Loews Salem Avenue Cinemas

JimRankin on January 6, 2005 at 10:09 am

For those born too late, it may sound curious to name a theatre “KON-TIKI” and wonder at the abstruse imagination of the builder, but to set history straight, it may interest readers to know that the name is that of a Polynesian who was later deified, and the name is drawn from the famous documentary novel by the late Thor Heyerdahl writing in Norwegian, as the following excerpt from a review of his book at www.amazon.com: shows, making the name of the theatre appropriate to the day and age it was conceived, since the hullabaloo then surrounding the publishing of the book made it a cause celeb:

“ Kon-Tiki is the record of an astonishing adventure — a journey of 4,300 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean by raft. Intrigued by Polynesian folklore, biologist Thor Heyerdahl suspected that the South Sea Islands had been settled by an ancient race from thousands of miles to the east, led by a mythical hero, Kon-Tiki. He decided to prove his theory by duplicating the legendary voyage.

On April 28, 1947, Heyerdahl and five other adventurers sailed from Peru on a balsa log raft. After three months on the open sea, encountering raging storms, whales, and sharks, they sighted land — the Polynesian island of Puka Puka.

Translated into sixty-five languages, Kon-Tiki is a classic, inspiring tale of daring and courage — a magnificent saga of men against the sea."

The now lost KON-TIKI theatre is summarized in these posts here at CT:
http://cinematreasures.org/news/12583_0_1_0_C/
Last day photos are included there. A great pity is that the interior at opening is not shown so that we all might have known of this unique design.