 and Streeter and the host today for this episode. And today we're gonna be talking about the rebirth of the State Theater. And we have two guests today, David Wilkinson, to my far right, and Jeff Levich. David, let's start with you. If you could tell us about the history of the theater and you're a historian, you must have taken quite an interest in doing this project. Yeah, Steve, I guess my interest in the State Theater goes back to probably around 2005, I'm thinking. Actually, probably a little bit earlier than that. In 2003, I'd published a book by the Yolo County Historical Society called Crafting a Valley Jewel, The Architects and Builders of Woodland. And it was during this book project that I came across historical photos of the State Theater. And I did a profile on the architect, William B. David. And I came across historic photos taken by Paul W. Hollings had around the time the theater had opened in 1937. And these beautiful photos had showed what the theater looked like, of course, which was entirely different than what it looked like in 2005. The beautiful marquee and tower had been stripped off of it in the 60s when the main street was widened. So I became aware of it then. And then over time, I kind of became obsessed with, gee, wouldn't it be wonderful for the community to restore that facade and marquee? It would be a beacon on main street. So that kind of led me into the second book project. Again, published by the Yolo County Historical Society, Hollywood Comes to Woodland. And I collaborated with Paul Hollingshead's son, Bill Hollingshead, who grew up in Woodland. And Bill and I collaborated. There's lots of historic photos in that particular book. Of the state theater. The impetus there was to inspire the community to restore the state theater by delving back into all the amazing theater history in Woodland going back over a century to the earliest days of cinema with the Nickelodeon. So that's really how all this got started. Well, there was an effort by people that wanted to preserve the theater, I believe in 2005 or so, the wrecking ball was imminent. And some local folks like you came forward and said, let's keep the theater. And the Woodland Opera House was on the table at the same time. Well, the state theater in 2005 was still operating barely. It was being leased out to a gentleman who did a wonderful job operating it with three screens, which was a very tough thing to do. The state theater had been multiplexed in the 70s by the owner, Richard Mann. But the main auditorium had never been broken up, which was really crucial. So the state theater ran continuously from 1937 all the way to 2010. So I actually started talking up, restoring the marquee and the facade with the theater operator. Of course, that was an expensive proposition. The owner of the building, Richard Mann, who Jeff and I actually dedicated the film to. Richard was older, he really didn't wanna put a lot of money into the building. He was very open to saving the building if a new owner would come along and take it off his hands, so to speak. Jeff, let's give you some time to tell us about the documentary filmmaking process and all the interviews and pictures you sorted through. We interviewed around 15 or 16 people. Woodland politicians from the city council, Richard Mann, who was the owner of the theater. Dave Corkle, who from Cinema West was the new developer for the theater. And as well as people that attended the theater back in the day and worked in the theater. So it was quite interesting, a broad scope of interviews. The process was to take their stories and weave our own story together from the interviews. And it was a very timely, intense process. And there was so much good information, so many stories, each interview could be its own separate story. But we took these pieces and we call them sound bites and weave the story and then we're able to go back and get visuals to compliment what's being set on the screen. It was a great project, fun to do. And they understand there will be an opportunity to, Davis Media Access will be allowed to see it. Yes, yeah, we provided a copy for them for you to view. Yeah, it'd be wonderful. David, we have some pictures. Maybe you'd like to walk us through those and tell a little about the history of the theater going back to 1937, much different than it was now. And later we have one of the renderings, what it looks like currently. Yeah, one of the interesting things about the state theater is we had probably almost 20 theaters downtown that preceded the state theater, going back all the way to around 1908. The state theater was the first movie theater in downtown Woodland that was built from scratch. All the other movie theaters or Nickelodeons had been remodeled historic buildings. But the state theater was developed by the Redwood Theater Group, who were headquartered up in Eureka, California, along the Redwood Highway. And they were working with a talented architect at the time, William B. David. David, interestingly, had worked for William Randolph-Hurst designing movie sets, decorating his mansion in San Simeon, and in fact, Bill David produced probably a dozen B movies in Hollywood. He was a real dashing figure, drove sports cars, et cetera. So he designed a really beautiful theater for a small town. It was done in the style of the day, which was a streamlined, modern, with kind of aerodynamic banding around the facade. The auditorium was quite large. It seated almost 1,000 people, decorative lighting, and stadium seating, what we call stadium seating today. So very functional auditorium. And, you know, lots of generations of wooden orders and people throughout Yolo County would come to this