by Larry Kardish We don’t yet know what film will reopen the restored Crandell in October but we do know what was the first to play in our beloved theater when it opened on December 25, 1926: Michael Strogoff, a mission-impossible, action-packed epic that at two-and-a-half hours is virtually as long as Tom Cruise’s latest adventure. Strogoff, a young soldier and the tsar’s “courier,” travels incognito across Russia and into far Siberia with a secret message to prevent an alliance between invading Mongol hordes and a traitorous provincial governor. Along the way he is mauled by a bear, fights many battles, is twice captured, tortured, perhaps blinded, and finds love. Based on Jules Verne’s immensely popular 1876 novel of the same name, it has been made into at least seven movies and two television series. But the version that inaugurated…

Few people today may remember a time when the Crandell offered more than free popcorn to its members. But Chatham native Mace Sawyer heard all the stories – and still has the sets of dinnerware her grandparents, Edith and George Rochester, received in the 1930s and 40s. “I remember my grandmother saying they got the dishes by going to the movies,” she says. She’s donating them to the Crandell for posterity. Mace and her late husband, Dwight, who owned Chatham Auto Body Repair for years (now owned by their son) always collected objects “that came from Chatham’s history. I’m giving these dishes back so everyone can see them. Otherwise they will be in a cabinet, where no one can. I want to keep the memories of Chatham alive.” Chathamite Dale Shannon recalls that Tony Quirino Sr. revived the Dish Giveaway…

“Walter S. Crandell, of New York and Chatham, says that while it is not an absolute certainty he will erect a theater, store, and office building on the vacant lots on the property known as the Crandell homestead on Main Street, it is his intention to do so if possible.” So reported the Chatham Courier on March 19, 1925, the first official mention of the Crandell Theatre to come. The vacant lot was once the home of Crandell’s grandfather Solomon, one of Chatham’s earliest settlers who built the village’s first general store. Silent “photoplays” had been screening in Chatham since 1907. Cady’s Hall, the long brick building on Main Street that now houses Bimi’s and Pookstyle, showed these early moving picture shorts on emerging projectors. Beginning as an opera house and alternately known as Allen’s Theatre, Cady’s continued to host…