The Smithfield Times was enthusiastic in announcing the first movie to be aired by the town’s new theater when it opened in 1932.

“The Smithfield Theatre, next door to Delk’s store, will open Friday night, May 6 at 7:15 with the showing of ‘Riders of the Purple Sage,’ an outstanding western picture, adopted from the story written by Zane Grey, well known and popular author.”

The newspaper gave a detailed description of the renovated building that would entertain local movie fans for the next 28 years thusly:

“The building … has been completely painted, renovated and up-to-date talking, moving picture equipment installed in a fireproof booth, a new slanting floor, with comfortable theatre chairs and everything necessary to make a modern little theatre.”

Newspaper Publisher Jesse Scott’s enthusiasm for the new enterprise might have had something to do with the fact that Scott kinfolks from the Peninsula were the entrepreneurs who opened the theater. 

“The Scotts are experienced moving picture men, having successfully operated theatres in Hampton and Phoebus for many years,” Scott wrote.

The theater would offer matinees and evening showings. Admission would be 10 cents for children under 12, and 15 cents for adults (matinee) and 25 cents evenings.

Scott purchased the theater in 1933, a year after it opened. His front-page announcement of the change in ownership was, once again, profuse with praise, but he failed to identify himself as that new owner.

“The management of this new movie enterprise announces a thoroughly modern cinema house. It is attractively decorated and will show only the best in pictures. We offer all encouragement to this new enterprise …”

Of course, he did, but so did the rest of the community. Scott may have hedged on his ownership, but everybody knew it was he who was running the place, and everybody wanted it to succeed.

And so began the 27-year run of the Smithfield Theatre, located in the building that now houses H. Woodrow Crook’s law practice.

The paper gave unflagging support to the theater’s viewings. Just after he purchased the theater, Scott announced that he had booked “Air Mail,” a Universal Studios “great drama of the men who wing their way across the continent with the government mail.”

Scott ran the theater for seven years, before selling it to a statewide theater company in July 1940. During his years of ownership, trading as Smithfield Amusement Corp., Scott was continually coming up with ways to promote his new enterprise. 

He announced the hiring of Frank Robbins, a popular high school student, as his projectionist, and made sure that most every new movie brought to Smithfield got front-page billing in the paper.

He set a line of type filler that read “Attend Smithfield Theatre” and randomly inserted them throughout the paper. During special promotions, new newspaper subscribers would be awarded free theater tickets.

A couple of years after opening the theater, Scott installed an “ice fan,” a rudimentary air cooling system that circulated cool air through the building. He promoted it as “comfortably cool.” It would be some years before the new chain owners installed a full-fledged air conditioning system. They were so proud of it, they advertised “air conditioned” on the theater’s street front.

Scott ran ads congratulating downtown businesses on any improvements they made, a practice not unusual for a newspaper. But in this instance, the congratulations were made by the Smithfield Theatre and The Smithfield Times.

He published a front-page endorsement by a resident who enjoyed movies, and gave away free tickets for most any imaginable promotion.

In the end, however, a small, independent theater just couldn’t compete in attracting the best Hollywood could offer. 

Scott did manage to land a few major movies, including “The Wizard of Oz” in November 1939. But for the most part, the Smithfield Theatre got second-run movies, and generally not-so-successful ones. 

Scott tried unsuccessfully to obtain “Gone With The Wind,” and just before he sold the theater, he ran a movie ad that may have expressed a bit of frustration.

“Gone With the Wind” is a great show, and so are these,” he declared at the top of his weekly movie listings.

Scott’s run as a movie impresario ended a month later when P&R Entertainment, owned by Benjamin Pitts and Harvey Roth, bought the building that housed the theater in April 1940 and announced plans to renovate it.

In July of that year, the theater reopened as the Pitts-Roth Smithfield Theatre. The company, which also purchased the Chadwick in Suffolk, ran the theater for just under a decade.

Pitt-Roth did get to show “Gone With the Wind” — three times, in fact — making it one of the most repeated movies shown in Smithfield, undoubtedly thrilling “Lost Cause” believers.

Older, small theaters, even those owned by promotionally savvy chains, were losing ground to large city venues and emerging “modern” theaters. Pitts-Roth sold the Smithfield Theatre in 1959 and it struggled on for two more years as Richardson’s Smithfield Theatre.

The curtain finally came down on the theater in March 1961 with an airing of “Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come.” Appropriately, it was a Western starring Jimmy Rodgers. If you look back through the movie ads during the theater’s run, Westerns appeared more frequently than any other genre. And surviving old men even today recall days of their youth spent watching cowboy idols in a Saturday matinee.

 

John Edwards is publisher emeritus of The Smithfield Times. His email address is j.branchedwards@gmail.com.