Saratoga News

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

Spare the four-letter J-word for these relics

Visitors at our house usually are polite enough not to use the four-letter J-word in referring to one particular collection of artifacts, but the strain on them is obvious.

The subject collection consists of old 35-millimeter movie projectors and parts thereof, for which I can offer no more justification than that some of these items have historical relevance to Saratoga. That, however, wasn't my motivation in acquiring them.

In my childhood scheme of things, movie projectors were almost a fetish. Partly it was because of their theater-generated mystique. Audiences were aware only of a series of wall openings high at the rear of the auditorium, of muted sounds having to do with the changing of reels, and of the movements of a shadowy figure tending what had to be marvelous machines. Even up close, projectors had a certain magic about them. Anything that could transform almost-microscopic images on a strip of celluloid into moving, larger-than-life counterparts on a screen was quite a device. But about that historical angle.

Saratoga's first movie theater was the Saratoga Foothill Clubhouse. The 1915 Julia Morgan-designed building lent itself admirably to this use, even though that wasn't its intended purpose. In 1916, Saratogans were asked to contribute to the purchase of a movie projector, which would make unnecessary the streetcar ride to San Jose for cinematic entertainment. The projector acquired was a Power's Cameragraph, a formidable-appearing apparatus some 6 feet high, hand-cranked and with a carbon-arc lamp that required continual adjustment by the projectionist.

The late Arch Brolly, who grew up in Saratoga and later was in on the ground floor of television development, recalled the times when, as a high school student, he was hired to crank the film through the projector, which was set up in the fireplace room and aimed at a screen in the alcove opposite.

Eventually, the projector wound up at the Saratoga Grammar School on Oak Street, but, to my knowledge, was never used there, even though the school did have a sheet-metal-lined projection room at the rear of the auditorium, now the media center. In time, the projector was relegated, in pieces, to the basement as just so much junk. (There's that word.)

When, in the fall of 1937, the year of my graduation from the school, I asked the principal if I could have those pieces, she was only too happy to see them go. There were many missing parts, and there was no way I could have restored that projector.

But I assembled what was left and fantasized about what it must have been as an operating machine. My brother, who was of a scientific bent, did get the arc light to work. After the outbreak of World War II, I took most of the pieces to the metal scrap drive but kept the arc light assembly and the upper reel case, which I still have.

The next movie machine, or maybe the first that was operational, at Saratoga School was a gift from the Walter Duesenberg family, about 1929 or 1930. This was a 35-millimeter Holmes projector, which, unlike the Cameragraph, was portable and could be used outside the projection booth. Instead of an arc lamp, it had a 1,000-watt incandescent bulb, which made things a lot easier for the projectionist. The machine was used not only for educational films but also for weekly movies open to the public, sponsored, I think, by the PTA.

I don't know what became of that projector. When the school was beefed up to meet earthquake-resistant requirements around 1970, the projection room was eliminated. I inquired after the machine at the time, but no one remembered having seen it.

However, when I found the exact kind of Holmes projector in a Los Gatos antique shop in the early '70s, I knew I had to have it, even if it meant giving up an early phonograph and small printing press in trade. That machine no doubt will never show another film, but today it peers from a projection-room aperture into the room my wife and I call the Great Hall. Spare the J-word, this is a relic.

In a future Stereopticon article, I will describe Saratoga's real movie theater and the destiny of one of its projectors.

[ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ]