Grand Illusion Cinema
1403 NE 50th Street,
Seattle,
WA
98105
1403 NE 50th Street,
Seattle,
WA
98105
6 people
favorited this theater
Showing all 12 comments
Well it is a Grand Illusion.
According to this article, the theater is not doing well financially: View link
Here is a website for the Grand Illusion Cinema.
For many years the auditorium space was occupied by a dentist’s office. The Grand Illusion was originally The Movie House, the first cinema in what became Randy Finley’s Seven Gables circuit, now part of Landmark Theaters. The current name came from Paul Doyle, who ran the cinema for 20 years before selling to a non-profit. He now owns the Columbia City Cinema in Seattle’s Rainier Valley.
I’m sure the late Mr. Powell and Ms. Loy would appreciate their films running alongside of a classic like Pootie Tang.
This is the Grand Illusion Cinema marquee.
The Grand Illusion is running a Halloween double bill of classic horror comedies with “Arsenic and Old Lace” and then “ The Boogie Man Will get you”. The latter stars Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom.
And, in fact, there was indeed a “Ben-Hur Drive-In” in Indiana…also a “New Merry Widow Theatre” in St. Louis, possibly named after the operetta rather than the Ernst Lubitsch/Jeanette MacDonald film.
David Kleiler used to run a regular series called “The Rear Window” in various rented spaces around Boston.
Other cinemas I thought of that were named after movies are Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries) in Stockholm, named after the Ingmar Bergman movie, and Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale, named after the Italian movie or else the theatre portrayed in it.
Here’s an excellent article with photos on the cinema, published in The Seattle Times.
Nice to read about a cinema named after a great movie classic, in this case Jean Renoir’s 1937 masterpiece. There is a cinema in Paris called Accattone in honor of the Pasolini film. Is there a “Citizen Kane Cinema” somewhere, a “Psycho Theatre” or a “Ben Hur Multiplex”? I think it’s a wonderful idea. Anyone know of others?