Rio Theatre
373 Yonge Street,
Toronto,
ON
M5B
373 Yonge Street,
Toronto,
ON
M5B
2 people
favorited this theater
The National Theatre opened in 1939 and was renamed Rio Theatre in 1943. It closed in 1991.
Contributed by
Christopher Walczak
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Recent comments (view all 21 comments)
I spent many a Friday night at the Rio back in the late eighties. They used to have the trio at the Rio and was one of the last good grindhouse theaters around. Many people think of this theater as an adult theater, but it was truley more…..
The closure date is incorrect. The Rio shuttered sometime during the spring of 1991. The last time I walked by the theatre when it was in operation, they were showing THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and DANCES WITH WOLVES, the only time I had ever known the Rio to run less than four movies at once.
Thanks for that for that correction.
Here’s an updated link to the picture of the Rio that I posted on June 5, 2008: View link
The picture posted by Grainger on Oct. 19, 2008 is from the summer of 1973.
That is when Toronto turned Yonge Street into a pedestrian mall.
Hey all, here’s a shot of the Rio in 1985 with Missing In Action 2 on the bill. It actually opened as the Big Nickel in 1913 as per a contemporaneous article in Construction Magazine.
My family owned and operated the Rio from 1949 until my grandmother finally closed it down in 1991. It’s no nice to read that people still remember it! I still have nearly all the movie posters that we kept when the building was sold. I’ve had them now for twenty years, but I have never done anything with them. I am now preparing our first public exhibit of some of that collection, which will be somewhere in downtown Toronto. I’ll have more details in the coming weeks, but if any of you have any movie poster requests, please e-mail me. Stay tuned!
Hi Rio ! Thank You for posting and please keep us updated.
Hey all, I’m currently writing a paper on some grindhouse cinemas in Toronto and am looking for detailed stories of experiences at the Rio in the 1980s. If this sounds up your alley, please email me at
Though certain cinemas are bringing this type of “trio at the Rio” back, I don’t know if I will ever experience a cinema like one must have experienced a grindhouse theatre in the 70s-80s.
We’re posting shots of some of our amazing Rio posters here: http://www.facebook.com/RioMoviePosters. There are still a few boxes we haven’t even catalogued yet!
The architect of the Big Nickel Theatre was John Wilson Siddall. I will upload a photo of the facade as it originally appeared in 1913, from the trade journal Construction.