Rob Dippel has been managing director of Hogansville’s historic Royal Theater for just six months, but already he’s met dozens of community members with memories to share. Everyone, it seems, has a Royal story to tell.
Oh, what stories!
Hogansville native Dennis Sims says his father, Jesse Sims, helped install seats when the theater was built in 1937. “He was 17 and really skinny, so he could squeeze between the seats to get the concrete dust out of the holes.”
Sims and his wife Brenda had their first date at the Royal Theater in 1966. Neither remembers what the movie was, but they do remember something important.
‘We sat on the back row and got our first kiss,” Brenda Sims said. “I was 14, and he was 16.”
Now married for 54 years, the couple attended a recent “sneak peek” at the Royal, slipped into a` corner and kissed again.
Retired nurse Wanda Lowe, who grew up outside of Hogansville, remembers the “big treat” of going to town to see a Saturday double feature, often taking her younger siblings along.
‘You could buy a Charm sucker for a nickel, and it would last all day,” Lowe said.
Moviegoers from the 60s and 70s remember being “scared to death” by a horror film.
Patricia Bryan Ellis recalls seeing Psycho and “jumping out of my seat” when someone tapped her on the shoulder.
‘The Blob got me,” said Marie Hines. “I could almost feel it oozing under the seats and down the aisles.”
Even Hogansville City Manager Lisa Kelly has a Royal story to tell.
“My great uncle once ran the projection room,” she said, “and my mother had her first piano recital on that stage.”
Now, after a multi-year, $3.2 million restoration, the Royal Theater is ready to make new memories. After a soft opening in late October and a reopening gala on Nov. 9, the landmark movie house will reopen for business on Nov. 16. The first movie will be Jaws, believed to be the last movie shown before the Royal ceased operations as a theater in 1980.
“It fills me with so much pride, I can hardly think about it without tears,” Kelly said. “People who grew up here are so excited. I’m happy we could do this before that generation is fully gone.”
Just thinking about the reopening gives her goosebumps, Lowe said.
“I was driving by as they were putting the sign back up. I got so excited I stopped in the middle of the street to make a picture to send to my siblings.”
Nostalgic feelings are strong, but Hogansville leaders say the restoration of the Royal is about more than honoring the past. It’s about enhancing the city’s future, as well.
“I believe that the Royal Theater coming back to life is going to play a significant role in our community in the next season of life. The theater will be a multifaceted asset for our community,” said Hogansville Mayor Jake Ayers.
“It’s going to be an economic driver and our new claim to fame,” Kelly added.
The theater was built by O.C. Lam, a movie business pioneer whose brother C.O. Lam was superintendent of Troup County Schools. The Atlanta architectural firm of Tucker and Howell designed the theater in the sleekly elegant Art Deco style. With its clean lines and distinctive ziggurat, the Royal has been described as “an architectural treasure.” The building was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.
In the early 1980s, the then-vacant and seriously deteriorating theater was donated to the City of Hogansville and remodeled as a city hall. The adapted building was not perfect, but it filled a need from 1984 until 2021, when city offices moved into the former PNC Bank building at 111 High Street.
The theater restoration officially began in 2022, but the hopes for it go back decades. At various times in its history, the Royal’s very survival was in doubt.
“It’s a story told across the country,” Dippel said. “So many great old theaters were lost or almost lost. The people of Hogansville are extremely fortunate.”
Funded entirely by a series of gifts, grants and community fundraisers, the Royal’s revival has had more twists and turns than a Saturday matinee. Bringing the almost 90-year-old building up to current codes and into safe, modern condition was a slow, difficult and expensive task. Among the challenges: roof replacement, structural stabilization, accessibility, reconstruction of interior elements, integration of building systems, including HVAC, electrical, plumbing, sound systems, security, sprinkler, and lighting systems.
Great care was taken to re-create the distinctive look of the interior. Manager Kelly credits Lynne Miller, Hogansville’s community development director, with securing the bulk of the funding for the project, which will operate as a property of the City of Hogansville.
“Lynne is an amazing grant writer. She pursued all kinds of grants and got almost all of them,” Kelly said.
Miller is still pursuing grants for other finishing touches, including the dramatic, needle-like spire that topped the original building.
A total of $750,000 in designated funding from a previous SPLOST was used to leverage the array of grants, including from the USDA Rural Development, the Georgia DNR Historic Preservation Division, Georgia Council for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration. Fox Gives, a philanthropic arm of Atlanta’s Fox Theater, gave three separate grants totaling more than $150,000. The Callaway Foundation made a generous gift, as did John and Glenda Jones.
“The only local tax money is from the previous SPLOST,” Kelly said.
The restored theater has the capability of hosting movies, live performances and “whatever other types of events we can come up with,”Dippel said. With a seating capacity of 511, including ground floor, loge and upper balcony, The Royal also will serve as a performing venue for schools in the Callaway zone.
As often happens with historic preservation projects like The Royal, discoveries made along the way highlighted the history that could very well have been lost.
When a representative from the seating company met with city officials, for example, he was astonished that a large number of seats were still available from when the theater was open. He said the only other place he’d seen that particular style was in the company’s museum.
“We learned that the sides and backs of our seats were manufactured from leftover metal from World War II,” Dippel said. “Like many factories across the country, the company had converted to making machine guns and tanks in support of the war effort. After the war ended, they went back to making seats and used the leftover metal.”
Soon visitors to the Royal will find 300 seats that have been refurbished, reupholstered, and reconditioned. The remaining seats are new, but made to match the historic seating.
“Guns into plowshares,” Dippel observed. “It’s stories like these that could have been lost forever that makes this project so special.”
Getting the theater restored is one thing; keeping it will be another. The first step was hiring Dippel, a Wisconsin native with decades of experience managing historic theaters. A former board member of the League of Historic American Theaters, Dippel was lured out of retirement by the chance to help relaunch the Royal.
In addition to helping guide the restoration, Dippel has been developing programming. The plan is to show classic movies on most weekends and at least one live performance each month.
“This is going to be the community’s theater,” Dippel said. “My goal is to offer something that appeals to all people. We will have a wide variety of shows.”
Early offerings include a Dec. 7 showing of the legendary film “White Christmas,” along with an audience singalong. On Dec. 14, a live performance dubbed Home for the Holidays will feature Peabo Bryson, Ruben Studdard and Haley Reinhart.
The goal of being “the community’s theater,” even extends to the snack bar. The theater Facebook page conducted a poll to find what candy people wanted sold. Whoppers was the number one choice, followed by Raisinets and Reese’s Pieces.
Dippel and city leaders have also worked to mobilize community support, including a cadre of volunteers whose first assignment was to conduct “sneak peeks” during the recent Hummingbird Festival. A membership plan offers several tiers of support, including “gold level” members known as the 1937 Club.
“Our members will be the rock upon which the future of The Royal will stand,” Dippel said.
Whether all the effort and entertainment options will attract enough activity to sustain the theater remains to be seen, but organizers are optimistic.
“My hope is that the theater will play a major role in bringing a lot of new people to our community as we curate different events and performances,” said Mayor Ayres. “But I also hope it becomes a great place for our local community as we bring back the joys of movies and possibly local theater to the stage. I hope when my kids are older they have vivid memories of seeing movies and watching plays in the Royal Theater as it becomes yet again a huge part of our history.”
Dippel sees the venture as “huge” for the community.
“It’s too easy to gloss over what this {restoration} means. Look beyond that and see the service this building has been to the community. It’s more than preserving bricks, mortar and wood. It’s the collective experience. Now we’ve gone full circle, back to the beginning.”
Now, the curtain rises again.