Mystic Luxury Cinemas
Growing up in “The Business” doesn’t always mean Hollywood. It can be a third generation Hardware Store, fifth generation Law Firm or in this case a second generation Theater. When you walk through the doors of the Mystic Luxury Cinemas, you will more than likely bump into its owner Bill Dougherty. Started out cleaning the bathrooms in his father’s theater, he witnessed firsthand what it meant to really run a business, you must be willing to do anything and be prepared for everything.
Bill’s father, William F. Dougherty, Sr., along with his partners, William Rosen, Leonard Sampson and Robert Spodick pioneered the first multi-screen theater in Southeastern Connecticut. Through the years, the partnership constructed or acquired locations in Groton, Derby, Mystic, Norwich, Westerly and Narragansett before selling to Hoyts of Australia. They were the last operators of the Norwich/New London Drive-In. Bill vowed in 1986 to someday bring your theater back to local ownership. On May 5, 2006 he fulfilled that life long dream. When you see a movie here, you feel like you’re at home, and with more and more locally owned businesses being taken over, it’s nice to come home again. Every day as Bill unlocks the front doors and turns on the lights, in that moment of silence before his employees arrive or costomers start buying tickets, he remembers his father. Who always told him, “You will own the seats, screens, projectors and popcorn machines. The building and property belong to Joyce and Jerry, but the THEATER belongs to the community.”
As life around us gets faster and faster, we sometimes forget to take a moment and remember where we’ve come from. A day when things were simpler and theaters were owned by everyone who ever walked through the door. In just six easy words Bill’s father said it best, “The Theater belongs to the community” and I think we are all well overdue to experience what we now own.
