Newcastle's amazing theater man

Rhonda Sedgwick Stearns
Special Correspondent
 
Newcastle’s beloved Dogie Theatre is a centerpiece for this community’s observation of May as Historic Preservation Month. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a “contributing building to Newcastle’s Downtown Historic District,” the venerable facility is most deserving.
According to acclaimed Wyoming historian Lucille Dumbrill, the Weston County Historic Preservation Board and the alliance for Historic Wyoming — supported by the Weston County Historical Society and Weston County Museum District — are sponsoring this recognition. Dogie Theatre owner Gerald Bullard will participate in a panel discussion with Lucille, Valerie Pollat and Leonard Cash in the Michaels Room at Weston County Senior Citizen’s Center at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 4.  The community is enthusiastically invited to enjoy this informational, educational time, including refreshments. 
Bullard, a movie aficionado (who recalls his 7-year-old first-film-viewing of “Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come” in detail) has been a theater owner/enthusiast since his youth in Oklahoma. If it were possible to research, Gerald probably holds an unchallenged record for years of owning/operating multiple theaters in multiple states. He has much acquired wisdom and many memories to share, along with his personal affection for ‘The Dogie.’
As a child, killing time while his Dad conducted business in tiny Stonewall, Oklahoma, a dozen miles from home, Gerald wandered into a burned-out theater. He discovered the fire had started in the projection room (an all-too-common tragedy due to the extreme heat generated by projectors and the very flammable nitrocellulose base used in early film) and burned right out through the roof. Exploring further, the youth was captured by a desire and vision to buy and repair and operate that theater! Miraculously, he managed to convey the magic of that vision to his father, as
soon as he emerged from his business meeting.  
After following his son into the gutted building for a quick assessment, Mr. Bullard quickly sought information about the current owner.  “You’ll find him at his desk just inside that bank on the corner,” he was told, “but it closes for the weekend at exactly 5 p.m.” 
Father and son hastened there by car, Gerald jumping out on the street and running for the door while the car was being parked. A bank guard inside was reaching for the lock even as young Bullard hurled himself against the heavy glass door and yelled that they “must see” the bank president. Rebuffing him, the guard jerked the door shut, but fate had arranged for that bank president to see and hear young Gerald, and he personally welcomed father and son inside, where Gerald’s feet found and took their first steps upon a destined life path.
On the drive home that evening, Mr. Bullard advised his son, “Things will probably be better if you don’t tell Mother that we bought a movie theater.” 
He didn’t — but now proudly affirms, “Within three months, on March 10, 1944, all repairs were in place and we opened the theater to a full house — Tex Ritter starring in ‘Oklahoma Raiders.’ Business was good at 25 cents Adult, 10 cents Kids.”
A long and winding road brought Gerald from that dusty, poverty-plagued Oklahoma childhood where he launched his entrepreneurship by selling ice behind his father’s grocery store in Centrahoma; through multiple movie theater experiences — including ownership of Upton’s theater — to a lengthy and prosperous lifetime in the petroleum industry of Weston County, Wyoming, and beyond.
Regarding the Dogie Theatre, Bullard recalls, “The first one that started building it was Shorty Shenton. I finally met up with her and we visited a lot about the old days of theater. It was really interesting to talk to Shorty because she had a small theater across the street in silent film days, the Castle Theatre, that she did a real good job with.  It was small, I think it had 250 seats, and it was doin’ so much business she couldn’t accommodate the customers very well.
“So she built a real nice theater here, The Dogie, an’ she never did get to run it ‘cause Black Hills Amusement insisted they should have it”, Gerald explains. “When Shorty started buildin’ the Dogie she picked these plans and they built it just like she wanted them to, and it’s real nice; but Black Hills Amusement Company thought they should own it. The show business was really good in those days, and they just sort’a bought her out whether she wanted to sell or not.”
The theater industry took a hit with the introduction of television, and began treading very shaky ground when satellite broadcasting was initiated. Bullard explains, “We’re comin’ to a point now where we’re not gon’na have 35 mm films anymore, it’s gon’na be all hard drive. You go ahead and pay the same for the film, but because it’s no longer 35 mm you must take out all your projectors and buy video projectors. We’ve also added a lot more speakers around the theater for getting all the channels of sound and sound effects … there’s a lot’ta big changes in theater.” 
Bullard’s Geju Theatre business name came from the first two letters of his name “GErald” and the name of his great love and late wife “JUdy” — GEJU. The Dogie is one among many in the Geju Theatre company -- which owns and operates four theaters in Alliance, Neb., and three in Chadron. They also had the theater in Hot Springs, South Dakota until its’ recent sale. Gerald Bullard says “Our son Craig is very involved with our out-of-town theaters, and daughter Melinda Powell books all the films.”     
Gerald’s ardor for theater has never dimmed, and he emphatically declares, “I have to say that the decades of enthusiasm, hard work and good management exerted by Bill Nelson and his wife Shirley have been the driving force in every success this Dogie Theatre has enjoyed! They keep it going.” 
According to Lucille Dumbrill, “As part of the celebration of Historic Preservation Month,  Gerald Bullard will be providing a Matinee on Saturday, May 11, 2019, free to the public at the Dogie. The movie will be ‘African Queen’ with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, a movie issued in the United States in 1951 … for which Humphrey Bogart received his only Academy Award.” Ironically, Newcastle’s Dogie Theatre opened that same year, 1951.
Life is filled with irony, like Gerald’s school-day detour “of about 30 miles” from his normal home-to-school route to a place called “Turner Ranch” where a film named “Tulsa” was being filmed. Susan Hayward and Robert Preston starred, and Gerald recalls, “I wanted Susan Hayward’s autograph, so I went over there where they were waiting to film and said “Hello.”  She said, “Well, hello.”  I said, “Susan Hayward, I want your autograph,” and I had a yellow pad, and she said “Sure” and she put her name ‘Susan Hayward’, and she said, “Well, good luck in school.”
The tenacity which characterizes Bullard’s life was strong even then. He remembers, “I was over there the next day, to get her autograph again, an’ she said, “I’ll sign it one more time, don’t do this again.”
The irony, you ask? 
That filming site involved a Halliburton truck, oil drilling rig, oil field crews, a mud pit, cables … movie filming and movie stars … everything that young, autograph-seeking, Gerald Bullard grew up to work with and earn his living with, throughout his lifetime to date!