Oral History Interview with Hugh Hudson Jr.

“Stories From the Balcony”

Interviews about the Grand Theatre in Frankfort Kentucky

Interview on Video with Hugh Hudson

On Location at the Grand Theatre

Conducted by Joanna Hay

January 12, 2007

This project has been supported by the Kentucky Oral History Commission

And Save The Grand Theatre, Inc.

[The video starts with an image of John Hay, Joanna Hay’s brother in law, who helped her set up the shot. The background is the remnants of the Vaudeville Wall from the 1910s when the Grand Theatre was a small shotgun theatre on St. Clair Street.]

HAY: Just going to introduce this tape… this is January 12, 2007. We’re inside the Grand Theatre inside the lobby and I’m taking with Hugh Hudson and my name is Joanna Hay and we’re talking about the old days of the Grand Theatre. So, you are a long time resident of Frankfort and your family has been here for generations and I understand you had a business, a family business in downtown Frankfort. Can you tell me about the business?

HUDSON: It was the former Hudson’s where the Nitro is on the corner of Lewis and Main and it was W.S. Farmer and Son and my father bought in to it in I think 1934 and it became Farmer Hudson and he got me into it in 1955, his manager and I finally bought him out and we existed until .. when…

(daughter Dorothy Hudson adds from the background… until 1963)

HUDSON: until she took over (referring to Dorothy)

HAY: When did it finally close?

(Dorothy talks in background and says 1996)

HUDSON: I retired in 1982

HAY: Hudson family ran that until 1994 or 1996 And of course in the old days Downtown Frankfort was a thriving, bustling place?

HUDSON: Yes it was. Sears was downtown, Penney’s was downtown. There were four drugstores and a grocery store and a dime store next to the Grand, which incidentally burned down and my grandfather owned most of those buildings.

HAY: What year did they burn down? Approximately… what decade?

HUDSON: probably ‘42 or ‘43

HAY: So, how did the theatres, like the Grand Theatre and the Capital Theatre, how did they play a part in what happened in Frankfort… it was busy, people were here all the time… how were the theatres important to Frankfort?

HUDSON: Well, there were four theatres at one time, the new theatre on the corner of Catfish Alley and Main Street and the State Theatre just west of the capital theatre and of course the Grand and the Capital. They were really thriving for a while.

HAY: Which theatre did you attend the most?

HUDSON: Capital Theatre, yeah, because it was first run. It was a pretty decent theatre.

HAY: You were saying how beautiful it was with the decorations and it had all the… you said it had dressing rooms at the Capital?

HUDSON: Yeah, below the stage were regular dressing rooms, just like a New York theatre and it had a grand stage.

HAY: Can you tell me a little more about… the old shotgun theatre… you told us a little about it on that earlier tape, but can you describe what the old old shotgun theatre at the Grand was like?

HUDSON: I really can’t because you told me something that I didn’t remember that we probably came in and walked up some steps and down and I don’t remember.

HAY: But you do remember what it was generally like which was…

HUDSON: I remember it was pretty sorry.

HAY: Was it movies being played here at that time?

HUDSON: Movies? Oh yeah, it was a movie theatre, like third run, fourth run movies.

HAY: So, pretty dirty.

HUDSON: it was pretty crummy.

HAY: So when the new Grand opened as a movie theatre, what was that like?

HUDSON: It was much improved, much cleaner, they showed better movies. They still didn’t have very many first run, because it was… Chakeres owned both of them… and they used the Capital for the first run movies and the Grand for second run movies.

HAY: And then your family… you were telling me earlier your family, your grandfather had a connection with the building next door to the theatre.

HUDSON: Yeah, he owned that building too. Inherited it from the Swigert estate. This was called Swigert row. The two dime stores, Newberry’s, Woolworths, and then there was a Mr. Brown, a Jewish fellow who had a clothing store there, he owned that and it all burned…

HAY: So, Swigert row, that’s an interesting uh… so the Swigert Family, which you are a part of owned this whole…. St. Clair… and Main. A block or two each way?

HUDSON: Yes, but they didn’t own the corner, because the McClure building was there.

