, moviegoers in Warwick no longer could walk to a downtown cinema. It was a fine new place when it opened in 1914, just down the street from the train station. The Advertiser described the Oakland as a structure of “simple but tasty design.” It was fitted with 625 seats and separate men’s and women’s checkrooms. The Oakland’s first offering was a live production of “Way Down East,” a tearjerker about a naïve young woman done exceedingly wrong by a deceitful man. The play had been around for years and always drew big audiences. The Advertiser reported a sell-out crowd on opening night with some standees. It took no notice of business at the Demerest Opera House, the older theater in Warwick, which was showing “The Wreck,” a railroad adventure movie laced with blackmail and murder. A week after it opened, the Oakland offered a serial called “The Adventures of Kathlyn,” which was a forerunner of “The Perils of Pauline.” Then came the movie “The Last Days of Pompeii,” which the Oakland advertised with such hyperbole as “See the historic Roman arena in all its grandeur. See the fighting gladiators. See the lions turned loose.” In the following decades the Oakland presented movies, vaudeville, minstrel shows and lectures in its 4,500-square foot auditorium before switching to an all-film format. Some people who went to the movies at the Oakland late in its life have rich, if not exactly affectionate memories of it. Richard Hull saw “Psycho” at the Oakland and remembers that the theater was on the site of the present-day Burger King, about 100 feet from the railroad track that slices the village in two. “It came the moment when Janet Leigh goes to take her shower,” Hull says. The shower curtain parted and a raised hand holding a knife came down. “She opened her mouth to scream but at that moment, a train came by - and all you heard was the blast of the whistle from the locomotive. It was quite a moment,” says Hull, a historian and professor at New York University. Trains were always part of a night at the Oakland. “You’d hear the whistle, and then the train would pass. The whole building trembled and you’ d shake in your seat,” Hull says. “If it was a train with 50 or 60 cars, it could take 15 minutes to pass. It felt like you were in the Battle of Britain.” Whatever remained of the Oakland’s early luxury was gone by the late Sixties. Where once there had been leather covered entrance doors, now there was chewing gum stuck to the floor and the aroma of old popcorn in the air, say patrons who were there. It had become just a simple, unadorned movie house. People who patronized the Oakland in its last years say it should have been kept up better. Toward the end there were many torn seats, Hull says. “It was the last place you’d want to take a date,” says Bill Doty, the proprietor of Doty Automotive. “It was run down and you’d rather go to the Paramount in Middletown. That was a much nicer place.” But in its decline, the Oakland remained an adventure for young kids. It was at the Oakland where a 6-year-old Bill Doty was frightened out of his wits watching “Frankenstein.” He recalls that the Saturday children’s matinees were long programs of cartoons, newsreels, coming attractions, and short features as well as the main attraction. “Some of the older kids would throw pennies at the screen,” Doty says. “Then one kid came with a slingshot, fired a penny and made a hole in the screen.” There was another rite of passage in Warwick, says Mayor Michael Newhard. “I think every kid in Warwick snuck in at one time or other,” Newhard says. “One kid would pay for a ticket, go inside and crack the exit door open a little and then all his friends would run in.” No one wound up with a police record. “When they caught us, they just kicked us out.” Newhard says. The Oakland may have deteriorated but it had its charm. “They had a projectionist named Charley Dowdy who played great records while you waited for the movie to start,” Newhard says. “We heard a lot of early Motown - Otis Redding, the Temptations, Aretha Franklin - it was just great. The Oakland was never very glamorous - but it was the best place in town.” But audiences were going elsewhere. “I remember going to see ‘The Sterile Cuckoo’ at the Oakland. The audience consisted of me and someone else,” Newhard says. There was talk on the streets in 1972 that the Oakland might go under. By autumn it became official that the old place was about to show its final feature. By rights, the last picture show should have been “The Last Picture Show,” the Peter Bogdanovich film of friendship and young love in a small Texas town that is home to the Royal, a decrepit old movie house that goes out of business. But the Oakland got it wrong. The last show was “Prime Cut,” which concerned a really bad guy in Kansas City who turned his enemies into sausage. There were six people in the audience on closing night, The Times Herald-Record reported. The box office gross was $12.