Colony Theatre

Our company has upgraded the cinema projection system in the performing arts center. The theatre is closed for 9 months in 2003 so that they can build a new stage area to the existing complex.

I remember seeing GUYS AND DOLLS at this theatre. Shortly before this the theatre had been closed, but many posters were in view for the upcoming attraction of GUYS AND DOLLS which reopened the Colony. At that time the theatre had a much nice facade and marquee. There was a longer entrance before you entered the theatre with framed posters behind glass to show what feature was playing or upcoming. Somehow they must have expanded the lobby area since the entrance area is now very short.

Saw Barbara Cook In Concert here many years ago.

An odd side-note to all of this: the exterior of the Colony is visible in the 1963 skin flick "Blaze Starr Goes Nudist". Blaze, weary from working under hot studio lights, goes to a movie to relax. She watches a film about a nudist camp in Homestead ("why that's just a few miles away") and immediately decides to become a nudist. As Blaze leaves the theatre, fans crowd around her for her autograph, confirming for Blaze that it's time to get away for a while and become a nudist. The theatre is clearly the Colony, although I don't think the marquee is visible. "Blaze Starr Goes Nudist" is one of several early skin-flicks directed by Doris Wishman and filmed in Miami.

This is a B/W photo of the Colony marquee.

Here is a 2006 photo of the Colony theater.

In the sixties, the Colony was home to THE SOUND OF MUSIC on road show release. On it's first anniversary, the managers sent the local critic an anniversary cake marking one year since he had written his scathing review of the film.

a couple of recent shots of the facade including a lobby shot (which must be a recent reconstruction as this area of the theatre was totally gutted a few years back during the extensive renovation - see the last photo)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/woody1969/130985242/in/set-1113147/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/woody1969/131550618/in/set-1113147/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/woody1969/130992567/in/set-1113147/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/woody1969/61640949/in/set-1113147/

This is another recent photo of the Colony Theater.

Does anybody know anything about a former Strand Theatre in Miami?

One morning while communting from my home in Hollywood down to my job in Coral Gables, I decided to avoid the terrible traffic on I-95 and find some avenue that ran parallel to the interstate. And somewhere between NW 29th Street and NW 14th Street along NW 7th Avenue I found a small theatre with a marquee and classic double doors. It was labeled the STRAND with the S having fallen off some time ago. It currently seems to be a small church/prayer home now. I will try to take some pictures of it. Can anybody here identify what part of town/neighborhood we would call this area? It's definitely industrial and very poor. Perhaps that might help with some research (where I'm finding NO luck).

Stage, this would have been either Wynwood or Allapattah, most likely the latter. I show the Strand closed in the mid fifties and may served a blak community displaced by 1-95 eminient domain.

The theater that your looking for might have been the Sun Theater aka Strand Theater. Click here for the Sun Theater page on Cinema Treasures.

InterAmerica Stage, Inc. took part in the demolition of the old rigging system and furnished the theatre with a new counterweight fly system, pin rails, fire safety curtain, motorized rigging, controls, draperies and track.

http://iastage.com/historical_renovations

Here is another recent view of the Colony Theater.

About halfway down this page there's a close-up of one of the figures on the Colony Theatre's silver entry doors...

http://www.southbeach-usa.com/features/features1/lincoln-road/lincoln-road-guide.htm

A better photo is here

Merry Christmas from Florida State Theatres, 1966.

http://preview.aalvarez733.photosite.com/album1/scan0001.html

One more photo of the Colony Theater can be seen here.

Opened as THE COLONY, SPARKS' NEW WONDER THEATRE on January 25, 1935 with CLIVE OF INDIA starring Ronald Colman and Loretta Young.

It should be mentioned in the introduction that the Colony had about 1,200 seats in its heyday as a cinema. The current seating capacity of 465 creates a false impression of what the original theatre building was like. Some multiplex "screens" have more than 465 seats.

This is a recent close-up view of the Colony Theater.

Here is the Colony Theater at night.

Another photo of the Colony Theater at night can be seen here.

Much nicer since its upgrade. The only problem is how steep the stadium seating is. I went to see the only South Florida screening, on 35mm, of David Lynch's 'Inland Empire,' and despite my $20 to $30 ticket price (don't remember the cost, but the ticket price was almost as steep as the seating incline), I was given an assigned seat, way up top, which made sitting through this otherwise wonderful 3-hour film somewhat of a chore. Assigned seating for any film screening, unless you're at high-profile film festival (many of which don't even impose such a thing), is just snooty, and in this case -- given the particularly uncultured region in which the Colony sits (Lynch didn't trust this market for a regular run of his self-distributed film) -- pretentious.

"The Sound of Music" played for over a year at the Colony. Here is the 1965 Florida State Theatres Christmas ad.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25725093@N07/2418291313/

Colony opening program, January 1935.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25725093@N07/sets/72157604906643463/

Current seating is 440 according to this site.

Some photos are at this link.

1985 Photo

1987 Photo

This is a 2008 photo.

Here is a 2009 photo.

On February 18, 1936, a little over a year after it opened, the Colony Theatre hosted the world premier of Walter Wanger's "The Trail Of the Lonesome Pines," the first dramatic feature film in full color. Two days later, the New York premier was presented at the Paramount Theatre there. Paramount Pictures congratulated itself with this two-page spread in Boxoffice Magazine of March 7, 1936.

The October 23, 1948, issue of Boxoffice reported another world premier at the Colony, that of the Ingrid Bergman-Charles Boyer movie "Arch of Triumph."

A brief item in Boxoffice of September 23, 1950, mentioned "...Paramount's Colony, Miami Beach, now called the Colony Art Theatre...." This name and policy change does not appear to have lasted long, and Boxoffice was again calling it simply the Colony Theatre by 1952.

The theater was apparently closed in late 1953. The November 12, 1955, issue of Boxoffice reported that the Colony would be reopened by Florida State Theatres on December 23 with the southeastern regional premier of "Guys and Dolls." The house had been closed for two years, the item said, and was being refurbished and would be equipped for wide-screen movies.

After that, the Colony appears to have thrived as a first-run house, with occasional road shows, for a couple of decades, and was mentioned in Boxoffice frequently.