Although little known today, the Carolina Theatre was the first motion picture theater on Blowing Rock's Main Street, opening on 4 June 1928. Like all early Blowing Rock film theaters, it was operated only in the summer months, generally from June to September, and catered especially to summer tourists. In 1929 it became the first theater in town to feature talking movies, a focus of its subsequent advertising. It was located in the building now occupied by Kilwin's Chocolates, an ice cream shop on Main Street across from the venerable Martin House:

This map has been re-drawn using the 1927 Sanborn map and other sources. Though parts of the foundation for this building appear to remain, the rest of the exterior has been extensively altered and the interior entirely gutted since its days as a theater; no remnants of the film exhibition history of this building are known to survive. The final season at the Carolina ended on 1 October 1938. The Yonahlossee Theatre opened up just down the street in the summer of 1939 and the Carolina building was converted into retail space.

Grand Opening: 1928

After the fire of 1923, which destroyed most of the buildings on the east side of Main Street across from the Martin House and up to the corner with Sunset Drive, all new buildings in Blowing Rock were to be made with brick:

MUST USE BRICK AT BLOWING ROCK NOW Town to Prohibit Rebuilding With Wood; Buildings Are Planned

. . . Already rebuilding in the burned area has begun. The new brick store building of H.C. Hayes is well under way. . . . (Lenoir News Topic 10/23/1923, p. 1)

While some building began immediately, the 1927 Sanborn map shows several vacant lots on this side of the street. The newest building in this block would have been the theater built by Everett Greeley Pitts (1886-1949):

Will Operate Picture House

The new building being erected by E.G. Pitts adjacent to the Sanitary Barber Shop will be occupied by a moving picture theater this summer, the owners have announced. The company operating the theater is composed of G.C. Robbins, Mr. Pitts and E.G. Underdown.

Only first-run releases will be shown in the theater, it was said, and whenever other entertainment can be had, it will be shown on the large stage, which is being built.

Seating room to accommodate the large summer crowds will be provided and the theater will have an attractive lobby. The owners promise to open a first class theater about June 1. (Watauga Democrat 4/12/1928, p. 1)

This was not the first motion picture show at Blowing Rock: the Wonderland Theatre in Mayview had been opened in 1922, but it was the first to be located in downtown Blowing Rock, directly on Main Street. As in all theaters of the time, manager Grover C. Robbins, Sr. (1887-1956) planned not just films, but live entertainment as well: "Some vaudeville may also be shown from time to time." (Watauga Democrat 5/17/1928, p. 1).

The first night of film exhibition at the new Carolina occurred on Monday, 4 June 1928, with the William Boyd and Mary Astor feature, Two Arabian Knights (1927):

Carolina Theater Opens

The Carolina theater was formally opened Monday night with an address by Mayor George M. Sudderth and another by Dr. R.B. Scales before the large crowd that attended the first performance. Mayor Sudderth pointed out that this theater is entirely a local institution, since it was built and is owned and operated by local men, and therefore, deserves local support.

Dr. Scales followed with some whimsical advice to both the owners and the patrons.

Then followed the photoplay, "Two Arabian Knight," a farce comedy of war time, with a plot that is distinctively different from the conventional war picture.

The owners, E.G. Pitts, G.C. Robbins and E.G. Underdown, said that only first-run, clean pictures will be shown. (Watauga Democrat 6/7/1928, p. 1)

By appealing to hometown spirit ("entirely a local institution . . ."), the Carolina owners differentiated themselves from their Mayview competitors at the Wonderland, owned by businessmen off the mountain. Like all films shown at the Carolina in 1928, Two Arabian Knights was a silent movie--the theater would not be equipped for talking pictures until 1930. No mention has been found of piano or other type of live accompaniment for the films, although this certainly would have been expected at the time.

After the big premiere, the ads in the newspapers, Boone and Lenoir, all but vanish. The only other film mentioned for the opening year was Cecil B. DeMille's epic, King of Kings (1927), that appeared at the tail end of the season in mid-October (Watauga Democrat 10/18/1928, p. 5). No ads were taken out for the competing Wonderland Theatre at all that year, so it was obviously enough for both theaters to rely primarily on marquee advertising, attracting tourists who probably would not subscribe to local papers anyway (Blowing Rock did not yet have a paper of its own). The Carolina's central location on Main Street would have given it a huge advantage over the nearly hidden Wonderland; in fact it appears that after one year of direct competition the Wonderland closed its doors permanently in 1929, while the Carolina flourished.

