The Emory Theatre in Emory Village (1939-1979)
By J.J. Williams
The Emory Theatre was built in 1939. It was the eastern most building in the row of shops along Oxford Road. On either side of the entrance to the theatre, there were two very small storefronts which usually contained sandwich shops or small grills. There were 492 seats in the original auditorium---a very large number by today’s standard.
In the 1940s, there was a Saturday feature, followed by ‘Short Subjects’ or the latest serial of Flash Gordon, the Green Hornet, or the Lone Ranger. Dr. Richard Sams recalls that when theatre owner/manager Danny Demitry brought Gone with the Wind to the Emory Theatre, “We saw that four hour world renowned epic for only 14 cents. During the intermission, Danny allowed some of us to go home for lunch and return for the remainder of the film.”
Dr. Sams recalled that “Danny Demitry knew us all practically by name.” Sams also reported that, “The movies were a big form of entertainment in those days. One of my friends, Susan (Borjes) Newell enjoyed a ‘50s Friday night when she and her two soul-mates, Mildred and Margie, paid forty cents to see Stewart Granger in ‘Scaramouche’ (1952) at the Emory Theatre. Dressed in boys’ jeans rolled up just below the knees, a white broadcloth shirt under a plaid flannel one, and of course the ‘official Druid Hills’ white moccasins, the mostly teenage audience on Friday nights sometimes got a little unruly. This would elicit expulsion warnings by the brass-buttoned uniformed theatre usher. Such a night of unruliness usually included some unsolicited shouts by the audience, or some flying popcorn, or fireflies let loose in the theatre. Sometimes marbles rolled loudly down the bare slope beneath the seats during one of those tender love scenes, but only on Friday nights. That would have been unthinkable any other time.”
George Quillian had a job delivering flyers for the Emory Theatre. Danny Demitry, would print flyers that showed a month’s worth of movie features. He would gather six to eight boys, drive them to various streets in his Cadillac, and the boys would deliver the flyers to neighborhood mailboxes. In return, the boys received free passes to movies---worth 13 cents apiece.
Mike Durret, who attended films at the theater in the late 1950s, got a job first in the concession stand and later as a projectionist in 1963. He wrote, “In the ‘50s, the Emory changed movies three times per week, on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Fridays and Saturdays were usually double feature westerns.” Durret described the Emory Theatre as follows: “On the sidewalk, there was a small ticket kiosk, barely comfortable for one cashier to sit [in]. You bought tickets here, and you could walk around the box on all sides. About ten feet from the sidewalk was a pair of entrance and exit doors. Above the sidewalk, [there was] a traditional triangular marquee with two sides for letters (three lines on each side), Emory on a tower on a point, and a modest amount of neon. On either side of the box office, two poster cabinets for 40x60 sheets on the sidewalk [and] over to the side and back of the box office, there was space for five more posters. Enter the front door and a doorman on the right, concession stand in the center. The concession stand was three sided; drink machine and candy on one; more candy on the next; and the third side had the popcorn kettle and counter space. Opposing 40x60 posters were on the side walls. Then there were six more doors going to an interior lobby about twelve feet deep to the back of the auditorium. This area was mostly a lounging space with two couches and a chair and the restroom doors. The men’s room was on the left and the ladies room slightly more elaborate, was on the right. The seating inside was in three rows with 12-14 on the side sections and about 20 in the middle. There was a respectable Cinemascope screen mounted on the stage which had a four foot area in front to the footlights. Behind the screen, there was a very shallow backstage which housed the speaker and curtain, motor, and riggings. There was an old-fashioned household-style radiator on the auditorium floor in front of the stage that was the heater. The air conditioner was a water cooled system, but adequate.”
The 1979 Fire
In 2005, some Paideia students had a class project of writing about Emory Village businesses and history. One of the most poignant passages has to do with the day “Emory Village burned down.” The Paideia students wrote: “On January 2, 1979, a fire began which gutted seven businesses: Emory Florist, Village Bookstore, Doo-Dah’s Records and Tapes, Scoopeasy Sandwich and Yogurt, Emory Cinema, Atlanta Cookie, and Dawgwood’s Sandwich Shop (where the fire began.) All of these were in buildings that had been built in 1929.
