Martin Cinerama
4218 Lindell Boulevard,
St. Louis,
MO
63108
4218 Lindell Boulevard,
St. Louis,
MO
63108
2 people
favorited this theater
In 1960, the Martin Cinerama, the first theatre built in St. Louis since the Fox Theatre in 1928, opened in 1963 as part of a chain of Martin Theatres of Georgia.
It claimed to have the world’s largest indoor screen, which measured 100 feet on a curve. The two story building attempted to be a “modern movie palace”. The entire theatre was dressed in all burnt orange with gold trim. It was carpeted wall to wall, with the seats even set on carpet.
Opened as a Cinerama format theatre, with the original three projector equipment and later 70mm. It ws an established road show house until its last few years of operation.
The theatre seated 1,120 total between the two floors. Trans Lux Theatres took over operation of the theatre and the Cinerama closed in 1988 and was demolished in 1997.
Contributed by
Charles Van Bibber
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Recent comments (view all 22 comments)
Paul P. Danesh is my dad and he was the manager of the Martin Cinerama for many years. It was breath taking and way ahead of its time! Certainly whey a head of St.louis time! I remember going there as a child and seeing movies like “How The West Was Won” and getting to meet Charleton Heston and Harvey Kietel an Danny Thomas etc… Every time a major movie would premier the movie stars would come to town and make special appearances at the theater. I thought my dad was a movie star! The attendants were all nice and dressed up and some times wore white gloves! The theater was beautiful and very elegant! The sound was amazing and they would also sell the soundtracks to the movies.
There has never been another theater like this ever! I will try to find some pictures and post them. My dad said the first movie to be shown there was “This is Cinerama” He started there on the 20th of febuary 1962 and loved every day he went to work. Anybody who got to see a movie there knows there has never been anything like it! Ever!
Too bad there are not more photos.
Working on getting some posted right now! I have some great ones!
There is also a local publication coming out in St.Louis called Flashback Magazine and they are going to feature a story on it!
Thanks for your interest!
Never realized Martin went that far away from Georgia.
I did just try to submit a picture of the cinerama but the web site is having some problems.
I will keep trying. I have some great pictures and will try to get them on the web site asap.
Yes,Plez do if you can.Movie ads anything we eat them up.
As soon as I can I will get several pictures up and they also how the interior of the building which was fabulous.
Martin Theaters of Georgia, Inc. & Martin Theaters of Alabama, Inc. in the Martin Bldg., Columbus, Ga., Roy E. Martin Jr. Chairman of the Board had 159 theaters in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Martin CINERAMA, New Orleans, Louisiana, Martin CINERAMA, St. Louis, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia and Seattle, Martin CINERAMA, Seattle, Washington.
We don’t currently support “add-a-photo” options but hope to do so very soon. In the interim, many users post their images on Flickr and link to those in the comments section. We do truly hope to have the new site running in the near future.
Y'all support “add-a-photo” NOW! :) Hopefully that earlier poster will come back to this site and upload more pics.