Small Cities Imprint, Volume 3 (2011), No. 1, pp. 13 - 19

Inestigation of Cinema-Going Behaviour in British
Columbia, e Background to Cinema, British
Columbia: A People’s History
RON SMITH
ompson Rivers University

e premise for my CURA book project had its genesis, I suppose, in my personal moie
memories that have accumulated over the years. In conducting research for this project it
became clear that I was not alone in using ﬁlm memories as a means of charting life long
experiences—ﬁlms and cinemas served as important historical and emotional reference
points. is conference paper serves as the basis for my presentation at the CURA conference
in May, 2009 at North Island College in Comox. British Columbia.

So where does it all begin, you might ask, this ﬁlm adventure that captures the movie memories of
British Columbians? For me, it is as if it were yesterday. Nineteen ﬁy-eight and a spring Friday
evening at the Paramount Cinema in Lethbridge, Alberta—I was fourteen and the ﬁlm was e
Vikings with the most unlikely of Vikings (Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas). Curtis’ last medieval
epic was e Black Shield of Falworth (1954) where he uttered that famous line in ﬁne
Brooklynesque fashion “yonda is the castle of my fodda.” at is a ﬁlm and a line easily forgotten.
But e Vikings is perhaps why I am writing this book, because there is a scene in the
ﬁlm with stirring music that is not so easily forgotten, at least for me—a Viking ship on its way up
a ord and in the background an energizing ﬁlm score by Mario Nascimbene. I must watch that
ﬁlm once a month just for the music. When I think of that ﬁlm I also think of the Paramount and
the then-small-city atmosphere of Lethbridge, Alberta—it is hard to separate the two. Had it not
been for that ﬁlm, I doubt that my love of ﬁlms and teaching ﬁlm history would have been
realized. But those types of movie memories exist for others too, and that is what my book is
primarily about.
Annette Kuhn, in her oral history of ﬁlmgoers during the 1930s, indicates that their
cinematic experiences were profoundly and deeply felt. So much so that for many ﬁlm patrons,
they became life long emotional attachments. While many lifetime occurrences may have been
erased from one’s psyche, certain movies and cinemas seemed to remind or resonate with a
particular period or moment in a person’s life. e memories of cinema-goers in this book
certainly reﬂect Kuhn’s observation. For older generations, those memories of the golden years
© Copyright 2011. e author, Ron Smith, assigns to the Small Cities Imprint the right of ﬁrst publication and
educational and non-proﬁt institutions a non-exclusive license to use this document for personal use and in courses of
instruction proided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. Any other usage is prohibited
without the express permission of the author.

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Small Cities Imprint

linger on in visits to the neighbourhood cinema and the Saturday aernoon matinee, going to the
drive-in in the trunk of a 1956 Chevrolet, or having a root beer at the local A&W aer the
evening’s show. Contemporary movie buﬀs, on the other hand, might think of ﬁlm in reel-life
terms. Kamloops, for example, is not only a place for movie-watching; it has become a place for
movie–making.
ree major threads sustain my research and the stories about ﬁlms in Cinema British
Columbia. e ﬁrst has a historical ﬂavor and forms the book’s primary narrative which enables
readers to see how the community cinema played an important role in the lives of its citizens. e
stories told by these cinema-goers tell us that rituals associated with going to the movies not only
enriched the quality of their lives but also served as an archive of life experiences that were
triggered by memories of being part of their local cinema.
e second theme is one of a common cinematic community lexicon. Although the
cinema stories in my book are the product of far reaching places and various communities in
British Columbia, the stories all seem to share a similar language. Whether one was watching
Double Indemnity (1944) in Prince George or Gone with the Wind (1939) in Victoria, memories
of those cinema visits recall the same rituals—the smell of popcorn, the grandeur of the theatres
themselves, and being guided to one’s seat by an usher or usherette.
e ﬁnal seam within this story is not about movie watching it is about movie
making and how some British Columbia communities have become the location for movie
production. e dreams of making movies in British Columbia has historical resonance as well,
one that can be traced to the movie aspirations of Lloyd Champlain and his establishment of a
small community called, believe it or not, Cinema B.C in the 1920s. His story is one that may
provide both inspiration and caution for contemporary ﬁlmmakers about creating a “Hollywood
North” in British Columbia.
ese stories within the larger cinematic fabric of my book will help us see how the
community cinema serves an important cultural and economic link within the community and
how in some fashion or another touched the lives of its residents.
ese anecdotes that will form the foundation or structure of my monograph have
one common basis—they are memories, current and past, of cinema-related experiences that
residents have cherished in small cities and communities in British Columbia. For some they are
recollections, happy memories of times past, some imported from the locales of their youth, while
for others they are hopefully prophetic glimpses of a cinematic future. But they all speak to one
important thing—movies—whether watching them or being in them, have created lasting
memories or impressions in their lives.
e stories that will make up much of this book have had a strong emotional,
intellectual, and historical resonance with their authors. ere is a tendency at times for
academics to write about their subjects in a somewhat verbose style, but the enthusiasm generated
by the book’s story-tellers will most certainly negate that tendency here. Embedded in much of
what I have said is a strong undercurrent of emotion and sentimentality that has been triggered by
movie memories. We have all succumbed to movie popcorn and the rich smell of butter. For me (I
still use it to open my ﬁrst ﬁlm lectures of the term) it is the Twentieth-century-Fox fanfare or the
emotion that is ushered in with the phrase “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away.” ese are
magical movie moments that have, as I said earlier, become a kind of cinematic reference point
reminding us of the special association that we have with a certain time and place.
e inspiration for this book, outside the fact that little has been written about the
cinema-going memories of Canadians, came, in part, from a ﬁctional story that was serialized in
the 1930 August-October editions of the Saturday Evening Post. e Post story by Margaret

