Music can do many things.  One of the things it does best is create a mood of anticipatory excitement.

Think of the way you felt the first time you heard an overture at a Broadway theater.  Or the feeling you shared with a stadium full of people when the national anthem was sung before the biggest game of the season.  To be even more specific, some of you can remember the excitement you felt each December, when CBS was about to broadcast a children’s holiday special.  The TV screen would turn black.  Then a familiar, rolling drumbeat would build to a crescendo of horns as the word “SPECIAL” spun into place.  That meant that Rudolph, Frosty or the Heat Miser was about to make his annual appearance.

For me as a child, there was nothing more exciting than going to the movies, sitting in a darkening theater waiting for The Muppet Movie or Superman to begin.  I would get especially pumped up after the previews, when the theater chain would play its “Feature Presentation” theme song.  Through the 1970s and early ‘80s, the theater chain in the Binghamton area was Cinema National.  They had the most stirring, rapturous Feature Presentation theme song in the history of Feature Presentation theme songs.  There were no animated popcorn boxes dancing to the plinks of a toy piano here.  This was 30 seconds of pounding drums, swirling strings, and razor-sharp horns, ringing out a fanfare worthy of a king.  It was accompanied by bold graphics in red, white and black that pulsed and washed over the huge screen in time with the music.  With this grand intro, the stage was set for something magic and bigger than life.

Then Smokey and the Bandit II would start.

Since this piece of music was more memorable than many of the movies it preceded, it became etched in my brain.  To this day, I can hum the tune and picture the logo, despite the fact that the chain and its theme song disappeared in 1983.

About six months ago, I embarked on a mission to unearth a copy of the music.  Through some online research, I learned that the Cinema National chain had been owned by the Carrols Corporation.  (For regular readers of this column, yes, this is the same Carrols that provided me with one of the other great joys of my childhood, the Looney Tunes series of collectible glassware.  And no, I’m not on their payroll.)

I called Carrols’ headquarters in Syracuse and eventually spoke to no less an authority than their vice president and general counsel, Joseph Zirkman.  He asked some of the company’s longtime employees about Cinema National, and was able to put me in touch with a man named George Read in Jamesville.  Mr. Read was a projectionist for Cinema National, and is something of a film historian.  Miraculously, he had saved several copies of the trailer, and was willing to ship one to me.  Like Mr. Zirkman, Mr. Read indulged me in my ridiculous quest with patience and a large dose of good humor.

I will think of them every time I watch a movie at home.  Each viewing will start with the DVD transfer that arrived today.  The Cinema National theme lives on, if only in my living room.

© 2006 Tim Mollen

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