HAY: But down St. Clair from the Grand, you’re saying the dime stores…

HUDSON: The Dime Stores and Mr. Brown’s clothing store

HAY: And then on Main Street…

HUDSON: And then on Main Street the plumbing shop and they owned the building across the street that’s part of… the county owns now, Scott Furniture, they owned that.

HAY: so you said that…. that… your grandfather gave access for an exit out of the Grand Theatre? Can you tell me about that?

HUDSON: Well, all I know is that they had the law had to have an exit and they asked about running it back to the property there and he said OK and got two passes which I don’t think he ever used but Dorothy, my wife and I used pretty often!

HAY: And you could use the passes at either of theatres… at the Capital or the Grand.

HUDSON: I think so, I don’t recall ever using it here, but we may have but uh, most of the time it was at the Capital.

HAY: It was a different clientele at the Grand… wasn’t it?

HUDSON: uh, yea, after it was remodeled it was better. But before that it was cheap,

HAY: So you spent a little more on the tickets to the Capital.

HUDSON: yeah.

HAY: What were the ticket prices?

HUDSON: gosh, I don’t know 25c?

(Dorothy in Background says: when I was growing up adults were 54 cents and child was 15 cents)

HUDSON: I think I can recall a quarter

(Dorothy says popcorn was a dime)

HAY: You remember a little bit about live shows here, live shows like a concert, can you tell me about the live shows you remember at the Grand or hearing about?

HUDSON: No, Dorothy May, you attended one of the live shows, didn’t you? I don’t know there were a couple of wild west types of things. Tim Holt and I didn’t go to it.

HAY: And Tim Holt was a cowboy star?

HUDSON: Yes, his father was a cowboy actor and he became, followed in father’s footsteps. And I was surprised in him having a show in Frankfort Kentucky, he must not have been doing too well.

HAY: And Tim Holt went to Culver (Academy) when you were there?

HUDSON: Yes, he was an upper classman.

HAY: So you must have been at Culver with some of the Hays?

HUDSON: No, I was at Culver and I was only there part of a year and got sick and had to drop out. I think it was 1934.

HAY: So you got sick as a young man, as a teenager?

HUDSON: Yeah, I was fifteen.

HAY: So you came back to Frankfort?

HUDSON: Yeah, I came back to Frankfort High School, where I felt much more at home.

HAY: It’s hard to go away from home. Then let’s uh, you say you were friends with Jakie Hay, here in Frankfort?

HUDSON: Yeah, I was a friend of Jakie’s.

HAY: Did you have wild times with Jakie Hay?

HUDSON: I remember having chicken fights I don’t know if it was at Scotland, there were two homes there together and this one had a glassed in sun room or green house and they’d have chicken fights down there.

HAY: I think it’s part of the true history, isn’t it though? That was probably on that breakfast porch back there where there’s that greenhouse down below and the breakfast porch with the long glass partitions.

(Background talking)

HAY: Inside the house? Jakie Hay shot the fireplace out apparently in the front bedroom?

HUDSON: Jakie, maybe I shouldn’t tell this. He’d lay up in bed and put a cartridge box in the fireplace and shoot at it with a pistol and finally he shot the whole back out of the fireplace clear into the fireplace in the other room.

HAY: That was at Scotland Farm? That was inside Cousin MaryBelle’s bedroom, huh?

(Background talking)

HAY: Well I think that is so interesting. Did you personally love to go to the movies? Did you go to the movies all of your life?

HUDSON: Yeah, in recent years I haven’t been going hardly any, but we enjoyed it when we were going. There was no television and it was about the only recreation we had here, really.

HAY: …going to the movies… so you went when you were young and you brought your kids when you had a family… come with the family? The whole family would come to the movies?

HUDSON: Yeah.

HAY: So are you sad, do you feel sad when you come downtown and think back, thirty years on how different, forty years, on how different downtown used to be?

HUDSON: A lot of nostalgia, but they have preserved a lot of the buildings and I’m glad of that. John Gray’s had quite a bit to do with that.

