The Metropolitan Theatre
The Metropolitan Theatre was designed to be in the Louis XIV style, and it certainly was opulent. Mirrors, draperies, murals, and columns were meant to bring to mind the Palace of Versailles in France. An article published in The Boston Traveler on October 10, 1925, just a week before the grand opening, wrote that theater goers should pay special attention to the central mural in the auditorium "showing a lady where earrings, bracelets, necklace and anklets are set with real jewels. And they are real. The bill for that pretty conceit hovers around $10,000." This mural is known at "The Conception of Art and Music," and its 250 precious and semi-precious gems — topaz, moonstone, garnet, amethyst, turquoise, sapphire, and onyx — were believed to have been lost. However, they were rediscovered during the 2021 restoration of the mural. It can be seen directly over the very center of the stage's proscenium.
The Grand Lobby featured murals by Louis Amorosi, the Italian muralist who was known as the former official painter for the Vatican, and whose first work in the United States was at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Amorosi's work also shows up in the auditorium, fringing the inner dome. Below the Grand Lobby were a men's smoking room, a grand lounge paneled in carved walnut, and a ladies' parlor. These three rooms together could hold 2,000 people. The reason for such a large capacity in the lobby and lounges was there was a law that decreed "each playhouse must provide lobby space sufficient to accommodate the full seating capacity of the house. Under this legal regulation, the Metropolitan was compelled to possess 6,000 square feet of lobbies. In point of fact, its lobbies cover an area of 23,000 square feet." (Exhibitors Herald, Nov. 7, 1925, p. 73) The interior of the theatre's auditorium featured 11 murals by Edmond Philo Kellogg of Chicago.
In the first three days of operation, the Metropolitan Theatre had nearly 75,000 attendees. Final cost of building this movie palace topped $8 million (or over $144 million today). The initial cost to the attendee to see a show was $.35 in the morning until 1:00 p.m., $.50 in the afternoon until 6:00 p.m., $.65 for evenings (except for Saturdays, Sundays, and Holidays), and $.75 for Saturday evenings, Sundays, and Holidays (about $13.50 today). Six showings of the main feature were scheduled each day, with the first one starting at 10:45 a.m. and the last one at 11:00 p.m. When it was time to be seated in the auditorium, patrons would meet the Head Usher stationed at the main entrance who would indicate where they would be seated. Ushers from each section of the auditorium would indicate where vacant seats were located by a push-button system that was visible to the Head Usher. 80 ushers and other attendants made up the staff of the theatre, and they were advertised to have been trained with military precision. The auditorium had three levels of seating: orchestra, mezzanine (including the mezzanine boxes), and balcony.
Blackhall, Clapp & Whittemore, with George Nelson Meserve, were the architects. It was claimed to be the 3rd largest theatre in the world when it was built. It was said that one regular-sized theatre could fit within the Grand Lobby, two within the auditorium, and one more on the stage!
A show at the Metropolitan didn't just mean a movie. It encompassed a "feature photoplay, short screen novelties, organ music, orchestral music, and big and little stage presentations which go to make up the two-and-a-quarter-hour show which we give to Boston," said Jeff Lazarus, the communications director, in The Boston Traveler on November 6, 1925. He went on to say that this sheer variety of entertainment made it difficult to describe succinctly: "But what in the deuce I can say in one or two words which will tell people of the huge and varied ensemble which we have in this theatre is as yet beyond me, as it is beyond the ken of every other motion picture advertiser in America." There were further entertainments to be found throughout the building. Dancing was held nightly from the beginning, and in 1931 newspaper ads promoted the theatre's bridge lessons and ping-pong availability in the lounge.
A 55-piece orchestra led by Nathaniel W. Finston figured largely in the theatre's plans as a theatre that had everything. On opening night, October 17, 1925, the first number performed was the "1812 Overture." This was followed by a pair of singing banjoists performing a few numbers, then the Metropolitan Ensemble performed a "stage scenic" of "The Life of Chopin" which was a combination of music, tableau, and film. Arthur J. Martel was next on the Skinner organ, the "largest organ in the country" which was a two-console organ costing $100,000 (a little over $1,800,000 today) to make and install. Then was the John Murray Anderson show of "The Melting Pot," consisting of three scenes and 20 performers. Finally, there was the feature presentation, the movie The King on Main Street. This was followed by a new comedy, news reels, and short screen subjects.
