THE THEATER IN BAR HARBOR'S CHANGING WORLD By Peter Cooper Research by Lynn Kippax, Jr., Donna Delnick and Peter Cooper Photography by Richard L. Sturtevant I is twenty minutes to show time at the Criterion Theater in Bar Harbor, Maine. Already a queue of tourists clad in blue jeans, sneakers and woolen sweaters has formed outside the box office. Above them, framed in a band of colored lights, the marquee heralds the arrival of The Great Muppet Caper. From its drab exterior, the Criterion looks like countless other small town movie houses. But once inside its darkened lobby, amid the faded splendor of the theater's original art deco motif, there is no mistaking the Criterion for an ordinary theater. When it first opened its doors a half century ago, the Criterion was hailed as one of the finest showplaces in New England. The year was 1932, and Maine, like the rest of the nation, was still mired in the Great Depression. But inside the Criterion, with its silk-paneled walls and velvet draped loges, its ornate glass chandeliers and grey-suited ushers, one could escape-for a few hours, at least-the uncertainties of the outside world. For a town of 4,000 year-round residents, it was a remarkable place. But Bar Harbor in the early 1930's was not just another small New England town. The extraordinary natural beauty of Mount Desert Island, with its lush mountains and fabled rock- bound coastline, made Bar Harbor an ideal summer sanctuary for some of the wealthiest and most powerful families in America. For the most part, the "summer colony," as the privileged summer visitors were called by local residents, lived quietly, whiling away the days in ocean-side estates that were staffed by as many as twenty-five "locals," or on their well-appointed yachts, also manned by locals. 4 CRITER ION 1932, WITH 916 SEATS, MONDAY RIGINAL ART DECO STYLING OCTOBER CRITERION In the evenings, there were Bar Harbor Club, once the sym- private cocktail parties and din- bol of wealth and prestige has ners at the exclusive Bar Harbor lost its luster. Club. Afterwards, they stepped Outside the Criterion, the into their chauffeur-driven limousines no longer line Cot- limousines for the short ride to tage Street, dispatching the the Criterion. summer socialites in their even- The glamor and excitement of ing finery. The theater itself has that period has long since passed. fallen into disrepair, the sleek The Fords and Rockefellers and elegance of its art deco design Vanderbilts have abandoned dulled with age. their once exclusive enclave to There are those who worked and played at the Criterion in its early years who still remember "Y ou had to that golden era in Bar Harbor's be careful history. Through anecdotes and reminiscences and feelings half which summer forgotten, they paint a vivid picture of a changing world. person you sat with which Th only theater in town before the Criterion was summer the Star, a place which appeared to be the creation of a frustrated person. Hollywood set designer. The gray stucco facade rose in a series of right angles like a the growing number of tourists sawed-off pyramid, crowned bellows, snap on the light over who descend upon the island with a large white star. the console and, with one eye on each summer. Inside the pine-panelled audi- the screen and the other on the The fashionable hotels and torium, silent pictures danced keyboard, launch into her first shops have given way to inex- across the screen as the music salvo of chords. pensive motels and souvenir from a formidable Robert Mor- "That was an era of gracious stores catering to the tastes and gan pipe organ filled the room. living," recalls Mrs. Wescott, a budgets of the middle class. The For many years the high priest- vibrant 88-year-old, who now posh dinner clubs have been ess of that keyboard was a makes her home in a senior replaced by fast food restau- woman named Pearl Wescott. A citizen center not far from rants and pizza joints; the few minutes before the show where the Star once stood. Dreamland Dance Pavilion by a was set to begin, Pearl would "We had two Bar Harbors, discotheque. amble down the aisle and step winter and summer. The sum- Campers and motorcycles clog behind the low red cafe curtain mer people, Bar Harbor catered the narrow streets, while boats which enclosed the organ. Doff- to them because they were bread filled with sightseers cruise the ing her racoon coat, she would and butter. For three months island's jagged shores. Even the flick a switch that turned on the it was bread and butter. Very 6 gracious living." quent visitor to John D. Rocke- of the Chase Manhattan bank). When Mrs. Wescott wasn't feller's estate in nearby Seal And