- 15 hours ago
Abandoned Engineering - Season 15 Episode 9 -
Agent Zigzag
Agent Zigzag
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00A secretive complex in Bulgaria, part of a global information war.
00:07These communist states were willing to do anything to stop people telling the truth.
00:16A French compound where a staggering deception was launched.
00:21What unfolded was one of the great spy stories of the Second World War.
00:25An iconic Philadelphia venue that set the stage for era-defining artists.
00:33All these famous entertainers, it was electric in here.
00:39And a mansion in Malaysia, the scene of a baffling crime.
00:44This house was the site of a brutal killing. His body was found with a shotgun wound to the back of the head.
00:5580 miles from the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, is a hidden facility.
01:05The propaganda mouthpiece of a repressive regime.
01:09There's forest as far as the eye can see. It feels remote, but out of the way. The perfect place to hide something.
01:22Then out of the trees rises this structure. The whole thing has an ominous feel.
01:27It's massive and concrete. It is one of these Eastern European communist monoliths.
01:37Among the derelict remains, there are clues to why it was built in such an isolated location.
01:45Inside, it's been virtually stripped to the walls, but there's a few hints that it was a highly technological structure.
01:53There are these channels cut into the floor, maybe for pipes or cables.
01:59You can also see platforms that look like the basis for some kind of machinery.
02:05It has its own power line leading to it. So clearly, whatever happened here required an enormous amount of electricity.
02:14Could this have been some kind of secret government office or military research facility?
02:20It was created to fight a disinformation campaign from deep behind the Iron Curtain.
02:27But when the West gained the edge, this Cold War confrontation turned hot.
02:34The Bulgarian government's control over information was so complete and so paranoid, they were even willing to launch a daring assassination in the streets of London.
02:46Spiridon Harizanov began working here as a technician in September 1988, when Bulgaria was part of the communist Soviet bloc.
02:49Spiridon Harizanov began working here as a technician in September 1988, when Bulgaria was part of the communist Soviet bloc.
03:14Spiridon Harizanov began working here as a technician in September.
03:18Spiridon Harizanov began working here as a technician in September 1988, when the war was part of the communist bloc.
03:19Spiridon Harizanov began working here as a technician in September 1989, when the war was part of the communist bloc.
03:20The Cold War was a political and ideological battle as a military confrontation.
03:21As the Eastern and Western superpowers were facing off with their nuclear arsenals, another unseen battle was unfolding,
03:28and the war was a military confrontation.
03:30The Cold War was a political and ideological battle as a military confrontation.
03:34As the Eastern and Western superpowers were facing off with their nuclear arsenals, another unseen battle was unfolding over the airwaves.
03:53These structures were part of communist Bulgaria's attempt to convert the world to their way of thinking, using international radio broadcasting.
04:05This complex had enough power, it was said, to broadcast a shortwave signal six times around the world.
04:20The people who worked here would work in 24-hour shifts, and the transmissions went all through the year, even on holidays, 24 hours a day.
04:31Everything that was produced was propaganda.
04:36Some of the emissions were brought to Bulgarian foreign countries.
04:41But a big part of them, and the same thing, were covered by a completely different audience.
04:47Latin America, Southern America, Western Africa, and the most different languages.
04:54We were produced from the most distant points of the world.
04:57This is the Bedarsko Radio Center.
05:02Transmissions from here included speeches by the country's leader, Todor Zhivkov,
05:08praising Bulgaria as a socialist worker's paradise.
05:12The reality was very different.
05:16Bulgaria was a political state.
05:19But their eyes were everywhere.
05:22People were not permitted to know anything that their dictators didn't want them to know.
05:34So Western nations set up operations to broadcast to various countries behind the Iron Curtain.
05:40There were stations like The Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and the BBC, which all beamed programming direct into Bulgaria and the Soviet Union.
05:52And all of these radio stations are designed to have real journalists sending real news to parts of the world where all they were fed was government propaganda.