The Boston Evening American ran a contest to select a "beautiful girl" to fill the role of "Directorette" at the theatre. The chosen winner would receive $500 and a costume designed by a famous costumer. She would then appear daily in the main foyer to greet attendees and charm them with her beauty and grace. Nina Wolffe won the job, and was to be positioned under a spotlight on the first landing of the grand staircase.
The Music
The Organ
"The largest organ in the country" was how the organ installed in the theater was advertised. Built as its opus 545 by the Skinner Organ Company of Dorchester for the theater, it boasted over 3,000 pipes, the largest of which was 32 feet long. It also had two playing consoles, which meant that two organists could perform on the organ simultaneously. The first two musicians to perform on the organ were Arthur J. Martel and Lloyd D. Del Castillo. Arthur Martel studied organ and piano at the Boston Conservatory, and was already a well-known organist in Boston by the time he accepted the position at the Metropolitan Theatre. So valuable a performer was he that his former theatrical employer insured him for $500,000 against illness, accident, or other cause that might prevent him from fulfilling his contract. Del Castillo went on to be organist and program director of radio station WEEI until 1943, when he moved to Los Angeles.
Regrettably, this marvel of a musical instrument didn't stay in the theater for very long. In 1930, it was sold and removed to the auditorium of the Heinz Company in Pittsburgh. A smaller organ from the Wurlitzer Company was installed in its place. This organ now resides in Groton, Massachusetts, at the Shanklin Center, where it has been restored to its former glory and can be heard accompanying silent films. When the organ was first installed at the Metropolitan Theatre in April of 1930, the theater brought in Jesse Crawford from the New York Paramount Theatre for a one-week engagement. He would perform a “by request” concert on Mondays and Tuesdays, where audience members could mail in their requests to be performed at the theater at 11:00 p.m. Crawford also performed a Sunday afternoon concert from 3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
The Orchestra and Its Music
The orchestra started out as a 55-piece ensemble, and would perform on a platform on the stage that not only could be raised and lowered, but could also be moved from the front of the stage to the rear. The musical director and the organ also had their own lift.
Silent films shown during the opening years after The Metropolitan Theatre opened greatly differed from the films of today in one specific way: silent films offered little to no synchronized soundtrack suggestions, which left it up to the musicians in a particular venue to create a live soundtrack of instrumental music to accompany the film. Although large theatres like the Metropolitan had their own orchestras, smaller venues sometimes had as little as one person improvising the soundtrack on organ or piano to accompany a film; thus, the accompanying musical experience greatly differed depending on the resources and the venue of any particular theatre. And, unlike films of today where one, two, or a team of composers may be tasked with creating a newly-composed score for a film, accompanying music for silent films would often be selected by Hollywood studios from a plethora of popular pieces from the classical repertory (for instance, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker), but arranged in reduced versions for a smaller amount of musicians capable of fitting in an orchestra pits of movie houses. These arrangements for smaller forces of musicians are now known as “theatre orchestra” arrangements. In fact, “photoplay music,” an entirely new type of incidental music to accompany specific moods in scenes of the movies were composed and published. These short pieces focused on specific moods that would offer a compliment to the scene at hand — such as mysterious, agitated, melancholic, devastation, storms, and many, many other moods — became so commonly published that Hollywood studios would create a “cue sheet,” or a list of suggested pieces to accompany scenes from commercially-printed photoplay works.
Much photoplay music was recycled from movie to movie, although some arrangements were specifically created for a handful of films. In addition to silent films — and created from a mixture of photoplay music and specifically-created in-house arrangements — the Metropolitan Theatre Orchestra was also responsible for accompanying the Daily News — held before or after a film — outlining the daily news happenings of any day as well as any other shorts or small unique performances that might accompany a particular evening. It was up to the conductor or music director to select appropriate music from the orchestra’s library to accompany these additional presentations. Because the pieces from the library were reused so many times in various movies and newsreels, it is impossible to know which pieces in the collection were used to accompany specific films. It was a library that evolved over time to meet the needs of a developing artform.
