Ninety Years of MOVIE MAGIC
Historic Island Cinema Marks a Major Milestone
STORY AND PHOTOS BYLUCIANO MARANO
Bainbridge Island’s oldest silver screen has officially entered its golden years.
The historic Lynwood Theatre—reportedly the second oldest continually operated business on the island (only behind Bainbridge Gardens)—opened its doors 90 years ago this July.
However, it technically wasn’t Bainbridge Island’s first theater.
“The first actual theater to show movies here was part of the Port Blakely Mill,” said Lynwood Theatre’s general manager, longtime islander Kevin Lynch. “But they only showed silent films; it’s all they had the tech for. So, when this one opened in July of 1936, it was officially the first talkie theater and we’ve been doing it ever since.”
Lynch expects the actual age of the cinema to go unrecognized by most guests and patrons, although architectural flourishes of a bygone style and historical cinematic artifacts on display in the lobby are undeniably part its appeal—for those who still show up.
It’s no secret that box office business is not what it was even just a few years ago, on both a national and local scale, and Bainbridge Island’s oldest theater has some new competition.
“One of the key things that we’re facing right now, among a plethora of other challenges, is that of oversaturation,” Lynch said. “By that I mean you’ve got options today like never before. You can sit at home and stream a movie, you can come down here, you can go the Pavilion, you can listen to live music in any number of venues, you can get involved with sports and
educational activities, with various social activities, there is plenty to do. When I first got to the island in 1976 there were limited opportunities, there were only a couple of things you could do—and this was one of them.”
The ubiquity and popularity of various streaming services, as well as the massive improvement of home entertainment technology, have taken their expected toll on business. But so have internal problems, according to Lynch.
“We’re not getting a lot of help from Hollywood,” he said, lamenting the industry’s current obsessive focus on making enormous, expensive spectacle-driven films instead of modest, more adult-oriented dramas, thrillers and comedies. “It’s tough going.”
Island entrepreneur Jeff Brein, of Faraway Productions, has been an owner of the Lynwood Theatre (as well as Bainbridge Cinemas in the Pavilion and several other indie theaters in Washington State) since partnering with Sam Granato in the late 1990s. Granato, who passed away in 2024, was the City of Bainbridge Island’s first mayor.
“Sam had been involved with Lynwood for roughly 10 years before that,” Brein said. “It’s always been owned by people who live on Bainbridge Island.”
And, in recent memory, at least, it’s never been much of a money maker.
“Sam and I, since we became partners in 1997, have never taken a single penny out of that theater in the way of bonus or salary or gifts or loans or anything,” Brein said. “We have plowed everything back into the operating of that business and we have expended personal funds to do so in an effort to keep it and preserve it.”
A task which, even as the theater marks a historic milestone, has become more difficult than ever.
“We are in a situation now where the industry changes are necessitating that we become creative, not only with our programming but with our business structure and the way that we operate,” Brein said.
To that end, Brein has begun the process by which the theater might soon become an officially recognized nonprofit, thus making it eligible for a variety of grants and support funds that would facilitate part of his planned-for improvements and renovations.
Meanwhile, Lynch has done a great deal to diversify the entertainment offerings and expand food and beverage options. For instance, the menu now features beer, wine and cider. In addition, live music, standup comedy, free specialty screenings, plays, readings and private events are all now regulars on the cinema’s calendar.
And, of course, there are plenty of new movies, too.
The latest of the “talkies,” which the Lynwood Theatre first brought to Bainbridge, are still the primary attraction.
“I think there will always be a place for the true cinema aesthetic,” Lynch said. “It’s just too rich, has too much of a history and too much potential, because everyone wants to have that Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese, Villeneuve, del Toro-type of moment. Where you have a packed audience and the end credits roll and there is one nanosecond, that one beat of silence, before the applause. That’s a very, very powerful thing.”
“There is nothing that is more enjoyable than having that experience with a group in real time in a movie theater,” he said. “There’s just nothing like it.”
