The Strand Theater on Main Street in Enfield, Connecticut, was a quite ordinary brick and mortar, gummy-floored 20thcentury movie house. It was neither exceptionally ornate nor historic. The fire department was located across the street and a couple hundred steps down to the right on the banks of the town’s Mill Pond. The police station was a few steps to the left, across from the old Congregational Church and the obligatory war memorial. There was nothing really extraordinary about the theater nor its setting, but then there was nothing really extraordinary about Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, until Abraham Lincoln was shot there and nothing extraordinary about the Biograph Theater in Chicago until the FBI tracked gangster John Dillinger down there and shot him outside. Fate occasionally intervenes and renders the ordinary extraordinary.
Shep Farrell was just putting the K in place to finish the word Black on the Strand marquee when his boss, Leo D’Aleo, stepped out and looked up to check his work. “Hey, Shep,” Leo yelled to the young man at the top of the ladder, “You spelled Creature wrong.”
Shep leaned back on the ladder as much as he dared to read the signage he’d spent the last hour working on: The Creture from the Black…
“I did?” he yelled back down.
“Needs an A after the E,” Leo yelled back up.
“Damn. I’m a terrible speller.”
“Don’t curse it, Shep. Just fix it. I’m heading over to the post office to pick up the film now. Then I’ll drive by the house and get Rosemary. You’ll have plenty of time to screen it and then help her get the lobby ready for the first showing.”
The first showing of the weekend’s new double feature would start off with Creature from the Black Lagoon at 5. Shep was always excited about Friday night openers, which usually brought out a good sprinkling of Enfield’s young people. Although the theater couldn’t get a 3-D copy of Creature, the national publicity surrounding it seemed to Shep to make it a cinch Friday night date ticket, even at 50 cents for those 16 and up.
Enfield in 1954 was a monochromatic town. Most of the recent European immigrant families who had settled there — even the Sicilians — muted their native colors to better blend in with the staid descendants of the town’s original colonial settlers. With no color TVs, the only time hue and saturation mattered at all was when one of the new Technicolor films arrived in town. Such a film was Carmen Jones…
which would be second billed on the double feature with Creature from the Black Lagoon. That might normally set Carmen Jonesup for a bigger reception, but its Technicolor glory would be overshadowed by its all-black cast. In Enfield at the time there were as many blacks…or Coloreds, as they were called…as color TVs. No, the bigger draw for the upcoming weekend would not be the dazzling sights and sounds of the musical Carmen Jones, but the terrifying black and white thrills and chills of Creature from the Black Lagoon.
When Leo D’Aleo returned with his cans of film and daughter Rosemary, he was happy to see Creature spelled correctly and happy to see Carmen Jones on the marquee in smaller-sized letters. He and Rosemary entered the Strand to find Shep sweeping the lobby. Rosemary scuttled over to kiss Shep on the cheek, and Leo winced at the thought that he might soon have a son-in-law who could not correctly spell the word creature…as well as so many other words. Then the three of them gathered over the candy counter as Leo opened the heavy cardboard box that contained a trio of canned reels of the new film. Each can featured a strip of masking tape upon which someone had hand-written the title: Creature from the Black Lagoon. Leo slid the box over to Shep. “There you go. Load it up.”
“Roger,” said Shep, the Strand’s projectionist as well as its sign maker, floor sweeper, and usher. “Do you want me to call you when it’s ready for screening? I think it’s going to be cool.”
“Got enough scary stuff in my real life. I don’t need to look for it in the movies.” With that, Leo picked up the last of his mail and headed up to his office on the second floor.
“What did he mean by that?” Shep asked Rosemary, who was watching after her dad with obvious concern.
“I don’t know,” she answered, stepping behind the counter and starting to shelve boxes of candy.
“Well, I think this one’s going to be a hit. Come up to the projection booth when you get a minute, and we’ll do some smooching and screaming together.” She smiled wanly as Shep put the box of film under his arm and headed upstairs to the projection booth.
Shep’s sausage-like fingers were serious obstacles in his training to be a projectionist. The delicate task of sliding the film through the camera’s sockets and then looping it around to the pick-up reel was not meant for someone with blacksmith’s hands. Days of lots of trial and error on the arduous learning curve almost convinced Leo D’Aleo not to hire the then 18-year old Shep. And if Shep couldn’t handle the projectionist’s job, Leo couldn’t afford him to be the theater’s Jack-of-all-trades either. More pressingly, Shep was Rosemary’s boyfriend of two years already, and Leo had promised her he’d hire him full-time after high school graduation. So Shep became the Strand’s projectionist, though he’d never win any ribbons at the job and even though his hands still shook and he broke into a sweat every time he had to thread a film. As excited as he was about Creature from the Black Lagoon, it was no exception. As soon as he unfurled enough film to slide it into the camera sockets, he started sweating.
