Center Theatre
1517 Atlantic Avenue,
Atlantic City,
NJ
08401
1517 Atlantic Avenue,
Atlantic City,
NJ
08401
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Listed in the 1970 FDY as part of G.G. Theatres.
Howard
Just saw your posting from Jan. The Center showed Funny Girl in 70mm as a roadshow engagement in 69. The Hollywood showed Airport and Doctor Dolittle in 70mm
So where did My Fair Lady play in Atlantic City? It had to have been 70mm. And all those Todd AO films and Ben Hur. And Cinerama? They couldn’t all have been at the Virginia.
The Colonial Theatre opened in 1914 and was built for movies and vaudville. It was equipped with a Kimball theatre pipe organ.
I attended movies at the Center Theater many times during the 60’s and 70’s. During that time the theater, along with the Hollywood, Shore,Virginia and Roxy were operated by George Hamid, Jr. (who also owned Steel Pier). The theater was not the ornate movie palace the larger neighboring Hollywood was, but still a great place to see a movie in its heyday. The Center’s auditorium was very wide and had no balcony. The theater’s prominant and best feature was it’s huge curved screen. I believe the theater was equipped for 70mm (especially with that big screen) but I don’t recall any 70mm
presentations there from the mid 60’s – late 70’s. I did see the Blue Max at the Center as a roadshow engagement, but it was 35mm Cinemascope. Interestingly, the only theater I recall as having 70mm
presentations during that era was the Virginia located on the Boardwalk which did not have that impressive a screen sizewise and was in fairly funky condition for a roadshow house even in the 60’s.
If anyone out there has any info on 70mm presentation in Atlantic City at theaters other than the Virginia I’d love to hear about it.
Correction to my above posting, the theater closed in 1978. Anyone with onformation on the other Atlantic City theaters please contact me at
The theater closed around 1977. The last movie there was Greased Lightning. They never took it off the marquee and it got demolished witht he building to make way for a parking lot.
The Colonial Theatre was located at 1517 Atlantic Ave. and it seated 1391 people.
I believe that the approximate dating of the photo of the Atlantic City Colonial and Hollywood theaters should be late February to mid to late March of 1947. The clues to this dating being that there is snow on the ground and the main feature on the marquee of the Colonial appears to be “THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS”. This Warner feature premiered on December 25, 1946 and went into general release on February 8, 1947. Although it was reissued by Dominant Pictures in 1956, the name of the theater had been changed to the Center two years prior.