The same movie was showing west of town, in a cram-you-in-the-seat-next-to-a-person-where-you-will-soon-be-rubbing-up-against-him/her-intimately sort of places.
You know the routine: Line up, buy the ticket, smell the glorious six-dollar popcorn smothered in heart-clogging butter, get lost in the hallway looking for the one theatre room out of ten or twelve, and check your ticket twice to be sure you are in the RIGHT room! THEN, find a seat, and if we are not there half an hour before the forty-five previews of movies that won't come out for another six months, we may not even get to sit with the person we came with! Every seat might be taken, and latecomers are divorced in the dark from their partners, and forced to rub up against strangers.
During whatever show we've come to watch, there seems to be an earthquake or bombing going on somewhere else in the building: never quite located, and out of sync with the show we're watching. We hear bombshells.... or whatever. It never fails that someone is texting or playing with a brightly-lit fancy phone, in spite of polite commercials asking guests to turn them off before the show, too.
I am not a fan of "modern" movie houses, I guess you can tell.
The Highland Theatre is my idea of Nirvana for movie-goers. It has had some tough financial times, we've heard, and we are doing our part to be sure it is in Akron for many more years to come. In other words, that's where we spend OUR movie money. All five dollars of it.
That's the price. Five bucks. A polite lady takes your money as you enter the lobby of the Art Deco relic of the past. It's worth five dollars just to SEE the Highland Theatre, I think. The lobby has a one hundred and ten foot curved bar, where you can buy yourself a beer, a Crown Royal, popcorn, nachos or sweets to enjoy with the show. ( I used to buy candy at that counter's location when I was a kid. Ten cents a box. I'd stock up for weeks at that price, take it home, hide it under my bed, and for under a dollar I ruined my teeth and had a wonderful time.)
There is a stage near the bar, in case you get the urge to dance, I suppose, during a musical. And there are tables with chairs near the China White Lounge, so you can sit comfortably with your drink at a table, if you'd rather not be in the dark with it. Rumor has it that some reunions are held in the theatre, and wouldn't THAT be fun???!
Oh yes, there are theatre seats, and plenty of them. AND LEG ROOM............you can put your feet on the seat in front of you if you want to...............and be comfortable! Nobody is going to brush up against you and squoosh you, and no stranger will be in your lap! There is room for EVERYBODY!!!
In the early 2000's, a half a million dollars was spent to renovate and repair this theatre. The good news is that it has not altered its personality. The Highland today is pretty much the same as The Highland "back then."
As a frequent visitor to ladies rooms, I can promise you that the restroom, with its white and gray marble stalls and maroon-patterned wallpaper, still has the ambiance it had in the fifties.....and sixties.......except that the swooning couch (or whatever it was called) is no longer at its place against the wall. Since I never swooned on it anyway, that's OK, and the wall still has the break in the chair rail, in case they want to replace it someday, for ladies who swoon over the new vampire movies. Other than that, that ladies room is vintage!
Randy and I took our seats, along with the twenty-five other customers. We'd bought our tickets behind a lady who dragged in a little cart full of clean laundry that she'd done at the local laundromat. She parked it by her seat. No big deal. (Try doing THAT at those fancy new movie houses, huh???)
While sitting there, watching Randy clog his arteries with some inexpensive popcorn, before the one and only preview, I had a sort of FLASH BACK............one of those times when not your whole life, but only a small portion of it, flashes through your memory-brain, delivering glimpses of things from the past.
In the semi-darkness and quiet, I looked over the large seating area of the Highland Theatre, and saw myself sitting in exact seating areas, in years gone by!
My first movie ever was seen in this theatre. I was seven years old, and I don't remember the movie, but I remember the experience. We sat in the left section, all four of us. It may have been the only time my mother went to a movie with us, as most of my childhood movies were seen with Pop. We saw Western Movies, one by one, each weekend until I got too old to be seen with a parent. Many were in the Highland Theatre.
My friend Alexis and I sat, center-section right side, weeping copiously during Gone With the Wind. It was 1960, and Clark Gable had recently died. Lexie and I were not only weeping for the beauty of GWTW, but for the loss of our movie star leading man, the love of our just-turned-teen lives.
Right-section, midway back, Pop and my sister, Alison, and I sat, while Debra Kerr and Cary Grant lost each other, and found each other again, in An Affair to Remember. I was ten, my sister fifteen, and Pop 55. (Oh my goodness..........he was so YOUNG!) He'd taken us to the movies on a Saturday night ( 35 cents back then, if that,) and we sat in the Highland Theatre, all three of us sobbing at the end of the movie. (You know the scene: Cary Grant finds out that Debra Kerr can't walk.........and they play THE MUSIC...........and she says, "If you can paint, then I can walk................") We cried so hard and long that we begged Pop to let us watch it AGAIN..........and we DID! We sat there in the Highland Theatre, and watched An Affair to Remember TWICE in one night! I must have seen it fifty times since then...............and I always remember Pop saying "Yes, OK," while we three sat there, wet cheeks in the dark.
My neighbor, Lindy, and I sat center-section near the front, with her four brothers and sisters to see Thirteen Ghosts. Her dad had dropped us out front with her entourage of siblings. At twenty-five cents per kid, it bought her parents some time alone in a quiet house. (We didn't figure that out until we were older, and her little sister was born.....) Armed with a ten-cent box of Licorice Allsorts and a pair of paper glasses with one red lens and one green lens (which I still have somewhere), we had the BeJesus scared out of us with half of Akron's other screaming children, some who cried. (Not us.) Every seat was taken. Loud shrieking audiences never were my thing, but I remember vividly the howling and gnashing of teeth that afternoon. The ride home in the two-tone station wagon, Lindy's dad smiling, and her siblings saying how they hadn't been really scared at all, holding my paper glasses, was half the fun.
Lastly, returned from college, I sat with a young man, center section, last row, and fell in love with Robert Redford during Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I may have been a little in love with that young man, too, then. There was a black mark on the theatre screen for many years. I later found out it was a hole, and he confessed before the show that he had made it by throwing a rock at the screen, in his youth. If you were a patron back then, you might remember that black mark, too, huh? The screen has been replaced, and that young man, who sort of resembled Robert Redford, was also replaced shortly afterwards.
Our movie ended, the laundry lady dragged her cart out the door, we all said goodbye to the ticket lady, and to each other. We'd shared an experience at the Highland Theatre, after all. (I had actually shared several experiences, but who knew that?)
The Highland Theatre is still here on West Market Street. I want to see it STAY on Market Street. The marquee with lighted bulbs welcomes us and YOU! The movies they're showing are first-run stuff lately, which may be why we've been there so many times. If you live in the Akron area, GO THERE! You can see pictures online at www.virtualakron.com/highlandtheater or visit it live at Highland Square, in Akron.
Your flashbacks are welcome, too, I am sure, and if you don't have any, create some!
copyright: KP Gillenwater
