It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down. On April 15, 1912, 100 years ago this month, the Titanic went down. Without radio or television, how did the local people even find out about it? They read about it on the front page of the April 18 edition of The Alto Herald. It was a short account entitled “1200 Lives Claimed By The Sea Waters”, obviously sent out from New York, but it gave all the pertinent details about the iceberg, the number of people lost, the number saved and the name of the first ship to come to the rescue.

The Herald continued to follow up on this gripping story. In the May 23, 1912 issue, a gruesome report entitled Tried to Eat Cork described the discovery of a life raft from the Titanic with the bodies of three men lashed to it, their mouths full of small pieces of cork from the life jackets.

A week later, on May 30, there was a heartwarming little untitled vignette about two unidentified French children, rescued by the Carpathian, who knew only their first names. Upon publication of their pictures in France, they were reunited with their mother who stated that the children had earlier been kidnapped by their father. She had no idea where he had taken them, and had the Titanic not sunk and the father drowned, she likely would never have seen her children again.

The saga of the Titanic lends itself perfectly to the motion picture screen. The 1997 movie Titanic has become a classic and is frequently viewed even today. But it is not the only version. In September of 1953, the Alto Theater, owned by O. L. and Russell Smith was showing Titanic with Clifton Webb. But long before the Alto Theater or even the Majestic Theater, in the earliest days of the motion picture, Alto had the Empire Theater which served not only as a motion picture theater but also as an opera house for live performances. In the November 27, 1913 issue of the Herald, the Empire announced that it would be showing Titanic or The Ghost of Disaster on December 1. The point was strongly made that it would be three reels – not slides, but real moving pictures. Whether this was a “talking picture” we do not know, but the Empire had reported earlier that month that it would begin to show “talkies”. At least it must have been something special. The price of a ticket went up from 10 to 20 cents.