But this time something inexplicably amazing happened. As soon as he brought the edge of the film close to the sprockets, it threaded itself…like a trained seal looping itself through a pool full of inner tubes…and when it slipped ever so smoothly around the pick-up reel, it came to a stop at exactly the point a professional projectionist would’ve stopped it. Shep had to step back and look on it in total astonishment. Then he gingerly moved his index finger toward the off/on switch and flicked it up, allowing just enough playing time to see that it worked right…but not enough time for the color that briefly flashed on the screen to register with him as anything other than a ghostly shadow.
In the theater manager’s office, Leo was staring glumly at a piece of mail that had arrived with the Creature from the Black Lagoon when his daughter walked in.
“Pop,” she said, “we’re out of Good & Plenty and have less than a box of Juicy Fruit and Milk Duds. What’s happened to the inventory?”
Leo pushed the problem piece of mail toward Rosemary. She picked it up and read it. “Foreclosure notice!” she exclaimed. “But how?”
“How, Rosemary? Jack Benny is how. Jimmy Durante. Ed Sullivan. Tonight…Friday night boxing. All on TV. For free. People don’t want to leave their living rooms and pay for entertainment any more. The movie business is dying. We’re dinosaurs. The Strand is a dinosaur.”
Rosemary flung her arms back and raced to embrace her father, “Oh, Dad…Dad, this is awful. What are we going to do?”
“I’ve been wrestling with this for six months, dear. I’m out of ideas.”
“Does Mom know?”
“It’s why she asked for extra hours at the hospital even though she hates the night shift.”
Just then there was a strange, loud noise and the office shook.
“What the hell was that?” asked Leo, jumping out of Rosemary’s arms and his seat.
“An earthquake?” guessed Rosemary, reaching for him.
“In Connecticut?”
Shep burst into the office with a look of perplexed wonder on his face. “Quick. You’ve got to come see this.”
Leo and Rosemary hurriedly followed him out the door and down into the auditorium. When they all got there, they came to a stop in the aisle at the last row of seats and stared up at the screen. On it, a forbidding-looking, bald-headed, tattooed black woman in shining red leotard and holding a spear smiled wickedly. There was another black woman…young and exotic…who approached a huddled group of black women dressed in desert garb and told them they were free to return home. But before they could leave, the woman with the spear warned them not to tell anyone what they just had just seen.
“All these Coloreds,” Leo said. “Is this Carmen Jones?”
“I don’t know,” said Shep. “It was labeled Creature from the Black Lagoon, but when I turned it on there was a meteor crashing to earth and then animation of all this fighting going on in Africa and then it cut to some live action involving Coloredhoods in Oakland, California…in 1992. That’s when I ran to get you.”
“Look at all this color and listen to that sound,” said Rosemary in awe as a rocket soared through majestic cliffs and waterfalls.
“Look at all these Negroes. It must be Carmen Jones. You must have put the wrong reel on,” said Leo. Then he did a double take at the screen and said, “Wait a damn minute! Did that Colored girl just give that Colored boy the finger?”
“I think she did,” Rosemary confirmed.
“Jesus Christ,” said Leo, “The Legion of Decency is going to be all over us if they ever see that. Go shut this goddamned thing off,” he ordered Shep.
As Shep ran off to do as he was told, Leo shook his head at the screen, “All these Negroes and no singing. No dancing. Who would want to see such a thing?”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the movie switched to a heist scene at a British museum, allowing Leo to briefly get his bearings. “Wait a minute. Now it’s like Asphalt Jungle. But in color. With white people.” As the heist scene unfolded, Leo struggled to find comfort in the familiar genre. But before he could, the film switched back to a futuristic landscape as pulsating African music filled the theater and hundreds of dark-skinned people in vividly multicolored dress filled the screen, standing in cascading formation on sheer soaring bluffs and flanked by roaring waterfalls.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” marveled Rosemary, in wide-eyed wonderment.
Shep reappeared and sheepishly confessed, “I can’t get the projection room door open.”
