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• Artcraft Theatre

In the lobby, teens pose with a cutout of actor James Dean, who grew up in Fairmount, Ind., and made three classic films, "East of Eden," "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Giant." (Rob Goebel / Indianapolis Star)

Neon lights illuminate the Artcraft Theatre lobby in Franklin. The lights were installed as part of a late-1940s renovation. (Rob Goebel / Indianapolis Star)

Vern Johnson staffs the box office, selling tickets for "Grease." Like all theater personnel except the projectionist, he is a volunteer. (Rob Goebel /Indianapolis Star)

Like the Johnson County Courthouse in the background, the Artcraft Theatre is a longtime landmark in Franklin. It gradually is being restored. (Rob Goebel / Indianapolis Star)

Spencer Tracy's craggy, monochrome visage harrumphs with annoyance at an impossibly young Elizabeth Taylor. Several dozen people chitter appreciatively with laughter at Franklin's Artcraft Theatre.

Somewhere in the back of the cavernous auditorium, behind the mega-sized movie posters and a handful of leather couches, a bell chimes softly: It's time to switch reels on 1950's "Father of the Bride."

It's a tricky maneuver that hasn't gotten any easier since oily-fingered projectionists started doing it in the heyday of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. The projectionist at the Artcraft waits patiently as one 35 mm projector unspools the last of its celluloid thread, the next reel sitting ready to go on its mechanical twin a few feet away. The bell warns the projectionist to watch for cue marks in the upper-right corner of the screen.

At just the right moment, a switch is thrown and one projector starts up while the other begins to die down. A powerful bulb flares to life while another extinguishes, and the sound pickup switches channels. The next reel is off and running, chattering away noisily at 24 frames per second, Tracy's discomfiture at his soon-to-be-wed daughter's antics uninterrupted.

Like an Olympic race in which runners gracefully hand off the baton, the cinematic torch has been passed.

And at the Artcraft Theatre, a 1920s movie palace that sits in the heart of Franklin, new generations flock to rediscover a legacy on film.

"If you talk to anybody who's lived here for any period of time, they have memories from the Artcraft Theatre," said Tricia Bechman, executive director of the Franklin Chamber of Commerce, who often can be glimpsed in the box office, selling old-fashioned roll tickets.

"It's a throwback. It doesn't matter how old you are, you feel like a kid again."

In an age of corporate chains of multiplexes splashing the newest movies on screen every week, the Artcraft thrives by playing old movies -- and brings out audiences in astonishing numbers. Several hundred people typically buy tickets on alternate weekends, paying $5 a head to see films that they could easily rent on DVD.

A showing of "Grease" in late June brought more than 500 patrons to the Artcraft. "A lot of places in small towns didn't sell 500 tickets to 'Wall.E,'." said Larry Thomas, a Cincinnati film booking agent, referring to the popular animated film released the same weekend.

Thomas, who books films for the Artcraft and a number of other independent cinemas, attributes the Franklin venue's success to two things: nostalgia for old films and the showmanship of the theater's owners. Since 2004, the Artcraft has been owned by Franklin Heritage, a group dedicated to restoring old houses around town.

Its bi-weekly screenings are exercises in old-fashioned, unabashedly hokey nostalgia. People dress up in costumes reflecting characters in the movies. There was a bride, flower girl and harpist at "Father of the Bride."

Before the show, there's a live warm-up called Short Attention Span Theater, complete with prizes and trivia. At "A Christmas Story," a perennial holiday sellout, they give out jars of Ovaltine and decoder rings. "The Star-Spangled Banner" plays before the.movie, and everyone is expected to stand up and sing.

"Those people over there work their butts off and sell sponsorships and make it a special event and get the community involved and have groups come in. They just make it a collective experience," Thomas said.

The small army of workers staffing the theater for every show is made more surprising by the fact that, like Bechman, nearly all of them are volunteers. Only the projectionist gets paid.

Rob Shilts, executive director of Franklin Heritage, said the group uses ticket proceeds for the ongoing renovation of the theater. Its goal is to take the Artcraft back to its heyday of the 1940s.

The group has received several grants, including $50,000 in April from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, to help fix the leaky front facade.

