Benita VanWinkle likes going to the movies. She’s gone to theaters in every state of the union. But she doesn’t always stay for the main feature. Instead, VanWinkle, an art professor at High Point University in North Carolina, pursues a picture show of her own. Over the years, she’s photographed some 1,200 theaters across the country. Almost 400 of those pictures make up her new book, America’s Hometown Movie Theaters: Please Remain Standing. It all started at her hometown theater near Largo, Fla. She had a college photo assignment and decided that the ornate theater she knew as a kid would make a great subject with its interior artwork of the history of sound and motion in movies with Egyptian characters and symbols (“They scared me as a kid.”) Part of the title of her book comes from Clarence, the former Marine who ran that Largo theater and always played the “Stars and Stripes” before every movie. “If you didn’t stand up, he would stop the film and put the house lights on until people stood up,” said VanWinkle. Sadly, two years after taking her pictures, the theater was torn down by the bank next door, she said. It was later in graduate school at Southern Illinois University that VanWinkle made shooting movie houses her graduate project and her life’s passion. “At first, I just shot theaters in Illinois. I’d stop in every small town and ask people if they had a theater or knew of any in the area,” she said. Soon she developed her own databank of movie houses. In addition to acquiring theater directories from different decades, she welcomed the Cinema Treasures website that started in 2003. “That was a history of theaters, a crowdsourcing project where people could provide additional details. That changed my life,” she said. “I will shoot abandoned theaters if I come across them, but I don’t focus on that,” she said. She credited photographer Matt Lambros, author of After the Final Curtain: The Fall of the American Movie Theater, with doing amazing work in the abandoned theater category. “I put more energy into theaters that are maintained, rebuilt, refurbished, or repurposed,” said VanWinkle. One of the most distinctive examples of a repurposed theater is in Kearney, Neb., she said. The old Fort Theatre is now a dentist's office but while the theater seats have been taken out, the place remains in good enough shape that it could be made into a theater again. Ironically, a popcorn machine and candy display, the very things that often drive one to the dentist, are displayed in the building’s front window, she said. Kearney is also home to the World Theatre, a nonprofit, volunteer-run theater, said VanWinkle, who’s come to know a lot about what communities around the country are doing with their theaters. In Viborg, S.D., a town of only 350 people, she photographed the Lund Theatre, where she captured the image of a four-year-old looking out through the theater’s glass door just as she snapped a picture of the theater’s exterior. VanWinkle also told of the art teacher, “a one-woman tornado,” who organizes a rummage sale twice a year to benefit the State Theater in Nashville, Ill. “I love hearing from people,” she said, referring to tips she gets on movie houses she hasn’t photographed yet. Her book is on the street, but VanWinkle still makes the rounds of movie houses with a camera in hand. This summer, she plans to visit the Russell Theatre in Maysville, Ky., the Maynard Arts Center just outside Boston, and the Little Theatre in Rochester, N.Y. The Little Theatre is one she’s been to before. When the pandemic hit, the theater backers decided it was a good time to overhaul a theater built in 1929. VanWinkle was there to photograph the project when it was completed. Today, the Little Theatre runs a mix of indie and foreign films, rotating art displays, and music, along with a casual cafe. One of the customer comments online raves about real butter on the popcorn and “generous home-baked desserts at great prices.” When it comes to rave reviews, VanWinkle credits her editor, Beth Daugherty, founder of Bauer & Dean Publishers, a firm that specializes in architectural books, with bringing her book to life. “It wouldn’t have happened without her,” she said. As for her next project, VanWinkle’s not sure if it will be a comprehensive look at theaters in Chicago, or another volume of movie houses from around the country (after all, she has 800 pictures that haven't been used yet). But whatever it is, she’s a believer in the power of entertainment as a group activity rather than a solitary exercise in front of a TV set.