Smith

Weymouth Jackson uses the mythical tale of the local cinema in the small Indiana town of
Hilltown to convey how the local cinema served as a cultural beacon for the community. e
Llamarada, as the theatre was called, became a time capsule of community memories. And while
the story is ﬁction it does resonate in some ways with smaller cities in the British Columbia
Interior and on Vancouver Island, particularly from a geographical and cultural perspective.
Why might Jackson’s story be a useful reference point for this study? Gregory Waller
in Imagining and Promoting the Small-Town eater mentions “e two hundred–seat Llamarada
eater in Hilltown, Indiana, unquestionably stands as one of the most well-documented smalltown movie theaters of the early 1930s. Owned and operated by a locally born and raised man
who had been exhibiting ﬁlms in Hilltown since the nickelodeon era, the state-of-the-art
Llamarada was built in 1930 and managed to remain solvent throughout the Depression and
independent despite the eﬀorts of regional theater chains to dominate exhibition in the Midwest.
From existing records, we know a good deal about the size and makeup of the Llamarada's staﬀ,
the managerial and programming policies of its owner-operator, and, most important, its
audience and its place in Hilltown as "an institution, an important part of the
community” (Waller 3).
at in it self would be enough to provide the historical and cultural framework for
examining the small town cinema in British Columbia. But Waller also provides an interesting
caveat to the Llamarada: “e problem—or at least the apparent problem—is that the Llamarada
eater and Hilltown, Indiana, are ﬁctional constructs…at the stories are ﬁction does not
negate their historical value—or, for that matter, that of the many other movie-related works of
ﬁction published in the Post during this period. In fact, the Llamarada stories are an important,
overlooked resource, which, when read in the context of the motion picture trade press, can help
us analyze the small-town theater as concrete practice, business strategy, and culturally resonant
myth” (Waller 3).
Jackson’s story of the Llamarada eatre might serve as a helpful orientation to my
examination of small community cinemas, as it provides an opportunity to analyze the small town
theatre both as a business practice and as a cultural cornerstone of the smaller community.
Jackson’s insights, while ﬁltered through her imaginary gaze, seem to resonate with a city such as
Kamloops and other smaller centres. A description of her mythical 1930 community begins with,
“Hilltown is…nestled between green hills and a shining river, with the limestone mill and quarry
lying on the outer edge of it…it was a place of its own, a little apart from the world” (Waller 5).
While Kamloops residents might see those green hills in somewhat more muted tones, the
limestone mill and river could easily be transposed to the ompson River and the Kamloops
Lumber mill.
We also need to keep in mind that while Jackson’s Hilltown cinema is ﬁctional, the
manner in which she describes the cinema, its patrons, and its owner resonates in a very real way
with the players you will meet in my cinematic story—people such as Gerry Sellers, Vernon
cinema manager, and cinema-goers Barb Kelly and Jean Huntly, who seem to use the same cinema
language to describe their experiences. Waller observes: “{ Jackson’s} story…foregrounds the new
organist (and his much-appreciated instrument), while another is set almost entirely in the
projection booth and lays out not only the projectionist's serious work but also the intricacies of
the Llamarada's sophisticated sound system. Both the musician and the projectionist-electrician
are from Hilltown, as are the two perky usherettes in scarlet satin skirts and gold-brocaded jackets,
as well as all the other members of this workplace family, young and old, male and female. No
matter what motion pictures ﬁll the Llamarada's screen, the theater is a local enterprise,
emblematic of a certain faith in the Depression-proof saving grace of small-town small business,

