Today’s Newsreel

posted by Ross Melnick on November 5, 2002 at 6:34 pm

SANTA BARBARA, CA — Metropolitan Theatres' briefly reopened the downstairs, main auditorium of the Granada Theater this past weekend for a three-day engagement of “The Santa Clause 2”. Santa Barbara’s oldest movie house, which was previously converted into a triplex, is currently being renovated and restored.

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BRIDGEPORT, CT — The city of Bridgeport hastily began removing the Palace and Majestic theaters' marquees because of fears that they might crash to the ground. The marquees will be stripped and stored in the hopes of rebuilding them if and when the city can restore and reopen the shuttered, adjacent movie palaces.

According to the Connecticut Post, “City officials hope that construction of a state courthouse at the corner of Congress and Main streets will spark a revitalization of northern downtown, including rehabilitating the now run-down theaters.”

View images of the Palace and Majestic marquees

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MINNEAPOLIS, MN — The Pantages Theatre will reopen this Friday after an extensive renovation effort. According to the Skyway News, the Minneapolis Community Development Agency, which bought the theater in 1999, has replicated the style in which the theater was originally built and upgraded and modernized its capabilites.

The Pantages opens with a three-day engagement by pianist Jim Brickman and will continue to offer “off-broadway performances and concerts.”

The Pantages was built as a vaudeville theater in 1916 and switched to movies in the 1920s. RKO remodeled the theater in 1946 renaming it the RKO Pan. It was bought by Ted Mann in 1960 and remodeled into a 70mm roadshow house, opening in March 1961 with “Spartacus.”

The former Mann theater closed in 1984 and has sat vacant ever since.