Now They're Flicks, Not Movies, But The Nugget Still Carries On

IT may be of comfort to some of you ("lest the old traditions fail") to know that the spirit of the old Nugget persists. Hanover's favorite commercial movie house is much more sedate today, to be sure, than it was in ever-green alumni memories. The days of the freshman rushes are over. The piano player who beat out accompaniment to silent movies while dodging apple cores and peanuts has long since become a victim of electronics. Then too, the Theda Baras, Clara Bows and Jean Harlows have been replaced as symbols by the Marilyn Monroes and Brigitte Bardots.

Still, a Nugget-type audience participation flares up occasionally and to "flick out" continues to mean a couple of hours escape from the mind-stretching world of books, lectures and labs to the fantasyland of the darkened theater.

Even in these days of rising academic standards and ever-broadening intellectual frontiers The Nugget remains a safety valve and as much a Dartmouth tradition as Winter Carnival.

The Nugget spirit is taken pretty much for granted by the old-timers among the students (i.e., all sophomores and many third-term freshmen) and by faculty members and townspeople. But to an entering freshman or any other newcomer it's a refreshing, if at times bewildering, experience.

Take for instance the recent night a pre-feature travelogue carried the viewer along the canals of Venice. One scene showed two gondolas, one trimmed in green and another in red, racing prow to prow as the gondoliers strained.

A chant started. "Go, Green, Go." It gained adherents. "Go, Green, Go." Soon the theater was rocking along at about 38 strokes a minute. It had become "GO, GREEN, GO," by the time the scene changed.

And then there was the time . . .

What's that, sir? Oh yes, of course the green gondola won.

As was being said, there was also the time a student was heard to say to another, "There's a Westmore flick on tonight. Let's go."

Well, flick is for flicker or movie. Westmore? Is there an actress named Westmore? Or actor? . . . Let's see . . . a producer . . . Goldwyn, Stevens, Hornblow .... Nope, maybe it's a foreign film.

The mystery was cleared up a couple of days later. Westmore is a make-up man. It seems that student viewers passed the dreary time when screen credits were being shown by commenting on the names of various technicians. A series of simple deductions followed. Stars have hits and flops and so do producers and directors. The names of some of the technical people kept showing up on the good ones consistently. By identifying them you had a rule-of-thumb for movie critics.

These criteria became a fad, but not everyone would agree on which were the vital jobs and personnel. Some argued for Make-up Man Westmore, others for film editing by Fazan, and still others for costume design by Beaton. The Dekes were in one camp and the Betas in another.

At least this was the story told to one gullible newcomer who was foolish enough to ask about Westmore.

There is something peculiar about Nugget stories though. Ask an alumnus - even the one who recalls every play of the Yale game of twenty years ago - about his favorite Nugget anecdote and chances are you'll draw a blank. He's likely to say, "Some hilariously funny things happened. I wasn't there, but a classmate told me ..."

Memories seem to fail. Often the teller will start a story, but halfway through will suddenly recall that it all happened at a movie showing aboard an LST in the Mediterranean or in a rest camp in the Philippines. Even the alumnus who confessed that he had gone back to the second showing in order to use a line he had composed during the first wasn't much help. It was very funny, he said.

Well, what was the line, he was asked. "Gee, I don't remember," he replied.

This one did remember the movie about the Biblical temptress, Salome, though. When John the Baptist's head was served up on a platter at her bidding, someone in the crowd remarked: "Dig the crazy dessert!"

And then there was the time the leading lady was torn between beaux. "What am I going to do?" she wailed. "What am I going to do?" The answer came from down front again, obviously from a football fan, for it was the time-honored advice to indecisive quarterbacks who are in trouble:

"Punt!"

The Nugget is often a lot of fun for students and there are times when townspeople complain about the distractions. Most take a longer view, however. The students are the theater's principal source of revenue and that revenue has done many things for the Town.

The Nugget is owned by a nonprofit charitable organization, the Hanover Improvement Society. Since taking over its operations in 1922 this group has plowed an average of about $10,000 a year from the profits into civic improvements. The Storrs Pond swimming area is maintained by the Society; the Occom Pond skating facilities are co-sponsored by the Society and the College; Society funds have been used to buy fire apparatus and school equipment, to repair .sidewalks and roads and to care for trees.

