Grand movie palace to reopen after $25 million renovation

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- The gild is back on the crown.

Knoxville's grand old movie palace, the Tennessee Theatre -- designated Tennessee's official theater in 1999 and a registered national landmark -- has reopened after a nearly $25 million restoration.

One of the last great movie theaters from the 1920s, the theater has received a top-to-bottom overhaul since construction crews and craftsmen moved in June 2003.

Its romantic Spanish-Moorish opulence has been revived. Rich reds and golds gleam under crystal chandeliers and along the terrazzo floor in the long lobby, up the carpeted grand staircase and across the sweeping, aqua-domed and balconied auditorium of 1,631 plump scarlet seats.

"So this is what the inside of the genie's bottle looks like," comedian Steven Wright once observed from the Tennessee's stage.

Behind the curtains, everything is as contemporary as today. The eight-story stage house has been enlarged by cantilevering it out over a city street in the rear. The dressing rooms were made five times larger by usurping several small retail shops within the building's footprint.

"I am very proud of it," said James A. Dick, 85, who saved the theater from demolition when he bought it 1981 and kept it going until he donated it to the not-for-profit Historic Tennessee Theatre Foundation in 1996. "You just have to be proud of it. It is a thing of beauty."

"There was a will to do it right, and they were absolutely resolute about it," said Paul Westlake, principal in the consulting architectural firm of Westlake Reed Leskosky, a Cleveland firm that is expert in historic theater restoration.

Each dressing room is dedicated to an entertainer who graced the hall -- a "deceased" entertainer, theater managers gently explained to Broadway veteran John Cullum during a project tour. Cullum is best known for his musical-theater appearances in "Urinetown," "On the Twentieth Century" and "Shenandoah," and for his role as Holling the bartender on TV's "Northern Exposure."

Actress Helen Hayes, band leader Glenn Miller, Hollywood director Frank Capra, vaudevillians Fanny Brice and Fifi D'Orsay, song-and-dance men Robert Preston and Donald O'Connor, and musicians Johnny Cash, Chet Atkins and Lionel Hampton all appeared here.

More recent alumni, such as musicians Alison Krauss and Lyle Lovett, have continued to return to the theater for its history and charm despite so many physical shortcomings that Actor's Equity once threatened to blacklist it. (Krauss appeared shortly after the theater reopened on Jan. 15 and Lovett performs Feb. 24.)

Opened at the dawn of talking pictures, the Tennessee Theatre survived through the suburban flight of the 1970s as a place for second-run films, monster movies and action pictures. It later became a vintage movie house and finally an emerging performance center for the Knoxville Symphony, the Knoxville Opera and several dance companies.

Tim Burns, the theater's longtime technical director, delights in recalling that many predicted the Tennessee's days were numbered when then owner ABC Theaters built a new movie house in a suburban mall as its local flagship in the early '70s.

"Now history shows us that the Tennessee is in the middle of a rebirth, and the theater that was built to replace it is now a parking lot," he said.

To the people of eastern Tennessee, the building has always meant more than its performances. For the gala reopening, they documented their "memories" of the place.

Billie Vinyard Dalton, 90, wrote that she was standing in line outside the theater on opening day on Oct. 1, 1928, when her boyfriend popped the question. "He asked me to marry him while we're waiting. I said, 'Yes,"' she recalled.

Thirty years later, Carolyn McClain had a similar moment. "As the movie began, he gently reached over and took my hand in his. The chemistry was unbelievable! It was at that moment that I fell in love with him," she said of her future husband, Jim.

That explains, to a large degree, how the historic foundation raised nearly all of its restoration financing so quickly -- only about $250,000 is still needed.

"There were a lot of people who sent checks -- people who grew up going to the Tennessee Theatre, going to the movies. They would send $5 or $25 or $50. A lot of small gifts," general manager Becky Hancock said.

More than 2,500 people and groups contributed since fund-raising began in 1999. Private donations paid for more than half the project. Knox County gave $6 million; the city, $4 million; the U.S. Department of Interior, more than $1 million in historic preservation grants and tax credits, and the state, $750,000.

"It has been a real grass-roots effort," said Bruce Hartmann, chairman of the historic foundation and publisher of The Knoxville News Sentinel. "It really has been a true partnership between the private community, the public community and just people in general trying to make this happen."

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