Julesburg – The help is paid in popcorn and jumbo pickles.
When the butter melter needs repair, the board member on duty considers the operation a success when there are no parts left over.
And when the show’s over and the town’s children are giggling their way down the empty streets toward home, cleanup time means firing up the leaf blower.
What better way to shepherd popcorn and stray candy wrappers toward the garbage can waiting at the bottom of Julesburg’s 87-year-old Hippodrome movie theater?
As in all small towns, when things can’t be done the way they should, they get done the way they can. All the more so when keeping alive a movie theater that may be the only source of group entertainment – for children or adults – on a Friday night on the Eastern Plains.
Leaders of Julesburg (population 1,343) took over the historic Hippodrome in 1996 and have run it since as a community nonprofit. Volunteers sell tickets, pour soda and sweep the aisles. A distant movie broker maintains the lifeline of first-run films.
The city donates utilities, while a local high-schooler is paid a nominal fee to learn the intricacies of projection. With the secret ingredients of donated labor, fierce loyalty and a little duct tape, movie magic visits another generation.
The towns of Holly (1,012) and Rocky Ford (4,152) run their oldtime movie palaces much the same way, though the leaf blower may be a regional touch peculiar to where Julesburg sits on the edge of the Nebraska sand hills.
Theater chains such as United Artists gave way to family operators, who found profits from the latest crop of Hollywood movies as fickle as winter wheat. So town mothers and fathers stepped in – in Julesburg’s case, during a regular meeting at the local bar – and made do.
Keeping kids in town
The Hippodrome was scheduled to be sold in 1996 to a furniture store as mattress storage. Local Rotarians stepped up with $1,000 each to contribute $10,000, and a grant supplied the other $10,000 of the $20,000 purchase price. Then the building was turned over to Sedgwick County.
The alternative to watching “Ice Age: The Meltdown” in Julesburg – a crowd-pleaser that packed the house at every showing – is a 30-mile trip to Ogallala, Neb., at 75 mph speed limits that terrify parents of driving teens.
“Our town offers very little, so it’s very important to have something for the kids to do,” said Jane Kipp, escorting grandchildren Braylin and Janae, both 8, to “The Wild” at the Hippodrome on a recent Friday night.
On other nights, Kipp is one of more than 100 volunteers, from teens to seniors, who run the theater. She’ll take her right of free popcorn on off nights but pays the $4 ticket like everyone else, grateful for $1 popcorn and 25-cent candy.
“You can yell at the unruly kids by name,” she said.
Nonprofit status allows the towns to stretch the use of their cinema space to win grants for live theater or concerts, far more rare in rural Colorado than a good movie. Francie Miller, manager of Rocky Ford’s Grand Theater, recalls a fourth-grader greeting her after watching a play put on by a visiting company.
The girl told Miller, “That was the best movie I ever saw!” The fact that a fourth-grader didn’t know the difference between a movie and a play “is exactly why we need to keep this theater going,” Miller said.
Homegrown glamour
Answering that challenge takes more than a list of volunteers willing to give up a Friday or Saturday night. Old movie houses are a nightmare for owners and a lifetime-employment guarantee for contractors. The leaky Grand Theater, built with love and architectural detail in 1935, now sucks down $2,500 a month in heat for the coldest winter months.
The Hippodrome’s early glamour is covered by a 1970s renovation that bolted down era-appropriate and taste-inappropriate fabrics, ranging from burnt orange to burnt tan. A pressed-tin ceiling hides above a drop-down acoustic tile monster. The original cramped projection room, with an escape window leading to the street in case the silver- nitrate film caught fire, needs a soapy power wash for some R-rated graffiti.
Taming the screen
Picking the one perfect movie for a single screen is another obstacle in towns that need to draw both thrill-seeking teenagers and skeptical grandparents. Holly’s theater won’t show anything pushing beyond a mild PG-13, while Julesburg occasionally programs R films in order to “be all, to all.”
“Scary Movie 4” was a decent draw for Julesburg, though Hippodrome president Anna Scott demonstrates the volunteers’ teen-control efforts by pointing to bolt holes where seats used to be.
“We took out the back row so we could stand behind the junior high kids and thump them,” she said.
Despite the heating bills and the periodic competition from high school basketball games or county fairs, the small-town cinemas often turn a profit when they no longer have to issue many paychecks. Holly has accumulated enough to buy another town building and convert it into a teen center. Rocky Ford has installed vintage carpet and entered the era of surround sound.
The Hippodrome has the most expansive plans of all, in the midst of gutting two next-door buildings for scenery shops and dressing rooms that will greatly improve Julesburg’s efforts at live theater. Grants from a local foundation supplement the annual gala fundraiser, this year featuring town elders with hook-hands and eye patches for a “Pirates of the Caribbean” dance.
Sedgwick was the only county in the state without a building on the state historical registry before Julesburg got the Hippodrome on the list. The distinction helps win grants and makes the movie palace a stronger town pillar than ever.
Adults dig social scene
Contractors bang away overhead as Scott unlocks the cash box for the night and board member Stacie Olson assembles the butter melter. Three volunteers and a board member are scheduled for each show, with most asking to work about once a month.
While the original donors meant to save the theater “for the children,” volunteer coordinator Sherri Hinde said, adults who worked the shows for free soon grew addicted to the social scene the Hippodrome creates for all ages.
Scott is asked what the schedule is for completing the ambitious Hippodrome plan.
She takes the long view as she passes a stack of pickle jars behind the concession stand.
“I just hope I’m still alive,” she said.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