06:07They also broadcast a lot of interviews with political leaders like President Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, entertainers like Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Jones, civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King.
06:28But it wasn't just American voices and celebrities that were beaming into Bulgaria.
06:35Exiles and dissidents were brought in to broadcast their criticisms of the regime back into the country.
06:43Help us to keep our young people from falling under the influence of the Communists.
06:49In 1969, one of these political opponents fled to the West.
06:56From there he took to the airwaves, attacking the Bulgarian regime.
07:01His name was Georgi Markov.
07:04He had settled in England, where he worked for Radio Free Europe, the BBC, and other radio stations broadcasting back into his home country.
07:14I think there is no Bulgarian who has not heard the recent reports of Georgi Markov.
07:23Markov is being very pointed in his criticism of the Bulgarian government and of Todor Zhivkov, who was the Bulgarian dictator.
07:35Markov is a very dangerous nuisance.
07:39Fearing his shows would incite a rebellion, Bulgarian authorities turned to facilities like Pedasco.
07:48This building in this part was the so-called Amonia, which was used to call the invasion of the war stations.
07:58It was in the jargon, but there was also another one, Bramchilka, etc.
08:04During shows they thought were particularly damaging, like Markov's shows, they would tune to that channel, broadcast on the same frequency, interfering noise, music, crazy sounds.
08:21Here's the Soviet government's 120 million dollars a year direct answer to radio liberty.
08:28Jamming.
08:30And they didn't just do it from this station.
08:34They had transmitters across the country that existed just to block out signals coming in from the west.
08:42According to one estimate, the Soviet government spent over 900 million dollars a year to block western broadcasts.
08:51This was more than the combined global budgets of the radio stations they were trying to block out.
08:58But even with this huge investment, they weren't that successful at blocking these transmissions.
09:06A person could arrange their antenna in a certain way, or maybe drive out of the countryside, and they could often wind up hearing these broadcasts.
09:17In the house, almost everyone would listen to the radio in Europe.
09:23Regardless of whether the colleagues who have changed it the same day, try to block it.
09:29Georgi Markov's blistering criticisms of the Bulgarian leader, broadcast from London, continued to be heard.
09:39The Bulgarian authorities were so outraged at Markov's transmissions, they were really hitting home with the Bulgarian public, that they took a desperate measure.
09:51On September the 7th, 1978, Markov was walking across London's Waterloo Bridge, heading for his job at the BBC.
09:59Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his leg, as if he had been stung by an insect.
10:05When that happened, he saw somebody bend over and pick up an umbrella and walk away.
10:12And he thought no more about it.
10:15But by that evening, he was deathly ill and went to the hospital.
10:19They couldn't really figure out what was wrong with him, except for a tiny puncture in the back of his leg.
10:24But four days later, he was dead.
10:26There's a widespread theory that a Bulgarian Secret Service officer had an umbrella capable of injecting a pellet of ricin poison into Markov's leg, and the poison killed him.
10:42Every word he said over the radio was damaging to the Bulgarian Communist Party.
10:51Markov had to be stopped, and he was.
10:57Across the West, the attack was front-page news.
11:02But in Bulgaria, the official line was complete silence.
11:07I couldn't believe it was possible.
11:08I couldn't believe it.
11:09I knew it, but I knew it exactly the same way.
11:10I knew it was the same way.
11:11I knew it, but I knew it.
11:12I knew it exactly the same way.
11:13I knew it, but I knew it.
11:14Or it was on BBC.
11:15I learned it about the religion of Georgi Markov.
11:16Markov's killers were never brought to justice, and Padasco continued to operate until a wave of democratic protests finally toppled the regime in the late 1980s.
11:32But again, after the changes.
11:34Almost immediately after the changes, we stopped to turn on the trigger.
11:41In 1990, Todor Zhivkov was arrested and put on trial for corruption and abuse of power.
11:48He died while under house arrest eight years later.
