CHICAGO-According to James Jovan, owner and operator of the Monroe, even oldtime showmen who think they have all the answers for the type of films that go over with moviegoers have a struggle in meeting public taste. After running a series of old and new films, with a wide range of subject matter, his experiment with “Bride of the Monster” and “Fire Maidens from Outer Space” made the box office jingle louder than it has in many weeks.
This is from Boxoffice magazine in July 1957. Park Theater should be an aka.
EL DORADO SPRINGS, MO.-Mrs. Walter Lovan, operator of the El Dorado Drive-In, has purchased the Park Theater equipment from Ray and Dorothy Brown. In addition, the building at 105 N. Main St., now occupied by the theater, has been leased from Mrs. Fern Williams and son Edward.
In 1936 Mrs. Lovan and her husband, the late Walter Lovan, became managers of the Park and operated it successfully for a number of years. In 1954 the El Dorado Drive-In was built on Highway 54. Plans are being made to redecorate the Park Theater in the near future. The house is to be closed temporarily and an announcement made concerning the reopening date.
PITTSBURGH-The Park Theater on Greenfield Avenue was closed after Sunday exhibitions and the house will be dismantled to make way for a beer distributor and an insurance office. Opened 17 years ago by Leonard Perer and his cousin Nathan Perer, they operated the Park until its closing. They continue in exhibition at the Novelty Theater, north side.
Some Chicago Tribune articles circa 1922 discuss boxing matches being held at the Argo Theater. That predates the opening of this theater in 1934, obviously. Perhaps there was an Argo in Chicago that is unlisted.
Here is a photo from a 7/20/58 LA Times story about the Chino Theater. A group of Girl Scouts renovated the theater and re-opened it in an effort to raise money for a trip to Hawaii. http://tinyurl.com/boxgcp
National General Corp. has closed the Iris Theater om Hollywood for a $250,000 renovation project. The theater will be renamed the Fox and will reopen on December 20 with an exclusive run of “The Killing of Sister George”. The remodeling is part of an expansion program launched by Eugene V. Klein, president of the Los Angeles-based company.
The 650-seat house will be given a deluxe appearance, including a new facade, expanded lobby, marble walls, carpeting and comfortable bodiform chairs.
Austinites seeking the destruction of an abandoned building in the area have completed cleanup operations on the building to make it less of an eyesore, until the building is demolished or renovated. The building, the former West End theater, 125 N. Cicero Ave., was boarded recently after residents and the Austin Community organization (ACO) complained the open building was dangerous and had become a refuge for skid row characters.
Cleanup task force members painted the bare boards, cut down high weeds and grass, and picked up trash and debris around the building. Capt. John Neurauter, commander of the Austin police district, labeled the building “a bad place. We have been there many times to arrest delericts bedded down in there. It is also very filthy.”
One of the most successful recent conversions in the north side communities is the changeover of the former Coed theater into the present Beth Israel Anshe Yanova synagogue, 1328 Morse Avenue.
In the main auditorium the newly reupholstered seats will accommodate 600 persons for the Sabbath rites. In daily use, however, is the chapel seating 70 persons created from a portion of the lobby. What had been second floor offices now includes a social hall seating 170 persons, a temporary study for the pastor (sic), classrooms for the Hebrew school, and a well appointed kitchen. The two projection rooms of the theater days are now respectively a cloak room and rest room.
A conversion which changed the Alba Theater to the Alba Bowling Lanes, 4814 N. Kedzie Ave., included tearing out a balcony, constructing a false ceiling and soundproofing it, installing new lighting and correcting the pitch of the floor. That latter operation, providing for 12 alleys, was designed so that the pits are at the front, or stage area, of the former theater layout.
A game room and lounge is now in the lobby area, but owner Edwin Meyer still utilizes as his office the office used by the theater cashier. The projection room of the theater has become a storage room.
In a reent conversion, just completed last April, the venerable old Roscoe Theater, 2044 Roscoe Street, became the social hall and headquarters of a German-American club, the Schleswig-Holsteiner-Saengerbund. Buying the theater and obtaining the materials to convert it cost approximately $50,000, since the members did their own work, except for certain technical skills.
Club official Eugene Erbach said the effort was well worth it, as the 74 year old club now has an ideal showplace for its choral concerts and a neighborhood social club for its 200 members. A dance floor of some 3,000 square feet, and a terrace above it provising some 4,000 square feet, allows plenty of room for club activities.
