Even in the spring of 1959, when Eutaw Street's Hippodrome was only 44 1/2 years old, the cavernous theater seemed ancient.
At that time, what seemed like half the screaming children of Baltimore filled its orchestra and sprawling balcony for a live appearance of the Three Stooges. Accompanying them on the screen was a singularly dumb Louis Prima-Keeley Smith movie. One critic said the best thing about the show was a short film clip that noted the locations of the exit doors.
Every time I pass this pile of bricks, it's hard not to think of that June afternoon when the Stooges whacked at each other. And how many other generations of Baltimoreans don't share in the same Hippodrome experience -- a recollection of some comedy or canine act; a good, bad or indifferent film?
The old Hippodrome, that temple of cheap but effective theatrical art, turns a ripe old 80 this week. It opened Nov. 23, 1914. All of the city's daily newspapers treated the occasion as if Baltimore had landed three professional sports teams in one morning.
The Hippodrome was certainly in the big league of theaters. It was designed by none other than Thomas Lamb, probably the best known theater architect of his day. Born in Scotland, he loved classical columns, fancy plaster work and gold detailing. His designs brought the world of the opera house to the counter girl at Hochschild Kohn.
The theater possessed a great name -- Hippodrome, a word that is Greek in origin. A hippodrome is a course for chariot and horse races surrounded by tiers of seats. And Baltimore's Hippodrome certainly had seats -- about 3,000 of them. For the first decade of vTC its life, few of those chairs were vacant for long.
Movies were just coming into their own; the big attraction was vaudeville -- separate, short acts that featured comics, singers, trained dogs and jugglers. If you can remember the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday night television, you have a fair idea of the Hippodrome's lineup. You could get in for a dime in the afternoon.
The entertainment business is not for the weak. By the 1920s, competition was hurting the Hippodrome. Baltimore had other movie and vaudeville palaces -- the Rivoli, the Century, the Valencia, Keith's and the Stanley. By 1931, the Hippodrome's name was being dragged through the courts for bad debts.
Enter one Isidore Rappoport, a theater operator who came to Baltimore to scout business prospects. He took on the now beleaguered Hippodrome and pumped it full of feature movies and vaudeville acts. Admission was a quarter before 12:30 p.m. and nobody ever went broke in Baltimore who realized how cheap its citi
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Mr. Rappoport did a wise thing. He installed a huge marquee for the Hippodrome. Its 8,000 lights flashed and pulsed and lighted up Eutaw Street.
Along with films supplied by RKO Studios, he gave his audiences live, on-stage performers. In September 1934, for example, the price of admission bought you a movie (say Grace Moore in "One Night of Love") and a headliner. One week it was ethnic comedian Gertrude Berg. The next was Mae Questel, the Betty Boop girl who still turns up in Woody Allen movies.
Another week brought Reggie Childs orchestra, followed by Baltimore-born harmonica stylist Larry Adler. Another Baltimore favorite son, Sam Robbins and his orchestra, rounded out the month.
There would also be lesser acts, some so bad all you could do was look at the ceiling or leave your seat and smoke a cigarette in the restroom.
It was one of those lesser acts that created one of the Hippodrome's most lasting stories. There was a lion act, "Beauty and the Beast," on the stage in 1936. The beauty was one Gladys Cote, who was attacked by one of the animals during a routine late-afternoon show. Infection set in and she died of gangrene.
The policy of a movie and a vaudeville show made the Hippodrome a success. Its patrons made a habit of going there each week. They didn't worry about the title of the movie or its stars. They didn't pick and choose among the vaudeville acts. They just went.
The World War II audiences were some of the largest in Hippodrome history. Consider the bill in October 1944. On the screen, Cary Grant starred opposite Ethel Barrymore in "None But the Lonely Heart." And live on stage was Jan Murray, billed as "Broadway's favorite nitwit of howlarity," and Bill and Cora Baird's marionettes. Both Murray and the Bairds went into television, a medium that tortured the Hippodrome and the entire Hollywood movie circuit.
The Hippodrome fought back in the 1950s and 1960s. It landed local rights to "Cleopatra" with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The theater was refurbished for the occasion. There were those who thought the refurbishment resembled the interior of a plush coffin.
The Hippodrome finally closed a few years ago. Its owners, Continental Realty, remain confident that the final curtain has not been rung down. They believe that out there is someone who will bring back the lights and fill all those seats.