VIP David Shepard
Visits our Paradise Theatre

Mount Pleasant, SC - June 27, 2009
International film historian and DVD producer, David Shepard, was in Charleston to attend Charleston Harborfest 2009. One of the ships attending the event was featured in a 1932 film Around the Horn in a Square Rigger. This film is one of five on a newly released DVD produced by David Shepard and Jeffery Masino called Under Full Sail: Silent Cinema on the High Seas.

We were very excited to have David for an all-too-short visit. Ken and Anne Robichaux were able to join us for a lively discussion of silent film preservation and a showing of some short films from the DVD Saved From The Flames: 54 Rare and Restored Films 1896 - 1944. David Shepard and Serge Bromberg wrote and illustrated history and comments on each film in this collection. The history is included with this 3 DVD set.

Left to Right:
Anne and Ken Robichaux, John Coles,
Mark Tiedje, and David Shepard

Lunch with New Friends

Web Site Developers - June 18, 2009
The East Cooper section of the June 11, 2009, edition of Charleston's Post and Courier newspaper had an article by Jessica Johnson on three web sites hosted in the area that are devoted to movies, a movie star, and theaters. The article, Searching for America's Past on the Silver Screen featured Ken Robechaux, known as the Picture Show Man, Susann Gilbert, who has a website about her cousin, silent film star Alice Calhoun, and our web site on South Carolina movie thaters. (Photos by Jessica Johnson, The Post and Courier)

Trip to Hampton, Ridgeland and Beaufort

On The Road - June 16, 2009
We drove to Hampton, SC, to look through their newspapers on microfilm hoping to find articles, or at least advertisements, for the theaters and drive-ins owned by the Greene family. Sometimes the hours spent cranking the microfilm reels yield small nuggets and sometimes you strike the mother load. This time, we came up empty. We did find an odd advertisement for the Pal Theatre in Fairfax. It is odd because it says the theater is having its "Grand Opening" in June, 1962. We know from reliable sources that the Pal Theatre was in operation in 1945.

On the way out of town, we drove down Lee Avenue to get a glimpse of the Palmetto Theater. We saw someone in the lobby and stopped to see if we could get inside to take interior photographs. Maxine Tuten greeted us and told us more about the theater's history and it's co-founders. To see the new photos of the interior of the Palmetto Theater in Hampton, CLICK HERE.

We drove to Ridgeland and spent some time in the library there. We did find an advertisement for the Coastal Theater in Ridgeland in a 1937 edition of the Jasper County Record, but no mention of the drive-in there that was operated by the Greene family.

We arrived in Beaufort late in the afternoon and didn't have time to go to the library. We did look in the restaurants on Bay Street for an old photograph of the Breeze Theater. The manager of Panini's Restaurant remembered the photograph but said someone had stolen it. We did find out that Panini's Restaurant had once been a movie theater. We got several names and phone numbers but have yet to locate this black and white photo of the theater. Dodging a thunderstorm, we made it back to the car and headed back to Mount Pleasant.