Come watch a movie with me.
A small package arrived by mail to our office Thursday. It is still wrapped in plastic, like a ham or a gift basket, and I haven’t unwrapped it.
Though I want to, I cannot.
Though the plastic is transparent, I’m not sure what I’ll find when I open it. Sure, I can see right through the wrapper. And I even know what I’ll find when I open the little plastic case when I tear away the cellophane. I’ll find a disc, a shiny plate of plastic with microscopic pits arranged in some secret code only a DVD player can comprehend.
And, according to some research I’ve done on the inconvenience we call the Internet, I even know the basic outline of the information on the disc. It contains a story, the story of an Irish lass named Irene.
“A hardworking but under-achieving Irish girl loses her job and gets tossed out by her tough mother,” the jacket reads. “She turns to her gold-digging friend and turns the head of a society man until his mother finds out about her family. How can it end?”
Elsewhere, I’ve written about the story recorded on this particular disc.
It’s “a saga about the life of a poor, beautiful Irish lass whose dire economic circumstances obscure her royal lineage. She worked as a shopkeeper’s assistant, selling dresses. A local grandee had obtained the job for her there as a model; the villainous shopkeeper had demoted her to lowly clerk. During a grand fashion show, the grandee notes the absence of his protégé, storms to the dimly lit store, costumes the girl and returns with her to triumph, and eventually love – discovered on a rusting fire escape, outside the fashion show.”
I even wrote “the scenes of the fashion show were ‘registered in subdued tones of the Techni-color process, a new idea which has recently been discovered by those who invented the method of color photography.’”
Here’s the deal: I’ve found a digital copy of the 1926 movie “Irene.” This probably means nothing to you, Gentle Reader. But in my recent obsession about the Arcadia Theater, it means a lot to me. You see, ‘Irene’ was the first movie ever shown at the Arcadia.
“On the warm Tuesday evening of June 29, 1926, a flock of folks crowded into a newly built hall to watch the comedy film “Irene,” starring Colleen Moore.”
Yep, about 81 years ago exactly, the first movie shown at the Arcadia has returned to Kerrville. On Thursday afternoon I tapped the still-wrapped case of the DVD against the wall of the old silent Arcadia Theater. I don’t know why, but it felt good. Like a circle was finished, one that started in that hot summer of 1926 and was completed in this wet summer of 2007.
A picture of Colleen Moore is on the cover of the plastic case. She’s pictured looking out of a doorway wearing an oddly-shaped hat. She looks hopeful, as if expecting something.
Here’s what I’d like to do, if I can figure out a way to bring it all together. I’d like to show the movie at the Arcadia, projecting the DVD-encapsulated movie against a bed sheet or some other make-shift screen, not unlike the way movies were shown in the classic film Cinema Paradisio. I’d like anyone who was interested to show up, bring a lawn chair, and watch the old story with me. I’d like to share the story with a crowd of people, munching popcorn in the dark, hoping dear Irene finds her way to happiness.
Not unlike the crowd in 1926. In the same place. Watching the same movie.
It would be an interesting historical experiment: Not only would we be watching the same movie they saw that first evening, we’d be following the same story, feeling some of the same emotions.
If you’d like to be there, drop me a line, either by mail or by email.
Maybe I can figure out a way to make it all happen (there are some technical, permission, and air-conditioning issues to be solved). If so, if you let me know you’re interested, I’ll send you an invite. It might be quite fun.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who wonders what the crowd saw that now distant evening.