the father paid them seven playing at the Star, she was Harbor, where she played at a cents a quart. You would never often hired to perform at private private dancing school for the know they were millionaires. I recitals and dinner parties. "Mrs. Rockefeller children. "They were sat and ate with them and I ate (Frederick) Vanderbilt wanted lovely people. And when they the same food I put on my own me to play at her Sonogee (name came to Seal Harbor all the table." of her estate). She had a big pipe pomp and circumstance was organ, and she wanted dinner gone. They were just as ordi- music while they were in the nary as you and I. T's he Star was a place where shopkeepers and gardeners dining room. You see I had an "I knew the housekeeper for could sit elbow to elbow with entree to a gracious sort of years, and she would tell me the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. living. And, of course, it paid how the boys used to pick blue- But it was a far cry from the well. Mr. Emory (Joe Emory, the berries for their mother (Rocke- elegant theaters of Philadelphia, owner of the Star) was tickled to feller had five sons, including Boston and New York, to which death because of the publicity." Nelson, the former governor of the summer colony was accus- Mrs. Wescott was also a fre- New York and David, chairman tomed. 7 CRITERION The absence of a theater ap- vision and ingenuity who, as his torney, John Stolfoid, who owned propriate to the tastes of Bar son, George McKay, Jr., recalls, stables and greenhouses, and Harbor's elite did not go un- "was just always dreaming about Dan Heurley, who owned the noticed by George P. McKay, a things. My mother was in con- Dreamland dance pavillion, one local entrepreneur who ran a stant fear of what brainstorm he of Bar Harbor's hottest night small cottage on Main Street. would come up with next. He spots, as well as a local boxing A handsome, dapper man, Mc- was a very progressive thinking arena. Kay was a gregarious sort who guy. He could see things that There are those who whis- per that McKay acquired funds through another source as well -rum running. If McKay was, in fact, a bootlegger, one thing is certain: he was not alone. In the years preceding the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, bootlegging was rife along the entire coast of Maine. And there was no place better suited for the trade than Bar Harbor, an island port with a populace that could well afford to pay the price for illicit liquor. "I remember the town was dryer than beach sand," Mrs. Wescott recalls. "But the rich people wanted their liquor, and they would get it. It was a perfect place. They would run the liquor in from beyond the always had a smile and a drink to needed to be done. Every day it lighthouse. The boats were going offer friends and acquaintances. was something different." in and out and the government, I He would often tell the story of One of the things he thought think, turned their backs on it. how he stepped off the ferry most about was creating a the- We all knew who they were, but from Hancock "leading a cow later that would lure the town's there was a lot of looking the with 40 cents in his pocket". But monied inhabitants. Although other way. There was SO much he soon established himself by McKay had accumulated some money involved." forming a trucking business wealth from his business enter- If McKay wasn't directly in- which catered to the summer prises, he lacked the funds to volved in running hooch into residents. Later he would estab- finance a project on the scale he the island, there is little doubt lish the island's first bus service envisioned. So he formed a cor- that he had easy access to it once connecting Bar Harbor with the poration and sold shares to other it arrived. Although he wasn't neighboring communities. prominent citizens of the town. much of a drinker himself, he McKay was no ordinary en- Among the shareholders were was quick to pass the bottle to trepreneur. He was a man of Ralph Masterman, a local at- others. 