Polk Fiction
This 77-year-old theatre is both entertainment and history.
Photo by Cecil Thronhill
The theatre mainly draws the older, Broadway theatre-
loving crowd.
Dressed in a blue-checkered sundress, bobby sox and a pair of pink slippers “glittered to death in red,” Valerie Kielmovitch was ready.
For a movie. On Friday night.
With a red circle of blush dotting each cheek and her brunette hair pulled into loose, curly pigtails, the 21-year-old University of Central Florida student scooped up her picnic basket, a stuffed pooch peering from beneath its wicker lid.
Her costume was complete.
Graphic design gives him the flexibility of illustrating graphics he normally would not be able to draw. Tarpley designs shirts, fliers and other accessories for Greek organizations, student government and other events.
With a sorority sister in tow, Kielmovitch skipped to a special screening of “The Wizard of Oz” at Lakeland’s Polk Theatre, complete with sing-alongs and a costume competition.
A special captioned reel of the film allowed its audience to warble the correct words to each song. Bubbles were distributed to blow when Glenda the Good Witch floated onscreen, and noisemakers signaled the presence of the Wicked Witch of the West.
“We were the oldest kids there,” Valerie says, masking some embarrassment, “and the oldest kids to dress up.”
Post movie, Valerie strutted on stage to be judged.
Her sorority sister represented the Lolly Pop Guild.
They won the competition.
“I felt like I went back in time.”
With the advent of colossal, 20-theatre megaplexes, replete with stadium seating and jet-engine-loud audio, most single-screen community movie houses have faded into antique memory, sandwiched between black-and-white musicals and Vaudeville acts in the nation’s collective consciousness.
However, through verve and ingenuity, some of these movie palaces remain, and they’re closer than you think.
Lakeland’s historic Polk Theatre, a Mediterranean-modeled movie house, screens first-run, independent foreign and art films each weekend, with showings on Friday and Saturday evenings and a Sunday matinee.