Wilmette Theatre

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

Brian, thanks for the link to the Wilmette theatre. I enjoyed the photo's and hope to take in a movie during a future trip to the Chicago area.

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.

Let me re-state that last post - the theater re-opened later than I indicated. I meant, how was it used about the time frame of '65-'67?

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.

My mother and her brothers saw films at the Wilmette as children. My father was a project manager for EB during the time you speak of. He recalls working on film production in the Wilmette Theater when all the seats were removed. There were EB offices in a building around the corner on Wilmette Ave, which was also a theater at one time long ago (that building is also still there). You lived there in '55 Paul. You might even remember the electric train that used to run down Greenleaf Avenue a short distance away. I remember seeing Pulp Fiction at the Wilmette with a bunch of teenage friends after it had been twinned (in the 90's). There was still some decoration at that time...it wasn't quite down to concrete walls in the auditorium. Amazing how that building has spanned the generations.

When we first moved to Wilmette in 1955 we lived near 4th & Linden. The streetcar you speak of had already stopped running by then but the tracks remained embedded in the brick streets for years. I don't recall another theater being around the corner from the Wilmette, but I do recall the EBF offices on Wilmette Avenue. My first job was across the street from it at the now-defunct Smithfield's Grocery, a tiny grocery store which provided home delivery of phoned-in grocery orders! (After all, it WAS the North Shore.)

My neighbor, the film director for Encyclopedia Britannica Films, was the late William Kay who worked out of the EBF offices in the former Wilmette Theater. I appeared in one classroom film he made called "The Digestive System" which was filmed on a Saturday morning in the teacher's lounge of New Trier (east) High School in 1964. A one-second clip of me from that film appears in Terry Zwigoff's 1994 documentary "Crumb". My earnings for the day - twenty bucks, and that was under the table!

The Wilmette was used as the John Colburn Film Studio before reopening in 1966.

It was originally the Central

I moved as a kid to Wilmette around the spring, I believe, of 67. The Wilmette was just about ready to reopen.
As an indie, it aforded me a lot of good times and helped with my film education. They used to bring back Hollywood classics, and had kiddie shows on the weekends, sometimes those horrible K Gordon Murry things. I saw all four Beatles movies there once on the same bill.
I remember them having a bit of a dust up over showing x rated films in the 70s. I remember when they played "Mean Streets" they had little signs warning you about the bad language.
I have just heard they are possibly about to close again. Too bad.
I hope they make it to 100.

As of May 9th the marquee is blank and there are several signs on the doors reading "Temporally closed for remodel".

The theatre is closed only "temporally". Will be re-opened by Memorial Day!

Here is a sun-times story on the changes: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-wilmette10.html

This is a recent photo of the Wilmette Theater advertising the "Da Vinci Code" on the marquee, so this theater must be open.

Yes, it reopened last weekend. I don't really care for the 'modernized' marquee.

Per that Sun-Times article, it was to have become a furniture store.

This theater is now owned by the Nova Cinemas chain in which they also own the Nova 8 Cinemas (formally Westridge Court) in Naperville.

If you read the article I posted on May 28, you would see this:

"(Richard) Stern, who has operated the two-screen cinema for the last 40 years, has sold the building to Carole Dibo and Sam Samuelson, founders of He Mette She Productions. They plan on making minor renovations to the theater and will continue to show movies and also stage live events. The theater should open in its new incarnation by Memorial Day, Dibo said.

(...)

Plans are to keep one theater for movies, which will be managed by Nova Cinemas. Dibo and Samuelson will focus on programming the second theater, which will run the gamut from children's shows and lectures to theater productions and anything else the team can come up with."

I'm with you Brian...I like the old marquee better. The red and white color scheme fit better with the building, and that corny "W" on the front had been a staple of Downtown Wilmette my entire life.

All that being said, I am glad it is still with us. It's pretty cool to think about how many generations of North Shore resident have gone to the movies there.

Maybe the stage shows will keep it going, but I can'I don't know how this is going to make it as a first-run, $8-a-pop movie house. The draw of the Wilmette was the price and the selection of independent releases that you wouldn't even find at the Landmark or CineArts. Even with the "renovations," which I think did more harm than good, it's still the same cramped theater with uncomfortable seats and a third-rate sound system, with several modern megaplexes nearby. To make matters worse, when I got there at 7:02 for a 7:00 show and asked if there were any previews, one of the staff assured me there was, and he had "just started it." So I paid and walked into the auditorium - several minutes into the movie.

How did the Village of Wilmette allow the marquee to be replaced?

That marquee is u-g-l-y!

I saw two movies here, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and THE TAILOR OF PANAMA. The latter was in 2000 or 2001. I recall the place being tiny and it reminded me of the 3Penny or the Village. Now it's been renovated? How?

The new marquee on the theatre is indeed ugly! Or perhaps "minimalist" is the proper word here. I've been to this theatre a couple of times and it is a cramped, unpleasant place. Paul F, I saw "Life is Beautiful" here and I thought the movie was condescending, trivializing, and appalling.

Some recent photos of the exterior are in set #23, here:
http://www.mekong.net/random/theatres.htm

My father worked for John Colburn in the late `50's or early `60's. Before going down to Vougue Wright & Fred Niles Studios (Which Oprah eventually bought).

I was at the Wilmette a couple times in the `60's, then again in the `70's.
Thought I saw "Hot Rod" with Pernell Roberts & Robert Culp there.
But I can't recall if that was originally a theatrical release or made for TV. Might have been a second run of "The Wanderers" with Ken Wahl.

There used to be a vintage ice cream/burger shop called Bob's about a block away. It had dark wood walls and old style ice cream glasses. Many families would go there with kids in tow.

I was googling and came across this clip of the theater on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5GyyLUCiVY

Awesome find. Thanks for sharing.

Here is a 1983 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/c8p7ov

There currently are more live music events at the Wilmette. Various members of the Chicago Cabaret Professionals have had featured showcases there, as well as at the Skokie Theatre.

P.S. That Wilmette Chuck Wagon next door had great burgers also back in the day. I believe it may still be there.

Here is a recent article.