11:53This facility was still used to transmit Radio Bulgaria for another couple of decades.
12:00No one has nostalgic memories of this facility.
12:29No one is organizing fundraising to restore it or turn it into a park or museum.
12:36It sits here out in the forest, abandoned.
12:39A bad memory of a very dark time.
12:46In Malaysia's Penang province, tales of haunting and violence swirl around an isolated relic.
12:54We're in a lush tropical area.
13:01And at first, all you see is trees.
13:03It looks like an unbroken forest.
13:05In the middle of it all is this large imposing ruin.
13:09Clearly, no one has lived here for a very long time.
13:13But the sparse interior does hold evidence of who built this place.
13:20You can tell it was once a luxurious residence for a very wealthy person.
13:24But it doesn't look like a traditional Malay building.
13:28It's been built from heavy stone with palatial European features.
13:33It was constructed using the profits from an incredible resource boom.
13:38But as a family tried to reassert dominance over this land, it became the scene of a twisted crime.
13:45It's one of Malaysia's most famous unsolved murders, but there are no shortage of theories.
13:56This is what we call a secret, mysterious place.
14:00You could feel the presence of something in the past.
14:06When Clement Liang first visited this grand ruin, locals told him about a spirit they believe still stalks these halls.
14:17When I came here in 2006, there was actually a picture of a Hindu god on the staircase.
14:25So I was curious and asked the character, why you did it?
14:29Oh, the spirit of John is still around.
14:32We need to have some deity to console his spirit.
14:36John's full name was John St. Moore Ramsden.
14:41He was part of a colonial dynasty that controlled vast amounts of land in British Malaya in the 1870s.
14:49At first, the estate grew sugarcane, but a technological advancement would lead to a far more lucrative crop being grown here.
15:01This radical transformation began with a revolutionary discovery made more than 9,000 miles away in the United States.
15:10In the mid-19th century, a self-taught American chemist named Charles Goodyear started tinkering with rubber to try to make it more durable and tougher and more elastic.
15:23Eventually, he came across a formula that was stretchy, but could return to its original shape.
15:29There was nothing quite like it.
15:32Rubber very quickly became one of the most in-demand products in the world.
15:40Malaysia turned out to be one of the best places to grow rubber.
15:44And within a few years, it was making more than a third of the world's supply.
15:48The Randons family changed all this into a huge rubber plantation.
15:55Instead of traveling from Britain themselves, they hired managers to run the estates.
16:01This building was built in 1917 to be the administration and also the residence for the managers.
16:10One thing about the British, they also like to build huge buildings, mansions like this, to show the power and the authority.
16:18So a grand building here would assert a kind of authority over the plantation workers.
16:24This was the jewel in the crown of the plantation, and it was called Caledonia House.
16:34For decades, demand for rubber continued to grow.
16:38And from their luxurious mansion, the Ramson family's managers oversaw an increasingly diverse workforce.
16:48As the economy grew, it pulled in hundreds of thousands of immigrants from China and elsewhere, who mixed with the indigenous Malaysian population.
16:58The family were raking in the cash.
17:01At the time, it was said to be the most valuable European holding in British Malaya.
17:06But this massive wealth was being watched jealously from overseas.
17:11And soon war would bring disaster to Caledonia plantation.
17:18On December the 8th, 1941, almost simultaneously with their attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese army invaded British Malaya.
17:28Malaya had enormous resources, including these rubber plantations.
17:33Those were vital for Japan's military efforts.
17:38They swept through the country at lightning speed, and after just three months, the unprepared British surrendered in Singapore.
17:47Caledonia was now under Japanese occupation.
17:51But the British would go to great lengths to regain control of the valuable colony.
17:58They needed to find help wherever they could.
18:02And in many countries, there were insurgent groups fighting the occupiers.
18:07Many of these groups were inspired by communist ideology.
18:11But the Allies decided to fund them and support them, give them weapons,
18:16because they needed that help behind enemy lines to undermine the Japanese.