Side walls have been improved with paintings of old country landscapes, and the projection room of the old theater has been converted into an auxiliary meeting room, Erbach said.
Chicago Tribune confirms demolition of Villa, aka Halsted, on July 30, 1958. The theater was showing Spanish language films at that time. Villa should be listed as an alternate name.
The auditorium was cavernous, especially if the crowd was small. Sitting in that theater really gave you a feeling for how the old days must have been.
Here is part of an LA Times article dated 10/21/90:
The Raymond Theatre-which has been dark and neglected since January-now rings with the sound of workers' hammers, drills and saws. Sunlight streams through doors thrown wide open and portable spotlights shine everywhere. The 69-year-old historical structure is being reborn.Under new owner Gary Folgner, crews have been working for the past three months, frantically readying the building for a Nov. 16 reopening concert. The frenzied work fulfills a 2-year-old city dream: preservation of the onetime vaudeville house and former movie theater as a premier entertainment venue in Pasadena.
“Everything has come together,” said Claire Bogaard, executive director of Pasadena Heritage, an activist preservation group. “We’re just thrilled.” Bogaard said some in Pasadena had feared that Folgner would slap a coat of paint on the Raymond and quickly start booking the rock, country and pop acts that perform at his other two clubs. Folgner is owner of the Coach House nightclub in San Juan Capistrano and the Ventura Theatre in Ventura. Instead, Folgner “seems to be very serious and very serious about doing it right,” Bogaard said of the preservation work. “He’s going to put the windows back, the original marquee back and the original marquee ceiling.” Ed Razor, Folgner’s project manager for the theater, estimated the restoration will cost $1.5 million. It will continue after the theater opens, perhaps taking years to complete.
It includes uncovering three front windows plastered over years ago and dismantling the late-1940s marquee to uncover the still-intact 1921 marquee. Construction of a three-story commercial building on the parking lot next door also is planned, but that, like the major restoration work, is months away. For now, Folgner wants to replicate the original, classic beaux-arts style of the interior and begin booking concerts and renting the hall. Professional groups, such as ballet companies and other performance groups, could use the Raymond when they can’t obtain dates at the Civic Auditorium, can’t fill the Ambassador Auditorium and don’t want to use the area’s college auditoriums, Razor said. “This is the only real hall available for rent in Pasadena,” he said. “It’s an elegant setting. The hall fills a huge gap.”
Designed by J. Cyril Bennett, architect of Pasadena’s Civic Auditorium and scores of buildings along Colorado Boulevard, the 1,800-seat Raymond opened in 1921 as a vaudeville house. In the 1930s, it was converted to a movie theater. In 1948, it was remodeled as the Crown Theater and lost many of its beaux-arts architectural features to modernization. Marc Perkins bought the Raymond in 1978 and dubbed it Perkins Palace. Top-name pop acts like Roberta Flack and Air Supply played there, followed later by heavy-metal rock bands.
After it closed four years ago, the Raymond became a hulking money loser with a leaky roof and pigeons in the rafters. In January, vandals broke in and tore out all of the building’s copper electrical wiring. Perkins soured on concert producing and, with partner Gene Buchanan, sought to convert the Raymond to office space. But preservationists rallied and city officials persuaded Perkins and Buchanan to delay their plans while a $29,800 economic study was completed on the theater. The study paid off when Folgner, a buyer willing to pay the reported $2.8-million asking price and keep the Raymond operating as a theater, was found. Before escrow closed on the purchase, Folgner sent crews to begin work: patching holes in the floor, putting new upholstery on the seats, installing missing wiring and replastering and repainting the walls.
“Once you spend a lot of time in here, you fall in with it,” Razor said. “This is a place where magic happens. It may not look like it now, but it will happen.”
Here is part of an LA Times article dated 9/20/91:
The El Rey is hard to miss; it’s a big old movie theater on Wilshire Boulevard, the one with the colorful neon blazing in quasi-Aztec designs. Inside, where the theater once held movie seats, there was a sea of tables set with white linens and wine glasses with cloth napkins sticking out of them. On either side were elevated seating areas, tables with a box-seat feel to them. Between the front row of tables and the stage was a parquet dance floor. Except for one elderly couple, we were the only people there. We ordered drinks and perused the menu, a listing of Russian classics.
