All In The Family

Headnote

Moses Millhauser kept his whole family working in his movie house.

On the Saturday afternoon of Jan. 5, 1918, crowds gathered on the sidewalk in font of 1039 N. Gay St., forming a line at the box office in front of the Elektra movie theater. They were there to see "The Fisherman's Granddaughter," which was much advertised and widely talked about.

In the darkened theater, patrons quickly filled the 150 seats and sat waiting to cheer the heroes and boo the villains. They did not have to wait long; movies were silent, 15 minutes in length, and management scheduled them close together. For that fisherman and his granddaughter in the featured movie (and her no-account husband) it was showtime - Saturday afternoon at the Elektra, circa 1918.

Right on schedule, the screen came alive with flickering light and shadows. People moved about to the accompaniment of piano music (for a chase, the frenetic "William Tell Overture"; for a love scene, the breathless "Clair de lune"). The actors "spoke"; their words appeared on the screen in bold letters, and their lips moved, but the audience was not tooled. The "voices" were of the "talkers," standing off to the side of the screen, reading from a script.

Among the Elektra's "talkers" were - according to the family's archivist, Richard Millhauser - all of the members of Moses Millhauser's family: Moses himself, age 54, the sole owner; his wife, Flora (nee Adler), 48; and their three children, Herbert, 21; Gertrude, 25; and David, 26.

In the day-to-day operations of the Elektra, the ticket-takers, the ushers, all of the voices of the on-screen performers, the janitors who opened the place, cleaned it and closed it - all of these tasks were performed by the Millhauser family. The theater could have been called "The Millhauser."

The plot of "The Fisherman's Granddaughter" was unapologetically sentimental, designed to bring tears to the eyes....