SPRINGVALE — If you’re a fan of motion pictures, you could thank Thomas Edison, who, along with several others, played a role in developing cameras that could project moving images on a screen.

To watch moving pictures, movie theaters were necessary and a celebration of Sanford’s love affair with movies, theater and other entertainment will begin Thursday when the Motion Picture Exhibit opens at the Sanford Springvale Historical Museum at 7 p.m. The opening coincides with a brief business meeting of the Sanford Springvale Historical Society and will be followed by a talk by society president Harland Eastman.

The new exhibit features photos of most of the theaters, advertising posters that were placed around town, film advertisements that appeared in the old Sanford Tribune and the ceiling medallions from which the chandeliers of the Capitol Theatre were hung, said Eastman.

Sanford’s movie theater history is a long one. Frank Leavitt opened the Theatre Comique in 1908. Two years later, he built the 1,300-seat Leavitt Theatre downtown on Main Street. it opened on Nov. 18, 1910, though the name of the first movie shown there remains lost to time. The Leavitt became the Capitol Theatre in 1930.

In 1913, Edward Gowen and his son Lloyd Gowen, opened the Gowen Theatre on Butler Street in Springvale. It was renamed the Colonial Theatre three years later.

There was the Sanford Theatre on High Street, an 800-seat venue, which operated from 1928 to 1937, when it burned down. At the time the fire broke out, 650 people were inside, waiting for the second show. All escaped the blaze uninjured, said Sanford Springvale Historical Society President Harland Eastman.

The 1,000-seat State Theatre opened in 1929 on Main Street; it too fell victim to fire —  it burned in 1956.

There were other movie theaters in the city. For a time, movies were played in both the old Sanford Town Hall, now the Sanford Springvale Historical Museum, and in the auditorium at Sanford City Hall.

The Vale Theatre operated in the old Sanford Town Hall briefly, and around 1937 advertised there would be shows every day in the winter, except for Tuesdays, when there would be boxing matches instead, Eastman said.

And of course, there was the Sanford Drive In, which opened off lower Main Street in 1950.

Historian Eastman was a fan of movies in his youth. He recalls heading off to the movies on Saturday afternoons when he was about 10 years old. The fee for the bus from Springvale to downtown Sanford was 5 cents.

“For 10 cents, you could see two movies,” he recalled. “One was usually a cowboy movie, then a serial like the Green Hornet, plus a cartoon and the news of the week. Then, it was 5 cents to get the bus home.”

Eastman recalled that when America entered World War II, a 10 percent tax was instituted on movie tickets, and so the 10 cent ticket became 11 cents.

“I was outraged,” he recalled.

The Leavitt Theatre was considered one of the finest in the state, said Eastman, and sported six boxes where people could watch theater productions or moving pictures in some privacy. The seats in the orchestra, the boxes and the first three rows were upholstered in a special material produced by Sanford Mills.

Sanford Springvale Chamber of Commerce President Rick Stanley saw his first movie in a theater in 1961.

“The first movie I ever saw on the big screen was ‘Babes on Toyland’ at the Capitol Theatre,” Stanley recalled on Tuesday. “We stood in line not knowing if we could get in because there was a big crowd.”

Stanley did get in. He recalled that everyone was issued a raffle ticket and the owner had purchased a lot of children’s toys, like games or dolls, and he raffled them on stage.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted 282-1535, ext. 327 or twells@journaltribune.com.

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