Mr Warren of the Paramount Theater

Here's a bit of nostalgia written by classmate Sheila Tracey's brother, Kevin, from the class of '65. Kevin prefaced his article sent to me with these thoughts about the Needham Paramount Cinema: I remember the sound a large paperclip made when it hit the screen, the dried gum stuck under the seats, how you would get a flashlight shined on you if you put your feet up on the seat in front of you, the cartoons, the short subjects, all those westerns, the British vampire movies, and on and on... If those thoughts make you smile, you'll enjoy his article. And if you have any photos of the old Paramount Theater, please send them to the webmaster. One I found: Copyrighted image. Hey, the Needham Barbershop is in the photo! Do you remember Frank? - Fred

Mr Warren
Submitted July, 2011

If you were to walk from my old home on Cleveland Road to downtown Needham today you would be lost. Lost in the sense that nothing familiar from your childhood remains. The houses, the streets haven't changed. You will still walk by the Baptist church, as pretty as ever, and its next door neighbor, the Christian Science church. It is when you reach the town itself, the commercial district, that what you knew as a child, what you remember has disappeared. The buildings remain, it is all the stores you knew as a child that are gone. The hard reality of nothing stays the same cannot be ignored as you walk down Great Plain Ave. and into the center of town. The town looks tired. The stores seem empty. Gone is the hobby shop, Mr. Carre's Sherwin-Williams store, The Needham Paramount, the jewelry store, Frank's hardware, the woman's clothing store on the corner. Cross Dedham Ave. and you will no longer find Kinne's Drug store, Woolworth's, Brigham's, The Rexall Pharmacy, Rimmele's Market. At the corner of Great Plain and Chestnut you can stop as when you look across you will see that West's, Perlin's, The Crest are gone. They are all gone now. For the most part they seem to have been replaced by restaurants. Restaurants that cater to every taste, every taste but a twelve year old boys. No Eadies, no Bergson's, no lunch counter at Woolworth's and so on. Where do you go to spend your allowance as a kid in Needham now? Do they even get allowances now?

Over the past several years since I began visitng Needham I have avoided the downtown section. I've walked all through the rest of the town, looked at all the McMansions going up, looked for the homes of my childhood friends. Many of the streets are the same. You can walk by homes, including my old home, and have the sense that if you knocked on any of the doors your childhood friends would answer. It's comforting. Not so with the town itself. It seems cold. It seems dead. Not even the ghosts of my childhood remain. Except for one.
Mr. Warren, Ernie when he couldn't see the boy who would shout out his name as we hung out in the lobby of The Needham Paramount waiting for the feature film to begin, is my ghost from downtown Needham. When I think of The Needham Paramount I think/see Mr. Warren. They are forever linked in my memory. I don't remember him not being in the theater when I went there as a boy. He always wore a suit and a bow tie. He had a pencil mustache. He was a dictator, the lord of his domain and all who dwelled within it. Going to the movies as a kid meant more than just grabbing a bag of popcorn and heading into the theater. No, going to the movies back then also involved either obeying Mr. Warren's rule of movie theater etiquette or avoiding getting caught if you violated any. And violate them we did. I have a list of those violations but before I go there I'd like to describe how the Paramount looked back then. At least what I remember or think I remember.

If you look for it now, nothing remains. Nothing. No marquee, ticket booth, glass cases with movie posters, not one brick to mark The Paramount's existence. What exists now is some pieces of grey painted plywood covering up the spot on Great Plain that meant so much to us as kids. I tried looking for pictures, information on-line and came up almost empty. No pictures of the theater, its interior turned up. So, what you will get is a walk through of what I remember. Walking up to the cinema what you would see first was the marquee hanging out over the side walk. Advertised would be the movie playing, the times it was showing. It was white with black and red block letters and it was lit up at night. The letters were put up and taken down by hand. When you got under the marquee you would see the ticket booth, the glass cases facing the street on either side of the entry with posters of the current movie. The ticket booth was an island unto itself. There was a metal coin tray, a metal speaking area cut into the glass, a seat for whoever was selling the tckets and a roll of tickets. They must have had the selling of tickets down to a science as I never remember long lines of kids waiting to buy even when the theater was packed. After you bought your ticket you would walk up either side of the booth up a slight incline. On the walls were more glass cases with posters of future attractions inside. Passing those you came to a series of doors with brass handles and brass kickers. Upon opening those you would take a step or two to a second set of doors of similar design the led into the foyer.

