“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
—Heraclitus
Over the years I’ve probably shots a few dozen photos of old movie theaters in my travels around the United States. They made a fitting metaphor for life. For change. A few weeks ago on the way to see the Tampa Bay Buccanneers play I purposefully took a side street in Tampa just to see some things I’d never seen before. About 10 miles from Raymond James Stadium I came upon on the Springs Theatre.
According to the Cinema Treasures website in opened o December 7, 1944. Three years to the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and while World War II still nine months from ending. According to the Cinema Treasures website, the double feature that opening day was “Tyrone Power in The Rains Came & Linda Darnell in It Happened Tomorrow.”
The Rains Came (1940) also featured Myrna Loy and. The movie won one Oscar—Best Effects, Special Effects.Philip Dunne and Julien Josephson based on the novel by Louis Bromfield. Duane received two Oscars nominations in his career including the John Ford directed classic How Green Was My Valley (1941). Josephson received an Academy Award nomination for Disraeli (1929).
As I point out in my book Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles, Frances Marion became the first female screenwriter to win an Academy Award for writing (and the first screenwriter to win two)—her script for The Big House won over Josephson’s script for Disraeli. You just never know what kind of info you’re going to unearth when you finally go to see Tom Brady play a football game.
I’ve never seen The Rains Came, but the storyline appears to involve a love triangle. Casablanca came out two years later and also involves a love triangle. And there have been a few move love triangle movies since then. Nothing new under the sun folks, except fresh ways of telling old stories.
It Happened Tomorrow (1944) was nominated for two Oscars (Best Sound and Best Musical Score). It was written by Dudley Nichols and the director René Clair. And there are five additional people credited with things like ideas and originals. I’ve not exactly sure what “originals” means. Perhaps some kind of original source material the script pulled from.
Here’s the entire movie found on YouTube.
The Springs Theatre has had several lives. A first run theater, a second run theater, a porn theater, a church, a print shop, and a recording studio. I tried the website on the theatre sign and it just says, “We are making something exciting.” So the metaphor I alluded to at the start of this post is that movie theaters, like the movie industry itself (and humans—even Tom Brady) are in a constant state of change.
Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles
Screenwriting from Iowa 