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Small Cities Imprint

which here requires no urban intervention in the form of technical, aesthetic, or ﬁnancial
expertise” (Waller 6).
From a business perspective Jackson’s ﬁctional theatre seems to parallel a number of
small town British Columbia cinema owners and managers. Waller comments about the
Llamarada: “Presiding over the Llamarada with benign paternalism is white-haired Mr.
McLaughlin, who has built his exhibition business from the ground up, plowing any proﬁts back
into the theater. His decency, kindness, and concern for his employees and for the community at
large are demonstrated in each story, although we never see him participating in civic activities or
opening the Llamarada for charity or public-service events. It is enough, Jackson implies, that
McLaughlin knows and plays fair with his customers—that earns him and his employees a modest
living and makes him ethically unimpeachable. ‘Know[ing] the town’ is McLaughlin's key to
success, the result of years spent ‘studying, wooing and winning Hilltown.’ He buys the right ﬁlms
and arranges weekly schedules so as to "catch" the many diﬀerent audiences that comprise the
town and its environs” (Waller 6). Might this description ﬁt one of Vernon’s cinema managers?
Hilltown’s theatre would serve the community in a number of ways. is relatively
new art form was a window to the outside world for ﬁlm-goers. Newsreels and selected short
features brought exotic and far-away places to the community. As Joan Lyons observed about the
cinema in Salmon Arm during the war years, “e [ﬁlm] broadcasts at the beginning of each
movie, particularly during the war, were scary. We all knew people who were ﬁghting over there,
but didn’t really have a clear concept of what was really happening, we just knew it wasn’t good.”
Feature ﬁlms also enabled Hollywood’s “dream merchants” to recreate and invent the world for
audiences in frontier ﬁlms such as Dodge City (1939) or muster up the age of chivalry in e
Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). e Llamarada was a meeting place socially, but it was also a
venue of the imagination, far removed from the glitz and glamour and so-called sophistication of
the larger urban centres.
Jackson’s story created a ﬁlm-going culture where the diﬀerence between the
metropolis and small town theatres was found in the down-to earth-demeanour of its audience—
no “city slickers” here. e theatre’s sense of identity was best measured, perhaps, in the
relationship between owner and patrons: “promoted and, therefore, deﬁned in terms of ‘the good
of the community” (Waller 16). e cinema in Hilltown became a catalyst for certain community
behaviours. People came because there was a sense of belonging. at sense of belonging, as we
will discover later, came with a sense of ritual associated with going to the movies—the route you
took to get to the cinema, the people you associated with, all in all, they were part of a routine
that years later would be recalled with warm memories.
is sense of place as we call it has changed considerably since young theatre-goers
were emulating their favourite screen stars in the 1940s. In fact, the entire movie industry has
changed, in part, because the delivery of ﬁlms to the public has changed and the competition for
the entertainment dollar is so much more competitive. at is why the focus of this work will
have a more historical ﬂavour—it will provide us with glimpses of the social and personal
intimacies that the local movie-house provided for us and to the perception of life it created for
smaller urban communities.
As the preceding comments suggest, the cinema in the small community served as the
centre of civic life. But some ﬁlm observers have argued that the contemporary cinema has lost its
lustre, that watching movies at home is just like going to the Cineplex: why go to the theatre when
you have a sophisticated entertainment centre in your own home? But going to the movies is
special, a form of participation or spectatorship that diﬀers signiﬁcantly from the passive form

