Lincoln Theatre's legacy lives on

For a dime per child and a quarter per adult, Troy residents watched silent movies and accompanying Vaudeville acts at the Lincoln Theatre when television was only an idea in the mind of an inventor.

Wishing to continue the 84-year tradition, former owners Burt and Margee Wilson sold Lincoln Theatre to buyers last month who agreed to operate it as a movie theater.

“They asked if we’d be interested,” said Tina Moore, who purchased the theater with her husband, Josh Moore. “They did not want anyone to have it that wasn’t going to keep it a theater because Troy is such a small town, the theater is a big part of the entertainment.”

People in even the most remote locations now have access to a modern array of movie rental options, such as pay-per-view and subscription-based Netflix. Such effortless access has hurt small-town theaters like Troy’s, but it will never stamp it out, said Mayor Jim Hammons, who owned the theater from about 1993 to 2004. 

“There’s nothing like watching a movie on a big screen with good sound,” Hammons said. “It’s a social experience that I think people like.”

With the development of a nearby mine in 1915, and the opening of a large sawmill in 1922, Troy became fertile ground to build a competitor to the town’s existing show house Dahl Hall.

The name Lincoln Theatre was “selected as symbolic of this country,” the Troy Tribune reported in 1924, and along with the “latest technology,” the theater had a three-piece orchestra to furnish music for films.

With twice the seating capacity as its modern version, a balcony, and two dressing rooms for pre-movie Vaudeville performers, the Troy Tribune reported that the Lincoln Theatre drew a crowd so big on its opening night “chairs were placed in the aisles so none of them were turned away.”

Along with the Moore’s purchase last month came a house adjacent to the theater and the Eats and Treats diner next door. Eventually, Josh’s aunt and uncle will take over the diner and integrate it more with the theater.

Demonstrating how the two movie projectors work, Tina Moore pointed out that it’s actually her husband’s job to thread the film and run the machines.

“This is pretty much Josh’s world. The film isn’t as fragile as you might think it is,” she said, running her finger along a reel. “I’ve stepped on it, he tweaks it and grabs it.”

The length of film in a typical movie could measure around two miles in length. As a result, the film must be contained in a handful of large reels that each play about 20 minutes.

The projectors, which Burt Wilson estimates were replaced in the 1950s, still work the same way that its predecessors did. And though reels of 35-millimeter film are still used, the film is made out of a less flammable material.

“They don’t make film like that anymore,” said Wilson, who owns Libby’s theater and owned Lincoln Theatre for about four years. “The light bulbs are so intense and the buildings were made of wood. It would catch fire if you didn’t have anybody watching it.”

In fact, Wilson pointed out that three historic Libby theaters – the Fox, the Fawn and the Kootenai – were all lost in fires. Libby’s Dome Theatre rests where the Kootenai formerly stood. To the best of Wilson’s and Hammons’ knowledge, Lincoln Theatre has miraculously never suffered a devastating fire.

Lincoln Theatre’s projection room is small with curtains blacking out the sunlight from its two street-facing windows.

Movie reels are stacked on an apparatus called a platter, a 1960s invention purchased by Hammons in the 1990s. It enables projectionists to attach the reels together to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted movie.

Before the platter, projectionists had to thread the first reel in one projector and the second reel in another. With perfect timing at the end of the reel, the projectionist had to press a changeover pedal to start the second projector and stop the first. The projectionist threaded the unused machine with a new reel and continued swapping them until the movie was over.  

Hammons remembers the effort involved in threading and changing projectors every 20 minutes.

“Then you had to rewind it,” he said. Two miles of film took some time.

Hammons closed the theater for nine months after he purchased it, performing what was probably the first major remodel and upgrade of the building since its original construction.

Each seat was re-upholstered with non-flammable material, the screen replaced, the projector lamps upgraded, the roof fixed, bathrooms added, the electricity rewired and a new surround sound system installed.

While re-insulating the building, Hammons made a discovery.

“I found in the woodwork where the balcony was,” he said. “You could see where the beams were that held the balcony up.”

The balcony was taken out sometime in its first half-century of existence and the floor seating was rearranged and reduced by 68 chairs, but little else about the theater had changed until the upgrades. 

What has made a major transformation over the years are the movies themselves. 

In 1931, Lincoln Theatre was in the newspaper again for its first movie with sound – a talkie.

“Perfect sound has been brought to a town that most people would think hardly justified talking pictures,” the Troy Tribune reported.

With new owners come new ideas and Tina and Josh Moore are not without them. They’ve discussed pulling out the stage and adding a sound system to create a venue – if not for the public, said Tina, at least for her husband, who’s a drummer.

Tina would also like to invest in a digital projector system, the new wave of the future that Wilson predicts will be the movie theater standard in a decade or so.

“It’s a baby right now. We’re kind of nursing her along,” Tina said. “Hopefully, if we save right and invest right, this will be our fun thing to do after we retire.