Film Connecticut

One of the main venues for the Connecticut Film Festival, which opens tomorrow evening, is the Palace Theater on Main Street in Danbury, a once prosperous town 50 miles north of New York City. From the theater's simple facade and faded charm, it is hard to imagine that this was one of the important theaters in the Northeast, where headliners and musical legends once entertained Danbury's upper crust.

The historic theater, originally built in 1928 when Danbury was a wealthy town, has been part of local residents' lives for almost 4 generations. That's why the Palace Theater matters -- because it added to the collective experience of city residents for almost 70 years. It brought the city live entertainment, touring Broadway shows, big Hollywood pictures, and at the very end in the 1980s, midnight viewing of cult classics like "Pink Floyd -- The Wall'' and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show,'' when the audience dressed up, sang along and shouted out favorite lines in unison.

The Palace and its opulent interior were the dream of developer Charles Griffing, with over 2000 seats, a domed ceiling, Italian statuary, and a chandelier lighting the lobby. It had a full pipe organ, two grand pianos and a nine-piece pit orchestra, which played for both touring vaudeville acts and silent films. Such greats as Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Durante and Liberace played the house, as did many touring Broadway shows direct from their New York runs.

In the 1970s, the theater owners decided to stop booking live acts and converted the one huge auditorium into three small movie theaters, as was the trend at the time. At the time, The Danbury Preservation Trust fought the move, but the theater was too faded and the money was no longer there (as Danbury began a two decade decline). 

A local business man named Joe DaSiva bought the Palace in the early 1980s.  At that time, once busy Main Street in Danbury was a ghost town after business hours. Crime had invaded the once proud downtown district and movie audiences were attracted to more modern theaters in shopping malls. Eventually, in 1995, the theater closed its dors and suffered 10 years of neglect (with occasional use as a theater venue and, more successfully, a party space for weddings because of its still sumptuous lobby area).

In 2008, the Connecticut Film Festival decided to use the ornate lobby and the one functioning theater as its main venue, bringing cinema lovers to downtown for the first time in decades. The match was a good one because the Festival is back again at the Palace Theater, and patrons are coming  to downtown Danbury to not only sample films but also new restaurants and music clubs.

The owners are now looking to renovate the theater to bring it back to its old glory. The plans are to reconvert the space into one large auditorium again, which would then be filled with cinema programs, music concerts and special events. It is an ambitious plan, but Danbury's interest as a historic center, with many of its storied buildings receving national preservation status,  is part of the city's plan to attract visitors and create jobs.

Kudos to the Festival for leading the charge to revitallize this almost lost theater treasure and in so doing, making a strong case for further renovation efforts in what was once Danbury's "miracle mile". For information and to buy tickets for this year's film, music and seminar events, visit: www.ctfilmfest.com

Sandy Mandelberger, Film Connecticut Editor