How did all this happen? You're coming to that now.

Actually there were three Nuggets - the old one opposite College Hall on West Wheelock Street where the Western Union office now stands, the Webster Hall Nugget that served on an interim basis after the original burned in 1944, and the new Georgian edifice on South Main Street, opposite the Post Office, that was completed in 1951.

The original Nugget was the brain child of the late Bill Cunningham '19 of Boston newspaper fame. He dipped back into memories a couple of times to describe its origins for his readers.

Bill had worked his way through secondary school by doing odd jobs around Dallas movie houses. As a freshman in 1915 he was trying to piece out an existence at various jobs in Hanover - none of them particularly attractive. That winter he heard that F. W. Davison, a Hanover businessman, planned a new building on Wheelock Street. Most bets were that it would be a garage. Gas buggies were gaining wide acceptance. A stubborn few, however, insisted that it might be made into a movie palace.

As Bill told it, "I tore out to locate this Mr. Davison faster and with prac- tically as much gall as a man charging all hell with one bucket of water."

Mr. Davison did plan a garage on the site and none of Bill's blandishments worked. Profits, civic pride, the industry's bright future - all were ineffective. Bill found the answer though. Mr. Davison's son, Frank, was restless. The father was seeking a business that would settle him down in Hanover. Bill persuaded Frank and Frank in turn convinced his father that a movie theater could be his life's work. The proposed garage died aborning and the building became The Nugget.

Frank became the cashier and chose the name. His father picked the strictly utilitarian furnishings. Bill, the manager and piano player, had plugged for a plush establishment, but Mr. Davison knew his 1916-vintage student. The floors were bare concrete, the seats of wood and iron securely bolted to the floor and the walls of galvanized tin.

The Nugget was a howling success from the outset. The ads for the first showing in the fall of 1916 proclaimed "a powerful superfeature, 'The Alien,' with George Beban." It was, the Hanover Gazette said, "produced by Thomas H. Ince, dean of Montography. This production has been pronounced the greatest photoplay of the year. It comes to Hanover directly from the Astor Theatre, N. Y. City."

The Nugget also boasted of future programs: "Girl of Yesterday," with Mary Pickford; "Carmen," starring Geraldine Farrar; "The Iron Strain," with Dustin Farnum; "Best of Enemies," with Weber and Field, and "Fickle Fatty's Ball," starring Fatty Arbuckle.

There were three showings a day at the beginning. The afternoon matinee was a preview that provided considerable word-of-mouth advertising about the cinematic fare. The "first show" after dinner became by gradual custom the students' show. The "last show" was for townspeople, the faculty, guests at the Inn and anyone escorting a lady.

The latter was often quite dignified, old-timers recall. But the students' show. . . .

Let that famed trademark rooster appear and stretch his wings and the hall resounded to imitations of Chanticleer, sound track courtesy of the assembled students.

Bill Cunningham's most vivid memory of those days was "Tiger Rose," a movie called in the parlance of those days "a sizzler." The plot turned on the heroine's decision. She could save the hero's life by entering the villain's cabin unchaperoned. She approached the cabin and the audience cheered. Overcome with revulsion, she hesitated. "Stick, stick," the crowd implored. "You can't quit now." The heroine gathered her courage again (cheers); hesitated (groans), then walked in to her fate. She was rewarded with a thunderous "Wah-Hoo-Wah."

Of course movies don't end that way. The cavalry arrived in the nick of time and saved her.

Bill also recalled that in his twin roles of piano player and part owner of "The Mint" he was both victim and victimizer of the peanut throwers. Zack Jordan '20, varsity quarterback and Bill's roommate, and Tommy Thomson '20, captain of the track team, decided that a peanut concession outside The Nugget would be a moneymaker. A stand, dubbed "The Mint," was duly erected on the Casque & Gauntlet property adjoining the movies.

Business lagged, so the proprietors sought a stimulus. They had noticed that on one occasion one customer threw a peanut at a friend in an effort to get his attention. Others in the audience took up the practice and soon a fair number of goobers .were being thrown.

The enterprising peanut salesmen immediately saw a new outlet for their product. Several members of the ring were planted in the audience with a full supply of ammunition. As Bill walked down the aisle, prepared to play "The William Tell Overture" for the chase scenes and "Hearts and Flowers" for the more tender bits, his cohorts began peppering him with peanuts. He asked them as gentlemen to desist, then proceeded to the piano pit. En route another barrage descended and this time Bill, in high dudgeon, questioned their legitimacy and offered to fight them one at a time.

