Movie theater vs. Publix: The night a Pat Conroy premiere changed Beaufort, SC, into Tinseltown

We’ve got a dilemma on aisle 9.

Bring the mop, and plenty of tissues. Beaufort is going to lose its only indoor movie theater to make way for a Publix supermarket.

And it’s not going over very well, if you read the comments on our Facebook post of last week’s story.

People want a twin feature. They want both. Or they say there’s nothing for their kids to do.

And they say the same thing that has been said since the Pig uprooted the A&P: “We don’t need another grocery store.”

I’m not a real good judge, probably because I go to movies as often as I go to cockfights.

My favorite remains “Doctor Zhivago,” if that gives you a hint. And I loved “Easy Rider,” even if not as feverishly as a friend who recently told me, “I dropped out of college when I saw ‘Easy Rider.’ “

Reckon that happens to people who go to see the celery?

Beaufort still hasn’t recovered from losing The Breeze theater downtown on Bay Street. Its credits include all that was good about small-town America, when kids walked to school and didn’t talk on phones.

The theater vs. Publix problem is being discussed in business terms. Surely, if someone can get a return on a movie house, they’ll build a new one to replace one clearly worn out.

But the Plaza theater tells a story that a Publix can never tell, no matter how much you like its fried chicken. It’s not a business story, but one of the human heart.

‘Great Santini’

Never did the heart soar higher at the old Plaza theater than the Friday night of Oct. 26, 1979.

Beaufort had just dodged Hurricane David, and a show that would make the old traveling “Silas Green from New Orleans” tent extravaganzas look like a stamp-collectors convention was about to open at the Plaza Twin Theaters on the outskirts of Beaufort, population 15,000 if everyone was home.

It was the world premiere of “The Great Santini” movie. It had been filmed in Beaufort the previous summer. It was based on a book by Beaufort’s own Pat Conroy. It was the chilling story of a Marine Corps fighter pilot stationed in Beaufort.

Some Beaufort folks had actual parts, like Walter Gay, Ray Nix, Sarah Sanford, Sandra Patterson and Ron Garrett. Hundreds more were extras.

And on this night they would see it all, right along with the stars: Robert Duvall and Blythe Danner.

Two shows were planned that day: a 3:30 p.m. matinee ($10 per ticket) and the 7:30 p.m. grand hoohaw with $25 tickets and a local crowd dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos.

Even “Uncle Billy” Peters, the old rascal himself who would say things nobody could believe he would say into his microphones at WBEU radio, was in a tux. He was the announcer outside the theater, entertaining along with a Marine Corps band as everyone waited for the important people to arrive and dash across the bright red carpet into our theater now on the chopping block.

“I think we’re all going to enjoy ourselves tonight,” Uncle Billy said. “At $25 a seat, try.”

The silent star

The first dignitary to arrive was Gov. Dick Riley and his wife, Tunky. He said he was proud to represent all South Carolinians.

Then came Duvall.

“It’s great to be back in the city with the best shrimp in the world, the best hospitality,” he said.

Blythe Danner came hobbling in on crutches after breaking her toe the day before.

“I’m so thankful to be here,” she said. “The graciousness one feels in Beaufort — I hope it’s not a vanishing thing.”

Reckon they’re ever going to gush such a thing over the canned rutabagas on aAisle 11?

And, of course, it being a Conroy event, there was drama in the Plaza theater that wasn’t on the big screen.

Most of the family was there. But Pat Conroy was not. Neither was his father, the actual “Great Santini.” Joe Cumming Jr. wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution two days later that it was because Pat Conroy asked for 50 tickets and was denied by the premiere committee.

Conroy tells his side of a pretty funny story in his 2013 book, “The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son.”

But then-mayor Henry C. Chambers told The Beaufort Gazette he didn’t know about Conroy being denied tickets, but he would have told him “no” because that was a lot of money and proceeds were going to an entertainment committee for events at the new waterfront park.

After the premiere, a gala of some 1,200 people took place at the Tidalholm mansion owned by O. Stanley Smith, and the location of much of the film that changed Beaufort into a moss-draped Tinseltown and eventually birthed the Beaufort International Film Festival that has honored Robert Duvall, Blythe Danner and Pat Conroy.

No, that story doesn’t happen in the frozen food section of a Publix.

But as the Gazette writer said in the story on the grandest day to ever hit the Plaza theater, the biggest star that never walked the red carpet that night was Beaufort itself.

“And while most of the Hollywood stars have already returned home,” said the voice of the Lowcountry in the Monday afternoon paper, “Beaufort will always be here.”