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associated with “living room movies.” Susan Sontag bemoans this passing ritual: “For cinephiles,
the movies encapsulated everything. Cinema was both the book of art and the book of life…it was
from a weekly visit to the cinema that you learned (or tried to learn) how to walk, to smoke, to
kiss, to ﬁght, to grieve.” Mistakenly, however, she laments the demise of the cinema noting, “No
amount of mourning will revive the vanished rituals—erotic, ruminative—of the darkened
theatre.”
As our story unfolds, the memories of ﬁlm-goers past and present will serve as an
ethnographic and cultural link between yesterday and today. In small cities and towns across
North America, the local theatre became the focal point of the community. e rituals associated
with going to the cinema were both localized and foreign. New Canadians would bring fresh ideas
and old memories about the theatre from their native lands—a legacy that in some ways would
inﬂuence the evolution of local ﬁlm societies. ose experiences would be integrated with the
more localized cinematic institutions. Who can forget, for example, the theatre-usher in bell-hoplike uniform and white gloves guiding people to their seats? And what of the local drive-in
theatres of the late 1940s and early 1950s, which served as a portal from adolescence to early
adulthood? For others this experience would be as cinema owners or as contributors to the local
ﬁlm industry. By creating a feeling of verisimilitude, readers will be able to connect with cinemarelated stories that fashion for us an evening, a decade, and even a day in the life of the local
movie-house.
A common thread emerges as we engage these cinematic memories—there appears to
be a universal cinema language that people use. Older movie patrons speak about the ornate
designs and atmosphere of the theatres—their almost cathedral-like splendour and spiritual
intimacy. e refurbished Orpheum theatre in Vancouver is a throwback to those more ornate
movie palaces. e Orpheum had opened its door back in 1927 and although its outer façade
might have looked somewhat deceiving, it quickly earned the reputation as Vancouver’s cinematic
palace. By the 1950s, its neon marquee dominated along Granville Street, the city’s main drag.
Many ﬁlm goers in our story recall the neon marquees as beacons leading them into another
world
On another level, seeing Jennifer Lopez or Robert Redford on Main Street Kamloops
may give you a brief rush but I am not sure that making movies in a particular community or
region is what ultimately provides or enhances community cinematic pleasure. Being part of a
movie audience or talking about a ﬁlm seen at a movie festival are community activities that seem
to resonate with people. Such memories and opinions are what really connect us to the movies.
ey are found in particular images and speech-ways that make up the ﬁlm’s message—they make
us laugh, smile and cry. at is why they remain a part of us years later—they are indeed part of
our own cinematic archives, visual images that remind of key moments in our lives!
e Patricia Cinema in Powell River might be seen as a testament to these notions.
One of the longest serving theatres in Canada, its website reminds us what the role of a movie
theatre was in a smaller community.
In their essay Pulp, Paper and People (1988) Karen Southern and Peggy Bird mention
“Powell River had its own silent theatre…where Stan Meade tinkled the ivories, and Bobby
Scanlon opened the side door to the children without dimes. He was a well loved manager who
controlled the rambunctious teenagers with kindness, and winked at the lovers who sat beneath
the balcony.” Similar recollections of such cinematic “rites of passage” help make up this story
about movie memories in British Columbia.
My book, therefore, provides us with an opportunity to reminisce about the cinema
culture of smaller cities and communities in British Columbia. As ﬁlm-goers share their memories

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and experiences as part of this narrative it will become clear that movies and the cinema became a
form of ritualistic behaviour—going to a Friday evening double-feature or hauling the family to a
Saturday aernoon matinee. In short, it became a meaningful social and emotional reference
point. Recalling a favourite ﬁlm at the theatre harkens us back to a humid summer’s evening, a
meandering walk home along the river, or stopping for a malt along main street. My book,
therefore, will explore the small city cinematic culture through the voices and events of the people
who have lived and shared its experiences.

Works Cited
Sontag, Susan. “e Decay of Cinema,” New York Times on the Web, 25 Feb. 1996. Web.
Southern, Karen and Peggy Bird. Pulp, Paper and People. 1988. Web.
Waller, Gregory A. “Imagining and Promoting the Small-Town eatre.” Cinema Journal 44.3 (2005):
3-19. Print.

About the Author
Ron Smith teaches ﬁlm studies at ompson Rivers University. Dr. Smith has been published in:
Textual Studies in Canada; Historical Journal of Film, Radio, Television; Scope Film Journal;
Journal of Saskatchewan History; Nebula; Technical Communication; and 49th Parallel: An
Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies.