And now, what awaited discovery in the outer lobby of the Durfee Theatre:
You may wonder why the outer lobby was so big or why there even was an outer lobby. Well, that was because the Durfee Theatre wasn't just a movie theater, it was also a stage theater. In between films, traveling stock plays and musicals sometimes played the theater, more often than not featuring big name stars. (Though sadly none of the plays Joan Bennett did on tour during her times away from DS ever played there. It would have been a huge hoot if one had.) And it wasn't just plays/musicals because in 1969 Lillian Gish hosted a retrospective of her silent films at the Durfee. The outer lobby was so big because that's where audiences gathered to wait before being allowed into the box office lobby to present their tickets for plays/musicals or to purchase tickets for plays/musicals/films.
But we're more interested in what the outer lobby's purpose was with regard to films, and that use was as a place to display lobby cards for the current film and to advertise posters for upcoming attractions. And something that dawned on me as I was preparing material for this post but foolishly never dawned on me back in '71 was that rather than sitting around wondering when NoDS was going to open, we could have simply checked out the outer lobby to see if NoDS was being advertised.
During business hours the outer lobby was always opened to the public regardless of whether or not you intended to see a film or you didn't. And if you check out the photo, you'll notice a glass case in the middle of the wall on the left side. that's where the coming attractions posters were displayed.
But for the purposes of this post, we're more concerned with the case on the far right of the photo because that's where a film's lobby cards were displayed. And that's where I first saw the eight NoDS lobby cards. Most of you have probably also seen them. But I'm going to share them for those who may not have. But I'm going to post them in the order the scenes they feature come up in the film rather than in the order they're numbered. Here are the first four:
(Click
here for a 930X738 version)
(Ever since reading Grayson Hall's NoDS script, I've often wondered if, rather than a photo that oddly seems to have been taken in the foyer when Carlotta actually greets Quentin and Tracy in the entry, this lobby card is actually from
this line of dropped dialogue
and DC decided they would move into the foyer before Carlotta delivered it?)
(Click
here for a 930X738 version)
(Click
here for a 930X738 version)
(Click
here for a 930X738 version)
(The other color version I referred to in Reply #53.)