8 "If you were down to his house he'd give you a drink quicker than hell, and it would be the best," recalls Bob Cosom, who used to deliver coal to the McKay Cottages. "There was nothing cheap about him. He was a rough and ready fellow, a free hearted man, and he was generous with his liquor with any bum as long as they didn't make any trouble." "Y ou would never know they were million- aires." It was common knowledge that the kingpin of the Bar Harbor bootlegging trade was Heurley, a close friend of Mc- Kays and one of the chief backers of the Criterion. He was also one of the few operators who met up with the law, an occasion which won him an expense-paid trip to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. I' in June of 1932, McKay's moment of triumph finally arrived. The opening of the Criterion was greeted with a chorus of acclaim from area newspapers. "Criterion Theater, Bar Harbor Showplace, Opens Monday," read the banner head- 9 CRITERIO line over a full page spread in the Vila and Stringo are vaudeville's "It was more or less a formal Bangor Daily News. favorite syncopators and feature situation in those days, much According to the News, the the mandolin and guitar with their more than it is today. In the theater was erected in five singing. This act has played in some summertime, the balcony was months at a cost of $150,000, big city theaters and has good press always reserved seats. The best although other sources place the notices. A clever dog and a clever seat you could buy in the house cost as high as a quarter million man in an acrobatic act goes under was 99 cents. These were all the name Maxine and Bobby. The dollars. dog does a wonderful balancing feat reserved for the summer people. McKay spared no expense in "You had to be careful which and a tumbling act is a never to be creating his movie palace. The forgotten masterpiece of the art. summer person you sat with Criterion was a stunning blend Earl, Jack and Betty are a-thrill-a which summer person. You of art deco elegance and modern minute roller skaters and they have know, they're kind of cliquey. technology. The velvet lined clever stunts in their bag of tricks. There were people who thought seats were equipped with pho- They go places and do things on the they should have been million- nograph jacks SO that the hard of elusive rollers. The Three White aires but weren't, who always hearing could wear headphones, Gobs are from the good ship dance tried to get in with the mil- and the walls contained a net- and song, and can they do both! This lionaires. work of brass pipes which were act is clever and original." "You didn't know my father. to be connected to a vacuum Everybody that came into the system. O ne person who remembers theater, he used to say, 'Come In 1932 vaudeville was still those early years is Mc- into my office, it's my birthday, I very much in vogue, but it was Kay's son, who worked as an want to give you a drink.' There the talking picture, then in its usher at the theater. "It was a was one guy who came out of infancy, that was rapidly cap- long day," recalls George Jr., the office one time and said, 'Just turing the imagination of the who now runs the McKay Cot- exactly when is your father's American public. The Criterion, tages. birthday?' That was typical of with an expansive stage framed "I went to work in summer my father. in a towering proscenium arch, tux pants and white jacket and "He wasn't a drinker, though. was designed to accommodate cummerbund and starched shirt That was the funny thing. both stage and screen shows. and collar with a bow tie-it was They'd take him to parties and The opening night bill fea- a maroon bow tie. Everybody stuff, and he'd pour it in his tured the talkie "Arsene Lupin" dressed. At eight o'clock in the shoes. I remember one party he and five acts of vaudeville "di- morning father insisted we go went to he poured it in the rect from the Keith Theater in up there to clean the place. Then woman's plant and killed it. She Portland". Here is a description we'd go back for the two o'clock never could understand what of the program as it appeared in matinee. happened to her plant. one newspaper account: "You'd go home at 4:30, eat McKay's daughter, Margue- your supper, take a shower, and rite McKay Dwyer, a retired "Heading the bill will be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hokey, a miniature musical get back into that monkey suit physician who now lives in comedy of seven performers. The for the seven o'clock show at Bangor, sold tickets at the thea- act will be a comic satire on the night. You didn't get out of ter. She remembers a Bar Jekyll and Hyde masterpiece, re- there until after eleven. It was a Harbor much different than plete with chills, thrills and laughs. long day for a boy 15 or 16 what it is today. There will be singing and dancing. years old. "Your whole economy was 10 different back then. You had party, they would come to the had to do it first come, first Bonwit Tellers, Pearl Cum- theater in the morning, they serve. mings, Frank's Boot Shop. would have the chauffeur drive "Evalyn Walsh McLean (the Where the Villager Motel is, them up to the town. And they wife of Edward McLean, who that was McCloud's Garage, and would come in to look at our owned the Washington Post ) al- that's where a