Tuesday, March 6, 2012
The Majestic Theater opened in 1928 in East Saint Louis and was known as a movie palace. It was notable for being the first theater in the city to feature modern air conditioning. The first shows here were "Spotlight" starring Esther Ralston and "Sporting Goods" starring Richard Dix. After installing a new "vitaphone" system, the Majestic theater became the first theater in southern Illinois to show motion pictures with synchronized dialogue and the first film shown here which took advantage of this system was "Warming Up" starring Richard Dix.
This is actually the second Majestic Theater at this location. The first one opened in 1909 but burned to the ground in 1927. The new Majestic theater closed in the 1960s. And now, inside it is pitch black and mostly gutted, the only light inside comes from the roof behind the stage. This makes photography challenging. For this reason, I had to resort to using HDR with multiple exposures stacked on each other. I'm not a fan of HDR but in this case I had no other choice.
