West Side Theater

The West Side became a big-ticket, reserved-seat venue in the early 60’s with Windjammer (1958), the only film made in Cinemiracle, a 3 projector system like Cinerama (but all 3 projectors were in the same booth). It was a travelogue about a 17,500 mile voyage of the Christian Radich, a Norweigan training ship, which opened in 1.33:1 aspect ratio and a few minutes in expanded to 2.59:1 on a huge screen. Wow! Seven channel stereo. Wow! It was great. If my memory is right, it played for close to a year, amazing for a town the size of Scranton. Later, the West Side showed Cinerama films in both 3 projector and, I believe, 70mm Cinerama. Cinerama bought Cinemiracle and showed Windjammer in Cinerama theaters, then later converted it to Cinemascope for wide release. The West Side was the largest theater in Scranton so it was a great place to see the “big” movies.

A Kimball theater organ size 3/8 was installed in the West Side Theater in 1926.