Tivoli Theatre
13 Richmond Street East,
Toronto,
ON
M5C
13 Richmond Street East,
Toronto,
ON
M5C
3 people
favorited this theater
Opened as the Allen’s Downtown Theatre on November 10, 1917, it became the Tivoli Theatre in 1923. This was the first theatre in Toronto to show a talking picture (1928). It was operated by Famous Players and was closed in 1964 to be demolished in 1965.
Contributed by
Christopher Walczak
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Recent comments (view all 13 comments)
The Tivoli was a great place to see a 70mm film. Oddly enough, because of the stadium seating, there was no place to put a booth for head-on projection. Unless you were sitting toward the back, near the booth, horizontal lines were noticeably distorted. In the business this was quite often referred to as a smile. The 70mm (pseudo Cinerama) presentations at Toronto’s Glendale Cinerama theatre had exactly the same problem. You may be interested to know that both theatres had a huge screen with a 120 degree curvature and projected 70mm film with 6-track stereo sound. The Tivoli’s Todd-AO and the Glendale’s Cinerama presentations looked exactly the same to the audience. The only thing that set them apart was the huge Cinerama logo on the Glendale’s marquee.
December 28 was the 80th anniversary of the first full talking picture to play in Toronto. The Tivoli was packed that night, and today’s Saturday Star has a quick writeup commemorating the event!
For those interested, 32 Elvis Movies is a site dedicated to the history of Canadian movie theatres. Have a look!
And yes, I’m aware the Tivoli actually closed in 1964, not 1965 as written (blame the copy editors, not me:P). The cinema played its final film in November of 1964, and the building was sold in May of the following year, to be demolished soon after.
I am guessing this picture is from right after they closed as there are no features shown on the sign and the cars look to be from the early 1960s.
http://tinypic.com/r/2iljvqv/5
Here is a September 1929 ad.
Mid 60’s photo after the Tivoli had closed.
View link
This appears to be the same picture as the one posted on May 22, 2009.
LOVE that photo of the Tivoli Jon! I’ve often wondered if FP had booked “The Sound of Music” in to the Tivoli instead of the Eglinton, would it have survived a few more years. After all, the Tivoli was once the “home of Todd-ao” and TSOM was in glorious Todd-ao. I thought at the time it was a shame to have closed it since it had such a wonderful run as a major roadshow house. Why couldn’t they run it as they did with the Imperial-Yorkdale-Golden Mile-Runnymede and maybe had the Tivoli with the Capitol-Birchcliff-Westwood…
Here’s a picture from 1956 with the Tivoli marquee advertising “Rebel Without a Cause” at Shea’s (Hippodrome) Theatre. Perhaps the theater was closed when the photo was taken for conversion to Todd A-O? A portion of the Victoria Theatre can be seen at the left, probably closed as it soon would be be demolished.
Here are some links to some other pictures, a few posted before but with updated links:
As the Allen in 1919: View link
Interior, date unknown, but probably after renovation for Todd-AO: View link
Renovations for Todd-AO described in this 1956 trade article: boxoffice
Described as the New Allen in this 1917 trade article: archive