"It was, on occasion, used by presidents to rehearse important speeches such as the State of the Union address; and at other times, as a spot for visitors to dump their hats, bags and coats. But for more than 80 years, the White House movie theater was mostly a place where the first family and their guests went for entertainment."
""The best perk of the White House is not Air Force One or Camp David or anything else, it's the wonderful movie theater I get here," then-President Bill Clinton told film critic Roger Ebert in a 1999 interview. Jimmy Carter was also a big fan. In a single term, the 39th president screened at least 400 films between this venue and Camp David, starting with All the President's Men a movie about the Watergate scandal soon after he was sworn in."
The White House Family Theater was converted from a cloakroom by Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 and served as a private, roughly 40-seat auditorium for the first family and guests. The theater hosted newsreels, documentaries, westerns, musicals and presidential speech rehearsals such as the State of the Union. The venue underwent multiple renovations, most recently in 2004 with movie-palace red decor overseen by Laura Bush. Presidents from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Barack Obama and Donald Trump used the space for frequent screenings. Demolition of the theater and surrounding East Wing began to make way for a new $300 million ballroom, ending a long-running White House entertainment tradition.
Read at www.npr.org
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