lot of the limou- booking to see what we had ways came to the movies, and sines were. All the chauffers she always wore the Hope Dia- used to be there. mond around her neck-it was "The grocery stores were dif- "They They were on a silver or platinum chain. ferent. There were no chain rich and "She was always very gen- grocers. There was Butterfields erous, and I remember we had and Green Brothers on the cor- we weren't. vaudeville at the time-at that ner there, and Ding's Market, with all the fancy fruits and That's the way time they had some very good acts out of Boston, young people cheeses and everything. It was -and several times she invited just a whole different world. it was." all the cast down to her place, "You had a summer resident which was at the end of Way- population. And people used to booked for pictures. land Lane for supper after the go to the shore club, the Bar "And, depending on what we show. Harbor Club, and have dinner had for a show, and what we had "Walter Damrosch (the New parties. And they'd all come in available for tickets, then they'd York composer and conductor) evening dresses. book a box or two, whatever the used to come to the movies, the "Of course your best box was size of their dinner party, and (Edsel) Fords, the Rockefellers your center box. That was all then they'd go to the club and and the Stotesburys, Atwater fixed up with phones that you make arrangements for dinner. Kent, one of the big radio manu- could plug in (for the hard of There was a lot of feeling about facturers. hearing). What they would do, if who got what box. I mean, boy, "Usually their children, with they wanted to have a dinner it was ticklish sometimes. You their governess or tutors, would 11 CRITERION be driven to the first show, the property was sold and torn they make very many of today. while the older people had down to get that ferry terminal Of course, I'm the old fashioned dinner parties and they would in." type. come to the late show. "In those days, when I worked "There would be on Cottage P erhaps the best authority on there, the whole of Bar Harbor Street a whole line of cars, you the history of the Criterion was entirely different than it is know, Lincolns, and then the is Roy Blake, who worked at the now. Now it's a tourist town. Cadillacs, all the big cars, chauf- theater for over forty years as a Back in 1930 and along in there, feur driven. And you used to projectionist and manager. it was a summer resort for have a doorman out there calling At age 80, Blake has been wealthy people. And the sum- cars; you had to, you know. retired for years, but he still mer people had homes here; "The Ford children always makes his way down to the either that, or they came and came to the movies. The chauf- theater several times a week to stayed in hotels here or in feur would drive them over with Northeast Harbor. They stay the governess. In later years, there now (Northeast Harbor), Happy Rockefeller always came with their children. She was an "O ne day a what's left of 'em. native "The old time wealthy people extremely pleasant person, very. most of 'em dropped out She'd come to the candy counter jumped in the and the younger ones coming up and stand, waiting in line with aren't the same. They don't the kids. pool and they for these summer estates and "They were just ordinary drained it." chauffeurs and all that kind of people," Dr. Dwyer says of the stuff. wealthy and famous who fre- "When I came to work here quented the theater. "They came check the aging projection equip- there were horse-drawn carri- summers and you accepted them ment-the Simplex projectors ages with the liverymen and as part of the town. You see, originally installed in the thea- everything, you know. You where you're seeing all these ter are still in use today-or didn't see too many of them, but motels, those were all great big simply to pass the time. He first there were some. And then summer cottages. came to Bar Harbor in the early there were a lot of big cars, you "Where the ferry is now, that 1920's to work at the Star. know the big, expensive Cadil- was Edward T. Stotesbury's "I went to work at the Cri- lacs and that type of car with estate, they were from Phila- terion about a year after it chauffeurs. delphia, and they built this opened. When it opened they "And the madams would be beautiful home there. In the ran vaudeville two nights a in the stores summer bathrooms, all the fixtures were week, I believe it was Mondays stores you know. Had high grade gold-plated and everything. I and Tuesdays. I believe it was stuff; branches from New York: remember being invited with RKO Keith Vaudeville out of places like Tiffany's, and all of the YW and they had us up there Boston. those. And the chauffeurs would for tea. I can remember having "It was high class, good vaude- be standing next to the cars, watercress sandwiches. And we ville. Of course, in those days waiting for the madams to come were in those bathrooms as they were making what I con- out. That's the way it was then, much as we could looking at sider good movies, outstanding but that's all gone now those gold-plated fixtures. But movies, which I don't consider absolutely." 