18:22With the communists' help, Japan was finally defeated in 1945.
18:29But when Britain returned to Malaya, these guerrilla fighters switched their focus from one colonial oppressor to another.
18:37The British wanted these guerrillas to surrender their weapons,
18:41but they wanted to liberate Malaya from the British control.
18:46So they actually started a war again.
18:49To these insurgents, families like the Ramsdons were the ultimate symbol of colonial exploitation.
18:58In the face of this growing armed resistance, there was still money to be made,
19:03and the Ramsden family returned to the ruins of Caledonia.
19:08The patriarch of the family sent his son, John, to repair the estate.
19:15He went right to work getting the rubber trees planted and the latex harvested, and just putting things right.
19:23He is said to have treated the plantation workers well, offering them lavish dinners at the house,
19:29and having their children driven to school in his car.
19:33But no matter how good his relationship with the workers might have been,
19:38at the end of the day, this was a colonial enterprise that was built on racism and inequality.
19:44Two years after John Ramsden arrived here, these tensions came to a head.
19:50On the 8th of June, 1948, it was a hot, steamy evening.
19:57John just finished his work, and he was staying here alone.
20:01And he walked back, and he was about to climb up the stairs.
20:05Two gunshots were heard, bang, bang.
20:09The estate watchman and three plantation workers heard the shots and rushed inside.
20:18And they all found our John lying on this staircase with blood gushing out.
20:26And he died right on this spot.
20:30When the police arrived, they began combing the mansion and its grounds for evidence.
20:36Outside, they found two spent shotgun shells underneath one of the rubber trees.
20:44Very quickly, John Ramsden's murder got connected with a much bigger story.
20:51Over the following couple of weeks, other overseers of plantations in Malaysia were also killed.
20:58And these killings were connected with a communist insurgency that was sweeping the islands.
21:04The British planters were seen as their target because they represent the British authority exploiting the local workers.
21:15So there are some saying that, yes, John was also murdered by these communist guerrillas.
21:21But William Haynes, the police officer in charge of this investigation, was far from convinced that this was a political assassination.
21:30He believed evidence uncovered at the murder scene pointed towards an inside job.
21:36Near the body, they found a pair of shoes that didn't seem to belong to anybody working at the residence.
21:43It seemed like an open and shut case, but he claimed he'd been framed.
21:56Another suspect was John Ramsden's driver.
22:00And it was said that Ramsden was having an affair with the driver's sister.
22:06So he might have had a powerful motive for the killing.
22:11Both Mohamed Ramjan and the driver were arrested.
22:15But with only circumstantial evidence implicating the pair, they were eventually released.
22:21On the 3rd of September 1948, 87 days after John's murder, the investigation was called off.
22:30So we're still wondering who actually killed Mr. John Ramsden.
22:35Still a big, big mystery.
22:39Back in Britain, the Ramsden family was so heartbroken that they ordered the liquidation of all of their holdings in Malaya,
22:47including the Caledonia plantation.
22:50After a long and brutal insurgency against British rule,
22:55In 1963, the independent country of Malaysia was established.
23:01And Caledonia House was left to ruin.
23:09After its abandonment, life for Caledonia House went from bad to worse.
23:14In 2020, a fire ripped through the property.
23:18And later, a commercial crane working nearby tipped over and smashed through the roof.
23:24Caledonia House has such a significant historical value that I hope people one day would able to not only save it,
23:36but restore the whole building and let us know more about the history of this place.
23:41In the French capital, a decaying compound holds secrets of an extraordinary deception.
23:54We're in the quiet outskirts of Paris, and under this looming broadcast tower is a collection of buildings that look significantly older.
24:10This feels institutional or perhaps military.
24:13But as you look closer, you notice something more sinister.
24:17Built into these walls are rows of casemates, but instead of windows, they have heavy iron bars.
24:24These were clearly repurposed as prison cells, but who were they keeping here?
