Colony Theatre
1040 Lincoln Road,
Miami Beach,
FL
33131
1040 Lincoln Road,
Miami Beach,
FL
33131
5 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 31 comments
1941 photo added credit FIU-Miami News Archives.
Website: http://www.colonytheatremiamibeach.com/
The theatre reopened in 1955 and its premiere attraction was GUYS AND DOLLS. Remember seeing the poster plastered all over the outside of the theatre prior to its reopening. In later years I saw such films as SWEET CHARITY and MIDNIGHT COWBOY here.
“The Sound of Music” premiered at the Colony 50 years ago today. With a reserved-seat run of 82 weeks, do you think it is the long-run record holder for this venue?
Also, on a related note, I would like to mention my new 50th anniversary retrospective for “The Sound of Music” can be read here.
The January 25th, 1935 grand opening ad has been uploaded here.
Thanks for all the Great looking pictures.AClassy theatre all the way.
A recent photo of the Colony Theater
View link
I forgot to mention – if you look at the picture posted above – the wall on the left side of the image is where the original entrance was; pre-renovation build-out.
I’ve seen old photos of the Colony with an entrance directly on Lincoln Road itself. It was probably in 1955 that Florida State Theaters remodeled it with it’s diagonal entrance from Lincoln Road to Lenox Avenue.
The above-the-marquee signage lost its Plexiglass panels after 1965’s Hurricane Donna… and I remember seeing pieces of it up and down Lenox Avenue. In 1967 I (and a high school buddy) got dressed up in sport jackets and ties to look older – and we actually got in (at the age of 15) to see the movie “Candy” at the Colony…
When I worked at Miami-Dade Community College in the late 1970’s, one of the members of the graphics department was Frank Spaulding, who had been an animator with Fleischer – both in New York and in Miami…
1961, my Mom and I saw Spartacus. It was quite an experience.
My guess would be that Miami Beach was more tourism oriented, and world premieres there would encourage word-of-mouth promotion when visitors returned to their respective hometowns. It’s also possible that “double world premieres” were arranged to meet extra demand.
The brief presence of the Fleischer Studios received substantial press in Miami; a generous sampling can be found in Leslie Cabarga’s book “The Fleischer Story” (out of print, but worth the money for animation history fans). Another animated feature, “Mr. Bug Goes to Town” and the first Superman cartoons were among Fleischer’s output there before Paramount withdrew their business.
I never understood why some movies would open at two Miami Beach locations and not in Miami itself. Some would do the opposite.
Were they such distinct markets then even with common newspapers?
Another (co- with the Sheridan) world premiere of note was the Fleischer Studios' first feature film, “Gulliver’s Travels” (1939), produced at the company’s short-lived Miami headquarters. For a look at what the Studios became:
View link
Al, Joe Vogel, Found the grand opening ad and article in the newspaper from January 25th, 1935 and you can see it at View link
On February 18, 1936, a little over a year after it opened, the Colony Theatre hosted the world premier of Walter Wanger’s “The Trail Of the Lonesome Pines,” the first dramatic feature film in full color. Two days later, the New York premier was presented at the Paramount Theatre there. Paramount Pictures congratulated itself with this two-page spread in Boxoffice Magazine of March 7, 1936.
The October 23, 1948, issue of Boxoffice reported another world premier at the Colony, that of the Ingrid Bergman-Charles Boyer movie “Arch of Triumph.”
A brief item in Boxoffice of September 23, 1950, mentioned “…Paramount’s Colony, Miami Beach, now called the Colony Art Theatre….” This name and policy change does not appear to have lasted long, and Boxoffice was again calling it simply the Colony Theatre by 1952.
The theater was apparently closed in late 1953. The November 12, 1955, issue of Boxoffice reported that the Colony would be reopened by Florida State Theatres on December 23 with the southeastern regional premier of “Guys and Dolls.” The house had been closed for two years, the item said, and was being refurbished and would be equipped for wide-screen movies.
After that, the Colony appears to have thrived as a first-run house, with occasional road shows, for a couple of decades, and was mentioned in Boxoffice frequently.
Colony opening program, January 1935.
View link
“The Sound of Music” played for over a year at the Colony. Here is the 1965 Florida State Theatres Christmas ad.
View link
Much nicer since its upgrade. The only problem is how steep the stadium seating is. I went to see the only South Florida screening, on 35mm, of David Lynch’s ‘Inland Empire,’ and despite my $20 to $30 ticket price (don’t remember the cost, but the ticket price was almost as steep as the seating incline), I was given an assigned seat, way up top, which made sitting through this otherwise wonderful 3-hour film somewhat of a chore. Assigned seating for any film screening, unless you’re at high-profile film festival (many of which don’t even impose such a thing), is just snooty, and in this case — given the particularly uncultured region in which the Colony sits (Lynch didn’t trust this market for a regular run of his self-distributed film) — pretentious.
Opened as THE COLONY, SPARKS' NEW WONDER THEATRE on January 25, 1935 with CLIVE OF INDIA starring Ronald Colman and Loretta Young.
Merry Christmas from Florida State Theatres, 1966.
View link
A better photo is here
About halfway down this page there’s a close-up of one of the figures on the Colony Theatre’s silver entry doors…
View link
InterAmerica Stage, Inc. took part in the demolition of the old rigging system and furnished the theatre with a new counterweight fly system, pin rails, fire safety curtain, motorized rigging, controls, draperies and track.
http://iastage.com/historical_renovations
Stage, this would have been either Wynwood or Allapattah, most likely the latter. I show the Strand closed in the mid fifties and may served a blak community displaced by 1-95 eminient domain.
Does anybody know anything about a former Strand Theatre in Miami?
One morning while communting from my home in Hollywood down to my job in Coral Gables, I decided to avoid the terrible traffic on I-95 and find some avenue that ran parallel to the interstate. And somewhere between NW 29th Street and NW 14th Street along NW 7th Avenue I found a small theatre with a marquee and classic double doors. It was labeled the STRAND with the S having fallen off some time ago. It currently seems to be a small church/prayer home now. I will try to take some pictures of it. Can anybody here identify what part of town/neighborhood we would call this area? It’s definitely industrial and very poor. Perhaps that might help with some research (where I’m finding NO luck).