By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – There will be no third act for the Empire Theater. The 100-year-old landmark is set to be torn down this spring to make way for new development.

The Empire’s first act featured operas, comedies, stage plays and dancing girls. The theater was one of the most dazzling jewels in the New England vaudeville circuit in 1903. It was massive for the time, with seats for almost 1,500, two big balconies and 10 dressing rooms. It drew the cream of the regional circuit to its stage.

The entertainment industry had changed by the time the theater’s second act began, and the Empire changed with it. Vaudeville was all but dead in 1940 and movies were the way to go. Out went the upper balcony, the ornate decorations and the dressing rooms. In came a bigger movie screen, more bathrooms, better projection equipment and air conditioning. It was the place in central Maine for celluloid culture – Shirley Temple, Annette and Frankie, and the Beatles.

When the industry changed again 40 years later, the Empire couldn’t keep up. It was the dawning of the age of cable television and multi-screen cineplexes. There wasn’t a way for a stately single-screen theater to turn a profit.

For a few years, the Empire was a showcase for second-run movies. Finally, in 1982, owner Raymond Cailler pulled the plug. The theater came back to life a few years later as home to a church. But that didn’t last. Since the early 1990s it’s been just another empty place that cars drive past.

Crews are scheduled to begin tearing the walls down after April 15, making room for a parking lot and further downtown redevelopment. But that space will always hold a spot in many Lewiston natives’ hearts. Here are some of their stories.

Dancing janitor

History says Raymond Hitchcock, star of the opera “The Yankee Consul,” was the first to sing on the Empire Theater’s stage when it opened Nov. 24, 1903.

History is wrong, says Lewiston’s Gordon Windle.

He claims his grandfather, a janitor named Harry Windle, managed to steal the spotlight from the opera star, if only briefly.

“That may be his only claim to fame,” Gordon Windle said of his grandfather. “He was an amateur singer, doing songs like MacNamara’s Band.'”

Windle was sweeping the floor in the theater’s wings on that fateful day, according to family lore.

“Just before the curtain went up, he went on stage and sang a song and did a little dance,” Windle said. “It was just so he could say he was the first. He used to brag about it all the time.”

Harry Windle was born in Lancashire, England, in about 1856. That would make him about 47 years old at the time the theater opened. He worked for many years at the bleachery before taking the job at the Empire, according to his grandson.

“I went to work there myself, in about 1933,” Gordon said. “To us, that was really the ritzy place to be.”

Break a leg

You’d figure that a nimble 12-year-old usher would know his way around the back stairs of the local theater.

Vincent Blais said he did, especially after he broke his leg on one of them.

Blais was an usher working for the Maine and New Hampshire Theater Co. in 1945, just shy of his 13th birthday. He worked as an usher at the Strand Theater on weekdays and at the Empire on weekends.

“The Empire, that was really the acme, the queen ship in those days,” Blais said. He wore the Empire’s maroon uniform and kept a watch on the area from the back of the balcony.

Once, going back down, he missed a step.

“They had these wide steps followed by short ones, and I started off on a wide one and just missed the step after it,” Blais said. He broke his leg, but didn’t realize it at the time.

“I’m almost 13, and the last thing I want to do is show pain,” he said. He hobbled back downstairs, changed into his street clothes and checked out at the ticket office. Then, he hopped all the way home, to 56 Park St. That’s the middle of the city’s parking lot now.

“I’d take about five hops and then have to rest,” Blais said. “I just jumped and hopped all the way home.”

Beatlemania

John, Paul, George and Ringo never made it to the Great Falls.

Lewiston got the next best thing in 1964, according to Patricia Frechette Lazazzera.

“I was a real Beatles freak, and I knew A Hard Day’s Night’ was coming,” Lazazzera said. “But I had to really beg my mom and dad to let me go. Of course, the neighbors were letting their daughters go. So they had to let me.”

She remembers watching the film at the Empire.

“If it had been anyplace else, they’d have said, No way, Jose!'” she said. “That was the only one they’d allow me to go to.”

The movie was a lot like a Beatles concert, she said.

“Everyone was screaming and yelling, just like a concert,” she said. “It was pretty crazy.”

She saw her first horror movie at the Empire, too. She remembers watching the “Night of the Living Dead” there and then walking home to her house on Pettingill Street.

“They had that first scene in the cemetery, and then we were walking by St. Joe’s and we heard this noise,” she said. “We just ran all the way home.”

The empire evokes many memories for Lazazzera, including her first date.

“I remember a lot about the Empire. We saw all the Beach party movies there, and I remember how the curtains used to open and close before the movies. You could see a movie and have popcorn for under a buck.”

Crowds of kids

The Priscilla was fine, and the Strand Theater was tough.

But the Auburn and the Empire were the best theaters in the Twin Cities, according to Alice Moore Unnold.

She worked at all of them while she was in high school, selling tickets at one and candy at another.

“Wherever they needed you that night, that’s where you went,” she said. “At one point or another, I worked at all of them.”

It was about 1941 or ’42. The projectionist was a Dutchman named Van Eck, she said.

“I didn’t like selling candy much,” she said. “It was the kids. They just crowded around, grabbing and pushing. I finally told them, if they didn’t stand in line, they wouldn’t get any candy.”

Antique popper

Dave Mockler of Sabattus doesn’t know how the popcorn popper-peanut roaster from the old Empire Theater made it out to a scrap heap in Sabattus.

He found it in the old American Legion Building. He asked around town about it and was told it was from the Empire and had been removed sometime around 1941.

“It had the company information on it, about the manufacturer,” he said. He called and ended up talking to the president of the company.

“He said they haven’t made those things since 1939,” he said. “They make room dividers now, but that’s where they got started.”

The company president told Mockler he should keep it. There aren’t many left and it could be valuable.

“It has one little electric motor, like a sewing machine motor, that runs the peanut roaster, and it still works,” he said.

He has had the bottom of the machine redone.

“I have it stuck in a corner of my garage,” Mockler said. “One of these days, I’ll get it out and get it going again.”