Well, you know the rest. Undergraduates took up peanut throwing in earnest and the merchandisers' enterprise flourished.

Cunningham & Co. then evolved a refinement. After the show the peanuts were painstakingly swept up, dusted off, sacked again and sold again the following night.

"Sometimes," wrote Bill, "a good, tough peanut would last as long as five or six weeks."

These were The Nugget's early years. In 1922 the Improvement Society took over the operation and things did improve. Movies were growing up in the '20s, or at least getting better technically. Clara Bow, the "It" girl, was a smash. Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell starred in "Seventh Heaven." Cecil B. DeMille made "King of Kings."

Then Al Jolson introduced talkies in "The Jazz Singer," and the need for locally produced sound effects was at least lessened.

Somewhere along the line the freshman-rush tradition developed. The frosh would gather and rush the tickettakers. Once inside they would plant themselves and defy dislodgement. The management would usually run the movie, happy to have tradition served for another year.

One alumnus of the late '30s remembers this aspect of freshman year well. A disgruntled upperclassman who bore a grudge against the theater and the ticket-takers organized a conspiratorial cell of freshmen to stage a special rush. From his room in College Hall overlooking The Nugget's entrance he planned his strategy to the finest detail. He timed the movements of the theater personnel, observed the habits of movie-goers and then briefed his charges. Two were to start a scuffle in the lobby. Others already inside were to open the doors for the conspirators when the ticket-takers moved in to break up the fight.

Word leaked out, however. The scufflers were quelched; the doors failed to open; the whole plot failed.

The then-freshman says that the upperclass mastermind left school shortly after that, if not a broken man at least a disspirited one.

During the '30s - when Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Shirley Temple, Will Rogers, et al. reigned - movies were a good entertainment buy and The Nugget continued to flourish. In 1938 the place was completely renovated. A lounge and balcony were added, the roof raised (permanently), the lobby was enlarged and new seats added.

World War ll's advent made the theater even more important. It provided the principal entertainment for thousands of servicemen stationed at the College.

The end of the Wheelock Street Nugget came suddenly and, appropriately, with a bang. Early on January 28, 1944, smoke began seeping through the roof. As the alarm was sounding, a terrific explosion blew the roof off the building and rocked the entire community. Only some projection equipment was saved.

Now, for the first time since 1916, Hanover was without a movie theater. In less than two months, though, the Improvement Society arranged with the College to rent Webster Hall for its showings.

The war ended in 1945, but the showings at Webster did not. Construction costs, material shortages and difficulties in finding a suitable new site kept Daniel Webster on as Hanover's No. 1 movie fan.

In addition, other questions had to be settled. The elder Davison had insisted on a "no-frills" theater. Should this policy be continued or should the society attempt to build a really firstrate facility?

Max Norton '19, associate treasurer of the College, who was on the Building Committee along with David C. Rennie, Gordon H. Gliddon, E. M. Cavaney and Prof. John B. Stearns '16, recalls some of the deliberations.

After weighing all known facts, Max says, we decided to go all-out to provide as fine a theater as Hanover could support. It was a calculated risk. "We felt, though, that good movies in beautiful surroundings would attract audiences and this has been borne out. Patrons seemed to appreciate this effort to give them first-class fare and there has been amazingly little of the vandalism that other theaters experience."

The new Nugget was the first-class facility the committee wanted. Its redbrick exterior harmonizes with the general architectural style of the town buildings, the lobby boasts large, historical murals painted by Bernard Chapman that depict early Hanover scenes, the seats are comfortable, and the projection equipment modern.

The new Nugget opened its doors in September 1951, just 35 years after the Wheelock Street flick, with "Cyrano de Bergerac" as the main feature. Since then it has continued in the old tradition as a student. refuge, a source of revenue for the Town and its good works and . . . well, an integral part of life on the Hanover Plain.

The modern Nugget on South Main Street has an elegance unknown to the old theater.

The original Wheelock Street Nugget after it was remodeled and a balcony added.

When the roof blew off in 1944 — from fire, not from undergraduate deviltry.