Many thanks to Jared Rex, Curator of Music in the Boston Public Library's Special Collections Department, for sharing these items from the Metropolitan Theatre's music library (now housed in the BPL's Special Collections Department) and providing some information on how music was used at the theatre!
The Directors
Nathaniel Finston was brought in as the first musical director for the theatre. He was already known to Boston as a member of the Boston Grand Opera Company where he played violin, and he brought with him directorial experience from theaters in New York and Chicago. He personally selected the 55 members that made up the orchestra. The theatre also had a second, smaller orchestra of twelve pieces that would perform in the grand lobby in the afternoon and evening. Besides conducting the orchestras, he also arranged compositions for the groups to perform. He stayed with the Metropolitan Theatre until he left in 1927 to be the general music director of the Publix Theatres collection, of which the Metropolitan Theatre was one. By 1929, he had moved up once again and became the head of the music department at Paramount Studios in California.
Joseph Klein was hired in 1925 as the associate musical director under Nathaniel Finston, and stayed on through 1927. During his tenure with the ensemble, he believed that the radio and motion pictures were responsible for "popularizing the compositions of well-known musical geniuses," as he was quoted as saying in the Boston Advertiser on October 10, 1926. Not for nothing was the orchestra he headed heard by both movie-goers at the theatre itself but also broadcast on radio station WNAC each week.
Arthur Geissler came in around 1926 and stayed through 1931. He had been the music director at the Fenway Theatre when Nathaniel Finston happened to take in a show there and see him at work and liked what he saw. He was taken on as the assistant director to Joseph Klein, and would direct the "supper" shows and take over when Klein was unable to conduct. He left for Texas for a while to take on a more senior role at another theatre, but came back to the Metropolitan Theatre to replace Klein, who had been moved to the Midwest. Geissler's innovation at the theatre was to start a series of Sunday afternoon Salon concerts. These presented chamber music and would often feature soloists that had national reputations. He also started the Tuesday evening one-hour broadcasts on WBET, where each week the music would be all by one composer.
Dave Rubinoff (violinist, composer, and conductor) had stints as a guest conductor in 1929 and 1930, as did Hyman Fine of the Augmented Concert Orchestra at the Capital Theatre in Allston (he later became the Metropolitan Theatre's chief executive in 1933). Guy Harrison won the position of musical director in May of 1929. While in Boston, he also was the musical director of the People's Symphony.
In 1931, there were several guest conductors, among them Charles Hector of the Yankee Network Orchestra (a radio ensemble), Lew Conrad (known locally as a vocalist and eventually became the leader of the Coconut Grove Orchestra), Henry Kalis (director of the orchestra at the Capital Theatre), and Fabien Sevitsky. Born Fabien Koussevitsky, he was the nephew of Serge Koussevitsky and had shortened his surname in order to differentiate himself from his famous uncle. The two men were both double bass players and conductors. He was the conductor of the Boston People’s Orchestra. He resigned as conductor of the People’s Orchestra at the end of the 1935-1936 season. “Sevitsky came to Boston in 1930 as conductor of the People’s Symphony [note: didn’t actually do this until 1933] and Metropolitan Theatre Orchestras. While here he founded and conducted two of the first “young American” musical groups, the Young Musicians Orchestra and the Sevitzky Vocal Ensembles. He left Boston in 1936 for a position of conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony” (Boston Globe, Aug. 4, 1951). By the time Sevitsky started as a guest conductor, the Metropolitan Grand Orchestra as it was known was reduced in size to 40 musicians. Was so popular as a guest conductor that the theatre took him on full-time as the music director. "I have no favorites in music - there is only good music and bad music" (Boston Post, April 6, 1932).
The Young Musicians Orchestra & Vocal Ensemble were founded in 1932. There were 130 musicians in the orchestra and 75 in the vocal ensemble, with the ages of participants ranging from 16-18. The orchestra was integrated as evident by the inclusion of the Worthy sisters: Ruth (cello) and Helen (violin). The two of them along with their brother William (piano) performed around the city while in high school at Boston Latin School. The Worthys were a prominent Black family in Boston, active both socially and politically.
Interested in learning more about the movie theatres of old, not to mention seeing some pictures of these amazing spaces? Here is a selection of books from both the library's research collection (in-library use only) and circulating collections.
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