"It's their theater. It's this community's theater. (Volunteering) is the way they can support it," Shilts said. "If we had to pay for staffing, the restoration process would take so much longer. Here, they know all the money that comes in is going back into the theater."

Franklin Heritage members expect to spend $2.5 million all told before they're through. The exterior and crumbling roof that forced the theater's temporary closure in 2001 are fixed, and now the group is turning its attention toward making the inside shine.

Vaudeville roots

The Artcraft is every inch the throwback. Built in 1922 as a vaudeville stage and silent-movie theater, it has a huge half-oval marquee out front and a ton of.neon lighting in the lobby.

Inside the 600-seat theater, hot summer air is banished by the swamp cooler in the basement, an early form of air conditioning that uses a water well and huge turbine. In back rooms and hidden corners, Shilts and his crew have found mountains of movie posters, old furniture and other artifacts.

"They never threw away anything. They just covered it up and added more layers. What we're doing is peeling back the layers of history."

Among those often seen in costume before shows is Jack Wood, 72, a longtime volunteer who's been called to dress up as anything from a monster to father of the bride. Wood has spent most of his life in Franklin, and his memories of the Artcraft are long.

"I used to go when I was a kid back in the '40s. My favorites were the Westerns: Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy," Wood said. "And they had the Owl Show, late-night movies that went until 2 in the morning."

James Bingham, 78, started working at the Artcraft in 1943 as an usher, eventually moving up to doorman, member of the maintenance crew and assistant manager. His brother Willard was also an usher, and uncle Gleeson Bingham was the projectionist. James worked there until he entered the Army in 1952 to serve in Korea.

"I met a lot of wonderful people from Franklin there over the years and became friends with a lot of them. It was the center of town," said Bingham, who praised the ongoing restoration effort:

"It looks great. They keep at it, it's going to be just like it was back in the 1940s."

Others who worked at the theater included projectionist Merrill Hoover, Irene Petro -- aka "The Popcorn Lady" -- and husband/wife management team Bill and Grace Handley, who ran it for longtime owner Trueman Rembusch.

In the theater's early days, it was used for community plays and graduation ceremonies for Franklin College and area high schools, since it was the only venue big enough. Today it occasionally is used for musical performances, and Shilts hopes to bring back more live entertainment to recapture the Artcraft's vaudeville roots.

Generations of area teens had their first courting experiences at the Artcraft, and an untold number of first kisses were bathed in its flickering lights.

One of the more enduring romances, but with a less than auspicious start, was Flossie and Dillard Decker.

They had their first date at the Artcraft in 1947. Dillard, 84, doesn't remember which movie it was -- mostly because he.fell asleep during the show, causing Flossie to leave in a huff.

"I worked nights then, so it was kind of hard to stay awake," Dillard said.

After waking up and realizing his date was gone, Dillard searched around town frantically for her. He did eventually find Flossie, now 78, and there were many more dates at the Artcraft. The Deckers celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in April.

Picking the classics

The Franklin Heritage board selects movies up to a year in advance, influenced by suggestions from patrons. They range from Hollywood's Golden Age up to "new classics" at least 10 years old.

Sometimes movies aren't available in a 35 mm film print, or there's only a single print in existence. That's the main reason the Artcraft uses the old-fashioned two-projector method, since modern platter systems require the movie to be spliced.

They occasionally resort to DVD projection, but Shilts estimated they've done that only once in the past year.

In Franklin, old movies keep reeling at the Artcraft Theatre.

Artcraft Theatre

What: Historic theater plays old movies every two weeks.

Location: 57 N. Main St., Franklin.

Tickets: $5; $4 seniors, students and military; $3 children 12 and younger.

Info: (317) 736-6823, or visit www.historicartcrafttheatre.org.

Upcoming shows: "Grand Prix," 2 and 7:30 p.m. Aug. 8 and 7:30 p.m. Aug. 9; "The Goonies," 2 and 7:30 p.m. Aug. 22-23; "Rudy," 2 and 7:30 p.m. Aug. 29-30; "The Magnificent Seven," 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sept. 5 and 7:30 p.m. Sept. 6.