Majestic Theater

The Majestic was a nice theatre. For those you who were ever in the Northpoint Theatre in San Francisco, the Majestic was almost an exact duplicate in layout (although built much earlier). No art work of any significance in the auditorium, the curtain did work, but the screen was gigantic!. It only showed one movie, never saw it have a double bill. We used to stay at the Hotel State down the street when we used to gamble in the area. The theatre did not have a vertical blade, but a very plain green marquee with the word "Majestic" in red neon above. For a single floor theatre, it was quite immense.

This is supposed to be a 1915 postcard picture showing the Majestic Theater. Its the one in the upper left side of your screen. Its an Ebay item so view it quickly. :)

A Wurlitzer theater organ opus 197 style 185 was installed in the Majestic Theater on 12/21/1918.

Last film to play here was Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers.

For those of you curious enough to track this 1952 crime drama "The Captive City", The Majestic can be seen prominently in the background in an early opening scene filmed in Reno where much of the movie was filmed. It looked very much like the description of it posted in the comments section on The Nevada Theatre http://cinematreasures.org/theater/14649/ It looked ornate from the outside and had a huge Majestic Theatre Marquee vertically up the front of the building. It looked nothing like the description of the Majestic posted by robertgippy above. Perhaps it suffered a remodel later on. The film showing was one with Bing Crosby but I could not make out the title. The filming in Reno was briefly discussed in this article at TCM

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=17060&category=Notes

A photo of the Majestic from 1910 can be found at http://www.radioblvd.com/wireless/RenoCityHall1910.jpg although this was not the angle used in the film

The Majestic in Reno was not a flat single story theatre, nor was it smaller than the Granada. It was huge to the point of dwarfing the Granada! I saw South Pacific there, Exodus, and many, many double features as well. The epoch movies of that day were often four hours long, so those never had a second feature, but always a newsreel and a cartoon or two. The bottom was a flat huge plush deck covered in many rows of chairs, and swept up into a very large section of the best seats to view that giant screen which were called Loges. Those were the best seats which would lean back for luxurious comfort, and were situated just far enough back for you to see the huge screen well. The loges cost more than the General tickets and we children would often sneak down after the movie started, and sit in the empty ones until the ushers caught us and made us move to the floor seats or the balcony which cost the same as the floor seats. The balcony was better for viewing the giant screen though than the floor seats even though it was far away. The Majestic had layers and layers of curtains which swept open one layer at a time, two layers that opened out to the sides and one fab one that pulled upward like a giant Balloon shade. It was transparent and magical looking as they pulled it open. I hope I never forget that spectacular sight. I actually recall three curtains in all., first one heavy velvet drape, and then one satin, then the transparent one. There were cut glass wall sconces and velvet/ corduroy seats and Victorian everything. It was very old, and very, very beautiful. Above the floor seats, and the loges, accessed by the same steps was the balcony. I have had the best kiss of my life in that very balcony, so I remember it well. That theatre was aptly named, and truly was The Majestic Theatre. It was mostly red colored decor inside. The Granada had the Green interior, and was beautiful but much smaller. I remember how it looked because I was an adult driving by when they tore it down. The front of that old dream filled building was torn away, and I couldn't help but gasp! You see, I saw them! The seats we sat in when we saw Sparticus, the theatre we all grew up in, were just hanging there as if they didn't matter at all. Like nothing had ever happened in there, and nobody had ever sat there and learned about foreign lands and castles and ancient stories re-enacted. And so it goes. There is a parking lot there now. And a very ugly, ugly one at that.

The entire Majestic Theatre/Mapes Hotel block is now a public cement park with nothing more than a few benches and some shrubs scattered about. It is also the part time arena for the ice skating rink. Two beautiful buildings demolished for this, very sad.

The Granada Theatre was open until 1997 (operated by UA) when the flood hit Reno and making it impossible to renovate any building in that immediate area. Everything was torn down. A beautiful high rise condo building stands where the Granada was, a typical looking 12 screen Century Theatre sits on the other side of the street.