Inside Stories
A Star is Born in Passaic
by Capitol Theatre co-founder Al Hayward
The Capitol Theatre was an old Vaudeville
house, but they were showing X- rated movies when I discovered
it. This was a good thing because all the other theaters had to
show films on Friday and Saturday nights. They had to pay the
movie distributors a percent of the tickets they sold, and the
weekend was the best time for them to make any money. But
X-rated movies were different. The people who ran the movies at
the capitol paid a flat fee for each film, so the distributors
didn’t care if they showed the films at all. That fact
and the 3000 plus seats were the main reasons the Capitol
appealed to us so much. If the Capitol was showing regular
movies at the time John and I would never have been able to
produce concerts there.
While dreaming of the possibility of the
Capitol becoming a star in the rock and roll universe, we were
puzzled by a man who sold newspapers in front of this X-rated
movie house. He was doing a brisk business, but we
couldn’t figure out how his customers could read the
paper in the dark. Then, in a burst of imagination, it dawned
on us...