Eglinton Theatre
400 Eglinton Avenue W.,
Toronto,
ON
M5N 1A2
400 Eglinton Avenue W.,
Toronto,
ON
M5N 1A2
7 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 38 comments found
Here’s a post titled The Eglinton Theatre’s Elegant Neighbours.
That is the Royal Cinema
/theaters/889/
Doesn’t look anything like the Eglinton! And it’s EGLINTON, not EglinGton….it may be the current Royal cinema down on College st…it used to be the Pylon and I think for a brief time was the Colon showing Spanish films.
No, I’ve been to the Eglington but we will have to wait for a Canadian to identify this Colon theater.
Fortunately you don’t make mistakes with theater photos. LOL
OK, thanks. Any idea what that was before it showed Spanish films?
That’s not the Eglington.
Here are two 1982 photos which appear to be the Eglinton. If that’s the case, Cine Colon should be an aka.
http://tinyurl.com/oxh9f2
http://tinyurl.com/qko57h
A favourite of mine when I worked as a projectionist and also as a movie-goer. The Eglinton’s magnificent auditorium is somewhat similar to the Zigfeld in New York (where most of NYC’s world premieres occur). Massive screen, and the best THX installation in the city by far.
Before the THX work was done, the booth had the most unique machines in the city – Bauer U2’s. Big old German workhorse 35/70mm projectors that put a picture on the screen and nailed it there. I forget what bulbs they were running (4.5kW @ 150A, IIRC), but the gates needed to be water-cooled, not unlike a drive-in! The few times I worked there it was after the Bauers had gone and, IIRC, were replaced by a pair of 35/70mm Simplex XLs running 6000' reels.
…but the Kingsway Theatre lives again…
www.kingswaymovies.com
Still closed…
Eglinton Grand at night
A nice close-up photo is here.
Here is a recent view of the Eglinton at night.
This is a 2008 close-up view.
According to fromscripttodvd.com, The Sound Of Music ran 146 weeks.
Another photo of the Eglinton can be seen here.
Have a look at a tribute to the Eglinton Theatre I recently wrote, including an ad for the opening night!
Funny about the Hello Dolly movie. In the back behind the screen there were dressing rooms for the staff (not the modern ones but the ones used in the 30’s and 40’s. In a dusty pile in one of these rooms was a stack of ticket stubs from Hello Dolly. I took a few for myself and left the rest for the sake of history. Probably gone now.
Here is a 2007 photo.
The Eglinton showed a lot of Reserved seat Roadshows during the 60s including, Beckett, Doctor Dolittle,Finian’s Rainbow, Hello Dolly! and of course the record breaking 144 week run of “The Sound of Music” from March 10, 1965 to December of 1967.
I managed this theatre from April 1998 to April 1999. I was rummaging through the filing cabinet one day and found a scrap book from the opening. There was a full page add with a picture of the theatre and around it the names and logos of all the companies that helped build it.
The first movie was the King of Bulesque and in the opening night picture you can see the line up head west around the corner to where the Scotia Bank is now.
There was no concession when it opened, and the area by the office where the fire place is was a smoking area. The room behind the screen had stairs to two wings, a womans and a mens dressing room. Lockers behind the screen had some old uniforms that no one ever took or moved. They were a part of the place. When it opened there was an orchestra pit infront of the screen, you could get to in after it was covered up by crawling through the duct work.
I had the pleasure of being the manager during the movie shoot for Gene Wilder’s Murder in a Small Town. The theatre was filled with people in 30’s cloths watching the last 2 minutes of Angels with Dirty faces (which I got to do the projection for). On the street they had old cars and the fronts of the buildings on both sides of Eglinton were dressed up to look like stores from the 30’s, it was a trip to the past. If you ever watch the movie the first 2 minutes of the film were shot at the Eglinton. It took 12 hours to set up, shoot and tear down for thoes 2 minutes. It was a lot of fun.
The Theatre showed Titanic for it’s full run including the date the Titanic actually sank.
The Eglinton had handicapped access via the back doors, but I guess that was not good enough. It probably could have been grandfathered if Famous Players had of taken up the fight, but take it from someone who was there 3 years before the closing, the Eglliton’s fate was sealed as soon as the Silver City and Yonge and Eglinton went up and the final nail was Famous Players purchase of Canada Square.
Oddly enough when it was built the Eglinton was not a first run theatre it was a nieghbourhood theatre that took in films after theatres like the University and the Uptown were done with them. It became a first run theatre when the twins and multies with their smaller audtioriums were built.
I had the re release of The Wizard of Oz in 1998. I watched it on my own one late night and you could almost feel the ghosts of the past stop by to see it again.
It was called the Jewel of Famous Players at one time.
The 3-strip Cinerama films shown at the Eglinton were projected onto a large, but only very slightly curved, Cinemiracle screen. The only thing Cinerama about the Eglinton was the Cinerama logo that appeared in newspaper ads for How the West Was Won and Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. Other than this minor beef, the theatre was one of Toronto’s best.
This is a recent photo of the Eglinton Theater.
Loved this theatre. Unfortunately the last movie I saw there was Jeepers Creepers. But it was kinda nice that my friend and I had the whole theatre to ourselves. Beautiful theatre.