One more event at the Carolina Theatre is chronicled in 1928: a major fiddlers' convention in June of that year. The fact that this took place here and not at the Wonderland where past conventions were held (see Wonderland Theatre) indicates how completely the new theater had stolen away the town's public performance life. Perhaps in a bit of hometown favoritism, one of the most important old-time groups of the era, the Tenneva Ramblers, took second place to the local Cook Sisters (Watauga Democrat 6/21/1928, p. 1).

1929

The year 1929 was relatively uneventful for the Carolina, at least as far as newspaper reports are concerned: there are only two weeks' worth of ads in the Watauga Democrat with 8 films total. Not much can be said with such a small sample, but a direct comparison of films at the Carolina with films at the Pastime Theatre in Boone reveals a bit about the tastes of contemporary audiences:

• • 7/12/1929 (Fri) CAROLINA: Wild Orchids PASTIME (Boone): The Port of Missing Girls

  • 7/13/1929 (Sat) CAROLINA: The Port of Missing Girls PASTIME: West of Santa Fe

  • 7/15/1929 (Mon CAROLINA: Strong Boy PASTIME: Dead Man's Curve

  • 7/16/1929 (Tue) CAROLINA: Strong Boy PASTIME: The Cop

  • 7/17/1929 (Wed) CAROLINA: Bellamy Trial PASTIME: China Bound

  • 7/18/1929 (Thu) CAROLINA: The Awakening PASTIME: [closed? China Bound again?]

  • 7/19/1929 (Fri) CAROLINA: The Awakening PASTIME: Gun Law

  • 7/20/1929 (Sat) CAROLINA: Alias Jimmy Valentine PASTIME: Gun Law

  • 7/22/1929 (Mon) CAROLINA: Alibi PASTIME: The Awakening

  • 7/23/1929 (Tue) CAROLINA: Alibi PASTIME: The Awakening

  • 7/24/1929 (Wed) CAROLINA: The Little Wildcat PASTIME: Wild Orchids

Boone was a college town with a sizable year-round population. Blowing Rock had a relatively small pool of locals--many of whom would have been too busy in the tourist industry during the summers to frequent the movie house very often. So the wealthy summer tourists appear to be the main audience for the Carolina. Although owned by independent local exhibitors, there seems to be some interchange of film between the two theaters. The Port of Missing Girls plays Friday night at the Pastime and the next night at the Carolina, for example. The films Wild Orchids and The Awakening also played at both theaters in the same two-week period, and Bellamy Trial and Alibi played the Pastime immediately afterwards. Alias Jimmy Valentine was shown at the Pastime the following month.

The 6 films shown at both theaters include mostly dramas or romances; the films shown at the Pastime but not at the Carolina include Westerns, action or crime dramas, and one comedy:

• • • West of Santa Fe (Western)

    • Dead Man's Curve (action drama)

    • The Cop (crime drama)

    • China Bound (comedy)

    • Gun Law (Western)

This was a pattern repeated throughout the history of Blowing Rock theaters: compared to their Boone counterparts, the Carolina (and later, the Yonahlossee) focused on more adult entertainment, largely avoiding Westerns and genres more popular with children. At the Pastime in Boone, rarely does a Friday or Saturday show without a Western occur, especially at the Saturday matinees designed for children (note that all local movie theaters were closed on Sundays well into the 1950s).

1930: Talkies

By 1930, the Carolina was ready to add sound films or "talkies" to their program. The Pastime in Boone added Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc system, in September of 1929. For the season opening at the Carolina the following year, sound motion pictures made it to Blowing Rock as well (Watauga Democrat 5/1/1930, p. 8):

Rather than sound-on-disc, as at the Pastime, the Phonofilm system was more advanced and printed the sound track directly onto the film itself, guaranteeing synchronization. It was this system that would eventually come to dominate the film industry, while the sound-on-disc method slowly disappeared. The Carolina management vowed that: "Our entire programs from this date will be all-talking, all-singing . . ." (Watauga Democrat 5/1/1930, p. 8).

The Carolina opened the season on 5 May 1930 and only about 3 weeks of ads are missing from the local paper (the Watauga Democrat in Boone) until the end of August when the season closed. Comparing the ads with the Pastime Theatre in Boone, we can once again see a similar pattern of genres with the glaring exception of Westerns (note that some films can have multiple genres, so there are more genres listed here than actual films):

Of the 40 films listed in ads for the Carolina that summer, 6 were also shown during this period at the Pastime. A comparison of the two theaters at this time is especially revealing since there was relatively small number of talking films available.

