Coronet Theatre

Yes Eric was a godsend for the Coronet. As dedicated as they get.

I booked the Coronet and the other UATC Theaters in Northern California from !972-1977. Good ole Albert Levin—-a fixture and a character. We had a lot of sneak previews there as filmmakers loved the place——except maybe the night Stanley Donen, Liza Minnelli and Burt Reynolds sneaked LUCKY LADY and there were constant projection problems. They came up front and told stories, just as Coppola did at the GODFATHER 2 sneak with a break down. Those were the days of changeover and for sneaks, double system which is where the problem usually was. The studio would bring in their own sound and projection team to screw it up in a booth they did not know.

Booking STAR WARS was my job. UATC and Fox had a strong relationship. 20th wanted THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT in the best venues and luckily they also liked the Alexandria so I put that drama there, saving the Coronet for STAR WARS. Nobody at Fox nor practically anybody in the movie business believed in the Lucas space western, just as they had no faith in AMERICAN GRAFFITI before it.

So a lot of theaters got a new life by proving they could gross when they fell into STAR WARS as a last choice.

I had friends at Lucas and knew about their own unique grass roots marketing efforts that even Fox wasn’t aware of dedicated to generating massive turnout of science fiction fans to camp overnight and be the first to see it. (The head of distribution told me in Feb.that the Board has slept through it and were going to shelve it—-until I told him that the comic book and paperback novel were huge hits and about the science fiction convention slide shows Charles Lippincott was doing).

All went according to plan and in San Francisco and around the country the Lucas folks posing as regular folks called broadcast news directors and print editors to say, “Hey…what is going on at the Coronet? I just drove by and there are hundreds of people with their sleeping bags wrapped around the corner.”

Those camera crews arrived in plenty of time for the 11:00 o'clock newscast. The morning papers had front page photos. And the rest of the world was suddenly curious about this social phenomenon they hadn’t previously heard about and didn’t want their friends to find out they weren’t hip enough to have seen STAR WARS. They had to go asap. And thus the inverted word-of-mouth pyramid scheme was launched.

And science fiction suddenly came out of the geek closet.

When I finally made to you I knew I was the fortunate one. Inheriting Guido Girolo’s booth was an honor…and when he made a visit to his former theatre it was his way of saying in an unspoken manner he approved of my operation. So many sensed my passion and made that booth run like a Swiss watch: Mike C, Richie B, Sam Chavez, Rolfe and Ben, and the Great Man Albert Levin for trusting my judgement. I cried an ocean of tears when the end came. I will always miss you my fine lady.

Jimwhiterice, How is your book on SF Theatres coming. I have been involved with SF theaters for many years starting with the Times in the late 1960s. I wrote a chapter in LEFT IN THE DARK. http://julielindow.com/?p=1

Gary Meyer

Thanks Tis.

1986 nice marquee,someone actually cared about the getting the marquee right,thanks for the picture.

Interior Coronet photos here:

http://www.silverscreens.com/main.html

Click on the San Fran section and scroll down.

From 1993 a night time view of the Coronet Theater in San Francisco showing “Demolition Man”.

Don…

Here is another 1986 photo.

A couple more shots of the late Coronet – from 1996 & 1997:
View link
View link

Here is the Coronet when it was still standing.

The saddest thing about this theatre is San Francisco sat idly by and let this happen. Baghdad by the Bay has been replaced by commercialism by the bay. As far as a sense of history San Francisco officially sucks.

Believe it or not, the Coronet had an EVEN BIGGER screen at the time of the FIRST THREE 70 mm Todd-AO films, The Miracle of Todd-AO, Oklahoma!, and Around the World in 80 Days. I saw them all at the Coronet, 80 Days Repeatedly. For those three films, the deeply curved screen filled the ENTIRE AREA behind the curved curtains, with no masks on the sides, top, or bottom (the usual black masks, when fully open, were hidden behind the very small trimmer curtains). The image on the film running through the projector was 2.2:1, but it became more like 2:1 on the screen, when viewed from head-on, because the curve took up some of the width, as intended. It was only for these three films that the film ran at 30 frames per second (instead of the usual 24 fps), to smooth out the action, and allow for extraordinarily bright (“Sparkling,” one critic said) image without the flicker that bright projection sometimes causes (the Critical Flicker Frequency —the frequency in frames per second at which persistence of vision fails — is a function of brightness). They actually used two Todd-AO cameras simultaneously to shoot these films, one running at 30 fps and one at 24 fps for the inevitably disappointing 35 mm print downs for lesser theaters. In the 70 mm versions, all of the factors that increase arousal in the cerebral cortex were maximized — brightness, largeness, loudness and complexity of the sound (6 channel stereo, with great dynamics, and, in the case of 80 Days, a 114 piece orchestra). Consequently, the audience was “up.” It was near hypnotic! 80 Days ran well into its second year at the Coronet, forcing the chain to equip the inferior Alexandria down the street for 70 mm for South Pacific. At the Coronet, 80 Days began with a small 35 mm image of Edward R. Murrow introducing the film then the curtains, black masks, and image dramatically widened out to the full Todd-AO size, with the black masks disappearing behind the trimmer curtains.

When other 70 mm processes that didn’t use Todd-AO’s optical correction for the deeply curved screen started to be used, the Coronet tore down its big curved screen, and installed a more nearly flat, and smaller, one behind the same large curved curtains. Although it was still larger than most screens (at least from the front set of rows that extended right down to the screen, because there was no orchestra pit, and no stage to get in the way, it lacked the sense of total, engulfing involvement that the earlier screen provided. Had the owners of the newly arriving 70 mm processes (Super Technirama 70, Panavision 70, Camera 65, etc.) been able to get together on sharing an optical correction, the Coronet might have been able to hang on to the big screen, making everything from Ben-Hur to Star Wars more spectacular but this was a competition as misguided as HDDVD vs. BlueRay. or Beta vs VHS, or SACD vs. DVD-A …. everyone lost.

Now the Coronet is rubble. When we heard this, my friends and I sank momentarily into misanthropy.

Thanks for taking – and posting – those photos, Jim; devastating but representative of a necessary document…