Overlake Cinema
14505 NE 20th Street,
Bellevue,
WA
98007
14505 NE 20th Street,
Bellevue,
WA
98007
2 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 33 of 33 comments
So the president thought those white seats looked “elegant” huh. There are many words that come to mind when thinking about a typical 70s era General Cinema. Elegant, however, is not one of them.
Why white seat backs? Of course we wondered about that too, the official answer was “so you can see when they need cleaning”. We made cleaner’s wages – about twice our usher wages – to paint seats at night, so we didn’t complain about the seemingly flippant answer. Years later when I was a manager, I asked the division manager if we could get urinal blocks or fragrance sprays. He said, if the restrooms are clean, you won’t need that. Clean the restrooms. Well, turns out that’s true, so maybe that really does apply somehow to the white seat backs. Really though, I suppose Richard A. Smith, the GCC president, saw white seat backs somewhere and thought they looked elegant. Unfortunately, there was the GCC enigma (thanks D. Roben, the perfect phrase) at work – the auditorium floors were a continuous slope back to front, a spilled drink travelled clear to the bottom. Had they fixed that flaw, the seat backs might have stayed clean.
We’d get a few others.
I found (by working for them) that Syufy/Century built a lot of their theatres in a very standard way: cinderblock walls, pepto-pink paint, crazy-acid red carpet. Though certainly not a nationwide presence, if you walk into a pre-1995 Century multiplex, you’ve walked into just about EVERY pre-1995 Century multiplex.
DavyDuck, regarding the seating, I’ll bow to you since you worked there. Besides, it’s been many years now, and my memory could be failing… What fun it must have been to paint the backs of those white seats. And why white? Scuffs show up much more on white. Just another one of those General Cinema enigmas. They were headquartered in Boston, but I don’t believe the theaters there were any better.
Mark, regarding theater design, you make an excellent point. General Cinema was a relatively young company that aggressively began building theaters in the 1950s using, as I understand it, basically the same design through the 70s. Some, though, were true showplaces (the Northpark I-II-III-III in Dallas comes to mind) but even they
still had those Roman numerals! I’m sure you’ve seen the photos at Cinematour or Film-Tech.
Regarding a General Cinema Historical Society…I think there might be more members than you think!
Ah, please let me join your GCC society! For all that I disliked in their later years, I too had the best of times working in them. Mr. Campbell, you bring back some fond memories of the sights and smells.
But, D. Roben, the seating rows in every GCC house I visited (at least those built prior to 1975) were curved, not straight across, and I repainted many many of those stupid white seat backs in my time. When I left GCC to work at a Portland chain, I missed the rigidity of the GCC way of management. It’s too bad that they were so cheap in Washington State, I heard tales of how grand they were in Boston, but maybe that was just in the early days of the company.
Yes, there is something oddly attractive about the whole GCC atmosphere. At least even though they were building cheap, cinder-block theatres, GCC created a sort a corporate identity with their theatres in a somewhat modern way. You always knew you when you were at a GCC theatre: Shadowbox Screens, corrugated grey metal on the walls of the auditoriums, no light fixtures on walls, only dim overhead lighting, red carpet, white adjustable seats with, dim lighting in the halls, that GCC smell, red white and blue tile in the restrooms, the roman numerals I-II-III on the outside, i could go on. But, really, has there ever been a chain, especially so early in on, that had such a common design them nationwide? Even their theatres of the 80’s, with blue seats, red sound deadening panels on painted red cinderblock walls, danish-modern looking wood panelling in the halls, thick red railing/dividers, surround speakers enclosed in veritacal red boxes that went floor to ceiling, blue carpet etc etc etc. I always loved going to the GCC theatres in Washington, even though the SRO’s were far superior. It was always a bummer, though, when they played a scope picture in one of the tunnel houses. Roben, you, me and Scott Neff should start the GCC Historiacal Society. We would probably be the only members, though.
Mark, you’re absolutely correct. When these theaters were built in the 60s and 70s, before the age of megaplexes and hundreds of channels of cable TV, I believe General Cinema biult these cinder-block boxes on the business model of “build it and they will come.” And we did. Despite the fact that there were no street-side marquees to announce the films at their theaters, we found our way to these out-of-the-way complexes, though less so to the Overlake. It was the first to close, long before General Cinema suffered financially. They simply gave up on the lucrative eastside market.
The chop-job at the Overlake mirrors that of the Aurora, except only worse. I don’t recall an issue with the seats being angled incorrectly since all General Cinemas had straight rows that faced directly toward the screen. But because Overlake’s large house (the
one that was split) was much smaller than the Aurora’s, the resulting wind-tunnel theaters were even narrower and just as long.
But dang it…I still miss these theaters! Despite the poor physical design and lack of comfort, they still managed to put on a great show with excellent projection and sound (even if it was in mono). Add to that, they were the first in the Seattle area to use real butter on the popcorn when every other chain used “Super-Kist” topping. And, of course, there was the General Cinema jingle!
Those were the days!
I saw 2 films here before it closed: “The Bodyguard” in the “big” house and “Prelude to a Kiss” in one of the splits. Large house had Dolby Stereo. Small house was Mono. The Crossroads 8 was open by then and got most of the prime bookings, killing off the Overlake. General Cinemas always seemed to build their theatres in strange places. The Overlake was in a small non-descript strip mall. The Aurora was tucked up away behind other stores from Aurora Ave., out of sight from the main street with no sign on the street. The Villa Plaza was tucked way at the back of the Villa Plaza shopping complex, unseen from any main street, The Lincoln Plaza, Gateway 8 and Renton Village were tucked behind underperforming medium sized strip malls and were better accessed by side streets. It seemed they never wanted to build their theatres in a prominent place. I know most of these were built before people realized a cinema could be the centerpiece of a shopping/eating/entertainment complex, but most GCC’s seemed really out-of-the-way and out of sight. Must have been cheaper real estate.