Whether you were a fan seeking movie memorabilia or someone looking to pick up maintenance equipment at a discount price, items sold at yesterday's auction at the closed Westview Cinemas in Catonsville ran the gamut from machinery to foliage.
As the 32-year-old theater prepares to meet the wrecking ball next month to make way for a Circuit City store, everything was on the block, from popcorn machine to trash compactor to front-lobby palm tree.
The boisterous crowd followed auctioneers from Alex Cooper Auctioneers Inc. through the theater to each sale item. They endured sweltering heat for the one-day auction in a theater without air conditioning to make their bids. Most sales averaged about $200.
Karl O. Gilbert, a former chief projectionist for the Westview, came to the sale looking for souvenirs of his time at the theater. When a collection of movie posters came up for bid, Gilbert said, he considered purchasing them.
But at $80, their selling price was too high for someone unemployed, said Gilbert, now looking for work in a field increasingly dominated by automated movie projectors. The posters went instead to Bob Dix, a movie memorabilia collector.
Other people attending the auction had happier reasons for being there. Catonsville resident Amy Dreyer, a frequent Westview moviegoer, had nostalgia on her mind when she said she wanted a little piece of the theater where she saw "Little Darlings," her first R-rated movie.
Sarah Laing, visiting from Michigan, spent her time at the sale searching for something "vintage" from the 1950s-style theater. She and several friends picked up three of the theater's wood and leather benches for $40.
The theater's brass railings went to Mary Melnick for $250. She plans to install the fixtures in her 150-year-old house.
Removing some of the auction items presented a problem. Jay York spent $20 on the Westview's front lobby marquees, which were cemented into the theater's stone front lobby and bear the names of the theater's final films. York didn't know how he was going to get his "mementos" home.
Some of the Westview will continue to soldier on in other theaters. The large, off-white curtain that previously framed the main screen now heads to Garman Opera House in Bellefonte, Pa.
David Harry, Garman's artistic director, bought the curtain, along with the Westview's movie screens, for $500. When the curtain is used again, Harry said, it will announce not the beginning of a movie but of a vaudeville revival show.
Gil Stern, owner of a multistate movie chain, purchased the Westview's main lobby crystal chandelier for $500. He said he plans to install it in one of his theaters.
And many of the items most essential to the operation of the theater -- projectors, sound system, movie seats -- had been sold earlier to other theaters, said Fran Lewis, Westview's general manager.
Pub Date: 6/24/97
