Silent Screens: The Decline and Transformation of the American Movie Theater

The single-screen movie theaters that punctuated small-town America's main streets and city neighborhoods since the 1920s are all but gone. The well-dressed throng of moviegoers has vanished; the facades are boarded. In Silent Screens, photographer Michael Putnam captures these once prominent cinemas in decline and transformation. His photographs of abandoned movie houses and forlorn marquees are an elegy to this disappearing cultural icon.In the early 1980s, Putnam began photographing closed theaters, theaters that had been converted to other uses (a church, a swimming pool), theaters on the verge of collapse, theaters being demolished, and even vacant lots where theaters once stood. The result is an archive of images, large in quantity and geographically diffuse. Here is what has become of the Odeons, Strands, and Arcadias that existed as velvet and marble outposts of Hollywood drama next to barbershops, hardware stores, and five-and-dimes.Introduced by Robert Sklar, the starkly beautiful photographs are accompanied by original reminiscences on moviegoing by Peter Bogdanovich, Molly Haskell, Andrew Sarris, and Chester H. Liebs as well as excerpts from the works of poet John Hollander and writers Larry McMurtry and John Updike. Sklar begins by mapping the rise and fall of the local movie house, tracing the demise of small-town theaters to their role as bit players in the grand spectacle of Hollywood film distribution. "Under standard distribution practice," he writes, "a new film took from six months to a year to wend its way from picture palace to Podunk (the prints getting more and more frayed and scratched along the route). Even though the small-town theaters and their urban neighborhood counterparts made up the majority of the nation's movie houses, their significance, in terms of revenue returned to the major motion-picture companies that produced and distributed films, was paltry."In his essay, "Old Dreams," Last Picture Show director Peter Bogdanovich recalls the closing of New York City's great movie palaces—the mammoth Roxy, the old Paramount near Times Square, the Capitol, and the Mayfair—and the more innocent time in which they existed "when a quarter often bought you two features, a newsreel, a comedy short, a travelogue, a cartoon, a serial, and coming attractions."While the images in Putnam's book can be read as a metaphor for the death of many downtowns in America, Silent Screens goes beyond mere nostalgia to tell the important story of the disappearance of the single-screen theater, illuminating the layers of cultural and economic significance that still surround it."These photographs and the loss of which they speak signal the passing of a way of being together." —Molly HaskellList of Theaters by StateAlabama • The Lyric, Anniston • The Martin, HuntsvilleArizona • The Duncan, DuncanArkansas • The Avon, West MemphisCalifornia • The Town, Los Angeles • El Capitan, San Francisco • The State, Santa BarbaraConnecticut • The Dixwell Playhouse, New Haven • The Princess, New HavenFlorida • The Gateway, Lake CityGeorgia • The Judy, HartwellIdaho • The Ace, WendellIllinois • The Pekin, PekinIndiana • The Rem, Remington • The Ritz, RensselaerKansas • The Cameo, Kansas CityKentucky • The Crescent, Louisville • The Ohio, LouisvilleLouisiana • The Madison, Madisonville • The Sabine, Many • The Jefferson, New OrleansMassachusetts • The Strand, Westfield Michigan • The Liberty, Benton HarborMississippi • The Magee, Magee • The Star, Mendenhall • The Mono, Monticello • The Park, PelahatchieMissouri • The Star, WarrensburgNebraska • The Grand, Grand IsleNew Jersey • RKO Proctor's Palace, NewarkNew Mexico • The Lux, Grants • The State, San JonNew York • The Hollywood, Au Sable Forks • The Broadway, Buffalo • The Lovejoy, Buffalo • The Senate, Buffalo • The Jefferson, New York City • The Little Carnegie, New York City • The 72nd Street East, New York CityNorth Carolina • The Colonial, Chesnee • The Alva, MorgantonOregon • The United Artists, PendletonPennsylvania • The Lawndale, Philadelphia • The Rex, Philadelphia • The Spruce, Philadelphia • The York, Philadelphia • The Capitol, WilliamsportTennessee • The Park, MemphisTexas • The Royal, Archer City • The Strand, Chillicothe • The Gem, Claude • The Mulkey, Clarendon • The Texas, Del Rio • The Bowie, Fort Worth • The Chatmas, Hearne • The Queen, Hearne • The Palace, Henderson • The Alabama, Houston • The Almeda, Houston • The Crim, Kilgore • The Gulf, Robstown • The Clinch, Tazwell • The Winnie, WinnieVirginia • The Earle, Big Stone Gap • The Home, StrasburgWashington • The Pasco, PascoWest Virginia • The Ritz, Ansted • The Alpine, Rainelle