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Hollywood Theater

"Now the only time we would go to that was on Friday nights...And we'd start getting very good before Friday, maybe start up Wednesday or Thursday, so you'd be eligible to go. Doing housework or any little thing, or being very sweet with your tongue, and very mannerly to get to go to the movies."

- Frances Hargraves

The Hollywood Theater opened in 1939 as a movie theater for the Black community. It was run by E. Carrington Smith, the manager of the segregated Carolina Theater that served white patrons on Franklin Street. As the Hollywood Theater grew in popularity, the older Black-owned movie theater, the Standard Theater, went out of business. The theater was open Monday through Saturday and in the 1940s, weekly attendance was between 1300-1500 people. North Carolina photographer and filmmaker H. Lee Waters shot footage in the Black community in Chapel Hill and showed these "Movies of Local People" at the Hollywood on October 6th and 7th, 1939 and in April 1941. By 1961, the theater had closed.

Hollywood Theater
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Citation: “Hollywood Theater,” From the Rock Wall, accessed November 21, 2024, https://fromtherockwall.org/places/hollywood-theater.

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