Ideal Theatre

The MGM Theatre Photograph and Report form for the Ideal Theatre has an exterior photo dated May 1941. The theatre had a fancy 2-story facade. The entrance was at the center with a small marquee and a vertical blade sign above 2 or 3 sets of double doors. There was a narrow arch over the marquee and a rounded parapet above. The Report states that the Ideal is not a MGM customer, that it's over 15 years old and in Poor condition, and has 570 seats. The Ideal is listed in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook as having 600 seats and open 7 days per week. In the 1942-43 Motion Picture Almanac, the Ideal is listed as part of the E.M. Loew theatre circuit; just about the only theatre in "The Bury" which was not run by M&P Theatres.

The Ideal Theater in Roxbury was known affectionately as the "Shack". Nobody called it the Ideal. I spent many a Saturday and Sunday watching a double feature with as many as 20 cartoons and a newsreel with a pause for a collection for MD or polio. When I was about 7 or 8, it cost 7 cents. Then they put in Cinemascope and it cost 12 cents (around 1954). It was 35 cents for adults. I think it closed around 1961 and had many fires after that. They tore it down in the 1970s.

The Ideal had a facade very similar to that of the Niagara Temple cinema on Blue Hill Avenue. (Similar, but not identical). One wonders if they were both designed by the same architect.

The street number on Dudley St. was "530".