HAY: It’s interesting that the Kendrick [Hendrick] house, we were talking in there, has now been acquired by the Grand theatre so that the Kendrick [Hendrick] house on Main street will become the backstage and the offices for the New Grand theatre.

HUDSON: OK, so what you’re calling the Hendrick House is the old Plumbing shop and then Steve Bolton bought it at one time and then he sold it and I don’t know how that progressed but anyway.

(Ladies in background talking)… nobody lived there, no it was… in my time it was a plumbing shop or a lawyer and the building that they bought to extend the theatre out, I don’t know who owned that… I said it had inscribed in the sidewalk out front imbedded with I guess brass, spelled out and I can’t remember what… the name was in there a long time after they built the theatre and I can’t remember what it was.

HAY: So that would have been the building that the new theatre replaced.

HUDSON: The theatre where the auditorium is now/ As I remember it was a home or a rooming house?

HAY: We’ll have to look that up and see what that might have been. And do you think that was part of Swigert Row, or was this? What you call Swigert Row is that the Saint Clair?

HUDSON: Swigert Row was really I think St. Clair Street.

HAY: Do you have any other thoughts about downtown Frankfort or the theatre that you would like to say before we finish up this interview?

HUDSON: No I really can’t think of any thing else to add to it. It was a tremendous loss to downtown when they tore that group of buildings down there… the historic buildings…city hall was there, the Capital Theatre, which had a rotunda on it. The old Frankfort Hotel had a balcony on it just wonderful historical buildings… just tore the whole block out for a long time it was just parking lot there.

HAY: It’s a shame how that… people weren’t thinking ahead.

HUDSON: It’s a real loss

HAY: Well thank you so much for doing this interview with me. I really appreciate it.

HUDSON: My memory… is pretty well faded.

HAY: No it’s not… it’s pretty clear... so your family was Swigert and Henrick and Hudson and those are such…

HUDSON: Philip Swigert was my great grandfather, John R. Hendrick was a school teacher and preacher and he married Philip Swigert’s daughter and grandfather John Buford Hendrick had the house the big house next to the post office and we all lived there off and on. It was just home to us it was just heartbreaking when they tore it down.

HAY: Next to where… where the new library is now?

HUDSON: Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen pictures of it. It was a … house and had a huge porch across the house with columns…

HAY: I bet it was beautiful… right there on the river…

HUDSON: Yeah, it overlooked the river.

HAY: What year was that torn down?

HUDSON: 1954 I believe, 1954, 1955, Course, these days they would have saved it.

HAY: Now people have a sense of preservation don’t they… people have a sense of preservation and saving history, don’t they.

HUDSON: Oh, yeah, it would have been entirely different… I’m sure they would have saved it.

HAY: Well, this Grand Theatre… It’s interesting it was called the Grand when it was not the most Grand.

HUDSON: Sort of an exaggeration.

[Laughter]

HAY: But the name stuck.

HUDSON: It’ll be Grand now.

HAY: We’ll have a lot of kids in here over the decades to come learning about theatre and movies and plays. So well, I appreciate you doing this interview.

HUDSON: I enjoyed it, I wish I’d had more information, I’m so vlauge [vague] about it. I enjoyed talking about it.

HAY: It was very interesting, thank you. I keep telling you that it’s over, but then I have another question.

HUDSON: That’s alright!

HAY: Do you remember any of these names: Mr. Parsons who was the manager here. HUDSON: I remember him and I remember what he looked like. I didn’t really know him personally.

[ladies in background Hay turns and says I’ll ask you about it in your interview]

HAY: What about Gene Lutes?

HUDSON: Oh, I knew him real well.

HAY: He was the manager here and at the Capital?

HUDSON: Yeah, and finally he was kind of a branch manager for other theatres.

HAY: What about Ally Combs?

HUDSON: Who?

HAY: Ally Combs.

HUDSON: Eileen Combs?

HAY: Ally?

HUDSON: [looks to the ladies]

HAY: Jim Atterbury?

HUDSON: Knew him real well. He just died recently

HAY: Tell me about him, what did he do?

