THIS DAY IN 1918 IN THERECORD
Sunday, Feb. 17, 1918. No longer protected by an injunction, the Majestic theater in Cohoes is raided tonight by county law enforcement officers for opening on the Christian Sabbath. Albany County Sheriff James D. Patton leads the raid after the first evening show ends at 8:30 p.m., while people wait in line outside for the late show. Tonight’s screenings are benefits for the American Red Cross. Patton arrests Cohoes Amusement Company manager Louis Buettner, ticket seller John W. Martin, ticket taker Edward Landry and projectionist Edward Bachman. They face arraignment in Cohoes police court tomorrow morning. Cohoes Amusement had secured an injunction against local law enforcement last weekend, enabling them to open on February 10. The Majestic and another theater had broken the Spindle City’s ban on Sunday movies on February 3, to make up for revenue lost when the federal government ordered theaters to close on Tuesdays in order to save fuel. The government rescinded that order late last week. The ban on Sunday movies is enforced erratically throughout New York State. Troy allows Sunday shows, while most nearby places do not. State courts have sent mixed messages on the subject. “The first and second district of the Appellate division have handed down conflicting decisions on Sunday movie shows,” The Record ex- plains, “and [an imminent] Court of Appeals verdict will make a uniform law.”
At issue is whether section 2145 of the state penal code, the law forbidding “public amusements” on Sundays, applies to movie theaters. Theater owners claim that it doesn’t, since motion pictures didn’t exist when New York’s “blue law” was enacted. The second district court holds this view while the first disagrees. The Court of Appeals is expected to announce its ruling on a Schenectady case early next month.
Chef Shot By An Officer
A downtown chef is recovering at Troy Hospital after a policeman assigned to a special detail at his lunchroom shoots him early this morning, the Sunday Budget reports.
Officer Patrick J. McGrath wounds Tony Bracaglia in the right leg in the kitchen of the Belmont Lunch on Franklin Square around 2:45 a.m. Another officer hails a cab to take Bracaglia to the hospital, where doctors determine that the chef is “not seriously injured unless the bullet pierced a bone.”
“The police are in the dark” as to why McGrath shot Bracaglia. The officer “gave his version of the affair … in a very excited condition” at the Second Precinct station. As the Budget goes to press, “the police had not made up their minds whether they should hold him, the shooting having in some respects the appearance of an accident.”