Hanover's Nugget Theater, one of the oldest theaters in America owned by a non-profit organization, was not always a quiet place to enjoy a movie. Rowdiness, riots and even tear gas might be part of a student's trip to the movies.
"The Nugget was such a part of Dartmouth in the early years," said Tom Byrne '55, president of the Hanover Improvement Society, the non-profit organization that has owned the theater since 1922.
Byrne said the Nugget's nightly movies were once the mainstay of students' social lives.
"There were no VCRs, no cable and no Hopkins Center," he said.
"There were 900 seats in our old theater and a new movie every night."
Before the advent of movies with sound, students were notorious for talking and hurling objects at characters on the screen.
Students would "fill the air with peanuts, apple cores, innuendo, double entendre and just plain boorish comments," according to a 1992 issue of the Nugget Theater newsletter.
If freshmen won the annual freshman-sophomore football game, they would "rush the Nugget," a tradition in which students would force their way into the theater without paying.
The tradition ended when a member of Paleopitus was seriously injured by tear gas thrown by the Nugget's manager during a riot. Paleopitus is a group of senior leaders who advise the College president.
Even though rowdiness persisted after the installation of sound equipment in 1929 and the advent of "talkies," movies with sound, some students had begun to view students' heckling as passe.
"The era of talkies has come and we crave silence," states a 1929 editorial in The Dartmouth. "We admire the old tradition of noise in The Nugget, but with a new order of things, can't it be alternated with at least a few golden chunks of silence?"
Things calmed down even more after the original Nugget building, located behind Casque and Gauntlet Senior Society, burned down in 1944, ignited by a cigarette butt smoldering in peanut shells after a Thursday show.
The Nugget's films were shown in Webster Hall until its current location opened on South Main Street in 1951.
During those seven years, the student body's memory of rushing the Nugget and hurling peanuts dimmed.
The Nugget today
Throughout its history, the Nugget has been a mainstay of students' lives, and the theater still maintains contact with the College. The theater's films are chosen by a College official.
Hopkins Center Director of Film Bill Pence, who is in charge of programming films for the College's Spaulding Auditorium and Loew Theater, schedules the movies to be shown at the Nugget.
"We have no relation with the College except through Bill," Byrne said.
But the Nugget is an integral part of the town of Hanover. The revenue from the theater is applied to projects for the improvement of the town.
The Hanover Improvement Society manages the Storr's Pond Recreation Area and the James W. Campion III Skating Rink, keeps Occom Pond clear for skating in winter and helps maintain the town's gardens in spring and summer.
The Town of Hanover formed the Hanover Improvement Society when the Nugget's founder, Frank Davison, donated the theater to the town in 1922. Byrne said the town chartered the Improvement Society to run the theater and manage its proceeds, because it was illegal for the town to undertake the project.
