Stephen Johnson
John Lindsay has had a long-standing passion for the picture palaces built across Canada during the first decades of this century. This has been witnessed over the years, in his efforts to save the remaining examples of this unique performance venue from destruction or irreparable alteration. His knowledge of these buildings is evidenced in the array of photographs he has assembled in Turn Out The Stars Before Leaving. Photographs and text are organized for the most part historically. An introductory chapter traces the growth of the movie industry from the 1890s through the first twenty years of this century, during which time it infiltrated the vaudeville and smaller legitimate theatre circuits of North America. As film grew in popularity, film production companies came to dominate these circuits, co-opting both their business practices and their theatres, and striking all but the most powerful touring businesses a crushing blow. Across the continent, vaudeville and opera houses of all sizes and descriptions were transformed into movie theatres. The next two chapters - the major portion of the book - display the wonders of the picture palaces, the theatres built specifically for film companies after they had consolidated their control over the touring industry. There were two basic types. In the 'atmospheric' theatre, best exemplified in the work of architect John Eberson, the auditorium was decorated as an outdoor garden, with projected clouds moving across starlit ceilings. In the 'hardtop' theatre, best seen in Thomas Lamb's designs for Loew's theatres, the auditorium and foyer imitated the architecture of any number of exotic palaces and temples, in some cases several types of architecture in one theatre. The examples given of these two types of picture palace range across the country, from the Capital theatres of Halifax and many other cities, by way of Loew's Winter Garden, Shea's Hippodrome and Pantage's theatre in Toronto, to the Orpheum in Vancouver. Then, after a brief chapter concerning the organs used in such theatres, the book concludes with material on the art deco designs of the 1930s and later examples of movie theatre architecture.
Readers of this journal, who may be looking for a scholarly history and analysis of this subject, will have to look elsewhere. The market for this book is the general reader. Its purpose is to make that reader take an interest in Canada's picture palaces, and the means to do that is through photography. Turn Out The Stars Before Leaving must be judged as a photographic survey, since by far the major portion of its 176 pages is taken up with visual material. Visually, there is a danger in such surveys to suffer from a crowded, poorly organized layout, with photographs that are too small, overlapped and unrelated to each other. Happily, Mr Lindsay's book avoids all of these problems. It is not only singularly attractive, but the organization and layout have been conducted in deference to the importance of these photographs as historical artifacts. Some of the images are in colour, and all are clearly reproduced on glossy paper, the better to display the unique features of design and spectacle exemplified in this form - what Mr Lindsay refers to as 'gee whiz' architecture. The only misgivings I have with the photographs concern the inclusion of several well-known American picture palaces. Of course, as Mr Lindsay says, the picture palace was a very American invention, but the amount of photographic (and accompanying textual) material devoted to American theatres distracts from the other, more original contributions this book makes. Their inclusion is all the more puzzling, since there is more than enough visual evidence from Canadian theatres displayed here to illustrate all aspects of interior design and spectacle, without resort to American examples.
The text for Turn Out The Stars Before Leaving is characteristic of photographic surveys, although it does not avoid the problems inherent in the form as successfully as do its photographs. To attract the general reader, the tone is consciously informal, enthusiastic and nostalgic. Once attracted, however, this clientele has a tendency to browse through such books, reading random passages from the text while looking at the illustrations, and quite likely never reading it in its entirety. In response, the texts can become episodic, and the appeal of the part can take precedence over the structure of the whole. Mr Lindsay's text, of course, includes descriptions of the theatres that accompany the photographs, and these are informative. But for the most part it is filled with brief anecdotes, some concerning well-known names such as Louis B. Mayer and Mary Pickford (Miss Pickford wrote the Foreword), and others taken from the reminiscences of those who attended and worked in Canada's picture palaces. Such stories attract the eye of the random reader much as a single photograph does. Taken individually, they may indeed communicate an interest in and a nostalgia for the subject - especially those told by the ushers and organists who spent their lives in such theatres. Unfortunately, these anecdotes exist in such numbers that they overwhelm any organization and critical focus the text might have possessed, so that, when it is read cover to cover, the value of its best passages is lost.
This is to be regretted, not because of some quarrel with the genre of the photographic survey, but because, in those few passages that tell of the imminent danger to these buildings, Mr Lindsay's personal commitment gives the text both focus and force, and makes the subject more than of general interest. He is at his best in a personal description of the apathy surrounding the last picture show at the Odeon Carleton in Toronto in 1974, an event made all the more frustrating by the knowledge that it was afterwards offered to the city for $1.00 as a possible cultural center. That offer was refused, the city using the existence of the less than successful O'Keefe Centre as an excuse. The razing of the Carleton, Mr Lindsay notes, bankrupted the demolition company involved. One cannot imagine the O'Keefe putting up such a fight. But what is perhaps the most telling verbal image given in this book is of winos surrounded by cigarette butts sleeping in Toronto's Winter Garden, a vivid reminder of both the danger and the durability of neglected landmarks. Were such passages more prominent in the text, and used as its organizing principle, this book might have infected the reader not only with the author's fascination with picture palaces, but with his outrage at their loss as well.