theater. The Varsity Theater in Davis, also designed by William B. David, came much later in the late 40s, and it was an entirely different type of more modern architecture. You know, the ushers then dressed differently than they do now. We've got some pictures I can put up in a moment. Yeah, the ushers, usherettes, a classic photo, all these photos were so fortunate that Paul Hollings had a highly skilled photographer who trained at the New York Institute of Photography, had his studio in Woodland, and he documented the state theater for the owners at the time. These photos of the ushers are really beautiful. I believe they were taken in his studio in downtown Woodland. His son, Paul, his son, Bill, excuse me, in the movie remark that, gee, they looked like band uniforms with the brass buttons. And I think that's just a really right on statement. They're really handsome uniforms. And we interviewed, as Jeff said, we interviewed some of the women who actually worked at the state theater during that era, which they had a lot of good stories in the movie. I remember when I saw the documentary at the Woodland Senior Center in Devaga, some of them were there and told some stories from those days. Right. I believe there was one guy that ran the projector even that was present. Yeah, some of those employees worked at the theater for many years. I know the manager and kind of the person who was the projectionist. They worked at the state theater for quite a while, so they're fondly remembered in Woodland. Well, the technology has certainly changed since then, they're not using old style movie projectors with all digital these days. Could you tell briefly, since we don't have the architect, some of the challenges in restoring the theater? Yeah, in the, Jeff, in touch on this, we interviewed James Howard extensively, as you'll see in the film. James works for Cinema Last, he's an architect, really a talented interior designer. So, Jeff, you can talk about that, but we did a couple of walkthroughs with James during the whole restoration. He was very meticulous about restoring some of the historic detail. Yeah, and he showed us around, for me, what was really fun about going through the state theater and watching it grow to what it is today was to see the stages of the construction. But in the very beginning, when the theater was gutted out, we did a walkthrough and James Howard showed us all the old letters from the old marquee, the light fixtures, things that they were going to renovate and bring back to life to be included in the theater. When they took down the screen, the movie screen, they found a half-painted images of a couple on the stage above the screen. And from that, they ended up following the lines and recreated that image, that painting above the screen. And it's there today. The same thing with the very ornate ceiling in the state theater. And that had been painted over back, I think in the 60s, like a layer of white paint. And luckily, over time, that paint faded and they were able to see the outline of this beautiful mural or ceiling mural that they were able to, again, follow the lines and recreate that and finding the colors from that were used then as well. So they could keep it as original as possible. One funny thing I remember from the tour is that the screen at that time had thousands of holes in them and the projectionist would go down and stand behind it and watch the audience and their reaction. Right. Yeah, I think Walter Clenhard, who grew up in Woodland, his father, Dick, was the longtime director of the Woodland Chamber of Commerce. Walter worked there, I think, in the 60s or 70s and he had that story of sitting behind the screen where he could see the audience but they couldn't see him. Walter went on to successful career in Hollywood, actually, directing movies and acting in some movies. As we're wrapping up, maybe we could see what the theater looks like now. There's a rendering that was in the enterprise we found. And so it shows the outside with the marquee restored. I guess Caltrans is responsible for having it taken away earlier. Now it's back where it belongs. I understand from Ken Hyatt and others that there were some challenges with the palm trees. Not everybody was fond of those palm trees, but they've come to accept them and that's good. That was, in our interviews, we asked several people about what their feelings were about the palm trees and we got some real heavy responses. Like, what are they doing with palm trees? We should have almond trees. But palm trees in Hollywood and movies, they all go together. I like palm trees. That's good. Yeah, the story, there's so many stories within the movie, stories within the story. So Jeff and I broke it down into like a dozen vignettes within the movie and one of them was the great palm tree controversy. So it is fun to see all the wide ranging opinions about palm trees. But yeah, when the crane showed up this last summer to deliver the new recreated neon tower, LED tower, and marquee, it was very emotional for people that had lived in Woodland long enough to remember when it was taken down in the 60s. And of course, we'd only seen it in the hauling set photographs. But James Howard was very meticulous about recreating it to look almost exactly the same as it did in the 30s using those historic photographs. So that was quite amazing when that happened. We could talk for a long time, but we need to wrap it up for today and maybe we'll do a sequel. You have a lot more to say, I'm sure. Okay, very good. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you both David Wilkinson and Jeff Levich for being here today. And we'll conclude our in the studio episode for today.