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STAGES OF ATHENS
Vaudeville theatre withstands the test oi time
By ADAM CARLSON
The Red & Black
The years have made their
mark on the Morton Theatre.
Stand onstage, look out into
the auditorium and you’ll see
what they’ve left:
None of the support posts
match; the flooring, now in its
100th year, is scarred and lightly
scared; and the 500 seats that All
the room are marked with bright
“O’s —as in Ohio Theatre, the
defunct venue they originally
called home.
There’s little trace left of the
sky blues and Chinese reds that
once spread around the walls.
Look up: the great gold ceil
ing is gold no longer.
The venue has lost none of its
intimacy, but most of its gran
deur.
Yet the years that have
passed through the theater
haven’t worn it down.
They've built it up.
"To this day we are the oldest
built, owned and operated
African-American vaudeville
house [existing] in America,”
said Lynn Green, theatre assis
tant for the Morton.
Its history is not neat nor lin
ear, with a purpose that has
changed more than half a dozen
times in the last century.
It has been a place of multi
tudes, a fact seemingly inherited
by its original owner, Monroe
“Pink” Morton, himself a man of
many things.
Bom the son of a slave
woman and a white man,
Morton, at his peak, owned 25
buildings and was considered
one of the richest black men in
the country.
For five years, he also worked
as Postmaster General for the
city.
“He was just really industri
ous. he was very talented, and
he just had a head for business
that, as you can see. was not
going to be ignored," Green said.
So when he built the Morton
Theatre in 1910, its construction
didn’t just inspire notice it
brought exclamation.
“The ‘Athens Herald’ called it
‘the largest building built, owned
and operated by a colored man
in all the world,”’ Green said.
The opening and first years of
operation brought similar cause
for surprise.
“The cool thing about the
Morton is when it opened it was
so remarkable, so sensational,
that in the seats behind the
black people, the white audienc
es would come,” said Calvin
Smith, a performer and
University alumnus who opened
the theater's revival season in
1993.
Early in its life, the theater
filled a valuable niche in the
Athens area.
“At the time, live entertain
ment was the only entertain
ment, so it was huge,” Green
said. “[Morton] got national tal
ent. This was no small potatoes.”
Duke Ellington performed at
the Morton Theatre, as did Ma
Rainey and Cab Calloway.
Recently it was even discov
ered Josephine Baker had
passed through, working for
some time as a dresser back
stage.
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“The cool thing about the
Morton is when it
opened it was so
remarkable, so
sensational, that in the
seats behind the black
people, the white
audiences would come."
Calvin Smith
University Alumnus, Performer in The
Morton’s 1993 Revival Season
ater in Athens that brought peo
ple of that renown to this com
munity, white or black,” said Jill
Jayne Read, former director of
cultural affairs for the county
and one of the architects behind
the movement to revive the
Morton in the late-’Bos. “So his
torically, it’s terribly important.”
Monroe Morton’s death in
1919 led to a change: both in
leadership, with his son taking
over, and in business.
What began with vaudeville
displays expanded, eventually
encompassing many things: the
building has been a movie the
ater, a cafe, housed doctors’
offices and a pharmacy.
Briefly, it was even a bur
lesque.
“But of course what made
them and the building unique
was that they were all owned
and operated by African-
Americans,” Green said.
The first black woman
licensed to practice medicine in
Georgia, Ida Mae Hiram, worked
out of the Morton; Atlanta Life,
one of the largest African-
American insurance companies
in the country, opened its first
satellite office there.
Together with Wilson's Soul
Food and the Manhattan Cafe,
the building formed the “Hot
Comer,” which served as a vital
downtown hub.
“This was literally the center
of African-American life in the
area,” Green said.
A prominent part of it, the
Morton provided its patrons a
rare service before the advent of
television: the magic of moving
pictures.
“In order to be entertained,
one still needed to dress-up and
head out to the ‘Hot Comer,’”
Smith said.
Then, disaster: a small fire
struck the projection booth in
1954.
The damage was minimal, but
the resulting visit from the fire
marshal created problems.
He discovered the building
had only one exit for its auditori
um, which was at least one too
few.
With two options add more
exits or shut it down the
Mortdn family chose the latter:
they bolted the doors to the
auditorium and the space
remained dark for nearly 40
years.
Dark, but not unused.
In the '7os, the theater was
re-discovered by Athenian bohe
mians who began using it as an
impromptu practice and gather
ing space.
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“[A]fter a while, people start
ed to say, ‘We should save it,’”
Green said.
This community sentiment
coincided nicely with the efforts
of the county government, which
had begun doing studies in 1976
to determine the exact number
of performance spaces it had.
A second study asked people
what they most wanted in the
community, and a third identi
fied all of the performing arts
organizations in Athens-Clarke
County.
From those three studies, a
need was identified for a medi
um-sized venue, with between
500 and 800 seats —a descrip
tion the Morton fit perfectly.
“One of the things we need
was a community performing
arts, a place where anyone as
large as the symphony or the
Classic City Band down t 0...
individuals could perform,” Read
said.
Throughout the 'Bos, cam
paigns were created to raise
funds and awareness in order to
save the space, organized pri-
marily by a group of citizens who
had formed the Morton Theatre
Company and purchased the
building from the bond company
who owned it.
Then, success:
The Morton Theatre was
included in the original SPLOST
referendum, which gave it $l.B
million for renovations provided
the Company turn the property
over to the county.
It did, under a mutual man
agement agreement still in effect
today, and repairs got underway.
The roof was fixed; chairs
were installed; the pigeons were
driven out.
And in 1993, the Morton
Theatre began its first season in
decades with a performance by
Calvin Smith.
Since then, it has been the
go-to location for a variety of
activity, an interesting echo of
its past history.
Lectures, dances, pageants
even the Opera have all at one
point called the Morton Theatre
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▲ Erected in 1910, Morton Theatre has played host to
some of music’s most prolific jazz legends, including
Duke Ellington, Ma Rainey and Cab Calloway.
home.
There’s been a production of
“Joseph and the Amazing
Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
John Berry has performed in
recent years, as has Ken Ford.
“We’re really only limited by
someone's imagination about
what can be here,” Green said.
And although, according to
Read, the theater has not been
operating at maximum capacity
since reopening 17 years ago
due in large part to the loss of a
long-term management plan she
helped develop its custodians
maintain the Morton continues
to serve a necessary purpose in
Classic City.
“It has really fostered a won
derful community of the arts
here, and it has grown bigger
than Athens,” Green said.
Now marking its centennial
anniversary, the theater will see
the return of Calvin Smith,
whose own connection to the
building extends beyond his past
performance.
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During its years in decline.
Smith acted as unofficial janitor,
using a key he acquired to enter
the theater and change out the
buckets the other under-the
radar visitors had positioned
beneath the roof.
His “A Night of 100 Stars.”
which explores the decades of
Southern black theater and the
Morton's place in it, brings the
years full-circle.
“100 stars are going to walk
onstage, and appear on celluloid
and appear in dialogue and
appear in spirit,” he said.
Those in the audience, with
their clear view of the remnants
of Monroe Morton’s original con
struction behind the stage the
old brickwork, the outlines of
past dressing rooms may feel
some the history of the place
around them.
More, maybe they’ll feel a lit
tle of its resilience.
“The Morton Theatre is not
done,” Green said. “It is abso
lutely not done.”
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