Williams column - Capitol Theater

Salisbury's Capitol Theater was located on West Innes Street, not far from the old Salisbury Post building. Disney and Disney-style movies were featured at the Center Theater on South Main Street, but I saw epics such "Bridge on the River Kwai," "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago" at the Capitol.

Some of the more frightening movies were also featured there, such as film retellings of Poe classics starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Ray Milland, along with Hitchcock classics such as "The Birds."

After paying at the ticket booth, one would walk down a long, carpeted hallway to the concession stand. The palace at Versailles had its "Hall of Mirrors," and so did the Capitol Theater, with the walls on both sides of that initial hallway being covered with mirrors more than 6 feet tall and extending the entire length of the hallway. They gave the term "full-length mirror" an extended meaning.

In the darkness of the theater could be seen dimly glowing wall lights helping to illuminate the carpeted paths at the farthest edges of the rows of seats. The lights appeared to be styled as glowing vases, resembling art deco, which was popular in the 1920s and '30s. Above the curtains and screen were the faces of Janus, the symbols of comedy and tragedy in ancient Greece, although in the conditions of lighting there, they sometimes appeared as skulls of happiness and sadness.

On some Saturday mornings, the Capitol would screen westerns and Tarzan movies with the required admission consisting of only a couple of soft drink bottle caps. The late actor Jock Mahoney made an appearance there in the early 1960s promoting a Tarzan movie in which he was the latest in a long line of actors to portray that orphan raised by the apes.

On two different Saturdays, cars once belonging to Adolph Hitler and Al Capone were on display at the Capitol Theater. Both were heavily armored, with windows consisting of glass several inches thick, which made sense if one was either Hitler or Capone.

The Capitol Theater was later demolished and the new Salisbury Post building erected in its place, a dealer of fact replacing a dealer of mostly fiction.

In recalling something now gone which dealt mostly with make-believe, the memories are real, but they almost seem like make-believe when remembering a place whose business was mostly fiction and which doesn't exist in this present time.Mack Williams grew up in Rowan County and now lives in Virginia.