Capri Cinema I & II
5304 Kingston Pike,
Knoxville,
TN
37918
5304 Kingston Pike,
Knoxville,
TN
37918
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The Pike Theatre was Knoxville’s premier theatre for foreign classics and other alternative fare.
It opened in 1946 with 800 seats, and was a big plain concrete block box, which is kind of unusual for theatres specializing in such fare.
The Pike Theatre was located in affluent West Knoxville, and a ten minute bus ride away from the campus of the University of Tennessee. I first discovered the postwar international greats such as Bergman, Fellini, and Kurosawa there as a high school student in the 1950’s.
A tall, elegantly dressed gentleman was often present and I assumed he was the owner. We often chatted and after my third Bergman—“The Magician” (in 1959)—I remarked on how meager his audiences often were. "You have to build up an audience for Bergman," he said.
He often complained that the major distributors were colluding against him. Around 1960, in fact, he brought suit and eventually won a settlement and desist order against them. I left Knoxville shortly after that and never heard if the decision held or went into appeal.
The Tower Theatre, on North Broadway, was under the same ownership and was the Pike’s architectural twin. Both the Pike Theatre and Tower Theatre were listed in Film Daily Yearbook 1963 as "art theatres." In 1967 the Capri 75 theatre was built and opened adjacent to the Pike Theatre, which by then had been renamed Capri Theatre, and it basically operated as a twin theatre operation.
An Ace Hardware outlet now occupies the former site of the Pike Theatre.
Contributed by
fergusmacivor
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
fergusmacivor, Look up the Capri Theater in Knoxville, here on Cinema Treasures, I think it’s the same theater?
I think the Pike may have been the little theater next to (and connected to) the Capri. I was there on the day workers ripped off the old silver screen. The buildings are still intact and have been remodeled into an art gallery.
The gentleman that is mentioned is Walter Morris. He built both the Pike and the Tower theatres. C.H. Simpson leased both theatres from Mr. Morris in 1963 and remodeled both theatres and changed their names. The Pike became the Capri Cinema and the Tower became the Lenox. In cir.1965 the state bought the Lenox for the I-640/ Broadway interchange and in 1967 Mr. Morris used the money from the sale of the Lenox to built the Capri-70 adjoining the west side of the Capri Cinema which Mr. Simpson operated. The Capri Cinema and the Capri-70 were two separate buildings that shared a common wall. They should not be considered similar to today’s multiplexes as they each had their own lobby, boxoffice, projection booth, and heat and air systems.
After Mr. Morris’s death, Simpson Operating Company bought both theatres from Mr. Morris’s estate. In the mid seventies Simpson twined the Capri Cinema and it became the Capri Cinema I & II. In the late eighties, they also twined the Capri-70 and that became the Capri III & IV.
Regal Cinemas leased the Capri theatres form Simpson Operating Company in the early nineties and ran them for three years. Regal was unable to re-negotiate a new lease and the Capri’s were closed. In the mid nineties the Capri theatres were sold to Bennett Art Gallery. They demolished three quarters of the old Capri Cinema and completely gutted the old Capri-70 which they turned into their art gallery.
The Ace Hardware store is actually in the old Shoney’s Restaurant which was on the east side of the Capri Cinema.
I recall seeing handprints and signatures outside on this theater’s sidewalk – Oscar-winners Patricia Neal and Cliff Robertson, amongst others. Last I saw, these were moved over to the former Terrace theater.
The first handprints were from Ingrid Bergman from the premiere of “A Walk in The Spring Rain” in April 1970. I have posted a picture of the event in the photos section. I have also posted additional photos on the Capri Cinema III & IV thread since technically that was the former Capri-70 before it was twined.