24:29During the Second World War, thousands were detained here.
24:34But one man would escape these walls and do untold damage to the Nazi regime.
24:41He convinces British counterintelligence that he really is a German spy who is willing to be a double agent.
24:51He would become one of the most notorious spies of his entire generation.
24:56He was known as Agent Zig-Zag.
24:59Thomas Fontaine has spent decades uncovering the story of this decaying fortification.
25:15We are here in a very important place in the history of the occupation of France between 1940 and 1944,
25:22but a place that has remained until the beginning of the year 2000.
25:26It was built in the 1830s as part of a ring of defences around Paris.
25:36But these days, it's not known for its protection of the city, but rather something far more menacing.
25:42In May and June of 1940, the German armed forces very rapidly encircle the French and British armies in northeastern France.
25:53The French state surrenders. Paris was under occupation.
26:00Here, on the edge of the city, was a valuable asset, and the Germans weren't going to let that go to waste.
26:07The Nazi occupiers quickly transformed it from a place to keep enemies out into a facility to contain them.
26:16This is Fort de Romanville.
26:19This is Fort de Romanville.
26:23One of these inmates was an English petty criminal called Eddie Chapman.
26:29Eddie Chapman was a British criminal who led a lavish life in London, supported by the forging of checks and burglary.
26:36In 1939, he was arrested and sent to prison in Jersey.
26:39In the summer of 1940, Germany invaded and occupied the Channel Islands, including Jersey.
26:45Chapman was briefly released, but then re-arrested on suspicion of working for the resistance.
26:58So, Chapman is sent to prison. And where is he sent to prison? Not in Jersey. They send him to France. They send him to Fort Romanville.
27:23Eddie Chapman was in prison.
27:30There was no contact with the outside world, rations were strict, and prisoners could be executed without any explanation or warning.
27:40Chapman realized he wasn't going to survive this place. And four months into his imprisonment, he found a lifeline.
27:46His salvation came from a shadowy Nazi organization, the Abwehr, Germany's intelligence service.
27:57From the beginning of the Second World War, the Germans had tremendous difficulty recruiting agents in England.
28:16So, the German intelligence people go to Chapman and they say, can you go and be a German agent?
28:26Chapman accepts the German intelligence offer.
28:29And he's told that he needs to blow up the de Havilland aircraft factory in England.
28:38After some training in spycraft and a new nickname, Little Fritz, Chapman departed on his first mission.
28:47On the 16th of December 1942, Chapman parachuted into Britain.
28:53He was carrying a radio, a pistol, a cyanide pill, and close to a thousand pounds in cash.
28:59On the morning of the 1st of February 1943, British newspapers reported an unexplained explosion at the de Havilland factory.
29:12As far as the Germans are concerned, this new agent of theirs, Mr. Chapman, is now the great star of the German intelligence service.
29:24But he'd been conning German intelligence from the very start.
29:31For Chapman, the idea of being able to get out of jail, well, he'll do anything, won't he?
29:39And as soon as he gets on the ground, as soon as he has a chance, he tells British counterintelligence what he is up to.
29:49So, in order to build his credibility, the British armed forces simulate the destruction of the de Havilland factory.
30:03They arranged the fake sabotage of the airplane plant using an illusionist and a planted story in the newspaper.
30:13Nazi intelligence bought the lie.
30:16Chapman returned to Germany under the guise of having pulled off a successful attack.
30:21He was given a massive payment and the Iron Cross, the only British citizen ever to receive the award.
30:31Believing he was their best agent, he was soon tasked with a new mission.
30:36Chapman was parachuted again into Britain in June of 1944 to report on the accuracy of the V-1 and V-2 rockets being fired across the channel.
30:45He tells his British controllers what the job is, and British counterintelligence calculate exactly how wrong they want the German aim to be.
31:01Chapman was one of the most successful double agents of the entire war.
