The first Maui Theater days

My parents Robert "Bob" Hall and Eleanor "Red" Hall built the first modern theater on Maui, called Maui Theater. There were a number of their friends that invested with them to get it built. Jimmy Ouye of Service contractor, an investor and the contractor built it. Mr and Mrs Dr. Behnke, Russel Taft and others were involved as shareholders. It's pretty fuzzy since I was a senior at Maui High then. I think there were others from Maui and off islands that were also shareholders. Originally it was to be a Jerry Lewis Cinema. Jerry Lewis started a company to build theaters that used a film cartridge technology, similar to a giant 8 track cassette. The company fell through and so my dad took it from there, using the technology most theaters used. We had to take rolls of 20 minute film and splice them into 60 minute rolls for the projector to play. There were two projectors and when splicing ng, we had to not only get the direction and rolls right and not turn over, or wrong sections of the movie okay, played backwards or had no sound and the sound track was visible on the screen, plus we placed magnetic tape at just the right points to trigger the automation to either switch to the second projector, starting it and at the right moment, switching the shutters on and off. Because it was automated, there were quite a few things that had to be done right and at the right time. Generally the movies arrived at Aloha air cargo on Wednesday and I or someone would pick it up and bring it to the theater. Since I was in school, usually my mom or someone brought it there and then after school, I would go and build up the new movie and tear down the old one. Most of the time we tore the old ones down after the last showing at about 11pm. Many late nights there. The new movies generally began on Friday, maybe Thursday, not to clear on that anymore. They ran for a week or a few weeks. The studios charges like 90% of the box office and then dropped it about 10% each new week. If we ran for three or four weeks, we kept the most at the end. But there were less people that hadn't seen it by then, so the cost of showing it could be more than the box office. The concessions had the most employees working and like most theaters, were pretty pricey. But the profit from the concession was what mostly kept the doors open. Besides me, my Brothers and sisters also ran the movies and/or managed. Many of our family friends worked in the concession and later when I went to the Big Island for college, by buddy William "Billy" Kalaau pretty much did it all with our family. After the theater came up, the Kaahumanu Theater came up with a platter system projector. I think this was Holiday theaters that owned it. This had all the 20 minute reels built on to one big horizontal platter. This meant no change over half way through and less Interruptions from operator errors. Focus was an issue with all the theaters regardless. Keeping the projector window spotless was integral to that. In addition, the projectionist had to be able to see the focus from the window and spend time in the auditorium to be sure focus and sound was okay. A lot of back and forth to insure that. Unfortunately, some films came a bit used and scratches and focus between scenes could change, so hopefully the projectionist wasn't helping manage, at the door or helping in the concession. When that was the case, if the film broke or got really bad for some reason, we could tell not just by the irate people, but the number of people heading out to buy popcorn. This was usually due to a break and automatic shutdown and lights on. Many just figured it was an intermission. We did make more money at the concession when that happened. But I promise it wasn't intentional on our part. Being young and Kolohe, I remember when the studio came and installed this huge, sub sonic bass audio system in the theater. It was for the movie "Earthquake". During parts of the movie, there were signals built into the film to trigger a light sensor and cause the system to rumble. It literally shook the theater and was felt outside in the parking lot. I figured out how to trigger the system myself, using a haircomb in front of the light to trigger the rumbling. In the movie, the idea was to build scary moments when you could feel the tremors coming in and then really rumble during the earthquake scenes. We ran that for quite a few weeks. Top movies obligated us to longer runs. By the second or fourth week, running multiple shows a day, seven days a week, the projectionist pretty much has it memorized. The kalohe thing was I triggered some small tumbles at different times, just to watch the people jump. I hope I didn't ruin it for anyone. My father at different times, also ran the old Iao Theater and the old Queen theater in Lahaina. I never did work at the Queen, but I did run the old arc projectors at the Iao Theater. These were the original old style projectors that used an arc, like an electric welder, to create the light. They ran only the 20 minute reels, so there were an average of five or six change overs. The projectors were manually run, so firing up the arc, adjusting the light, starting the projector and opening the shutter had to be done just right. During a change over each 20 minutes, the opposite projector had to have the film threaded, start the arc at the right time, too early and the heat was excessive, start the projector and then flip the projector's shutter open and running to shut the other projector's shutter and hope for the best. Do a quick cleaning and maintenance and get the next 20 minute roll threaded and ready. Iao Theater had a tiny little window to see the screen and we had to stand to see out, so there was a lot of standing to watch and keep the focus on. The projectors, did have one "automatic" feature of feeding the arc wire to keep the light on. Unfortunately, one projector didn't do a good job and if the wire burned up faster than it moved it, the light went out. In addition, it used a whole welding rod type wire for each 29 minute run. So we had to change them out before it came in next. If we forgot that, we were biting our nails, hoping it lasted long enough for the second reel. Both theaters had many incidents, most operator error, but occasionally an actual broken film or projector. Those were the most stressful times. During those years we got to know a lot of people, people from the media, kmvi, knui, kaoi, etc and the newspapers. We did a lot of advertising and got pretty close to the salespeople and many got some free passes out of it. A number of famous people popped in to catch a movie while on Maui. I remember meeting Buddy Epson, of Beverly Hillbillies fame. Nice guy and really tall. The newspapers had a weekly ad for the Maui Theater. For a while, it was done in a cartoon style. It was drawn by Marty Bandy, who had worked with my dad for Lockheed and did whale scrimshaw work as a hobby. The cartoons featured my older brothers Randy and Tom Hall as the manager and projectionist, as well as with my mom Red Hall and my little brother Ricky. Who was usually in a shirt that barely covered his belly, while munching on a bucket of popcorn. I hope to find those and put them up one day. I was never featured in them, as they were during the time I was attending Hilo Community College on the big isle. Eventually, I went off to school and it was more than my mom wanted to run, so my dad sold it to Consolidated theater. I think Herman Rosen, a movie broker, May have been an investor, but he was close with my dad and I think facilitated the sale. Before the Maui theater, there were many theaters spread across Maui. Hana, Haiku, Iao, King theater in Waikiki, Queen theater in Lahaina and the Princess theater in Paia. I went to see Romeo and Juliet at the Princess theater in Paia as part of a Haiku School field trip. Lovely place, with the sugar company still in full swing, there were rats running under the seats and cane spiders dropping from the ceiling. Perfect for a Halloween movie, not so much for Romeo and Juliet.