| That was the year Gone With the Wind played the Metro. Louis Lober, director of the newly-opened
theater, planned a grand premier, with air-conditioning -- a first for a Cairo theater -- installed
especially for the occasion. Crowds milled in front of the Ford dealership, drinking coffee at the Excelsior cafe on the corner, and men in red fezzes, cigarettes between their ring fingers and
pinkies, raced by like extras from Casablanca, beating a steady stream past the Cicurel department
store and the Turf Club. After the show, the glass doors burst open in a crush of velvet and
gabardine, and the audience swept to the sidewalk, eyes sparkling with fading gleams of technicolor painting downtown Cairo in the over-saturated reds and yellows of Atlanta on fire. | 
|
