Wilmette Theatre

I lived in Wilmette from 1955 to the late 1960s. Our closest theater was the Teatro del Lago at the north end of Wilmette. The Wilmette theater at that time was closed and being used as one of the facilities for Encyclopedia Britannica Films, which headquartered in Wilmette, using various office spaces. My neighbor was a film director for EBF and even had me appear in one of his educational films – but that’s another story.
On weekends my kid brother and I sometimes rummaged through their trash behind the Wilmette Theater building and found reels of 16mm films, mostly junk but sometimes parts of feature films. (EBF was associated with Films Incorporated, a distributor of Hollywood films on 16mm.)
By the time the Wilmette theater was reopened and I finally got to see a movie there I had been off to college and Vietnam. It’s probably changed hands a few times since I was there.

Does anyone know how the the theater was used during the ‘60’s before it re-opened (around '65-'67)? I remember looking at some sort of studio stills in the poster frames. They never seemed to change, and it was always the subject of much speculation when we would go to Baskin Robbins next door.

Some photos of the Wilmette are visible here, the projection booth is shown here, and the incredibly cramped men’s quarters can be seen here