Our waitress said she had been working at the El Rey for only a few days, and mostly, she was still mystified and delighted to find herself employed at a Russian restaurant in a movie house with a Spanish name. Weekend nights are when the El Rey fills up, she said. There’s dancing and singing with an orchestra and a violinist. In fact, because big parties often book a large number of the tables, it’s a good idea to have reservations.
That Wednesday night, however, when we ate in the big empty hall the borscht had no particular character, the lamb shashlik was a kebab of dry meat served with bland rice and steamed carrots, the cabbage rolls were filled with rice and meat that had an off-putting metallic taste. A few more diners, most of whom spoke Russian, wandered in.
We returned to the El Rey the next Saturday night and found an entirely different arrangement. There were valets out front to park cars. Inside, the place was packed with people who were all dressed up. The tables were arranged banquet-style and occupied by what seemed to be a party of family and friends. We were seated above the dance floor with a good view of the stage where a violinist named Sergei was performing. Backed up by a three-piece band, Sergei, in a white tuxedo with red cummerbund, executed fancy footwork and wandered from table to table with his amplified violin. The audience loved him.
Chicken shashlik was well-spiced and juicy and quite delicious. Mostly, the food reminded me of banquet food: bland, easy to mass-produce and not-so-hot for the simple reason that it didn’t have to be. It seems that for the moment, the El Rey isn’t concerned with serving great Russian food. Rather, it wants to provide a hall for L.A.’s Russian community to assemble and celebrate with gusto, which is exactly what goes on.
TALLAHASSEE-The first-run, downtown Florida Theater, valued at $500,000, was completely gutted by a fire after closing the night of Friday, March 25. The cause of the blaze was not determined.
The Florida had been the favorite entertainment center for generations of lawmakers, their families and students and facult members of Florida State University in the state’s capital city. Managed for many years by Tommy Hyde, who indicated that rebuilding plans may soon be set in motion, the Florida was the flagship of Kent Theaters, owned by Fred Kent of Jacksonville.
Here is an item from Boxoffice magazine in April 1960:
HARTFORD-Community Theaters, a suburban circuit, has boosted adult admission from 70 to 75 cents, after 7 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, at the Central, West Hartford and Colonial in Hartford. The theaters' early bird policy of 60 cents for adults remains in effect from 6:15 to 7 p.m. on those days.
At the same time, children’s admission has been increased from 25 to 30 cents at the Lenox, Colonial and Central.
MIAMI-Miami is expected soon to have its first theater equipped to provide odors with motion pictures. Tests were made at Wometco’s Town Theater on Flagler Street by engineers, and a spokesman for Wometco said negotiations were under way with Walter Reade, producer of Aromarama.
Preliminary tests have been sucessful at the Town, with equipment being installed in the projection booth and other points, which operates through the air-conditioning system. The odors are emitted to correspond with pictures on the screen, and are exhausted through air vents. The first production by Aromarama will be “Behind the Great Wall”.
The building is now occupied by a liquor store. Here is an item from Boxoffice magazine in April 1960:
PITTSBURGH-The lease on the Shiloh Theater, Mount Washington, has been transferred from Roy Fiedler to Eddie and Frank Erkel. Fiedler continues in exhibition at the Parkway Theater in the McKees Rocks area, where he recently renewed his lease for five years.
NEW YORK-The 68th Street Playhouse, one of Manhattan’s oldest film theaters dating back to the nickelodeon days, became a first-run art theater March 30 with the opening of “When Comedy was King”, 20th Century Fox omnibus feature starring famous silent days comedians.
The theater, which has been operated as a neighborhood subsequent run house since Brecher Theaters took it over in 1937, was refurbished before the opening, according to Walter Brecher. The theater was at one time operated by the late Charles O'Reilly, former vice-president of ABC Vending Corp.
This is from Boxoffice magazine, July 1957:
CHICAGO-According to James Jovan, owner and operator of the Monroe, even oldtime showmen who think they have all the answers for the type of films that go over with moviegoers have a struggle in meeting public taste. After running a series of old and new films, with a wide range of subject matter, his experiment with “Bride of the Monster” and “Fire Maidens from Outer Space” made the box office jingle louder than it has in many weeks.
This is from Boxoffice magazine in July 1957. Park Theater should be an aka.
