Cine Capri
2323 East Camelback Road,
Phoenix,
AZ
85016
2323 East Camelback Road,
Phoenix,
AZ
85016
12 people
favorited this theater
This was the "Grand Old Lady Of Cinema" in Arizona, the one built especially for CinemaScope, 70mm, and 35mm widescreen movies. This theater opened in March 1966 with "The Agony and the Ecstasy" & closed in January 1998 with "Titanic" (ironically the last showing ending at the same time the "Titanic" actually sunk).
This was the first area theater to get Dolby Stereo(4, & 6 Track) and showed "Star Wars" exclusively for almost two years. Among the 70mm films show wer ‘Alien", "Aliens" "Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom" and "Lawrence Of Arabia". The seating was up to 900, but with new fire laws at the time, 100 seats were removed.
“This theater had no center aisle, (this was added later) you entered by two sets of theater doors at opposite ends of the large lobby, with signs that told you what side of the theater you were on. The fun was always people asking "Which side is the movie on?" after wandering from one side of the lobby to the other, and us saying; "It’s ALL one BIG screen!"
The entire theater was oval shaped, giving the viewer the first impression that it didn’t seem like there was not as many seats as there were, or it was as big as it was. And unless you remembered where you were seated, by the time it got dark, you were relying on hand signals.
Then there were the curtains. When the movies were run with a professional projectionist, the curtains shimmered with gold light; The scrim looking like a golden waterfall, the travellers sweeping majestically to reveal… a screen from roof to floor, so wide it almost went to the exits on either side (about 60 to 80 feet at it’s widest point).
The seats were tilted just so that you barely saw the bottom of the screen, but who cared? This thing was Awesome!!!"
Contributed by
Sly Dog
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Recent comments (view all 86 comments)
See I double clicked Sorry,still learning.
I have a comment on the entry of 5/20/10 by Mike Rogers regarding Star Wars. I do not think that it was an appropriate comment for this site. This is a place where people come to read and share stories on movie THEATRES, not the movies themselves. Now I know that it is hard to talk about one without the other because without the movie there would be no theatre. Part of the history of theatres is what movie opened the theatre, which one closed it, which blockbusters played here, and the source of this discussion, what was playing when a particular event took place. All of that is as relevant as events such as when a place was twinned, converted to platters or digital, or was robbed, flooded, raided, damaged by weather, or any number of the countless events that take place in theatres. However discussions about how good or bad a movie was is not really relevant here. That is blog and chatroom stuff. I am sure that Mike could find such a site and start a thread along the lines of:
STAR WARS: Overrated and it Sucks.
I have only read through these comments once, but I do not recall anyone talking about the worthiness of the movie, only its place in the history of this theatre. The fact that it was such a mega hit makes it worth noting that it played here. The fact that the theatre made the upgrade to Dolby during its run was a notable milestone in its history. You youngsters who did not grow up during the 1955-1975 era of movies where you only got stereo sound on big magnetic track roadshows will have a hard time understanding how big a deal the advent of Dolby stereo systems was to us. Now we could have stereo and surround sound in our neighborhood theatres all of the time although it was still early to mid 80’s before you could count on all movies being encoded.
As for myself, I will, in the spirit of full disclosure, partially break my rule and comment on the movie itself. I enjoyed it. I found it a good, entertaining, action adventure movie, but it meant no more to me than a good western or war movie would have. Once I had seen it, then I had seen it and probably would not have again except for one thing; presentation. Getting back to the spirit of this site though not this page, I saw it four times. First, at the Loews Tara in mono. I have often been critical of Loews, who I worked for at the time, for not going to the expense of installing a Dolby system in their showcase Atlanta house for this big event movie. That may still be valid although the information I found on this page makes me think that it is possible that one was not available during this period.
My second viewing was at the Canton Corners (Blackwell Square), a theatre far into the Atlanta burbs. I went to this trouble because Norm Schneider, the long time Altec serviceman had retired and did what most of us only dream of doing, opening his own theatre with a presentation built to his specs. A lot of people made that trek in those days where mono still dominated theatres and were rewarded with a sound presentation that I have only heard equaled at the New Neon Movies in Dayton Ohio during their Cinerama days. I still judge all theatre sound experiences by this standard.
Third was later that year at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Big event, packed house, lot of fun had by all, but I was there mainly to see what it would be like in this huge place with a big crowd. This was well before my days of working in the Fox booth so I was not as aware of why the Fox is such a poor place to see a movie. Although a lot of improvements have been made to correct this, back then the cavernous auditorium, plaster walls, dozens of nooks and alcoves, and no wall to separate the lobby from the theatre itself made the sound just bounce and rattle around the place. The explosions and laser blasts sounded great, but as for dialogue, well, it is a good thing that I had seen the movie before so I could follow the story.
My last Star Wars show was the 1983 re-release which was more notable for the Revenge of the Jedi preview attached to the front. I wish I had kept it and the one sheet as I am sure both went up in value when they changed the name to Return. We ran it in our Yamaha brand 4 track Dolby house. Sounded good, but pretty pale compared to the Canton Corners, which was custom designed by someone who had forgotten more about sound than most techs will ever know.
So, I am sorry that I got somewhat off topic here, but I would like to see people be able to come to this site and read and hopefully add information about these great theatres without having to wade through a bunch of extraneous material. So many of these theatres are gone now that this is one of the few places we can come to relive the good old days.
Mike: I have read a good many of your posts and enjoy the ones where you relate what was playing. A lot of us are fans of the style and layout of movie ads in the days before it became plain block listings resembling the phone book. It seems that you may be looking at some old ads you have kept. If so it would be great if you could scan and post them on flickr or some such site.
Michael: Thanks for the listings. Even though I have no connection to this theatre, it is fun to scan the list and recall what was playing when and think about where it played in Atlanta.
Re: “Star Wars”
Wish I owned 10% of that “Overrated and it Sucks”
What a dumb thing to say.
You are right Stan. I have been watching myself.Guess i am just too big a fanatic of 2001.
The Cine Capri was truly a beloved piece of Phoenix history and it was a real tragedy to have it lost forever. Many groups tried to stop the demolition over the years; the best they did was post pone the inevitable. Like many other people that posted, if a movie came out that I was really excited to see, this was the only place to see it. I waited in multiple lines that wrapped around the parking lot on opening nights just to see a movie there. I was priviliged to see the Star Wars re-releases, the opening of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, “Citizen Kane”, “Doctor Zhivago”, “The Lion King”, and probably many more. One that particularly sticks out in my mind was a day viewing of “The Silence of the Lambs”, one where I snuck out of a college course just in order to take it in. The theater truly had no equal and I could hardly believe it when they finally tore it down.
Kent Peterson, You last posted here in 2004. As knowledgeable as you seem to be, I’m wondering if you are related to Carl Peterson; once owner of a service and supply business in Salt Lake. When I last heard of him, he was Director of Projection Engineering for Pacific Theaters. I knew him from projectionist days at Catalina in Tucson.
IA, Carl is Kent’s father. Yes, I remember him from his Pacific Theatre days too. The studios would do a Dolby tech for a opening of a picture. And after they left he would come in and turn down the surround channel in the main house of the Hollywood Pacific Theatre. And I would come in and turn the amps back to the Dolby tech setting the day before.
March 30th, 1966 grand opening ad is at:
View link
Charlton Heston was in person.
Great ad, Mike Rivest!
My understanding is that the theater was not demolished but rather dismantled and rebuilt at another location. I was never able to see where it was rebuilt and it may be closed by now. Does anyone know for sure?