12 supposed to have been stolen many, many years ago, from the eye of some idol in some foreign country or something and there was a curse put on it. Probably there's nothing to that. "But I don't know I've had a lot of bad luck since I held that stone in my hand. Since that night I've lost two wives. But those things happen, you have no way of knowing. "The McLeans, this Edward B. McLean, he bought that for his wife for her birthday or Christ- mas or something. And Mrs. McLean died with a goiter, I believe, in the neck. And Edward B. McLean, he drank himself to death. "They had a little boy and he got hit by a garbage trunk. And the little girl which I was telling you about, she married some senator. I don't recall his name, but he was old enough to be her grandfather, I guess. Much, much older than she was. As I understand, she died from an overdose of narcotics, pills of some type." Jea ean Curtis Frost, the daughter of a local gardener, who works at the Bar Harbor Trust sion, Blake was hired Company down the street from m at the home of one On one particular evening, while he was setting up the the Criterion was only one year mer residents. One of old when the theater first projection equipment, Mrs. Mc- ar customers was alsh McLean, who Lean's daughter came up to him, opened. As a youngster, she ertained guests on the Hope Diamond dangling was, like many of her friends, an avid movie-goer. It was a rare ening with dinner and from her neck. It was, says Saturday afternoon when she Blake, a fateful encounter. creening. "The story of that could not be found attending the it was matinee with her girl friends or 13 CRITERION a special young man. looking. He was kind of a fancy "Most of the kids got twenty- man. He was nice to everyone. five cents a week for allowance. He used to have a lot of the local Everybody had boy friends, but drunks working for him. He'd you paid your own way because get a lot of work out of them for everything was Dutch treat in a bottle of wine. those days. It was fifteen cents For Jean and many of her to go in the afternoons. contemporaries who grew upon "So I had a dime left over and I Mount Desert Island, the Cri- saved my dime for the next day terion was the only theater they hoping to con my mother and had ever known, and they never father out of another nickle SO I thought of it as being anything could go again on Sunday after- exceptional. noon. My boy friend spent his "In a way it was like being and we got three candy bars brought up with a silver spoon for a dime at the A&P store. He in your mouth. You thought all picked one and I picked one and the theaters were like that, you we agreed on one. know, with all the velvet cur- "More often it was probably "As I recall, on Saturday you tains. It was very opulent, but I for lawyers' children rather than got a double feature, a serial and never did think about it, people gardeners' children, I don't a cartoon, if you were lucky. not having that kind of theater. know." They had "The March of Time" It was the only theater we ever -it was the news-and every- went to. N ow it's a body would hiss and boo, no- "Of course the loge was fun body wanted to listen to that. because you could go up there tourist 'The march is on,' it would say at and smoke cigarettes. Every- the end, and then somebody body did. But in the summer- town; back would yell, 'We're glad it's finally time, that's when the high then it was marching on.' You know, it was brows sat up there with the SO educational, nobody wanted curtains closed. They'd all come a summer to listen to that. Get on to the to the second show, after they'd Looney Tunes. Hopalong Cas- been out to dinner or at the club resort for sidy was my hero in those days. or somewhere; half-gassed most George McKay was a constant of them. wealthy presence at the theater in those "I can remember when I went people." days, recalls Mrs. Frost. "He was upstairs, it was probably for a charming man. A charming, someone's birthday. When you handsome man. He was always went to the movies on Saturday There was an unspoken rule there at the theater and he or Sunday afternoon, you didn't in Bar Harbor in those days that moved