Watch a small town theater owner pack them in with the opening of Apollo 13 in 1995. See towns people from over 20 years ago. The Lorraine theatre is located about 100 miles South of Chicago in the small farm town of Hoopeston Ill . with a population of just over 6000. The theater opened in 1922. From October 1987 until May 2007 the theater was owned by Gregory Boardman. When Mr Boardman took over the theatre still used two carbon arc projectors and vacuum tube sound amplifiers that had been installed back in 1953 with the advent of Cinemascope. When Boardman took over, The Lorraine did not have a snack bar. It only had a coin operated soft drink machine and a popcorn machine. By the way, you were not allowed to take food or drink into the auditorium. During the years he owned it Mr Boardman put new life back into this old rundown single screen theatre. He added a new state of the art projection, new screen, and a HPS 4000 sound system installed by John Allen, designer of the HPS 4000 theatre sound system. A system better than Dolby! The 90's saw the advent of Digital Theater Sound. The Lorraine had all the latest equipment and could project any of the three 35mm digital sound formats. DTS, Dolby Digital, and Sony's 8 channel Digital system were all installed new. All this while the other single screen and multiplex theaters in the area still only offered mono sound. Many other improvements were also made to the theatre such a new reupholstered seats, carpeting, marquee restoration, snack bar, and many other building repairs and upgrades. The small town was just not supporting such a nice state of the art theater. Boardman wanted to be able to show first run movies, so he started to promote his theatre outside the area in larger towns such as near by Champagne and Danville. He advertised in their Newspapers, Radio and TV stations to attract an audience from a larger area. The Lorraine's film presentations were so good the theatre was building a great following and would attract folks from as far away as Chicago. The film presentation was that good, and in most cases even better than theatres in Los Angeles where the movies are made. Mr Boardman also went the next step and put on great movie premiere presentations such as the one presented in this video for the movie Apollo 13. Along with a giant W.W. II Carbon Arc Searchlight from Chicago to light the night sky They were also used by NASA to light the Apollo launches Boardman also had a live feed from NASA on a monitor in the Lobby tracking the latest Space Shuttle, in the snack bar he imported NASA Ice Cream used by astronauts, and much more . Mr Boardman promotions were so spectacular that he would often attract live TV and Radio news crews to cover his movie premieres which in turn spread the word about the great Lorraine theater. Mr Boardman loved his theater and was a real showman. You rarely see presentations like his even in Hollywood. Hoopeston was a very lucky town to have such a great movie theatre during Mr Boardman's ownership. The great promotions put the Lorraine and the town of Hoopeston on the map. In order to get first run movies faster, Mr Boardman built a second screen called The Lorraine II in September of 1998. All these years Boardman had managed this theater from his home in Los Angeles where we worked as a Technical Director for NBC. In 1997 he and his wife Sandy gave birth to twins. Citing the need to focus on his new family, in May of 2006 Boardman put the Lorraine theaters up for sale and sold the theatres in May of 2007. The Lorraine changed ownership twice since then. The new owners, lacking the showmanship, knowledge and promotion skills of Mr Boardman, the Lorraine theater, with it's fine presentations it was known for, slowly started to deteriorate back to just another small town theater with just average sound and picture. Attendance from the big cities slowly declined to a point where the Lorraine theaters finally closed in April of 2012. With the coming of Digital Projection, the owner also did not feel a new required $60K Digital Projection system for each theater would be worth the investment to continue operation. The theatre went into foreclosure. When the utilities were turned off by the Bank in May of 2013, the building has since fallen into great disrepair. Renovation of the building would now cost over $300,000. A local citizen group called "Save the Lorraine Foundation" was formed in 2013 in hopes to restore and bring the theater back to life as a multi purpose building to serve the community and also restore the Lorraine as a movie theatre..

• published: 11 Sep 2015
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