Leo looked at him with mounting impatience. “Oh, for the love of…” He trudged off to the projection booth. Shep and Rosemary exchanged worrisome glances, took a passing glance at the elaborate tribal ritual unfolding on the screen, and then marched on off after Leo. At the projection booth, Leo struggled with the doorknob, but couldn’t get the door to budge. “Did you lock it?” he demanded of Shep.
“No. It must’ve locked by itself.”
Leo shook his head in disbelief, and then dug into his jacket pocket for the theater keys. He quickly identified the projection booth key, jammed it into the keyhole and turned it. Another shove at the door yielded nothing. He turned on Shep. “Help me here, dammit.”
Shep joined Leo at the door and together they thrust their shoulders into it. Then again. And again. “Jesus H. Christ,” muttered Leo.
“Do you want me to go to the fire department for help?” asked Rosemary.
Leo looked at her warily. The idea of opening this predicament up to outsiders was unappealing. Then he stepped away from the door and looked down at his movie screen where two muscular black men were engaged in the most ferocious fight he’d ever seen in a movie as an all too realistic, thunderous waterfall threatened to engulf them and the entire auditorium. This movie playing in his theater was too enormous and lifelike to be just a movie. Something seemed to be happening that was beyond him, and he really did need help. He turned back to Rosemary and said, “Yes, but only Cap Kelly. I don’t want the entire department in here seeing this.”
By the time Rosemary returned with fire chief Cap Kelly from a few doors down, the thison the screen had become an eruption of car chase noise and violence. Kelly was immediately dumbstruck by what he saw on the screen and joined the others in muted disbelief as screeching, big, black, futuristic vehicles careened over an urban landscape from another world. High-powered guns a-blazing onscreen turned the theater into a war zone. When one of the vehicles did a terrifying flip into the air, the awestruck audience of four ducked as one to the floor. “What the hell?” yelled Kelly. “What in the five-alarm hell?”
Leo signaled Kelly to follow him, and Rosemary and Shep joined them as all four, careful to keep their heads down, made their way to the projection booth. “What’s going on here?” asked Kelly, once they reached the projection booth door.
“No idea,” said Leo.
“It’s supposed to be Creature from the Black Lagoon,” said Shep.
“We can’t get into the projection booth to turn it off,” added Rosemary.
Kelly looked around at all three of them to absorb their collective discombobulation. Then he made a try in vain at the door. “You got the key?”
Leo held the key up to him. “Already tried it,” he said.
Kelly took the key from him, put it in the door, turned it and tried again in vain to open the door. In exasperation, he turned to Leo and asked, “What do you want me to do? Take an axe to it?”
“We’ve got to put a show on for an audience at 5. I’ve got to get control of my theater back,” Leo lamented.
Kelly rubbed his hand up and down the door and then looked Leo straight in the eye. “So’s it worth a new door to you?”
“Has to be,” Leo replied. “Do what you have to do.”
When Kelly returned with his axe, the others were watching intently as another fight over the waterfall between two muscular black men unfolded on the screen. Kelly was instantly intrigued and suggested to Leo that he just let the movie run to the end and see what happens. Rosemary and Shep both endorsed the idea, but Leo was adamant. “The end? How do we know when this movie will end or if it even has one? How do we know where it’s going to go from here? We’re sitting on a time bomb with this thing. I don’t trust it. I don’t like what it’s doing. We have to stop it. Now. Break the damn door down.”
With that, Kelly lifted his axe and took a hearty swing at the door. The door rejected the axe, and the shock wave from the hit nearly knocked Kelly to the ground. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed. “It’s not a wooden door?”
Shep ran his hand over the door. “It’s wood alright,” he proclaimed, before jumping out of the way of Kelly’s second swing. The door’s resistance bounced the axe out of Kelly’s hands and sent it flying dangerously close to Rosemary’s head.
“This goddamn movie!” Leo yelled out of alarm for his daughter’s life.
“I don’t know what in Jesus name you’ve got going on here, Leo,” said Kelly, humbled. “But that door’s not coming down with an axe, and it seems that movie’s going to run ’til it gets to the end. You better make plans accordingly.”
“Plans?” said Leo defiantly. “I’ll show you a plan.” He turned to Shep and ordered him to go to the main power panel and turn off the electricity. Then Leo, Rosemary, and Kelly watched as Shep made his way down to a side door to the right of the screen. He disappeared into the darkness there, opened the panel and flipped the switch. The movie kept playing.
“Turn it off,” Leo yelled.
Shep stepped out of the darkness and yelled back, “It’s off.”
