York Theatres 1 & 2

I started in the business as an usher here in summer 1980. Massive sellout crowds for The Blue Lagoon <grin>. One of my duties as an usher was to bring the projectionist his paycheque every week. One day it wasn’t in an envelope. That was the day I decided a career change was in the offing! I later worked there many times as a relief operator. I think the capacity was 751 up and 468 down, but that’s going on almost 30 years worth of memories.

They ran 35/70mm Vic 8’s upstairs and very strange, stripped-down 35mm-only Vic-8s down, both on 6000' reels at the time, a two-man job. When they eliminated the downstairs booth as a separate job they put Drive-In Platters in both. Upstairs was indeed a very good THX installation (Rick Long did wonderful installations for Best Theater Supply), but I don’t think the Uptown ever got THX Certified due to the rumble from the subway underneath—same reason that the Hyland couldn’t be THX’d. Only better THX installation at the time was the Eglinton, which remained the best I’d ever seen up till the end.

A picture of the former York Theatre 1 as an event center:
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