Paramount Theatre

Winter photo:
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posted by TC on Sep 19, 2005 at 12:17pm

TC
This link is also null-and-void and also “http 403 forbidden”

I really was looking forward to checking that one out too,
I was there 4/20 for Bruce….that building is amazing

Sincerely,
Greenpoint

While on a month long tour of New Jersey (and that’s a story in itself) I came upon the Asbury Park Paramount theatre and exhibition hall. I was stopped, slack jawed, in my tracks. That very night a performance of Aida was to take place and I bought a ticket then and there. The interior of the hall is pleasant but the real show is on the exterior. The riotous, sea-themed fantasy in terra-cotta, bronze, glass, and brick is worth sitting on a park bench and just staring at for a couple of hours.

The boardwalk/building complex shows up in some unexpected places. It’s in the background of an early scene in of the film “Dogma” (with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, 20th Century Fox).

Also, when the SS Morro Castle burned, the disabled ship came to rest right at the exhibition hall end of the complex. Photos of the ruined ship often include parts of the building. For example here:

http://www.jerseyboardwalk.com/morro.htm

Interesting view:
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This theater roadshowed Sound of Music in ‘65. Does anybody know if it was in Todd AO?

Went for a drive last Sunday(8-21-05) in the Asbury Park area with my mother and brother. We remember Asbury Park from the Sixties and early seventies when it was a decent resort area.We also went to the Paramount many times, and it was a lovely theater. Considering Asbury Park now looks like London or Warsaw after the blitz, it1s amazing the theater still stands.I1m glad that it is still in use as a concert and opera house. If Asbury Park ever “comes back”– it never happened like it was supposed to twenty years ago- at least it will have a decent theater. The ornamental works on the building- especially the large copper galleon type ship models are especially impressive.

“Michael Todd and his ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ made a big splash at this Boardwalk theatre here in August of 1957” (veyoung)

The “80 Days” opening day advertisements I have from The Newark Star-Ledger and Asbury Park Press are dated July 11, 1957.

Recent photo of exterior:
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Michael Todd and his “Around the World in 80 Days” made a big splash at this Boardwalk theatre here in August of 1957 after the expiration of a “promotion” agreement between the Michael Todd Company and American Optical Co., inventors of the 65mm Todd-AO filming process. The expired agreement had called for Todd to devote his best efforts to promoting the 70mm Todd-AO projection process. It is well known that long before this time, Todd had been ceremoniously removed from the corporations that had ultimately brought Todd-AO to life. Todd apparently felt that he was free to point out that his film could be favorably screened by methods other than T-AO. On Thursday the 22nd, he invited 100 exhibitors to the Reade Paramount to view a 35mm presentation of “80D”. In keeping with the recommendations of his engineering staff, Todd had a new booth built on the orchestra floor, and encouraged the exhibitors to show his film in 35mm on the largest screens possible, with curvature. He demonstrated some 35mm footage of a United Artists film, “Patterns,” and of a CinemaScope travelogue, both projected from the original upstairs booth at a considerable angle. Most of the exhibitors seemed to be more favorably impressed with the 35mm “80D” footage projected from the orchestra-level booth, though not all. William Goldman of the Philadelphia area complained bitterly about having had to spend $50K for installing T-AO projection & sound equipment at his Midtown theatre, saying he had “ a whole warehouse full of 3-D and other trick projection equipment for special process pictures."
At one point Todd’s print-down from 70mm to 35mm process was called "Cinestage,” presumably named for the roadshow theatre in Chicago he operated. And, of course, 35mm printdowns from 65mm-originated negatives persist to this day.