In the past year, Muse Watson has welcomed the birth of his little girl, survived two major surgeries and patiently overseen a massive rehabilitation of the once-grand Princess Theatre in downtown Harriman.
And now -- yes, say it with us -- you know what he did last summer.
The cliché is inevitable once you squint past his bushy moustache and glasses to spot the menace who stalked Jennifer Love Hewitt and company in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and its sequel. Out of trench coat, Watson satisfies that principal requirement of every great character actor; namely, the ability to inspire people to snap their fingers, point and rub their chins and swear, “I know I know you from somewhere! Just a minute … it’s on the tip of my tongue …”
Traffic is heavy as he loiters in front of the Princess, hands in pockets, looking like someone’s dad out for a morning walk. But his young fans aren’t fooled, though for a few years, he did manage to keep a low profile among his neighbors. In the mid-1990s, he and artist wife Nancy bought a home in Roane County and while he shuttled to Hollywood for filming and premieres, they still managed to get to the Princess -- then owned by Carmichael Theaters -- every so often for the dollar show. And nobody was the wiser.
When “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” neared release, Watson asked manager Cecil Johnson if it would be opening at the Princess. Too new, Johnson reported; maybe after a few weeks, he could bring it to Harriman.
“Maybe I could help you,” Watson offered, of which he says Johnson seemed politely skeptical. (Movie stars aren‘t widely seen squiring about town in their farm clothes.)
“No, really,” he pressed on. “I’ll call my publicist.”
And he did, and the studio shipped the movie post-haste, and Watson even signed posters at its Harriman premiere. “From then on, my anonyminity here, and my hideout in the woods, was no more,” he grins.
That was the beginning of his adventures with the Princess, which he’d had his eye on for years. Built in 1939, the 720-seat theater was originally equipped to both show motion pictures and host live plays. The perforated screen currently stretched across the front of the stage is a legacy of Cinemascope; back in the old days of motion pictures, the screen was much smaller and designed to be lifted into the rafters out the way during live stage productions.
At the Princess, the old board frame still hangs on pulleys far above the stage, the once-polished hardwood now dull with ground-in dirt and bird droppings. The basement, once coal-fired to heat the huge theater, stands in inches of water after a hard rain. Old lighting and projection equipment have been gathering dust, untouched for decades in the recesses of this antiquated palace. Scarlet, plush carpeting is flat and dingy with hundreds of thousands of footsteps and little of the once-colorful walls survived a thick coating of green industrial paint -- you know, that green.
But …
“There’s enough here to show us what it did look like,” Watson contends during his two-hour walkabout of the theater’s interior, gesturing here, pointing over there.
The 30-year veteran of the stage knows, for example, that this building is practically indestructible. Paranoid about fireproofing after the original Princess burned to the ground just months earlier, local contractors used only the sturdiest and best materials to rebuild. Steel beams of such girth as supports in skyscrapers are concreted into the walls and ceiling. The 350-seat balcony, which has long been rumored unstable, is actually probably safer than anything you’d find in a newly-constructed theater, several feet thick with concrete at its supports. In fact, the only evidence of structural weakness is a large water stain dribbling down from the ceiling along one wall, and Watson is considering rubber roofing to prevent more of the same. Colored light bulbs, some of which probably haven’t been changed in decades, still burn along the stage rafters!
Despite its disrepair, the Princess has all the trappings of good theater atmosphere. “I believe you should have a lobby to tell everyone what a good show it is,” he says -- and what a lobby it is, with two staircases that sweep to mezzanine and terrace levels. There’s even an upstairs lobby, as large as the one at the foyer. A small coffee shop in the same building is walled away from the main lobby; Watson wants to knock out the thin sheetrock and serve snacks that way, rather than put in a concession counter.
