Some 30 years ago, in the predigital movie theater era, Wolfe drove regularly to Philadelphia to pick up two film canisters, each containing two to four reels of celluloid film, and each weighing 20 to 40 pounds. “Regular movies come in on a hard drive that we upload into our server.” “We have a digital Blu-ray that plugs right into the main system. “The popular ones were ‘The Goonies,’ ‘Back to the Future,’ ‘Jurassic Park.’ What were the most popular ‘You show it, I will come’ movies? “We actually had two rentals for one person.” “We had a half a dozen that were for one couple, two people. “Whatever they brought on Blu-ray or DVD. Most weren’t close to that, 10, 12 people, 15.” “The vast majority was for movie rentals,” Wolfe says of the screenings. In the more than 15 months that it has been closed, The Roxy has made-do on rentals of the theater for private screenings and rentals of its marquee for birthday, wedding and anniversary greetings. “So, therefore, now when we do open we can literally go back to the way it was before any of this happened.” They were doing away with all of the capacity and social distancing restrictions.

“The state changed the requirements as of June 28. “Those things in and of themselves made it almost impossible for us to run our concession stand because of our limited space. “The big difference now from anytime we could have reopened is that there were restrictions: the limitation on capacity, social distancing,” Wolfe says in a phone interview.

The landmark 550-seat Lehigh Valley movie theater closed March 15, 2020, because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic shutdown.

The movie theater has reopened with “Cruella,” July 2 - 7.

Thus spoke Richard Wolfe, who celebrated 50 years in 2020 as owner-manager of The Roxy Theatre, 2004 Main St., Northampton.

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