Films of the 1930s at the Carolina Theatre

The nine seasons of sound films at the Carolina actually vary somewhat in length, beginning as early as 5 May and as late as 2 July. Closing dates varied from 29 August to 1 October:

• • • 1930: 5 May to 29 August

    • 1931: 6 June to 24 September

    • 1932: 1 June to 15 September

    • 1933: 26 June to 9 September

    • 1934: 2 July to 8 September

    • 1935: 24 May to 12 September

    • 1936: 24 June to 16 September

    • 1937: 18 June to 30 September

    • 1938: 3 June to 1 October

Certainly, the summer tourists left en masse beginning in September, after the August horse show and as the weather turned cooler. Their arrival appears to have been less predictable, no doubt being influenced by the school year or work-related duties, as well as the weather. Since many of these summer tourists would have come from larger cities, they would have had a chance to view currently released films. No doubt, they expected to see up-to-date material at the Carolina. Using the number of days from the national release of a film as a gauge, the films at the Carolina average just over two months after national release or 71 days from 1930-1938. During the same period (including the full calendar year), the Pastime in Boone had an average post-release date nearly double: 128 days. This might, in part, be due to the prevalence of Westerns at the Pastime: a genre where currency was obviously less than essential.

The 1930s were a golden era of Hollywood, focused primarily on the most successful movie stars. A list of the top 10 actors appearing in films at the Carolina from 1930-1938 and the number of times films featuring them were shown (including repeat performances) shows an audience not unlike the national average, again noting the absence of Western heroes:

• • • 22 appearances: Spencer Tracy

    • 21 appearances: Myrna Loy, Victor McLaglen

    • 20 appearances: Warner Baxter

    • 19 appearances: Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Montgomery, Robert Young

    • 18 appearances: Pat O'Brien

    • 17 appearances: Joan Blondell, Loretta Young

Most of these names are still well-known today, although perhaps primarily to film scholars and fans of classic Hollywood. Interestingly, nearly half of the performers are women.

Feature films were not the only source of entertainment at the Carolina. Like all theaters of the time, a variety of short films would have been expected before the main show. During the 1930s, cartoons, newsreels, comedies, serials and other shorts are common, but rarely mentioned in the newspaper ads. An unnamed Laurel and Hardy comedy was advertised in 1935 (Blowing Rocket 8/24/1935, p. 10), as well as several Broadway Brevities, musical-dramas from Warner Brothers focusing on New York talent. In the Carolina's final year (1938), a 15-episode serial, The Secret of Treasure Island, appeared weekly throughout most of the season. Serials were a staple of most film theaters at the time, but the most favorite genre would have been the Western. Perhaps Western serials were shown but not advertised at the Carolina; if they were, they were clearly not the focal point of the show in the ads.

Live Acts

In addition to the 1928 fiddlers' convention mentioned above, there was a performance by the a band using the name Original Hill Billies in 1931 and another fiddlers' contest in 1932. Again, there may have been other, unadvertised live events on the Carolina's stage, but it appears that this was not a central focus of the venue. There were several bands call the Hill Billies in the period, the original and most famous being Al Hopkins and His Hill Billies. Jack Pierce, a member of the Tenneva Ramblers appearing at the 1928 fiddlers' convention, returned to the stage with a benefit concert of unknown musicians in 1931:

HILL BILLIES WILL GIVE TWO LOCAL PERFORMANCES

Mr. J.C. Pierce, manager for the Hill Billies, musical and vaudeville troupe which won such distinct favor in this region several years ago, was in the city the first of the week and made arrangements for a showing here on Friday, the 8th, going on to the Carolina Theatre at Blowing Rock for a performance on Saturday. Mr. Pierce states that his company is presenting this year a decidedly superior program of popular string music as well as ballads peculiar to the Blue Ridge Hills, and that high class vaudeville occupies a prominent position on the bill. The Boone entertainment will be rendered under the auspices of Watauga Post American Legion, and a liberal share of the proceeds will be used to further the Legion causes. (Watauga Democrat 8/6/1931, p. 4)

The following ad (Watauga Democrat 8/6/1931, p. 3) accompanied this short blurb:

Note that a Western, starring Buck Jones, was shown at the Carolina to accompany the live show, one of the few true Westerns shown at the theater.

