The Movies are Coming to Wolfeboro!!!

[panjumbie]

I don't know where your theater is now, but in the 1950's when I was a student at Brewster Academy, movies were shown in the auditorium on the second floor of the Wolfeboro town hall building. The weekend projectionist was George Hall, whose main occupation was as music teacher at Brewster. (after Wolfeboro built its own high school a few years later, Mr. Hall taught there.) Mr. Hall, knowing I was interested in things to do with the media and such, invited me into the projection booth, and taught me how to thread and operate the 35MM projectors, which in those days included carbon arc lamps. I hung out there when he was working for some weeks until the manager got wind of it, and said I couldn't be in the booth because of liability concerns. But I had learned enough and when I went to college, was a founding member of an organization that ran projection, lighting, and sound equipment for the college, including similar 35MM projectors in the college auditorium. Some years after graduating from college, I ended up at ABC TV where I designed audio/video systems for 36 years, including several projects involving their projection equipment. I just retired.

I also remember visiting Mr. Hall one summer in the late 1960's when we were at the lake, where he was the projectionist at a drive in theater in, I think, Sanbornville. Perhaps someone else here remembers exactly where the drive-in was.

I guess there are hardly any 35MM projectors left (well, ABC has one for recording archival news film), and certainly no arc lamps. Everything is now digital.

John Schmidt