Village Theatre
700 Fort Couch Road,
Pittsburgh,
PA
15241
700 Fort Couch Road,
Pittsburgh,
PA
15241
3 people
favorited this theater
This was originally a single screen theatre, built in the late-1960’s by RKO Stanley Warner. Upon RKO-Stanley Warner’s exit from the area it was operated by Cinemette. The theatre was big (about 1,200 seats on one floor) and was decorated with plush seats and a lot of gold draperies in the auditorium and was very upscale to fit in with the shopping center, as I recall.
When I was there it was fairly new, we saw “The Detective” with Frank Sinatra. Later, after Cinemette was running it they divided it into five screens.
Sometime in the last ten years it was demolished, and Carmike Cinemas built a 10-plex on the site.
Contributed by
dave-bronx
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Recent comments (view all 14 comments)
Before finding this listing this is what my memories contained from 30 years ago. I remember this theater as a modern (for 1970’s) big box, huge 70mm widescreen shallow-curved screen with a grand moving curtain.
For the most part, The Village would get the movies after the downtown theaters where done with the first runs. Occasionally it would get first runs, such as follow-ons to “The Love Bug”. I remember this vividly as my dad was a VW salesman at McMillan and Beaer VW and they displayed VW Beetles in the lobby during the runs.
If the Warner downtown had almost 2000 seats, the Village must have had 4000 (so much for memories; was the Warner downtown really that big, even with the balcony?). The Village just seemed huge to me as compared with the Warner downtown, maybe because of the Warner downtown’s projection booth was smack in the middle of the auditorium blocking the sightline across the audience. The Village didn’t have a balcony.
The Village got “Earthquake” with Sensurround after the Warner downtown was done with it. I saw it at both and was more scared that the old Warner downtown was going to crumble around me. The Village Sensurround experience was not as powerful in the huge theater which had about 20 people in it when I saw the movie as compared with the Warner downtown which was filled to capacity. With the Sensurround speakers installed, the Village also got “Rollercoaster” (I think), and “Battlestar Galactica” (for sure) which were ok Sensurround experiences, which were the only reasons to go to these movies. Midway and Earthquake were the best of the Sensurround movies IMO, giving Midway the edge for the shear number of earth-shaking rumbles.
I remember going up to the big horns of the Sensurround speakers at the front of the theater and the two back speaker enclosure horns that were mounted on the backs of the rear seats to gawk in amazement that the horns were as big as me. Darn if I should have known to sit right in front of the speaker horns, but I wanted the center of the screen experience because the screen was so huge.
The other comments really did bring back memories of the amazement of those dual curtains opening, the curved one seeming to go on forever wrapping around the front of the audience in a huge arc. I recall that it would take at least 30 seconds for that curtain to open. If I recall correctly, the curtain would open part way for the 35mm previews, then close, before the grand opening of the curtain to reveal the huge grander of the widescreen. I really miss curtain openings, but I really miss those huge screens. People born after 1975 have no clue what a movie-going experience is.
That is so cool that this was actually built to be a Cinerama theater. That would have been great and I would guess would have been the largest one ever built. Boy I wish we had screen dimensions.
I really liked the Village and am glad I left Pittsburgh before the conversion to five screens. You can only imagine the shear size of this theater if you could put 5 little ones in the same four walls.
The theater is in Bethel Park. The nearby South Hills Village is part Bethel and part Upper St. Clair.
The capacity of this theater was 1,303 when it was the glorious, stylish one-screen Village.
When chopped up into five auditoriums, the seats in some auditoriums were not re-aligned to conform to the installation/angles of the five new, smaller screens, and so patrons of Village 5 sat at slightly skewed angles in at least four of the five auditoriums.
The original one-screen auditorium was for a few years the nicest second-run theater in Western Pennsylvania, I think.
A sign of the changing times occurred ominously in 1970 when the first-run Chatham Cinema Downtown/Uptown did terrific business for 14 weeks with “Airport.” The picture was still doing major holdover business when Universal yanked it to give it to a few suburban theaters including the Village. When the Village outdrew the biggest of the 14 weeks at the Chatham, the writing was on the wall: Movies, even pictures that have been playing for 14 weeks Downtown, could do better in the posh new suburban houses. We all know how booking patterns shifted dramatically in the years that followed, sealing the fates of the Downtown first-run theaters and then closing them one by one.
Ironically, the rush to open more screens in the suburbs led to the chopping up of some of the nice houses, including the Village, that had made “Airport” so attractive there.
I have found the grand opening announcement with a picture of the theatre on July 19th, 1966 at
View link
Renewing link.
Was this the theatre in the parking lot outside the mall? I saw EARTHQUAKE there too. The first film I saw at this theatre (and it ran for quite a while) was LOST HORIZON in 1973. It was a wonderful movie going experience and a great theater to see a BIG film in. I also remember seeing the re-release of MARY POPPINS in this theatre.
Another Village Theater . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWXjFHqc7gc
Was this the theatre in the parking lot outside the mall? I saw EARTHQUAKE there too. The first film I saw at this theatre (and it ran for quite a while) was LOST HORIZON in 1973. It was a wonderful movie going experience and a great theater to see a BIG film in. I also remember seeing the re-release of MARY POPPINS in this theatre.
Another Village Theater . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWXjFHqc7gc
I remember the brains of Cinemette had the construction crews knock out the walls for exit doors while people were sitting in the theatres watching the movies, all the daylight poured in and managment could'nt understand thier problems and complaints. DAH
I think I saw the early 90s version of “Dracula” here.
“ROLLERCOASTER” with George Segal was in Sensurround.
Does anyone have any old pictures of the original theatre that they could post?