The following year, "Uncle" Mack Crow led a fiddlers' convention more than a month before the season opened (Watauga Democrat 4/14/1932, p. 5):

Crow was to return several times to the area, including the 1941 fiddlers' convention in Boone where the young Doc Watson was recorded for the first time. Contest results were not published for this event, but the Cook Sisters again appear to have been local favorites: "The fiddlers convention at the Carolina Theatre Friday and Saturday night had quite a large audience. The Cook Sisters, well known mountain artists, received a large hand." (Watauga Democrat 4/21/1932, p. 5).

Spawn of the North

Finally, the most famous event in the history of the Carolina Theatre occurred during its final year: the world premiere of the film, Spawn of the North (Paramount 1938) on 20 August 1938. This event has been much-recounted in the histories of Blowing Rock, in large part because there are several photographs related to it, but its deeper significance as a publicity stunt exploiting Appalachian stereotypes has gone largely unnoticed.

The original ad is as follows (Watauga Democrat 8/11/1938, p. 8):

The film itself has nothing to do with the region, as might be expected, but deals instead with Alaskan fishermen. It was an "A" film and features some major Hollywood talent: George Raft, Dorothy Lamour, John Barrymore, and a very young Henry Fonda. But in the ad note the emphasis on those who have never seen a talking picture. As we saw above, sound motion pictures came to Blowing Rock in 1930, and only in bigger cities on a regular basis a few years before that around 1927. So it would not have been extremely difficult to find those who had avoided film theaters at that time; more conservative religious attitudes could have kept some from going, others may not have been able to afford or justify the ticket price. Silent films had been available for over 30 years by this time and, importantly, had been widely available not just at movie houses but at tent shows, schools, public buildings such as courthouses, city halls, even churches on occasion, sometimes with no admission. It is unlikely that many older people in the area could have truthfully signed an affidavit indicating they had never seen a motion picture. But in 1938 if you were willing to sign an affidavit that you had never seen a talking picture, you were set for a free show . . .

The trade periodical, the Motion Picture Herald (8/27/1938, p. 12), devoted the top of a page to the stunt, with 4 photographs:

Two disconcerting facts present themselves from this story:

• 1. This was not, in fact, a real world premiere, as advertised; the actual "Hollywood" premiere, with the stars, was held in Seattle, Washington the same day--a location more in keeping with the subject of the film.

  2. Along with other advertising and trade notices, the promotion has switched from those who had never seen a talking motion picture to those who had never seen a motion picture at all; the talking motion picture aspect in the original agreement is not mentioned.

So the stunt was, in fact, a sort of bait-and-switch where older citizens were lured to their first talking picture show and then pictured as rubes who had never seen a motion picture at all, complete with beards (or the shaving thereof) and Confederate veterans. This did not escape the notice of Rob Rivers in the Watauga Democrat:

SAME OLD STORY

Two hundred and forty-five people who said they had never seen a talking movie picture, came out to the Carolina Theatre at Blowing Rock Saturday night to witness the world premiere of Paramount's new production, "Spawn of the North," and the splendid management of the cinema palace and the townspeople generally are elated that the resort village should be the first locality of less than six hundred year-round population to witness the first showing of any film.

However, a good deal of the glamour of the occasion seems to have been removed in the minds of some of the natives of the mountain top, who, in press dispatches, have seen themselves as John Fox's Kentucky backwoodsmen brought to life. The covered wagon is prominently featured in the stories, together with trucks, but no mention, of course, is made of the countless automobiles which were driven over the mountain roadways to the attraction.

We quote a few excepts: . . . "And when the news reels are produced, and when the pictures come out in the illustrated magazines, it may be expected that a few folks in the movie audience will be featured to the exclusion of the vast majority of intelligent listeners, who just happened to have never become interested in the movies."

It's the same old story. For years on end, The Democrat has read publicity concerning this section--many items from the pen of eminent writers--but always the exception is taken for the rule. The most underprivileged people are made types of our mountain civilization. Pity is that the other side of the picture could not be more often shown the world. (Watauga Democrat 8/25/1938, p. 4)

Paramount's gimmick did have one positive effect: some of the only known photographs of the interior of a film theater in the area from before World War II, including this enlarged audience shot from the page above:

The relatively older audience (note that several children are present) appears to be watching the film as any contemporary crowd would--with the exception of press photographers gawking at them. Note also the relatively tiny dimensions of the theater itself: apparently with two rows of 5 seats. No wonder by the end of the 1938 season the owners of the Carolina had a new venue in mind . . .

Dr. Gary R. Boye

Music Librarian and Professor

Appalachian State University

boyegr@appstate.edu