“Goddamn it,” Leo exclaimed, still clinging to the belief that his problems were due to Shep’s incompetence. He ran down to the side door himself. He pushed Shep out of the way, opened the panel cover and flipped the switch: On…Off…On…Off. He ducked his head out and looked up at the screen where the movie was still playing. He went back inside and flipped the switch one more time for good measure, but still the movie rolled on. Leo looked up at it with mounting hostility and then stormed up the aisle, passing his daughter and the fire chief. “Someone’s going to hear about this,” he vowed.
As Shep joined Rosemary and Kelly, they shared a shrug of bewilderment with one another and then took seats in the auditorium to watch the movie.
In his office, Leo put in an angry call to Epstein Brothers, his film suppliers from New York. Izzy Epstein took the call and 30 seconds into Leo’s complaint told him he was drunk. “I’m not drunk. Come on up here and look at this thing you sent me. It’s taken over my movie theater!”
“If you’re not drunk, you’re crazy. We sent out 35 copies of Creature from the Black Lagoonthis week. You’re the only one to call and complain it’s taken over your theater. You should get your head examined.”
Leo slammed the phone down on Izzy’s ear, got up and headed for his car. As he drove 10 minutes up over the state line to Springfield, Massachusetts, Rosemary, Shep, and Cap Kelly let the bizarreness of the circumstance go and settled in to enjoy the latter part of the big, colorful, action-packed movie playing out before their bedazzled eyes.
In Springfield, Leo parked outside the Bijou and hurried inside to find Barry Grossman, its manager. An usher directed him into the auditorium where Barry was standing at the back watching the closing minutes of a black and white movie. Without prolog, Leo demanded to know what Barry was watching. “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” replied Barry. “Aren’t you showing it this weekend?
“You got it from the Epstein Brothers?”
“This morning, like always. Didn’t get yours?”
“They sent the wrong movie.”
“Too bad. It’s going to be good business.”
As Leo’s shoulders slumped and he turned to exit, Barry called after him, “Show the one they sent you. Epstein can’t charge you for it, and the audience won’t care. A movie’s a movie.”
Back at the Strand, Leo had to confront just that option. People were already lining up for the 5 o’ clock show. As he entered the theater, he passed Cap Kelly walking out muttering, “Never saw anything like that. Never.”
Inside the lobby he was greeted by Rosemary and Shep and asked, “Any change?”
“It ended,” Rosemary said.
“Thank you, Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” said Leo prayerfully.
“And then it started all over again,” Shep added.
“Just like that?”
“Ten minutes later.”
“Without a reel change?”
“All on one reel.”
“What do you want to do about the line outside, Dad? Those are paying customers.”
“But here to pay to see Creature from the Black Lagoon, not a bunch of half naked Coloreds flying through space and shooting up white people…and that Negro girl giving the finger. The Church can shut us down just for showing that.”
“We can’t shut it down,” said Shep. “It’s just going to keep on playing. Who knows how long?”
“If you’re not going to let people in to see it,” Rosemary argued, “you may just have to lock the doors until it stops.”
Leo looked at her with relief and then dug into his pockets for his keys. “That’s it. We’ll lock the doors and let it play itself out.” He headed for the main entrance, opened the door, and yelled down the ticket line, “Sorry, folks, the distributor sent the wrong movie. No Creature from the Black Lagoon. Sorry…sorry. Another time. We’ll let you know.”
As moans and groans rose up from the crowd, Cap Kelly and four of his firemen showed up from behind Leo. “Leo,” Cap Kelly bellowed, “Gotta give the boys a glimpse of this thing. Damnedest movie I’ve ever seen…” With that, half the Enfield fire department marched into the lobby and made its way to the auditorium with Leo, Rosemary, and Shep in quick pursuit.
“You can’t,” yelled Leo, “We’re shutting the theater until further notice. No show tonight.” But by the time he got the last words out of his mouth, the firemen were swept up in the strange and remarkable images flickering over the movie screen and were settling into their seats for more.
Moreover, out on the street the chief’s declaration about “the damndest movie” he’d ever seen quickly passed through the crowd and was translated into “the grandest movie” he’d ever seen, and people poured into the theater. Within a few hours the movie that Shep and Rosemary had watched through the end credits would begin capturing the imagination of the entire town of Enfield, Connecticut, and begin spreading panic all the way to the nation’s capital.
Rosemary cast a sympathetic look down on her forlorn father and whispered in his ear, “It’s called Black Panther.”
