Last summer I was wandering along Cedar Street, when I found myself down a back alley and standing in the middle of a car park.
It didn't take me long to realize that this wasn't just any ordinary car park – this once was the site of one of the most beautiful buildings Sudbury ever knew, the Capitol Theatre.
If I could go back in time and save just one of the hundreds of buildings demolished in Sudbury's past, it would be the Capitol.
Designed by Murray Brown for Famous Players, the Capitol Theatre designed opened Nov 28, 1939, and was the most lavish and largest movie palaces in Sudbury, and one of the largest in all of Ontario.
This imposing cinema had a seating capacity of 1,369 and was full of opulent art deco features.
I, like thousands of Sudburians, spent countless days and nights sitting in the marvelous treasure of a cinema watching many a movie here during the 1960s and early 1970s.
During the heyday of movie palaces in the 1920s and 1930s going to the 'show' wasn't just sitting in a movie house, it was an experience.
Movie theatres gave the audience more than just a double feature and few cartoon shorts, they provided an escape from the drudgery of life, especially during the Great Depression. You weren't just entering a movie theatre; you were entering a world of art deco staircases, glass chandeliers, stunning light fixtures, red velvet curtains and a glamorous world foreign to most audiences.
Sudbury's Capitol Theatre came about just as the Great Depression was ending and the Second World War was beginning, so to have this grand escape during such a turbulent time in human history must have been a godsend.
Everything about the Capitol was grand, from its ornate exterior facade to its long narrow lobby with its barrel-vaulted ceiling, to its curtained entrance to the auditorium, all of it stating, “You have arrived.”
I remember the first time I entered the Capitol. It was with my dad to see the Errol Flynn movie “Kim” about a young boy growing up in British-held India.
My dad was a huge Errol Flynn fan, plus the Radio Lunch, his favourite restaurant, was just across the street.
I couldn't have been more than four or five years old, and the excitement of being taken to the movies was so thrilling.
Some things just stay with you the rest of your life and the Capitol is one of those touchstones.
I remember the theatre having a huge inlaid star formation set into the lobby as soon as you entered off the street. The lobby itself wasn't very large and it narrowed as you got closer to the back where the entrance to the auditorium was.
Directly across from the auditorium entrance, there was a candy counter. A friend, Brenda Leuschen Farkas, told me recently that she had worked there some time around 1970-1973.
At that time, you could buy a box of popcorn for 25 cents and a small tub for 35 cents.
Brenda would pop the popcorn and clarify real butter in-house – not the chemical stuff they use today. She also told me the manager at the time, Mr. Dickerson, was a stickler for quality and it showed.
You would enter the auditorium walking up a ramp and the first thing that struck you was the art deco design of the whole theatre. I seem to remember a zig-zag, an almost Aztec or Navajo pattern, flanking the walls.
Also there were the chandeliers. Claude Mailloux, who also worked at the Capitol, recently told me he and his friend Danny had to clean them.
The way to do that was to go up in the crawl space in the roof, and the chandeliers were then attached to a pulley system and lowered down.
He and Danny also painted the back of the seats with a number for reserve seating for the blockbuster film “My Fair Lady.”
Sadly, all of this was demolished in 2006, but not without a good fight from forward-thinking Sudburians who believed this once-great theatre should be saved.
But alas, all that remains is the depressing facade painted pink from its original white buff sandstone. The auditorium with its stunning lighting fixtures, its art deco interiors and draped curtains is all but a memory.
If you stand in the parking lot off of Cedar, you can see an offensive brick wall covered in graffiti and a lone air-conditioning unit fitted into the wall. This unsightly scene was once the sumptuous lobby entrance to a grand Hollywood palace to the movies.
Next summer, and once we are allowed to gather in large groups once again, I would love to set up a projector in that parking lot and show a movie on the back wall as an homage to Sudbury's greatest movie palace.
For the past year, former Sudbury resident Bruce Bell has written a series of columns for Sudbury.com, sharing his memories of downtown Sudbury in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Back in November he shared his memories of Sudbury’s first movie palace, the Regent Theatre. You can read that here. Today, he takes us on a tour of another locally famous movie palace, the Capitol Theatre. For more of his tales, type “Bruce Bell” into the search bar at Sudbury.com.