EL DORADO SPRINGS, MO.-Mrs. Walter Lovan, operator of the El Dorado Drive-In, has purchased the Park Theater equipment from Ray and Dorothy Brown. In addition, the building at 105 N. Main St., now occupied by the theater, has been leased from Mrs. Fern Williams and son Edward.
In 1936 Mrs. Lovan and her husband, the late Walter Lovan, became managers of the Park and operated it successfully for a number of years. In 1954 the El Dorado Drive-In was built on Highway 54. Plans are being made to redecorate the Park Theater in the near future. The house is to be closed temporarily and an announcement made concerning the reopening date.
From Boxoffice magazine, July 1957:
PITTSBURGH-The Park Theater on Greenfield Avenue was closed after Sunday exhibitions and the house will be dismantled to make way for a beer distributor and an insurance office. Opened 17 years ago by Leonard Perer and his cousin Nathan Perer, they operated the Park until its closing. They continue in exhibition at the Novelty Theater, north side.
Here is a 1949 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/btcenv
Some Chicago Tribune articles circa 1922 discuss boxing matches being held at the Argo Theater. That predates the opening of this theater in 1934, obviously. Perhaps there was an Argo in Chicago that is unlisted.
After the pizza place folded, it looks like the most recent occupant was a scrapbook store:
http://tinyurl.com/bwzxm5
Here is a photo from a 7/20/58 LA Times story about the Chino Theater. A group of Girl Scouts renovated the theater and re-opened it in an effort to raise money for a trip to Hawaii.
http://tinyurl.com/boxgcp
Here is another LA Times excerpt dated 11/24/68:
National General Corp. has closed the Iris Theater om Hollywood for a $250,000 renovation project. The theater will be renamed the Fox and will reopen on December 20 with an exclusive run of “The Killing of Sister George”. The remodeling is part of an expansion program launched by Eugene V. Klein, president of the Los Angeles-based company.
The 650-seat house will be given a deluxe appearance, including a new facade, expanded lobby, marble walls, carpeting and comfortable bodiform chairs.
More renovation news:
http://tinyurl.com/arc7jd
Renovation news:
http://tinyurl.com/c2kzv5
From the Chicago Tribune, 7/22/65:
Austinites seeking the destruction of an abandoned building in the area have completed cleanup operations on the building to make it less of an eyesore, until the building is demolished or renovated. The building, the former West End theater, 125 N. Cicero Ave., was boarded recently after residents and the Austin Community organization (ACO) complained the open building was dangerous and had become a refuge for skid row characters.
Cleanup task force members painted the bare boards, cut down high weeds and grass, and picked up trash and debris around the building. Capt. John Neurauter, commander of the Austin police district, labeled the building “a bad place. We have been there many times to arrest delericts bedded down in there. It is also very filthy.”
From the Chicago Tribune, 12/9/56:
One of the most successful recent conversions in the north side communities is the changeover of the former Coed theater into the present Beth Israel Anshe Yanova synagogue, 1328 Morse Avenue.
In the main auditorium the newly reupholstered seats will accommodate 600 persons for the Sabbath rites. In daily use, however, is the chapel seating 70 persons created from a portion of the lobby. What had been second floor offices now includes a social hall seating 170 persons, a temporary study for the pastor (sic), classrooms for the Hebrew school, and a well appointed kitchen. The two projection rooms of the theater days are now respectively a cloak room and rest room.
From the Chicago Tribune, 12/9/56:
A conversion which changed the Alba Theater to the Alba Bowling Lanes, 4814 N. Kedzie Ave., included tearing out a balcony, constructing a false ceiling and soundproofing it, installing new lighting and correcting the pitch of the floor. That latter operation, providing for 12 alleys, was designed so that the pits are at the front, or stage area, of the former theater layout.
A game room and lounge is now in the lobby area, but owner Edwin Meyer still utilizes as his office the office used by the theater cashier. The projection room of the theater has become a storage room.
From the Chicago Tribune, 12/9/56:
In a reent conversion, just completed last April, the venerable old Roscoe Theater, 2044 Roscoe Street, became the social hall and headquarters of a German-American club, the Schleswig-Holsteiner-Saengerbund. Buying the theater and obtaining the materials to convert it cost approximately $50,000, since the members did their own work, except for certain technical skills.
