The Carolina and the Winston: A Tale of Two Downtown Theaters

For the first nine years of my life, the only indoor movie theaters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, were the Carolina, the Winston, and the Center. I never saw a movie at the Center. My dad said it was located in a “bad part of town,” though I have no idea precisely where that was. According to urban legend, the Center Theater had rats, which made it a pretty unappealing place to watch movies. I think Dad and my brother saw a revival of The Adventures of Robin Hood there in the late 1950s. Other than that, I know of no one who ever went to the Center.

The Carolina Theatre was a large, ornate theater located downtown. At one time, it was part of the ground floor of the Carolina Hotel, but the hotel was long out of business by the time I was old enough to go see movies. For most of its existence, the Carolina was the crème de la crème of Winston-Salem movie theaters. A sculpture of a woman, looking like a Greek goddess, protruded from the wall above the screen. She was flanked on either side by chariots. A humongous crystal chandelier formed the focal point of the lobby. The Carolina was the only theater in Winston-Salem to have a balcony, though I only sat there twice (during Flipper while attending YMCA Day Camp and with my sister during That Darn Cat!, probably because the theater was full).

The Carolina seemed to get most of the Disney films because it’s where I saw The Sword in the Stone, Those Calloways, and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones. It also ran “kiddie shows” with older movies and games on Saturday mornings and on weekdays in the summer. Briefly, it hosted weekend “midnight monster shows,” showing horror flicks while ushers in monster costumes ran up and down the aisles. I didn’t get to attend the monster shows and am sure I did my share of pouting.

Sadly, the owners of the Carolina let the theater run down during the early 1970s. They also painted the once-attractive lobby a hideous shade of lime green. During that period, the movies shown at the Carolina underwent a major change, too. Instead of Disney, it began to specialize in horror films, “blaxploitation” movies, and martial arts pictures. I still saw movies there with my sister and best friend Herb, such as Enter the Dragon, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, and Ssssssss.

During Terror in the Wax Museum (not one of Ray Milland’s better pics), Herb and I saw a patron singe a girl’s Afro with a lighter. At the same movie, a stranger ran up to Herb’s brother Johnny and told him: “There’s girl up there (in a row toward the front) that’s sweet on you.” The last time I can remember seeing a movie at the Carolina was when I was a senior in high school and convinced a group of friends to see Jimmy Wang Yu’s The Dragon Squad (this was during the kung fu movie craze of the mid-1970s.)

The Carolina was finally closed in the late 1970s or early 1980s, but its story has a happy ending. It was eventually sold, remodeled, and reopened as the Stevens Performing Arts Center, a venue for concerts and plays.

The Winston Theatre was located just a few blocks from the Carolina. It tended to show more adult fare; it’s where we saw Dr. Zhivago, Charade, The Great Escape, and Stagecoach (the remake.) However, it also showed family films. In fact, The Sound of Music played there for almost a year! It was an attractive theater with an aqua-blue interior, although the décor lacked the lavishness of the Carolina. It underwent minor remodeling in the early 1970s and became the first theater in town with Ultravision (a large slightly-curved screen).

The Winston's Ultravision screen.

Courtesy of my sister, I have very fond memories of the Winston. She worked there for a summer and, during that time, I saw every movie at the Winston for free! I would go with her when she left for work, watch the feature presentation a couple of times while she toiled at the concession stand, and then go home with her. It was a great deal and I saw two of my favorite films during that time: The Day of the Jackal and The Chinese Connection. In fact, I may never have become a Bruce Lee fan were it not for my big sister. When Bruce Lee’s first martial arts film, Fists of Fury, was released in the U.S., I snickered at the trailers because I knew him only as Kato from “The Green Hornet” TV series. But since I could see The Chinese Connection (his second martial arts pic) at the Winston for free, I did—and I loved it.

Unfortunately, as the suburbs of Winston-Salem expanded in the late 1970s, the Winston suffered a gradual decline and began to show second-run movies at a discounted price. My last visit was when some college friends and I were on spring break in 1979 and saw The Boys from Brazil (or rather The Bo s from Brazil…the “y” was missing on the marquee). Before we left for the movie, my father mentioned that couple of robberies had occurred recently downtown. That night, while we standing in line to get tickets, we heard the girl in the box office tell a patron: “We’ve been held up.” We looked at each other in shock—wow, my dad wasn’t kidding about those robberies! Later, we learned that that some employees had arrived late and caused some delays—that “held up” opening the box office on time.

The Winston Theatre in downtown Winston-Salem, NC.

I’m not sure when the Winston Theater closed, but the Hanes Mall Cinemas and other twin theaters (before the multiplexes) forced the closure of the largest movie theaters in Winston-Salem. There was no stopping the trend of building more screens with more movies (sometimes)—but the price was steep for those of us who got to experience the thrill of watching a film in a true movie palace.

(The photographs for this article are courtesy of the Forsyth County Public Library Photograph Collection. Additional historical photographs of Forsyth County, NC, can be viewed at http://www.digitalforsyth.org/.)