A TEAR FOR COUNT BASIE THEATER

Life for me was pretty simple in the summers of the early 1950’s in Red Bank. The back yard of the Friendly Luncheonette was my playground. It faced the Carlton Theater movie house now the Count Basie Theater. This was a time before beach clubs and back yard pools for most of us. The summers were hot and the best escape for me was the summer program for kids at the movies.

Four days a week, Monday to Thursday, there were matinees for us kids. The cost was 75 cents for tickets for all four days. The theater was air conditioned and would show 4 to 6 cartoons along with a movie. The noise was deafening from the audience as the show started. Four cartoons were OK and 6 were spectacular. I lost count of the movies I saw there. I know I saw “Them” the movie about giant ants at least 16 times over the years.

The movie walls were white with a great circle in the ceiling that I was told you could walk around inside of. I was told that a large chandelier hung there years ago but I have never seen pictures or mention of it. The theater needed work even back then and through the 70’s and 80’s under very bad management fell into worse repair. Crumbling walls and leaky ceilings seems destined to end the life of the theater. Over the past few years under the direction of Numa Saisselin and a new strong board of directors money was raised to restore the heather.

Last week Numa invited me in to see the renovations now almost complete. I was staggered to the point of welling up with a tear or two. The walls that for years had been a dull white were alive with color; these are the colors of the original theater. One section about 20 feet wide and 40 feet high has been complete with the original colors of mauves, greens soft oranges and gold depicting what the whole theater will look like when finished. Seats reflect the grandeur of the original style of the house, elegant and beautiful.

The theater will never be the same again. It will not look at all like the movie house I grew up in. It will always now hold on to its former grandeur but will also house the memories of hundreds of kids like myself who grew up screaming for the cartoons and learning about the world from hundreds of movies we viewed over the years.

Years later as an adult I viewed the movie “Cinema Paradiso” about a young boy without a father growing up in a theater in his small Italian town. I could certainly relate to that. It was one of the better movies I have seen over the years and is universal in emotion and appeal. I highly recommend this movie to you. It is one you will want to view a couple of time and captures the very essence of what our theaters and movies have meant too many of growing up.