Club official Eugene Erbach said the effort was well worth it, as the 74 year old club now has an ideal showplace for its choral concerts and a neighborhood social club for its 200 members. A dance floor of some 3,000 square feet, and a terrace above it provising some 4,000 square feet, allows plenty of room for club activities.
Side walls have been improved with paintings of old country landscapes, and the projection room of the old theater has been converted into an auxiliary meeting room, Erbach said.
Chicago Tribune confirms demolition of Villa, aka Halsted, on July 30, 1958. The theater was showing Spanish language films at that time. Villa should be listed as an alternate name.
The auditorium was cavernous, especially if the crowd was small. Sitting in that theater really gave you a feeling for how the old days must have been.
I saw this theater under construction a few years ago. It’s visible from the 15 freeway on your way into town.
Here is part of an LA Times article dated 10/21/90:
The Raymond Theatre-which has been dark and neglected since January-now rings with the sound of workers' hammers, drills and saws. Sunlight streams through doors thrown wide open and portable spotlights shine everywhere. The 69-year-old historical structure is being reborn.Under new owner Gary Folgner, crews have been working for the past three months, frantically readying the building for a Nov. 16 reopening concert. The frenzied work fulfills a 2-year-old city dream: preservation of the onetime vaudeville house and former movie theater as a premier entertainment venue in Pasadena.
“Everything has come together,” said Claire Bogaard, executive director of Pasadena Heritage, an activist preservation group. “We’re just thrilled.” Bogaard said some in Pasadena had feared that Folgner would slap a coat of paint on the Raymond and quickly start booking the rock, country and pop acts that perform at his other two clubs. Folgner is owner of the Coach House nightclub in San Juan Capistrano and the Ventura Theatre in Ventura. Instead, Folgner “seems to be very serious and very serious about doing it right,” Bogaard said of the preservation work. “He’s going to put the windows back, the original marquee back and the original marquee ceiling.” Ed Razor, Folgner’s project manager for the theater, estimated the restoration will cost $1.5 million. It will continue after the theater opens, perhaps taking years to complete.
It includes uncovering three front windows plastered over years ago and dismantling the late-1940s marquee to uncover the still-intact 1921 marquee. Construction of a three-story commercial building on the parking lot next door also is planned, but that, like the major restoration work, is months away. For now, Folgner wants to replicate the original, classic beaux-arts style of the interior and begin booking concerts and renting the hall. Professional groups, such as ballet companies and other performance groups, could use the Raymond when they can’t obtain dates at the Civic Auditorium, can’t fill the Ambassador Auditorium and don’t want to use the area’s college auditoriums, Razor said. “This is the only real hall available for rent in Pasadena,” he said. “It’s an elegant setting. The hall fills a huge gap.”
Designed by J. Cyril Bennett, architect of Pasadena’s Civic Auditorium and scores of buildings along Colorado Boulevard, the 1,800-seat Raymond opened in 1921 as a vaudeville house. In the 1930s, it was converted to a movie theater. In 1948, it was remodeled as the Crown Theater and lost many of its beaux-arts architectural features to modernization. Marc Perkins bought the Raymond in 1978 and dubbed it Perkins Palace. Top-name pop acts like Roberta Flack and Air Supply played there, followed later by heavy-metal rock bands.
After it closed four years ago, the Raymond became a hulking money loser with a leaky roof and pigeons in the rafters. In January, vandals broke in and tore out all of the building’s copper electrical wiring. Perkins soured on concert producing and, with partner Gene Buchanan, sought to convert the Raymond to office space. But preservationists rallied and city officials persuaded Perkins and Buchanan to delay their plans while a $29,800 economic study was completed on the theater. The study paid off when Folgner, a buyer willing to pay the reported $2.8-million asking price and keep the Raymond operating as a theater, was found. Before escrow closed on the purchase, Folgner sent crews to begin work: patching holes in the floor, putting new upholstery on the seats, installing missing wiring and replastering and repainting the walls.
“Once you spend a lot of time in here, you fall in with it,” Razor said. “This is a place where magic happens. It may not look like it now, but it will happen.”
