July 7 , 2009
For Immediate Release

WKNO PRESENTS MEMORIES OF DOWNTOWN MEMPHIS

On August 3, Channel 10 will premiere the latest installment in WKNO’s popular Memphis Memoirs series, entitled Downtown – a word that calls up variety of images of the city’s past.

To some, the word “Downtown” evokes a bustling mercantile 1940s Main Street packed with people, cars, buses and trolleys, businessmen in hats and summer suits making deals on a handshake, soldiers at the train station, USO dances at grand hotels, a hardworking, optimistic American city on the verge of a new era.

Others recall the music and names and sounds of an outrageous doomed Sin City of bordellos, opium dens, and wild street life circa 1905, including one rowdy saloon that never closed because it didn't have a front door.

A more family-friendly Downtown, still very much alive in the memory of many, is an innocent 1950s wonderland of gold and silver and green populated by Santa, Mr. Bingle, and awestruck children gazing at elaborate decorations. There are as many sides to Downtown as there are people to remember it.

In Memphis Memoirs: Downtown, producer Pierre Kimsey explores the personal stories behind the 20th Century history of Downtown Memphis. “The concentration of people, of businesses, of energy was remarkable,” Kimsey says. “Downtown’s modern resurgence has been wonderful, but we’ll never again capture the special feeling of the small-town city that Memphis used to be.” Except, of course, by capturing the memories.

Dozens of participants, including publisher Lester Gingold and historian Dr. John Harkins, tell stories of Downtown from 1900 to 1980 in this hour-long documentary, which also features some never-before-seen images of the city from Memphians’ private scrapbooks.

Memphis Memoirs: Downtown premieres Monday, August 3 at 7:00 p.m. on WKNO/Channel 10. It repeats, in a special double presentation with Memphis Memoirs: Beyond the Parkways, on Tuesday, August 11 beginning at 8:30 p.m. on WKNO/ Channel 10. It also airs on WKNO2 (10.2) Tuesday, August 4 at 8:00 p.m., and Thursday, August 13 at 8:30 p.m.

Memphis Memoirs is a nostalgia series that began on WKNO with Remember When? in 1996. Since then there have been eighteen Memphis Memoirs productions (including Downtown).
WKNO is a non-profit, private foundation serving the Mid-South for more than 50 years. An important community resource, WKNO uses the power of non-commercial public broadcasting to provide the Mid-South with quality educational and cultural programs that inform, entertain, and inspire.
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