31:07In November 1944, he was dismissed by British intelligence and continued his civilian life in London.
31:15By this time, the French prison where he had been recruited by the Nazis had been transformed.
31:20It was now a transit camp for French resistance fighters.
31:27The fort of Romainville became a point of departure for women to the Nazi concentration system.
31:35Before they left, they were held in the fort's dank casemates.
31:59These are the last records many of these people would leave behind.
32:02More than 3,800 women were detained here before they were sent to Nazi concentration camps.
32:11Fort de Romainville was finally liberated by the Allies in August 1944, and it was abandoned by the French military in the early 2000s.
32:24After his dismissal by British intelligence, Eddie Chapman continued living life on his own terms.
32:30Spending his time in the company of glamorous women, and becoming embroiled in a gold smuggling operation.
32:42Since 1945, Parisians have held ceremonies here to remember those imprisoned and deported from Romanville.
32:50Plans are underway to transform parts of the fort into a museum.
32:59It's a completely emotional place as a historian and as a human being.
33:04As a human being, it's really important to preserve these places, to understand what has happened, and to transmit it.
33:15In the U.S. state of Pennsylvania is a faded landmark once the life and soul of an uptown district.
33:28We're on the north side of Philadelphia, on a busy road flanked by offices and shops.
33:38One building along this strip stands out, and it looks like it's from a different era.
33:43From its design, with its ornate brickwork and detailed carvings, you can tell that this was a building of importance to the surrounding community.
33:53There remains part of a marquee with the words Uptown written on it.
33:57This was clearly some type of theater or music venue.
34:01Inside, the true extent of its ruin becomes clear.
34:07In the main room, there's a dramatic sight.
34:10A gaping hole in the roof lets in enough light to illuminate a huge open space.
34:16You can make out dozens of rows of seats facing an elevated stage.
34:22This may look forgotten now, but in its heyday, this was part of a network that spanned the whole of the East Coast
34:29and fostered some of the greatest entertainers of the 20th century.
34:34Ray Charles, James Brown, Jackson 5, this place played host to the who's who of American icons.
34:41But this wasn't just a place for entertainment. It was also a place for activism.
34:50Wow, I haven't been here since the 70s. It's amazing.
34:55My mom worked here as a cashier. I wasn't allowed in the booth because she was handling money.
35:05From the age of 14, Olivia Riley spent many of her evenings and weekends in this theater.
35:12I was kind of famous because everybody knew she was my mother.
35:17They kind of hung around me because they can get in for free.
35:24There was a lot of excitement because you were looking forward to seeing all the acts.
35:30They were all up and coming and famous artists.
35:34From its earliest days, this was the cultural heart of the neighborhood.
35:38It was built in the late 1920s, an era of rapid expansion in the city.
35:47Philadelphia was one of the most important manufacturing centers in the world.
35:52Factories and warehouses dotted this area and soon neighborhoods of row homes were built in order to accommodate the workers.
35:59As newcomers poured in, there was an increase in demand for entertainment venues.
36:05On the 16th of February 1929, Warner Brothers Studios opened the lavish 2,000 seat uptown theater.
36:14They spared no expense. It had terracotta facades, stained glass windows and velvet seats.
36:19This was a luxurious way to watch movies for everyone, from the city's wealthy industrialists to working class families.
36:30On its opening night, crowds flocked to see On Trial, starring Pauline Frederick.
36:37It was the perfect choice to showcase the uptown's cutting edge design.
36:41Hollywood was riding high on the success of silent films, and the Warner Brothers Studio decided to take a gamble on a revolutionary new development.
36:54Speaking films, known as talkies.
36:57This theater was specifically wired for sound. The audio quality here was second to none.
37:05It seemed destined for success.
37:07But just eight months after it opened, the country was struck by disaster.
37:13The Wall Street Crash.
37:16This recession resulted in the collapse of most of Philadelphia's manufacturing industry.
37:23And over the next few decades, many of its residents fled to the suburbs.
