Wineka column: When Capitol was king of theaters in town

John Lowery will play his street organ at the dedication of the Art Trail Marker on friday for the Sparks Circus. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post

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John Lowery's job as usher at the Capitol Theatre was pretty straightforward.

He stood at the head of an aisle with his flashlight, helping customers to their places.

He made sure no patrons were putting their feet on the seats in front of them. He kept an eye out for drunks or people snoring through that night's picture.

He also watched the fire exits, looking for kids trying to sneak in their friends.

"I had to wear a monkey suit, that's what we called it," Lowery says.

Downtown movie houses in Salisbury are long gone, replaced by the typical multiplex that shows up at the outward reaches of any town.

When Lowery ushered and worked as a ticket-taker at the Capitol from 1952-54, Salisbury's downtown had two other movie theaters: the Victory and the State (which became the Center in 1953), both on South Main Street.

The Capitol operated on West Innes Street near the Salisbury Post from 1925 until 1977.

The building was demolished in 1979 to make way for a new press at the Post and today's parking lot.

The Capitol started with silent films and vaudeville acts, then introduced talkies in 1928 — the first theater in Salisbury to do so and only the fourth in North Carolina.

Lowery loved the Capitol and its people.

Paul Phillips, "The Wizard of Innes Street," served as city manager for both the Capitol and the Victory, which were owned by the same company. Phillips was the theater firm's head man in Salisbury from 1928 until his retirement in 1966.

The Terrace Theatre, which came later to the Towne Mall, was dedicated to Phillips in 1969.

Walter Crowell was Phillips' cigar-smoking assistant manager, who also had talent as a sign painter. Lowery recalls the Capitol's having an upstairs art studio that included one of those nude Marilyn Monroe calendars — the Farrah Fawcett poster of its day.

Marshall Ramsey and L.A. Foster alternated days as the Capitol's projectionists.

Foster also was an accomplished organist, who had a regular Sunday afternoon program on one of Salisbury's AM radio stations.

Before Lowery ever worked at the theater, Mr. and Mrs. Grant Linn would entertain patrons during intermissions with live organ music. The Capitol's organ later was removed and sent to First Presbyterian Church.

Violet Ramsey, Marshall's wife, worked for decades at the Capitol. To the young Lowery, she was "prim, proper and dignified."

"Violet Ramsey used to give me a lot of motherly advice," he says.

Other theater employees Lowery remembers included Becky Kluttz, Garland Gaither, Charlotte Butler and Janet Lemmon.

"I'd like to know where they are and what happened to them," says Lowery, now 74.

Lowery worked at the Capitol from his sophomore to senior years in high school. He usually walked to the job from his South Fulton Street home near Foil's Grocery.

Sometimes the projectionists, Foster or Ramsey, would give him a ride home. Friday and Saturday nights were, of course, the big movie nights.

Between the Capitol and Victory, most of the top-tier movies were shown at the Capitol. The "B" movies, westerns and foreign films seemed to fall to the Victory, where Lowery thinks he first laid eyes on Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.

His duties at the Capitol included popping the popcorn. The popper was upstairs, and he often had to carry down the finished product in 5-gallon buckets to the warmers at the concession stand.

When he closed at nights, Lowery checked the bathrooms to make sure no one was left behind.

"I never knew women could be so messy," he says.

The kids attending Saturday morning shows left even bigger messes in the theater, Lowery complains.

Lowery can still picture the theater's light fixtures, velvet stage curtains, elegant wall sconces, fluted columns, the colorful movie posters and large still photographs of the film stars.

"I still have a picture of Elizabeth Taylor," he says. "I thought she was the most beautiful woman."

The early 1950s were a different social era in Salisbury. The Capitol was segregated. African-American patrons watched the features from the upstairs balcony, and the more expansive "white" section was downstairs.

The movie house played a pivotal role in Salisbury's integration.

On Feb. 27, 1962, 16 students from Livingstone College were denied seats in the white section of the Capitol, setting off a quiet protest outside the theater and leading to their arrests.

In the week that followed, prominent black leaders Dr. Samuel Duncan and grocer Wiley Lash sat in the white section of the theater every day. Other black adults and students eventually joined them.

Within six weeks, theater managers agreed to integrate their Salisbury movie houses for good.

Over his three years at the Capitol, Lowery saw a lot of movies from his various stations in the theater. He marveled at the crowds drawn by the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedies. He thinks Cinemascope debuted during his time, as did 3-D movies in 1953.

He particularly remembers the 3-D versions of "Bwana Devil," starring Robert Stack, and "House of Wax" with Vincent Price. Lowery handed out the cardboard 3-D glasses (with blue and red lenses) as he took the customer's tickets.

On occasion, Salisbury's most famous actors of the time, Sidney and Suzanne Blackmer, would attend a movie at the Capitol, Lowery recalls. The couple's Salisbury home was only about three blocks from the theater.

Lowery says his pay for working at the theater was "negligible," but it provided some extra money for clothes.

"All the kids I went to school with, of course, wanted me to let them in for free," he says.

When Lowery went off to the University of North Carolina, Phillips wrote a nice recommendation letter for him to E. Carrington Smith, the city manager of the Carolina and Varsity theaters in Chapel Hill.

Smith hired Lowery, and he worked at those theaters through his college days.

"I owe him a debt of gratitude," Lowery says of Phillips.

Lowery majored in philosophy at UNC and did a year's worth of graduate work at Duke University before deciding the school's approach was too analytical.

He ended up junking his notion to become an attorney and forged a notable career in social work. Many people in Rowan County now know him for a couple of his hobbies: playing a concert trumpet street organ and his collection of music boxes and Victrola phonographs.

Lowery says he wanted to share his memories of the Capitol because he fears many of the people from that early 50s era are gone.

It leads him to one more recollection — the day in 1953 when President Eisenhower passed the Capitol in a limousine on his way to give a bicentennial speech at Catawba College.

Lowery watched the president's car go by from the Capitol's front door.

"I was standing there in my monkey suit," he says.

Read Mark Wineka's blog, "Wineka's World," at www. salisburypost.com.