Balmoral Cinema

6080 Quince Road,
Memphis, TN 38119

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rivest266
rivest266 on August 14, 2021 at 6:51 am

The Balmoral Cinema opened on October 17th, 1975, with “Rooster Corburn”. Grand opening ad posted.

Iceberg
Iceberg on October 24, 2017 at 9:32 am

I recall that when this theater opened, it was advertised as being the place “where your feet don’t stick to the floor” and that you got real butter on popcorn. I think it opened with Rooster Cogburn in possibly an exclusive first run. It did play other first runs like The Outlaw Josie Wales in tandem with with one or more other theaters. However, after a year or two it may have been having trouble competing with other chains as it was an independent.
It later played foreign films as an arthouse for a while. Then, it became a discount third-run venue for some years, allied, I think, with the Village Cinema at that point.

staylor066
staylor066 on July 23, 2017 at 10:30 pm

Well, the building has officially been demolished even as we speak. The only remnants of the place is on the South end which features the old Book Store, Baskin Robbins, and Little Caesars facing Ridgeway Bl.

vastor
vastor on December 31, 2012 at 11:17 pm

The small building that once housed the Balmoral is at the back of the complex running parallel to the street. The entrance was at the back of the courtyard and this retains the 6080 Quince street address. A faded sign for a store matching the description in one of the commentaries is over this entrance. All commercial now but a pleasant looking building for its era.

obitguy
obitguy on January 31, 2012 at 10:57 pm

I saw “The Outlaw Josey Wales” there with some buddies. My dad took me to see “I Never Sang for My Father” there in the early 70s.

staylor066
staylor066 on May 24, 2009 at 5:23 pm

That place. Yes, I remember watching Star Trek:TMP in 1980. I had to wait til Blue Lagoon finished before it started. I guess they only had the 1 screen. Anyway, it was next door to a Seesel’s grocery store in a small strop mall. You had to walk down a corridor in the back to get there. It was kind of hidden. The photo lab listed at the address is probably inside the grocery store now called Schnucks(formerly a Seesel’s). The way it was remodeled you would never no that a movie theater even once existed there. But my memory of it still lives on!! Take that bulldozer and wrecking ball.

gspragin
gspragin on July 23, 2007 at 10:08 pm

I saw a few second run movies there in the mid ‘80s. Horrified when I saw the hot tub store. I couldn’t bring myself to go in.

William Creswell
William Creswell on July 25, 2006 at 12:27 am

I grew up around this theatre in the ‘80s. I went to school at Ridgeway High School located directly behind the theatre. I remeber seeing second run movies there in the early to mid '80s: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Cannonball Run, Etc. It closed shortly after that. A friend of mine actually invited me to go to church with him there! The last time I was in the building was in the late '80s when it had been turned into a hot tub and pool store. The store still had the theatre’s sloping floor. Not the best way to display a hot tub.

Backseater
Backseater on October 5, 2005 at 7:17 am

I went there a few times in the 1970s. One of our relief projectionists from the Guild ran it as an art theater for a while. It was a large strip-mall theater somewhat like the Paramount (described elsewhere on this site), but a little smaller and built later in the late 1960s/early 1970s suburban expansion. I saw several Laura Antonelli sex comedies, Romy Schneider and Rod Steiger in Claude Chabrol’s “Dirty Hands,” and most notably Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre-the Wrath of God” there. My impression was that it struggled for its entire existence, probably due to the obscure location, not being on any well-travelled main drag, and not being very well known. There were two or three other mall theaters in other outlying suburbs that eventually suffered the same fate.