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THSA Founding
Letter and
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Brother Andrew

Past Officers,
1969-present

[This article appeared in the 30th anniversary issue of Marquee® (Vol.31, No.1), First Quarter, 1999. Some minor changes in context
have been made.]

The boilerplate which usually appears on the back cover of our THS annuals begins with the sentence "The Theatre Historical Society of America was founded in 1969 by Ben M. Hall, author and theatre historian," a useful simplification which glosses over the efforts of Brother Andrew, Frank Cronican, Terry Helgesen, Tom B'hend and others present at the creation to emphasize his singular importance to this organization. Ben Hall was then the only national figure in the realm of movie palace history, and The Best Remaining Seats was the only available (when one could find it) book on the subject; no one else could possibly have written the founding invitation letter with any real hope of raising much dust. THS owes its existence to this letter.

The Best Remaining Seats was written as a remembrance, not a textbook or a plea for preservation, but the years have proven its worth in all these capacities. Today's movie palace bookshelf includes many more volumes, some far broader in scope and scholarship, but even the best of them can only build on Ben's work and supplement it: none can replace it. After nearly four decades, The Best Remaining Seats still holds its place as the very best introduction to the subject.

This makes Ben's name known to everyone with an interest in movie palaces, but to many newer and/or younger devotees, he is only that: a name. So who was Ben Hall? I got to know him in the late 'sixties, and remember an amiable, approachable and dryly witty man with an amazing diversity of interests and a sincere eagerness to share them. He seemed to relish every second of his life; just being around him was great fun and nobody enjoyed the fun more than Ben himself.

Though he was born and raised in the South, Ben was the quintessential New Yorker: like so many naturalized Gothamites, he savored its pleasures and perils more intensely than those who had merely been born there. He lived as a sort of Tory bohemian at the edge of Greenwich Village, very near the Hudson, in the upper two floors of what had once been the office of a steamship company. There he was brutally murdered in December, 1970, just short of his forty-ninth birthday.

His desk was cluttered with many projects in various stages of completion, but for a man who listed his profession as writer, the published output of Ben Hall was small. Beyond his one book, various articles and record-jacket notes, he was involved with Time-Life's This Fabulous Century series, particularly the too-short section on movie palaces in the 1920-1930 volume. He also excerpted portions of The Best Remaining Seats for a pair of magazine articles in advance of the book's publication. The "Best Ree-maining Seats" can be found in American Heritage Vol. XII, No. 6 (October 1961); "The Night the Roxy Opened" appeared in Vol. 1, No. 5 (October 31, 1961), of Show Business Illustrated, a short-lived Hugh Hefner publication.

Both are of interest mainly for photographs of Roxy which do not appear in the book, and the SBI article features a whimsical but reasonably accurate cartoon rendering of the Roxy by Andy Warhol. (Where might that be now?) It also contains a photo caption which displays well Ben's particular brand of wit. Roxy, wearing a spectacularly florid necktie, is seen seated at a desk; on the wall behind him are dozens of proposals for the Roxy logo; standing by the desk watching the great man sign something is Gloria Swanson. Caption: "Marquise: Gloria Swanson, then wife of the Marquis de la Coudray, with Roxy. Her movies had much in common with his ties." This is right up there with Major Bowes' "Boston baked paper towels," and "Christopher Columbus discovering the orchestra pit" of the TAMPA Theatre. (Both are in The Best Remaining Seats.)

Ben's most visible contribution to Marquee® was his column, "Around The Circuit," which ran in the first two volumes. The first is reproduced in this issue; the last, a farewell to the Brooklyn Fox, was submitted on December 3, 1970, two weeks before his death, and appeared in Vol. 2, No. 6. Ben's work was on both sides of the curtain; at ATOS [American Theatre Organ Society] Conventions he was the ever-witty emcee. He performed the same services for us only once. Ben organized our first Conclave as a rump session to the 1970 ATOS meet in New York. Among its highlights was the premiere of Frank Cronican's AVALON model and a trip to far Flatbush to see LOEW'S KINGS, a stop unaccountably absent from the ATOS schedule.

The revival which has saved so many movie palaces was underway during Ben's lifetime, but just: only three houses had been made into performing arts centers by the end of 1970. It is easy to imagine Ben's delight at seeing so many more rescued and renovated; he would certainly have attended many of their openings, and probably have emceed more than a few of them. As does everybody who knew Ben, I still miss him, but I'm even sadder about all he missed.

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