The foyer was in the shape of a hexagon, had a skylight. On one side was a set of doors that led out to the back of the theater and a few parking places. On the other side was Mr. Warren's office. There was also a phone booth and the set of brass posts and velvet ropes. You would walk through the foyer to where your tickets were taken, ripped in half and the stub returned to you. Looking straight ahead in the main lobby was the concession stand. To your left and down some stairs was the men's room, next a set of stairs that led to the ladies room and breaking off from those stairs were the stairs to the balcony. Beyond the stairs was a drinking fountain. If you looked right there was a set of doors that would lead you into the theater. They were always open before the movie started, during intermission, and when the movie ended. I want to say the floor was marble tile, the steps carpeted in dark red. The concession stand was a long glass case with ice cream bars dispensed on the left, candy, drinks, and popcorn in the center and the cash register on the right. When you entered the theater you were greeted with a half wall behind the last rows of seats, There were two aisles to walk down. The seats were of bleached out crushed red velour, with wooden arm rests and metal backs. Overhead were chandeliers. Red fabric on the walls with speakers and wall sconces mounted. At the front of the theater which you would walk down hill to get to was an orchestra pit protected by brass rails on each side of the pit were a set of stairs leading up to a small stage. There were curtains that would close and behind them was the screen. There were also emergency exits front and back. That's my tour.

Moving through my childhood The Paramount was an escape, a fantasy world, a place of high adventure, exotic places when we were in elementary school. We would go to the saturday matinee. Kids from all over the town would be packed in the theater. Once in and seated what then transpired was controlled mayhem. We would yell, scream, clap, laugh, boo in unison depending on what was happening on the screen. If the show was out of focus we would boo and yell out focus. If the film burned through we would boo, then cheer when the movie or cartoon came back on. There was always a break between the short subjects and the main movie. We would fill up the lobby and load up on candy, popcorn. If you bought an ice cream or soda you had to finish it in the lobby before the ushers would let you go back to your seat. You would always be able to get the same seat back that you had begun the afternoon with. The ushers and Mr. Warren would spend their time looking for those of us acting out. We would be disciplined for throwing candy, using squirt guns, shooting paper clips at the screen, putting our feet up on the chair in front of us. Grounds for a trip to Mr. Warren's office included swearing, getting caught opening the emergency exit doors, doing anything in the men's room other than going to the bathroom, trying to sneak up to the balcony, any type of rude behavior towards the ushers or girls behind the concession stand.

I made more than one trip to Mr. Warren's office. He would address you by your name, how he knew all of our names amazed me. He would ask you to explain your behavior. Then, he would hand out his punishment. The minimum would be a short lecture followed by an apology after which you could go back into the theater. The scale would progress from being kicked out for that day to a period of weeks. The big one was having your parents called. I never got hit with anything more than being kicked out for the remainder of the day. I do remember one matinee where our collective behavior was so bad that Mr. Warren stopped the movie and gave us a lecture on out behavior from the stage.

Once I hit junior high there would be no more Saturday matinees. They were for kids! I had graduated to the Friday night movie. Feature films only, no short subjects or cartoons. The theater would be filled up with teenagers, hormones raging. Same basic rules of movie theater etiquette were in place that we had to live by when we had gone to the matinees. What was different was the back rows were now occupied by boys and girls on dates with the prized seats reserved for those that would be necking. The other differences were kids that smoked out side the theater and the occasional fist fight. I don't remember how we were herded out to the concession stand, if every movie had an intermission. I remember Mr. Warren was more vigilante and that on occasion you would see a police officer in the theater.

I also remember what an education those movies provided for us. We learned about racism, alcoholism, and more from those movies. I have referenced all of this in other entries.

After junior high I rarely went to the Paramount. If you went on a date you went to a theater in a different town. The few times I went in high school or college was on a Sunday or an evening during the week. Mr. Warren faded out of my life. Matinees faded out of Needham, Friday nights reserved for kids from junior high faded away. The theater was sold, showed its age and became irrelevant in Needham closing [in 1989] under a cloud of litigation. [Photos of demolition in 2001]

I don't know how long Mr. Warren stayed with the Paramount. I don't know what happened to him. What I do know is how lucky we were to have the Paramount to go to growing up. How important it was to us as kids. Nothing like it exists now. Sadly.

Kevin Tracey '65

[See a blog about the Needham Cinema]

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