Racket collaborated with the Bethel University Arts + Culture Reporting class to produce the stories you'll read this week. Our editors worked with students, mostly juniors and seniors, to develop ideas, source stories, and edit them for the enjoyment of readers. Feel free to seek out these young journalists, photojournalists, and graphic designers to fill your internships and jobs. They like to get paid for their work, and thanks to Racket members and a grant from Bethel, they got cashed out for these pieces. Enjoy!
Tom Letness bought the Heights Theater with no plan for the future.
“It was just kind of a whim I guess,” he says.
Originally built in 1926, the Heights still boasts some of the original aspects from the 1920s, despite having faced multiple disasters during the last 100 years, including fires, a tornado, and a bombing.
The bombing came after two projectionist unions clashed during the Great Depression. When Heights owner Arthur Gluek hired a projectionist from one union, the other retaliated by throwing a Molotov cocktail at the front door one night. The blast shattered all the windows in the front of the building, but the Heights stayed in business.
Rumors have also circulated that the Columbia Heights movie theater is haunted. But Letness, who lives in an apartment upstairs, is confident there are no ghosts, even though someone died of a heart attack in the building a few months after it opened.
“I’ve lived here for 25 years, and trust me, it is the quietest place I have ever lived,” Letness says. “There’s no slamming doors, there’s no bumps in the night.”
The Heights is a single-room theater and still features the original plasterwork along the walls and on the ceiling, as well as the crystal chandeliers hanging throughout the theater, though Letness did install new seats and update the lobby.
“I definitely have done a lot of upgrades to make it more comfortable,” Letness says. “But I mean, I can only do so much, I still want to keep the historic character of the building.
Another original aspect of the theater are the organ grills set high into the wall in the front corners of the room. The organ space hadn't been used since 1936; the original organ was removed after the end of silent movies. But after Letness bought the Heights, he partnered with the American Theater Organ Society, which donated a Wurlitzer theater organ.
A Wurlitzer is different than a church organ: smaller in height, and with four keyboards and 225 stops instead of two-to-three keyboards and 80-100 stops. Using specific keys and stops, the Heights’ head organist, Ed Copeland, plays notes that sound like a flute, trumpet, cymbals, or drums. These settings make it possible for entire movie scores to be played on the organ, which Copeland uses in the occasional silent film showings, where he plays the score for the movies by memory.
“I’m doing this all out of my head, because if I had a score, I’d be concentrating on what’s going on here, not what's going on there,” Copeland says.
Copeland also plays before the 7:10 movie showings on Friday and Saturday nights. He does his best to play a range of music, from 1920s tunes to the Beatles and Elton John. He 's constantly learning new music; his latest piece is from a new animated television show called Hazbin Hotel.
Copeland's impressive range and skill brings in customers well before showtime—they just wanna see the man play. His playing ebbs and flows with their conversations, listening to how people respond. He loves to have fun with the music, trying different songs and styles to see what people react to.
“It's a bit like going to see a counselor without having to pay the counselor,” Copeland says. “I can make everybody in the room feel a certain way through my music.”
In addition to occasional silent-film showings, Letness likes to bring back classic movies that customers love, such as Singing in the Rain and White Christmas. The Wizard of Oz will screen at the Heights on June 16 and July 7 in 35mm technicolor. Letness also chooses new films, often from independent filmmakers: The Heights current feature film is Wes Anderson’s The Phoenecian Scheme. Other upcoming showings include The Out-of-Towners and The Odd Couple, which are both screening as part of a Jack Lemmon series. Letness aims to keep the classic atmosphere of the Heights by choosing movies that get less recognition.
“I mean, this is not for everybody,” he says. “You know, not everybody likes old things. Not everybody likes old buildings, and people like everything new. But for people that are interested in the history and the programming and the projection… that's a big deal. And so for people that are plugged in, it works.”
Sadie Buteyn is a sophomore English and journalism student at Bethel University. She is the news editor for the Clarion, Bethel’s student newspaper, and she likes catching grammatical errors in articles, learning from her mistakes and telling stories that have true meaning. She also likes reading mystery novels, singing at all hours of the day and staying up late to binge The Rookie.
