Curtains for Lakewood's Detroit Theatre

 Curtains for Lakewood's Detroit Theatre

By Pete Roche

Roy Neary quit his job as an electrician to become passenger on a gigantic spaceship in the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  A frustrated suburbanite, Neary (played with aplomb by Richard Dreyfus) left his family behind when offered a chance to pursue a childhood dream.  He wished upon a star, and the stars came to him.

Stars shined at the Detroit Theatre every week since its opening in 1923: Rudy Valentino, Sean Connery, Al Pacino, Harrison Ford. 

But the lights went out this weekend.

I saw Close Encounters with my grandfather at the Lakewood movie house when I was six.  I was too young to appreciate the cosmic significance of either Neary’s pilgrimage to Devil’s Mountain or the government’s attempt to thwart him, but it didn’t matter.  I was with Grandpa—catching a colorful, imaginative, delightfully noisy Spielberg film at our neighborhood theatre. Generations of friends, families, and sweethearts enjoyed the same kind of intimate magic at that same theatre.

The Detroit closed its doors for good yesterday, January 30, following Sunday night screenings of slapstick superhero adventure THE GREEN HORNET and the critically acclaimed Coen brothers remake of TRUE GRIT.  Located between Ethel and Hall Avenues at 16407 Detroit, the cinema was the last in Lakewood and one of few independently-owned and operated movie houses on the North Coast.

Messages left on The Detroit’s answering machine to inquire about the recently announced closing were not returned. Other outlets report that owner Norman Barr agonized over the decision to shut down after years of running in the red.  Like most cinemas, The Detroit coughed up a large percentage of its earnings to studios supplying the movie prints.  It relied on profits from its lone concession stand to break even.

Barr’s frustration is understandable.  Attendance at the theatre had been declining for years, even with bargain prices for first-run features.  The Detroit found it increasingly difficult to compete with the multi-screen Megaplexes erected in outlying suburbs during the 1980s-90s. 

Projectionist Ed Kern worked the reels upstairs at The Detroit for ten years.  He was also selling tickets and popcorn there on Friday night.

"My union will relocate me," Kern said.  "But this has been my home."

A partitioning of The Detroit's lone auditorium in 1988 allowed it to host two titles on separate screens.  It became a second-run theatre in the 1990s, at which time patrons could see blockbusters for a pittance just prior to their release on home video.  The facade itself was featured in the 2002 movie American Splendor, starring Paul Giamatti as grumpy clerk-turned-cartoon storyteller Harvey Pekar.       

Although the marquee received occasional face-lifts, the theatre interior was never updated to reflect changing times.  The glass counter in the lobby housing Milk Duds and Reeses Peanut Butter Cups last week was likely the same one at which moviegoers bought popcorn for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in 1981.  The men’s room at The Detroit was about the size of utility closet; three narrow urinals forced bladder-filled visitors to get cozy over crystal deodorant pucks.  The sound was slightly muffled in the auditorium when I saw LITTLE FOCKERS there over the holidays.

But lack of upkeep and general wear-and-tear was part of the theatre’s charm in its latter years.  One could pick a seat, close his eyes, and know he was at The Detroit just by smell.  And despite the ubiquity of computerized ticketing at modern box offices today (and perhaps in spite of it), Barr continued selling generic, old-style tear-off stubs without show titles or times printed on them.

Admit One.

This writer had his first movie date at The Detroit in 1985.  OUT OF AFRICA took Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director (Sydney Pollack) that year.  But despite gorgeous cinematography and competent performances from Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, the travelogue bored the hell out of this then-fourteen year old—whose date’s parents surreptitiously chaperoned the 160-minute outing from ten rows back.

Again, it didn’t matter whether the film was any good—or whether a kiss could be stolen in the dark of the auditorium.  Not as far as the experience was concerned.  Another indelible memory had been created at the nexus of Wagar and Woodward. 

My father took me and my brothers to reruns of old Disney fare like HERBIE: THE LOVE BUG and SONG OF THE SOUTH at The Detroit.  Thirty years later—and quite possibly from the same cushy seats—my kids and I enjoyed CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY.

Memories of The Detroit will linger long after the dimming of its humble, unobtrusive marquee.  The shame is that there will be no further magic made inside its doors. 

My grandfather joined Roy Neary in the heavens ten years ago.  Admit One.  But I’ll always remember our time together, and the countless matinees and movie nights-out in the shadow of (the also vacant) St. James Church. For eighty-five years, The Detroit was our Little Theatre That Could.