The Phantom of the Fox

[boblipton]

Here’s a piece about Joe Patten.

https://www.cracked.com/article_28394_t ... orgia.html

Bob

[sethb]

Thanks very much for posting this! The blog about the apartment that's linked to the article, with its associated pics, is also quite interesting.

The story is inspiring and heart-wrenching at the same time. It just goes to prove the old adage, "No good deed goes unpunished." SETH

[sethb]

This is somewhat off topic, but there was one very intriguing (and embarrassing) detail about the Fox Theater that was shown in the blog linked to the article in this thread.

About three-quarters of the way through the blog, there is an architectural drawing of the left side of the Fox Theater. It clearly shows a "Colored Entrance," together with a very long flight of stairs (4 or 5 stories high) that led to the Galley, a small section of the theater above and behind the main balcony.

This theater was built in 1928 and was located in Atlanta, Georgia, so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that such an entrance existed at that time. And I'm equally sure that until the 1960's, the same sort of seating arrangements probably existed in many other theaters, and not just in the South, either. But I can't begin to imagine how humiliating it must have been to take that long climb and sit in the "nosebleed section" -- and not by choice. SETH

[silentfilm]

About ten years ago I served on an historic theater board that was restoring a smaller 1927 theater in Brady, Texas. It had an outdoor staircase that lead to the balcony that African-American and Hispanic patrons had to use to get to their seats. They were not allowed in the lower level or in the bathrooms. This was pretty common in the South of the United States due to Jim Crow laws.

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/17421

[Harlett O'Dowd]

This is somewhat off topic, but there was one very intriguing (and embarrassing) detail about the Fox Theater that was shown in the blog linked to the article in this thread.

About three-quarters of the way through the blog, there is an architectural drawing of the left side of the Fox Theater. It clearly shows a "Colored Entrance," together with a very long flight of stairs (4 or 5 stories high) that led to the Galley, a small section of the theater above and behind the main balcony.

This theater was built in 1928 and was located in Atlanta, Georgia, so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that such an entrance existed at that time. And I'm equally sure that until the 1960's, the same sort of seating arrangements probably existed in many other theaters, and not just in the South, either. But I can't begin to imagine how humiliating it must have been to take that long climb and sit in the "nosebleed section" -- and not by choice. SETH

I've climbed down those stairs on multiple occasions when leaving the Fox and always find it a disconcerting experience when I pass the hidden-in-plain-sight abandoned ticket window.

I saw a documentary about the Fox on our local public TV network some years ago and remember former mayor Maynard Jackson stating that, back in the 50s(?) he refused to see *any* film that played the Fox or any other segregated cinema in town.

[s.w.a.c.]

This is somewhat off topic, but there was one very intriguing (and embarrassing) detail about the Fox Theater that was shown in the blog linked to the article in this thread.

About three-quarters of the way through the blog, there is an architectural drawing of the left side of the Fox Theater. It clearly shows a "Colored Entrance," together with a very long flight of stairs (4 or 5 stories high) that led to the Galley, a small section of the theater above and behind the main balcony.

This theater was built in 1928 and was located in Atlanta, Georgia, so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that such an entrance existed at that time. And I'm equally sure that until the 1960's, the same sort of seating arrangements probably existed in many other theaters, and not just in the South, either. But I can't begin to imagine how humiliating it must have been to take that long climb and sit in the "nosebleed section" -- and not by choice. SETH

I've climbed down those stairs on multiple occasions when leaving the Fox and always find it a disconcerting experience when I pass the hidden-in-plain-sight abandoned ticket window.

I saw a documentary about the Fox on our local public TV network some years ago and remember former mayor Maynard Jackson stating that, back in the 50s(?) he refused to see *any* film that played the Fox or any other segregated cinema in town.

The sad tale of civil rights and the Fox Theatre (and other theatres) was a bit hard to find on that blog, the link in the original post went to a dead page, but I used Google to find it, where it was combined with a post about the Metropolitan Opera bringing its seasons to Atlanta and the Fox.

The link is that in 1961, two black patrons were refused admission to the opera when it came to the Fox, although as pointed out above (and at that link) the troubled relationship between the black community and white theatres was well entrenched for years before that.