Las Vegas Cinerama
3900 Paradise Road,
Las Vegas,
NV
89169
3900 Paradise Road,
Las Vegas,
NV
89169
1 person
favorited this theater
This giant domed Cinerama movie theater which originally opened in 1965 was torn down years ago and replaced by the Hughes Center.
Contributed by
Scott Zimmerman
Want to be emailed when a new comment is posted about this theater?
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater
Recent comments (view all 37 comments)
Hey Paul… The Cinedome Six was at Decatur and Desert Inn, right? That’s a Smith’s grocery store and strip mall with other shops now. There’s a Sinclair gas station on the corner. I think the Cinedome Six closed over 10 years ago, but I’m not sure of the actual year.
The architect for the Las Vegas Cinerama was Perry Neuschatz. The contractor was E. L. Farmer Construction Company of Phoenix, Arizona. It was a partnership of Harry L. Nace of phoenix and William R. Forman of Pacific theatres.
Was in the USAF stationed at Nellis….We went to see My Fair Lady (1965) at the LV Cinerama…..Great movie and while I’ve seen it MFL on TV numerous times, it’s nothing like seeing it in Cinerama….
It’s ashame cinerama wasn’t continued………..
Claud,MFL was not filmed in Cinerama. I believe it was flimed Cinemascope. Can anyone verify?
I saw “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” in 70mm(i think)here while on vacation in 1987.
Whoops! Wrong theatre. I meant The Cinedome 6 on Decatur. Sorry.
Rich and Claud: “My Fair Lady” was filmed in Super Panavision 70, one of the early competitors of Mike Todd’s Todd-AO. It was released in both 70mm and in a 35mm anamorphic version for theaters lacking 70mm equipment.
This is a 1970 ad for the Las Vegas Cinerama.
Wow! How desperate were they for programming? LOL!
Lot of reminiscing folklore posted here about this one, that’s good. Let’s keep these amazing memories alive for the next generations.
The stretched aluminum roof was mind-bendingly novel back in 1965, perfected the year before at the NY World’s Fair.
First movie i saw here was “Earthquake” back in 1974. I lived in Hollywood, CA back then, where the film actually takes place, came up to Vegas for a few days and saw the flick there. They hauled in those giant subwoofers and placed them up front and in the rear of the auditorium. Two or three times during the movie, the low-frequency effects started, it was really something to experience that for the first time. I swear a couple of my tooth fillings got loosened in the mayhem.
Interesting that this theater was called “Cinerama,” of course it was built for Cinerama Corp, it’s just they never really showed any Cinerama movies here, the projector was 70mm. So, they showed Todd-AO, Super Panavision 70, and Ultra Panavision 70 type of 70mm movies mostly with 6-channel surround sound.
According to the article linked here, the screen was 90-ft x 43-ft in size, that makes its aspect ratio 2.091. A bit strange, considering that the Todd-AO and similar presentations were shot with spherical lenses in the 2.20:1 aspect ratio.
By 1976 I moved to Las Vegas to attend UNLV, and I was a production assistant on Clint Eastwood/Sandra Locke flick “The Gauntlet” the day they blew up that ambulance parked on the drive off of Paradise leading to the Cinerama. The whole movie crew incl. Eastwood stayed at the Jockey Club on the Strip (just south of Flamingo).
Altogether, this was a heckuva wonderful cinema, world class and cutting edge. My heart broke when it was “turned over” to a Korean church. So, it’s perhaps better now that it’s demolished, we will always have its memories from the glory days.