CityView Magazine - Fayetteville, NC
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/6452
12 | Feb/Mar • 2010 Publisher's Note I recently toured Cumberland County's newest movie house, the Millstone 14 in Hope Mills. Giant screens, seats that rock and an enormous concession stand, it made me reminisce about the theaters that have come and gone. But Fayetteville's love for the movies hasn't changed. Today's technology brings the theater into our homes on high-definition, wide-screen televisions equipped with surround sound. So why drive to a movie when it can come to us? It has to be the unique experience, the sound, the tremendous screen. But most of all, I think it is a time and a place to get away from the real world. No distractions, just you and the story unfolding in front of you. And this might explain why going to the movies makes our list of Winter Escapes this issue. The more things change, the more they stay the same. When I was growing up, the biggest screens could be found at drive-in theaters, and Fayetteville had three, all on Bragg Boulevard. There was the Fox where Powers-Swain Chevrolet is now, plus the Midway and the Boulevard. As teenagers we would sneak in, squeezed into car trunks, only paying for the two people in the front seat. Once we were all FAYET TEVILLE GOES TO THE MOVIES in, we would sit on the hoods of our cars and watch the flicks. The last movie I can remember seeing at the drive-in was the famous Jane Fonda movie, "Barbarella," made in 1968. Drive-ins died out in the 1970s as they lost distribution rights for first-run movies that went instead to the movie houses of the day. And we loved those, too. The Hamont Theatre where Cape Fear Regional Theatre is now was the mainstay for us kids on Saturday mornings. We soaked up the cowboy and Indian movies and serials like Captain Marvel and the Lone Ranger. If we weren't at the Hamont, we were downtown at the Carolina, the Broadway, the Colony or the Miracle, the Millstone of its day. But eventually the Hollywood distribution system squashed the small independent theaters. The last movie I saw at the Miracle was "Patton" in the early 1970s. Watching the evolution of Fayetteville's theaters has been interesting, but one thing is quite certain in our fallen world: we still love to escape into the silver screen. CV Marshall Waren, Publisher