around very fast making sit in the loge. You could go up, the local kids did not mix with sure that everybody was happy, but it was more money SO you the summer people. The most 'specially the summer people. sat downstairs. But if you had a visible symbol of that class "I remember him as being birthday party you made a structure was the exclusive Bar white haired and sort of elegant special deal. Harbor Club, where Jean's sister 14 Roy Blake sits in the darkened theater where he was projectionist. Below, owner B. J. Morison takes tickets. once worked "passing out towels to the rich kids." One day, local lore has it, a native jumped in the pool. "They drained it. You know, cleaned it right out. It was that kind of place." But for the most part, Mrs. Frost says, the local people did not resent their priviledged summer visitors. "That was the way it always was. They were rich and we weren't. I don't think there was any resentment. Jealousy maybe. We thought it would be nice to be rich." B y the mid 1930's, the Star, unable to compete with its posh rival down the street, had fallen on hard times. In 1936, McKay himself purchased the Star. It was a move, according to his son, designed to take ad- 15 CRITERION vantage of the film leasing October, when most of the sum- tried to get in through Hulls policies established by the major mer colony had retreated to Cove, we tried through the studios which required theater their winter residences. Al- Norway Drive. owners to book a certain num- though only two lives were lost "Finally we got in behind a fire ber of B-rated films. The idea (one child fell off a truck and a truck. And when we went down was to keep the top rated pro- man had a heart attack), most of Eden Street, those houses were ductions for the Criterion and the year-'round residents were just burning, just like you see in pass the others off on the Star. forced to evacuate the island. the movies. And the trees just "But the scheme only post- Sixty-seven of the 222 summer glowing, and the things coming poned the Star's demise. Several cottages, and 70 of the 667 year- over the road, and wires down. years later McKay converted round residences were de- It was just lawful. The people the theater to a nightclub, and in stroyed. were all on the athletic field. subsequent years the once proud "And then word came that the silent picture house was reincar- fire was spreading and they all nated as a bowling alley and a "In a way it ran down Main Street to the furniture store. was like wharf and were evacuated by The Star wasn't the only insti- boats. tution in Bar Harbor that was being brought "I don't know how many of changing. As World War II ap- proached, the town itself was up with a silver those great big homes were lost. And that's when everyone, undergoing a gradual metamor- spoon in your practically, who had money in phosis. The era of gracious living Bar Harbor moved over to was giving way to increasing mouth. You Northeast Harbor. We had commercialization. The fashion- able hotels and exclusive shops thought all nothing left. We lost all our hotels. All there were were just were replaced by inexpensive theaters were big chimneys standing. And motels and chain stores catering blackened trees. to budget-minded tourists. like that." "The whole mountains were And then came an event that, black. It was a total wasteland. in one lightning-quick stroke, Most of those who lived And all that was left of Bar changed the course of Bar Har- through the experience still re- Harbor was Main Street and bor's history forever: The Great tain vivid memories of that fiery Cottage Street and Mount Des- Fire of 1947. The accounts of week. Dr. Dwyer was in Bangor ert. Jackson Lab (the scientific how and where the blaze began with her mother when the fire research center), the whole lower vary, but the results were de- broke out, but her father and Main Street burned. The whole vastatingly clear. other members of the McKay town was just wiped out." In five harrowing days the fire clan were trapped on the island. Although the Criterion sur- ravaged more than half the land "We got back the following vived the Great Fire, the luster area of the town, blackening day to get my mother home to of its early years had worn whole mountainsides and con- him. And when we came in the thin. Several years earlier, Mc- suming, indiscriminately, the flames were going. We tried five Kay, faced with financial dif- homes of the rich and working ways to get into town before we ficulties, had leased the building class. got in. My husband had oxygen to a New York theater operator. The fire occurred in late tanks in the back of the car. We In 1956 Dr. Dwyer and her 16