37:28But a change was coming to this neighborhood that would give it a second life and a brush with stardom.
37:34In 1952, theater mogul Samuel H. Stiefel bought the uptown with plans to completely repurpose it.
37:44By this time, with migration from southern states, North Philadelphia had become a vibrant hub of African American culture and arts.
37:53It had incredible acoustics left over from its days as a movie theater.
37:59And Stiefel saw an opportunity to put it to new use as a music venue.
38:03But the uptown theater wasn't the only one of its kind.
38:07Rather, it was part of a circuit that stretched across the entire East Coast.
38:11Along with the Apollo in New York and the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., and the Regal in Chicago, and many others, this made up what was called the Chitlin Circuit.
38:22Because of racism, African American acts couldn't perform in certain areas, so they would do the Chitlin Circuit.
38:32The Chitlin Circuit gave so many black entertainers a chance during the era of Jim Crow when they were barred from white mainstream venues.
38:40This stage would play host to some of the era's most legendary black performers.
38:48I saw every show at least two times. I didn't miss a show.
38:54I saw the Jackson 5, James Brown, the Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and Marvin Gaye. I saw him so many times.
39:02But my favorite was the Isley Brothers because I was a part of history.
39:10At the end of their act, they just started singing Shout.
39:15And every time they sang Shout, they'd jump.
39:19Everybody in the audience jumped. It was electrifying.
39:23Ron Isley created that song that night that I was here.
39:27These acts would come for a few days or even a week playing shows around the clock for a ticket price as low as 50 cents.
39:35That's still only a little more than five bucks in today's money.
39:39On Saturdays, sometimes they'd even do five or six shows back to back.
39:46Tens of thousands of people came through this auditorium in the 1960s, and the theater gained a reputation as one of the country's most iconic venues.
39:57If there was one man responsible for a lot of the Uptown's success, it was the promoter, Georgie Woods.
40:04He had a nice voice. He had a beautiful personality. And he captured a lot of people's attention. He drew a big crowd. So they made him the emcee.
40:17He was known for bringing in incredible performers at incredibly low prices. It was reported that he got the Supremes to play for 10 days for $400.
40:27But Woods was not just a radio DJ, MC and promoter. He was a passionate advocate for civil rights.
40:38In 1963, he helped charter 21 buses to take Philadelphians to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic march on Washington.
40:48That same year, he used the Uptown to support the cause.
40:55Georgie Woods saw the Uptown theater not just as an entertainment venue, but as a vehicle for change.
41:02Woods began organizing what he called freedom shows, fundraisers for civil rights organizations right across the country.
41:09These star-studded concerts provided much-needed funds for charities and civil rights organizations.
41:18And Woods' contribution to the movement was soon recognized on the stage where it all began.
41:24He was even honored by the NAACP in a ceremony held right here at the Uptown.
41:30But the success of the civil rights movement in ending segregation across the country would have unintended consequences for the Uptown theater.
41:44Some say that after integration, when black performers could go to more venues, the importance of places like this on the Chitlin circuit declined.
41:53In 1972, Georgie Woods stopped producing shows here.
42:01And as many residents left for the suburbs over the following years, its fate was sealed.
42:07It closed because of the neighborhood changing. I think that's what really happened.
42:15The Uptown theater finally shut its doors in 1978.
42:19In 2001, the Uptown Entertainment and Development Corporation purchased the building.
42:31They now hope to breathe new life into this aging structure.
42:36The plans is to get the Uptown renovated, restored for the community.
42:43A lot of things happened here. The performers, they couldn't have made it unless they made it here.
42:48Unless they made it here at the Uptown.
42:51Everybody remembers coming here. So, it should be open.
43:18We hope it's open.
43:22Leo into that as long as a home to the center via the central to the center housing, Criptown.
43:26You should never meet with any locked signals.
43:29First of all, I'mたい, we should be open.
43:34All of our names are vital.
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