There’s finer details, too. Hidden lighting, fixtures for chandeliers and the remnants of the steamer ship design that became all the rage in Hollywood in the early 20th century define the interior. Seats are still soundly bolted and sturdy; faded ceramic crowning still graces the juncture of wall to ceiling; and under that green paint beats the faint vibrancy that once helped hail the Princess as a landmark “halfway between Cincinnati and Atlanta.”
Watson recently unearthed the original artist renderings of the 1939 Princess, and what a beaut! Red, black, silver, pastel blue and yellow, eggshell white; it’s just as he’s imagined from glimpses during rehabilitation, ripping drab paneling and mildewed curtains from the walls. The terrazzo lobby floor of red and black just needs a good wash and wax. Watson’s even convinced he can take down the large screen up front and put up an expandable that can be retracted as in days of old.
“I’ve been reading books about how you make these, and it’s like making a mirror with silver paint, almost,” he explains.
The basement is to be converted into dressing rooms, and he wants to knock drop-holes into the ceiling through which to mount stage lighting. There’s even an honest-to-goodness orchestra pit at the footlights!
One inevitable legacy of a 1939 Southern theater is the separate entrance just behind the ticket booth, behind plain metal doors and up a staircase leading directly to the uppermost part of the balcony. This feature is not mentioned in the eight-page dedication to the new theater published in the Nov. 16, 1939, Harriman Record, nor in any promotional literature on its construction.
Watson says he’s told it was the entrance for black patrons, who would purchase their tickets at the same ticket booth as white customers, though from a separate window, before heading up to “their” seating. A stickler for punctuality, he’s decided he’ll use it as the “tardy” entrance, if at all -- “If curtain is at eight and you show up at twelve minutes after, that’s how you’ll get in, most likely.”
Luckily for the Watsons, owners over the years have been packrats, leaving behind cartons and rooms full of theatrical treasures. He’s found “tons” of the original reels promoting local businesses and movie previews of the era, large metal hooked letters first used on the marquee, projection lenses and spools and carbon-arc spotlights not used for live indoor theater in probably 60 years, nor in the film business for a decade. (Carbon-arc consists of a tube to focus the light, which is produced by the burning of carbon rods inside it -- a job sure to burn fingers and singe eyebrows for the luckless stagehand put in charge of it.)
“My problem is, I don’t want to throw anything away,” he sighs, going through a box of old-style brass doorknobs and other fixtures he’d recently discovered under a table.
But somehow it’ll all come together, hopefully in time for the theater to reopen in November 2003, 64 years after its debut. And Watson knows just how he’s going to do it.
“We’re going to make this go and it doesn’t matter what it takes,” he says like a teenager determined his refurbished ‘57 Chevy will purr to life. “I tell people I’m going to produce ‘Man of La Mancha’ (his favorite career role is Cervantes) and if nobody comes, I’ll get an Elvis impersonator in here the next week.”
Other plans include regular theatrical productions, first-run movies, hosting traveling theater companies, concerts and, if he can get sponsors, perhaps even a weekly Saturday radio show complete with live audiences and regular cast members. Providing employment for fellow performers is important to him, as is engaging all people’s interest in art (see sidebar). Moreover, he thinks area residents want to see and patronize the Princess in all its former glory again.
Though still actively filming -- he recently spent time in Pennsylvania shooting a movie -- Watson moved to East Tennessee for a reason, to eventually make it his permanent home. Both his and his wife’s families are now here, and he’s made commitments to the Eastern Tennessee Conservatory for the Arts as a member and field volunteer.
And while he wants an active acting career, it doesn't hurt to take things easy for awhile. In January, Watson had bypass surgery to remove a tumor from his chest, and the month before that, it was a complicated procedure to remove another tumor from his brain. Both were benign, but the risk in the brain procedure was to work around delicate nerves -- nerves, that with a wrong slip, could've left him partially paralyzed. It's not a pleasant musing, but his future certainly is.
“I hope the Princess is my ticket home,” he nods, standing outside admiring the old-time marquee lights.
-Originally published in Knoxville Cityview, 2002