Proctor's Theatre, Schenectady, NY
Audio Excerpts | Current Photo | Historic Picture

Interview with: Gioia Ottaviano
Interviewed by: Josh Flagg, Anna Carbone, Emily Carbone & Nancy Gifford on 5/22/01

Gioia: My name is Gioia Ottaviano and I've lived in Schenectady all my life, taught here, went to Oneida Junior High, which was 7th-9th grade at the time and I am here to talk to you about Proctors, Riverside School and anything else you would like to know, that I know about Schenectady.

Josh: Are there any ghost stories about Proctor's?
Gioia: There may be. I don't know the ghost stories. The most important fun thing is what I am going to tell you about now. I have been up to the ceiling of Proctor's, literally-I'm not telling a story.

A few summers ago, they had the inside of Proctor's full of scaffolding because they were doing the ceiling and the upper parts of the walls in restoration. For those of us who are major contributors to Proctor's, of which I am one, invited us to walk up the scaffolding and we could really touch the ceiling, but we weren't supposed to since it was all fresh paint and especially the gold leaf.

Do you remember all the gold up on top there? Well a woman was working and she was showing us how she put the gold way, way up at the top. When I sit downstairs in the seats, I can hardly believe I was really up there, but I was.

Josh: Do you know any famous people who were seen at Proctor's?
Gioia: Blackstone the Magician was like David Copperfield. He was supposed to be an early participant in Proctor's and then he was part of the grand reincarnation of the theater.

Josh: Do you know how the idea of Proctor's began when it first came out?
Gioia: Well in 1926 when Mr. Proctor decided to build Proctor's - he built them all over. He built them in Troy, in Albany, in Utica. He had a series of theaters all over.

Movies were just the thing to do. You didn't have a television at home. You might have had a record player at home and you had a radio. The movies started in the early part of the century and then by the 1920s, they were very, very popular and the Vaudeville show was very, very popular, so he built the theater. It was popular for many, many years, during the 20s, 30s, 40s, and then it died out.

 

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