Here is part of an LA Times article dated 9/20/91:
The El Rey is hard to miss; it’s a big old movie theater on Wilshire Boulevard, the one with the colorful neon blazing in quasi-Aztec designs. Inside, where the theater once held movie seats, there was a sea of tables set with white linens and wine glasses with cloth napkins sticking out of them. On either side were elevated seating areas, tables with a box-seat feel to them. Between the front row of tables and the stage was a parquet dance floor. Except for one elderly couple, we were the only people there. We ordered drinks and perused the menu, a listing of Russian classics.
Our waitress said she had been working at the El Rey for only a few days, and mostly, she was still mystified and delighted to find herself employed at a Russian restaurant in a movie house with a Spanish name. Weekend nights are when the El Rey fills up, she said. There’s dancing and singing with an orchestra and a violinist. In fact, because big parties often book a large number of the tables, it’s a good idea to have reservations.
That Wednesday night, however, when we ate in the big empty hall the borscht had no particular character, the lamb shashlik was a kebab of dry meat served with bland rice and steamed carrots, the cabbage rolls were filled with rice and meat that had an off-putting metallic taste. A few more diners, most of whom spoke Russian, wandered in.
We returned to the El Rey the next Saturday night and found an entirely different arrangement. There were valets out front to park cars. Inside, the place was packed with people who were all dressed up. The tables were arranged banquet-style and occupied by what seemed to be a party of family and friends. We were seated above the dance floor with a good view of the stage where a violinist named Sergei was performing. Backed up by a three-piece band, Sergei, in a white tuxedo with red cummerbund, executed fancy footwork and wandered from table to table with his amplified violin. The audience loved him.
Chicken shashlik was well-spiced and juicy and quite delicious. Mostly, the food reminded me of banquet food: bland, easy to mass-produce and not-so-hot for the simple reason that it didn’t have to be. It seems that for the moment, the El Rey isn’t concerned with serving great Russian food. Rather, it wants to provide a hall for L.A.’s Russian community to assemble and celebrate with gusto, which is exactly what goes on.
From Boxoffice magazine, April 1960:
TALLAHASSEE-The first-run, downtown Florida Theater, valued at $500,000, was completely gutted by a fire after closing the night of Friday, March 25. The cause of the blaze was not determined.
The Florida had been the favorite entertainment center for generations of lawmakers, their families and students and facult members of Florida State University in the state’s capital city. Managed for many years by Tommy Hyde, who indicated that rebuilding plans may soon be set in motion, the Florida was the flagship of Kent Theaters, owned by Fred Kent of Jacksonville.
Here is an item from Boxoffice magazine in April 1960:
HARTFORD-Community Theaters, a suburban circuit, has boosted adult admission from 70 to 75 cents, after 7 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, at the Central, West Hartford and Colonial in Hartford. The theaters' early bird policy of 60 cents for adults remains in effect from 6:15 to 7 p.m. on those days.
At the same time, children’s admission has been increased from 25 to 30 cents at the Lenox, Colonial and Central.
This is from Boxoffice magazine, April 1960:
MIAMI-Miami is expected soon to have its first theater equipped to provide odors with motion pictures. Tests were made at Wometco’s Town Theater on Flagler Street by engineers, and a spokesman for Wometco said negotiations were under way with Walter Reade, producer of Aromarama.
Preliminary tests have been sucessful at the Town, with equipment being installed in the projection booth and other points, which operates through the air-conditioning system. The odors are emitted to correspond with pictures on the screen, and are exhausted through air vents. The first production by Aromarama will be “Behind the Great Wall”.
It appears to be a church now:
http://tinyurl.com/beprml
The building is now occupied by a liquor store. Here is an item from Boxoffice magazine in April 1960:
PITTSBURGH-The lease on the Shiloh Theater, Mount Washington, has been transferred from Roy Fiedler to Eddie and Frank Erkel. Fiedler continues in exhibition at the Parkway Theater in the McKees Rocks area, where he recently renewed his lease for five years.
This is from Boxoffice magazine, April 1960:
NEW YORK-The 68th Street Playhouse, one of Manhattan’s oldest film theaters dating back to the nickelodeon days, became a first-run art theater March 30 with the opening of “When Comedy was King”, 20th Century Fox omnibus feature starring famous silent days comedians.
The theater, which has been operated as a neighborhood subsequent run house since Brecher Theaters took it over in 1937, was refurbished before the opening, according to Walter Brecher. The theater was at one time operated by the late Charles O'Reilly, former vice-president of ABC Vending Corp.