Like so many of us who’ve called Coronado home for the best part of our lives, the Village Theatre is written on my heart. It’s where I spent just about every seventh-grade Saturday afternoon, watching MGM Musicals and Hopalong Cassidy serials. It’s where I had my first “date” (SO nervous!), and years later, where my husband and I would walk the few blocks to take in the Monday early show and grab dinner afterwards somewhere along Orange Avenue. How sad it was for us to watch this beloved local landmark fall into neglect and disrepair, eventually closing and locking its doors in 2000. For nearly eleven years, we were a town without a movie theatre!
But Hark! Like the hero of a favorite film, enter Lance Alspaugh, a man who knew a thing or two about movies and vintage movie theatres and loved them both with a passion! For ten years, he tirelessly and creatively worked behind the scenes to find a way to bring our Village Theatre back to life. And that he did — in a private/public partnership with the City of Coronado, Village Theatre re-opened to great fanfare in June of 2011, more brilliant and beautiful than it had ever been! Coronado had a movie theatre again! Happily, Lance also loved us and our film festival, and we loved him back with our whole heart. The Coronado Island Film Festival could not have happened without him!
Every month at our Classic Film Series screenings, our audience, comfy in plush seats, Merridee and I stand on the stage and thank Lance Alspaugh, our generous theatre sponsor since the very start, promising they would finally get to meet the man in November and thank him in person as we celebrate Ten Years! We imagined him with us on the stage of his beloved theatre, looking out at the packed house, warmed by the resounding applause he so richly deserves. Sadly, that won’t happen. But we’ll feel your spirit there, Lance, and we know you’ll be watching from the best seat in the house, the Heavenly Balcony.
VOL. 115, NO. 43 – Oct. 22, 2025