| August 23, 2017 | |
| 6:35 pm | |
| Norfolk, VA | |
| Naro Cinema | |
| Google Map |
The Naro opened as The Colley Theater on Feb 24, 1936, built for what was at the time the substantial sum of $75 thousand. It was a modern suburban theater with the latest amenities and an art deco design and at 500 seats was smaller than the older massive downtown movie palaces. The opening night picture was a Shakespearian adaptation, A Midsummer Night’s Dream with James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, and Dick Powell.
In the sixties the theater changed hands and new owner Robert Levine changed the name of the theater from Colley to Naro, naming it after his father and mother, Nathan and Rose. Levine owned or operated a number of the suburban single screen houses in Norfolk including The Riverview, The Rosna on 35th St, The Roselle in Ocean View, and the large and beautiful Memrose that was torn down in the seventies for the expansion of Norfolk Sentara Hospital. The Naro is the only theater in Levine’s chain that’s still open and operating as a movie theater.
The nineteen sixties and seventies brought social and technological changes to the movie industry and Levine ran into deep financial problems, losing all of his theaters by the seventies to creditors. The ownership of the theater defaulted to the Stein family and the estate has been the landlord to this day.
The theater had a brief life as a playhouse called The Actor’s Theater with live stage productions in the mid-seventies.
In fall of 1977, the Naro’s lease was taken over by two young upstarts, Tench Phillips and Thom Vourlas, who lived right down the street from the theater and wanted to showcase some of the foreign, art, and independent films that had been missing from the area.. Their company, Art Repertory Films (ARF, Inc) has programmed and operated the Naro as a decidedly independent theater competing with the big theater chains. In the early years of the seventies and eighties, the theater held a virtual monopoly on the showing of classic movies. There were no videos to rent, cable TV to hook up to, satellite dishes, or movies to download — and only three major networks for content. It was a golden era for specialty cinema and the Naro thrived.
In the 21st Century, the Naro has ridden a wave of unprecedented technological changes. The worldwide web has radically changed the social habits of modern life. The web has eaten up books, newspapers, music, and now movies. Some media giants like Blockbuster and Border Books are in bankruptcy with others to come. Will the Naro survive as a community gathering place for public audiences to experience new films, live music, speakers, and public discourse? In this age of Facebook and movie downloads, will people even want to continue to view films with a public audience? As in the past, the boxoffice will decide the Naro’s fate. And with a little help from Clarence, the guardian angel from It’s a Wonderful Life, there just may be some more life left in this beloved old theater.