Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Simplex and Peerless were American automobile manufacturers in the early years of motoring. A long history of these vehicles would be….pretty boring, for a blog. Fortunately, the names provide the critical link to talk instead about a vintage movie projector I reassembled early this week for Parkway Theater, in South Minneapolis.

It uses a Peerless carbon-arc lamp and Simplex projection parts–see the connection! Any gathering of brass-era motorcar fans could easily segue into the discussion here. And the projector’s shown hundreds of movies with cars.

This projector and one like it served the theater from the 1930s to the 1950s. One held the first reel, the other, the second. When the theater retired the two old machines it did not scrap them, luckily. Instead the two projectors were disassembled, placed on shelves in the theater basement and sat there, largely undisturbed, for half a century.

I know the former owner, Bill, and the current owner, Joe. Snooping around for old stuff, as any car nut will do, I saw the old projectors and what appeared to be all the parts needed to rebuild them. Wouldn’t movie (and car) fans love to see one of these projectors in the lobby—a tribute to this longstanding movie house and cinema’s long history? Joe thought they would. So, after talking to him on where to place it, I carried up the best looking parts, cleaned them and reassembled one of the projectors.

And it looks COOL. Anybody who likes movies, mechanical things, and the Golden Age of Cinema can appreciate a machine that entertained thousands of people during the Depression and WWII years, into the 1950s. This type of projector was also used in drive-in theaters, one of the great ways to combine automobiles and entertainment.

If you find yourself in the 4800 block of Chicago Avenue South in Minneapolis, have a look in the Parkway lobby—especially at night, when the vintage black projector really stands out behind the glass doors. It’s always thrilling to find an old car tucked away in hidden storage for 50 years. But for the mechanical-minded snoop, there’s lots of other neat stuff too, just waiting to be brought to the light of day.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 11:39 am and is filed under Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.