“The below-freezing temperatures kept the firemen from doing their best, and 30 mph winds spread the fire, which began as a simple grease fire at Dawgwood’s. As the fire spread to the ceiling, employees tried to put it out with soda-ash fire extinguishers, which were not intended for such fires. Clyde Partin, Jr. says it was freezing cold and the water the fire department sprayed turned Oxford and North Decatur into a ‘Polar landscape of ice.’ People were every emotional about losing the theatre, and still hope to have another one in Emory Village.”
In a section on Everybody’s Pizza, (now closed), the Paideia students wrote, “The saddest thing that has ever happened was the fire at Emory Village. Even though after the fire, Everybody’s was able to expand and get a parking lot, Phil [Paymer, the owner] remembers the fire as a very ‘painful event’ that really hurt the community aspect of the Village. During the fire, Phil and his staff were there feeding the firemen for three days.”
David Sinrich also recalled the Emory fire: “I worked for Everybody’s Pizza from 1978-79 before heading off to college. On the afternoon of the Village fire, I was at Pryor Tire, putting two new tires on my Toyota SR5. I asked if I could climb a steep set of steps to the roof to check out the view of the Atlanta skyline. From there, I could see a plume of black smoke which I thought was closer to Ponce de Leon. About 30 minutes later, I was helping Everybody’s staff push heavy Blodgett Pizza Ovens away from the endangered side of the building, praying the small service alley on that side of the building would save our jobs.
The fire raged for most of the night, and dazed firemen wandered in for free pizza and coffee, trying to catch their breath between the fire and the winter [weather]. The next morning, the ruins of Emory Village were made all the more surreal festooned with huge, exploding sprays of ice stalactites sparkling in the winter light. Kids poked [at] steaming lumps of black ice, searching for the unlikely surviving LPs [long playing records.]”
“The fire took the Emory Bookstore, a relative cultural Mecca in its day, with a large selection of Middle-Earth books. Thousands of pages of literary classics littered the intersection of Oxford and North Decatur. The fire also took a sandwich shop called Steverino’s, another called Dawgwood’s, a pre-Turtles record shop (Cricket’s?) and possibly Ed Green’s breakfast joint.”
Mike Durrett, who worked at the Emory Theatre wrote, “I’ve long regretted I wasn’t there [Atlanta] for the fire. It was like losing a family member. Today a Domino’s Pizza take-out is on the site of one of the theatre’s two storefronts. The theatre property is grassy and was never re-developed. I re-visit it from time to time. I was told recently that the last film shown was Animal House. “
EJL posted this on the internet about the Emory fire: “The fire was January 2, 1979—my grandmother’s birthday. I grew up about a half mile from the theatre. I remember the stores that were in the building (from left to right): A cookie shop, Emory Cinema, a yogurt shop, Dawgwood’s Sandwich Shop (where the fire started), Doo Dah Records, University Bookstore, Emory Florist and Morgan Cleaners.”
Jennifer Richardson recalls, “I was headed down to the bank to make a deposit in early afternoon. The fire had apparently just begun, and the streets were not blocked off yet. Flames were leaping from the roof of Dawgwood’s Sandwich Shop and moving along the roof lines toward the Theatre and other buildings, but the other buildings weren’t fully engulfed yet. I worried that Everybody’s Pizza, begun by high school classmates of mine, would succumb. The firemen were spraying water on both the fire, and on businesses near the fire to keep them from burning. The temperature was ‘way below freezing, which must have been a nightmare for the firemen, because the water they sprayed on the fire dripped off and began to freeze. There was a massive wall of solid ice from the old PB gas station site all the way down North Decatur Road toward the creek. I avoided going to the village for some time, because seeing the burned out buildings (and later the razed area) was just too sad. I felt as if part of my childhood was gone.”
Though the old theatre has been gone for over 30 years, it remains alive in legend and story. Whether it’s memories of attending movies or of the devastating 1979 fire, many Druid Hills residents will never forget “The Emory.”