Crowds Queue for Hidden Figures – Held Over another week.

Crowds filled the Old Greenbelt Theatre on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday to see the movie Hidden Figures, theater management reported. More than 1,500 people came over the four days, creating lines that went from the theater across Roosevelt Center to the New Deal Café, prompting the theater management to appear outside to say that everyone would get inside before the film started. The movie tells the true story of three African American women “computers” who worked on the Redstone rockets sending the first Mercury astronauts into space and John Glenn into orbit. The audience could be seen cheering as they came back out of the theater. Theater management invited guest speakers to enhance the event. On January 13 Lakesha Bates, head of NASA Goddard’s Flight Systems Integration and Test Branch, spoke about the movie and how it relates to the space program’s current status. She said most of the movie was realistic, but there were a few moments that were “kind of Hollywood.” Bates, who is the first female African-American branch head at Goddard, said that she knew about the story before the movie or the book because of her connections at Goddard. However, most people had never heard of the women shown in the movie. On Saturday, Nikesha Davis, attitude control analyst, also took questions. The theater manager said the responses for the show and the speakers were so good there will be guest speakers at the 6 p.m. shows on Friday and Sunday, January 20 and 22.