HUDSON: He was assistant manager there and finally worked at the post office for years but he moved away and I read in the paper where he recently died.

HAY: So was he the assistant manager at the Capital?

HUDSON: I recall just the Capital

HAY: Ms. Roberta Wilson?

HUDSON: Don’t know if she was the ticket taker or not?

HAY: She apparently worked upstairs and took the tickets at the top of the balcony [steps] so of course only the people that went to the balcony..

HUDSON: really.

HAY: would know her as much and of course that was in the days of segregation, so the African Americans of course were in the balcony, I’m sure you remember that.

HUDSON: I don’t have… memory of a red headed lady that played the piano … accompanied the movies. Must have been during the times of the silent films there … I remember her… and then she became a ticket taker… when you went in and I can’t remember her name to save my soul.

[ladies in background]

Bohannon?

HAY: Bohannon? Ms. Bohannon?

HUDSON: I think so.

HAY: Which theatre? The Capital?

HUDSON: Capital.

HAY: AT the Capital… So you remember the end of the silent movies?

HUDSON: I think I do… [chuckle] [ladies in background]

I do remember when they had a piano player down there..

HAY: Oh, like a live performance.

HUDSON: I remember my grandfather would take me every Saturday… they would have a Western on Saturday and they always had a serial. And uh, we would go every Saturday to see what had happened to the serial and to see the wild west show. And I think he enjoyed it just about as much as I did.

HAY: And that would have been in the19?

HUDSON: oh, 1920s and early 30s, mostly 20s.

HAY: When did uh, silent pictures end and talkies begin?

HUDSON: Silent pictures ended when they had Al Jolson the singing ___ I think the first one and Mother and Father went to see it in Louisville and it was about the time we had our tonsils taken out… [laughs]… I guess I was about seven years old. Mother took us all to Louisville to have our tonsils taken out and you talk about a pitiful looking bunch. The kids.

HAY: How many of you were there?

HUDSON: Well, let’s see. I don’t whether Jane was alive… probably four of us.

HAY: What are the names of your siblings?

HUDSON: Maybe three… um… Pauline Howard she still lives around on Wapping Street and Georgie May she lives on Wapping Street and Jane Yancee lives up in Tanglewood and I have a brother John Buford who lives in St. Pete, lived there for years.

HAY: So you all went to Louisville together to get your tonsils taken out?

HUDSON: Yeah, and there may have just been three of us but I remember it was a sorry sick bunch.

HAY: And that’s interesting that you made the connection that it was at the same time or at a similar time…

HUDSON: I connect that with Mother and Father going to see that first talkie.

HAY: And that would have been in… what year were you born?

HUDSON: I was born in 1919

HAY: 1919 so that would have been in mid-late twenties.

HUDSON: I guess I was seven years old… of course I was the oldest of the siblings. I suppose I was seven or eight years old.

HAY: Did you go to Louisville much for entertainment when you were young? Would you all drive?

HUDSON: We would go… then they would take us… especially at Christmastime we’d go down to see the Santy Claus parade and go to Stewart’s and different places to look at the toys and we usually got a room at the Brown hotel or the Seelbach just for the day, you know, to have a place to rest and I remember that with a lot of pleasure.

HAY: I bet that was a treat to go and do that. I remember the old Stewarts downtown and the Seelbach and the Brown.

HUDSON: yeah, it was such a really fun place to go.

HAY: So everyone would pile into the car… the whole family?

HUDSON: Yep, and we’d all wait to see the old water tank that was on old 60 it would kindy show up about 10 miles from Louisville and we always kinda had a contest to see who would see the water tank first.

HAY: That’s a great memory.

HUDSON: I’m probably telling you more than you want to know.

HAY: No, you’re not at all this is very interesting. I kind of want to keep you hanging because new stuff keeps coming out. [laughter] let’s see.

HAY: I think that’s all of my questions, unless you can think of any more nuggets.

HUDSON: Well, I’ve enjoyed it.

HAY: Thank you so much

HUDSON: I’ve really enjoyed it.

HAY: What’s your birthdate?

HUDSON: April 30, 1919

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