When I went to the Allwood in the last couple years of its single-screen days (the mid-‘70s; I believe it was twinned for Christmas '78), it seemed to play primarily United Artists/MGM releases (“Rocky,” “The Spy Who Loved Me,” the Brando/Nicholson flop “The Missouri Breaks”). It was usually listed in the co-op ads along with other so-called “Red Carpet Theatres” for UA/MGM releases, whereas Universal’s wide releases in the New York City area were at “Blue Ribbon Theatres” and Warner Bros. wide releases played at “Flagship Theatres.” Anybody have any background on where these collective terms came from (or why they’re no longer used)? The studios themselves? Film bookers? Were they used anywhere else in the country at that time?
The Loews Wayne 14 might also occupy some of the land formerly given over to the Anthony Wayne. One of the last drive-ins to close in northern New Jersey, and also the only D/I I’ve ever been to. I think it was around 1978 or ‘79. The budding cinephile in me kinda sneered at the drive-in experience then (picture too dark, audio coming out of a froggy-sounding speaker, people POSSIBLY NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO THE MOVIE), but there was also a communal, summer-outdoorsy vibe that I haven’t forgotten. The closest I’ve come to it since then has been at outdoor concerts. Now I actually envy people who can visit a drive-in without having to make a road trip out of it. Today, if I want a drive-in experience (and I just might, one of these summers), I’ll have to go either out of state to upstate New York or northeastern Pennsylvania, or down to Vineland in South Jersey, where a new drive-in has opened in NJ for the first time in what seems like about 200 years. Either way, I’m talking about a drive of 70 to 100 miles.
Did not ever visit the Jerry Lewis/5 Points, although for a few years I worked a couple of miles away from it and would pass by it from time to time after it had been twinned. I do have a couple of Union, NJ-related questions: Anybody else remember the old Fox Theatre on U.S. 22 (it has been a Chuck E. Cheese for several years, and was probably similar to the Fox Theatre in Woodbridge), and does anybody else remember going to either the Lost Picture Show (now closed) or the old RKO Theatre in Union, which lives on as the present-day Union Sevenplex?
I probably haven’t been to this theatre since I saw “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” which at that time monopolized five of the complex’s six decent-sized screens. Judging by some of the comments posted here, I haven’t missed much except a serious decline in upkeep; in 1997 the place was still reasonably well-run. Over the 20 years that I did patronize the Route 4 Theatre, in whatever configuration (triplex, eightplex, tenplex), I had a very mixed bag of moviegoing experiences, some very good to outstanding, and some pretty poor. Lest anybody think that the poor experiences have all been confined to more recent times, let me point out that on my second time seeing the original “Star Wars” in the supersized Theatre #1 back in the day, the surround channels failed to work for most of the show, the projectionist TWICE failed to synchronize the changeover from one reel to the next, and the film broke when Luke, Leia, and Han were in the trash compactor. Whereas the first time I saw it there, about a week and a half after it opened, the “only” problem was the sound going off at one point. Six years later, during “Return of the Jedi,” there was another film break. On the other hand, seeing a “Star Wars” movie (or any other, for that matter) on that enormous screen was a treat, and when Theatre #1 was subdivided into one okay-sized auditorium and two shoeboxes, the place lost much of its allure.
So if there’s going to be a new 16-plex to replace it (and, one assumes, the Route 17 triplex), it may simply be that the Route 4 tenplex has reached the end of its useful life.
You’re right about that, and I would encourage anyone who hasn’t ever been to a single-screen venue to try finding one, if it’s at all convenient. As for the memories of single-screen moviegoing, I’m glad to have quite a few and not as glad that in so many cases, the memories of these places are now the only opportunities to “visit” them.
I guess I’ve been to the Clifton Commons about a dozen times in the past few years and have yet to warm up to the place. Maybe it’s because so much that is off-putting about present-day moviegoing is in abundance here: the chintzy decor, the bored-looking high-schoolers behind the obscenely overpriced concession counters who don’t know how to enunciate, “moviegoers” who just can’t put their cell phones away, the amped-up digital sound that actually detracts from the experience, and last but not least, 15 or 20 minutes of the damn commercials. My wife and I went there one evening this summer, found that the movie we came for was sold out, and decided to see “Star Wars Episode III” instead. We made this decision at 7:02 p.m., bought our tickets, stood in line at the candy counter, and had plenty of time to search for seats in a crowded auditorium before the movie began. The advertised start time of that showing was 7 p.m.
A competent Loews multiplex with decent-sized screens and multichannel sound. Not too much different from the Mountainside 10, which Loews opened about 15 miles away at roughly the same time. My one complaint about this place is that the sound, ratcheted up so loud that the dialogue was unintelligible whenever the actors shouted (which was very often), made a very bad choice for a “date” movie—“William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet,” with Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes—even worse. I’ve had complaints about sound at other Loews multis over the years, come to think of it.
The Verona had a cozy neighborhood-theatre feel to it. The flipside was that you wouldn’t want to see “Lawrence of Arabia” or “Star Wars” here—the screen was not ‘scope width and was not even vertically masked to accommodate a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, so any movies with an aspect ratio wider than 1.85:1 were simply chopped off at the sides.
Theatre #1 (actually, I think it was labeled #2) of the Eric Twin was a favorite of mine in college days, as I went to school just about a mile from the theatre and would sometimes walk there. At that time it was the only theatre in the Trenton/Princeton area equipped with 70mm projection. I remember going there on opening day for “Return of the Jedi” in 1983 and waiting out in the lobby with several hundred other moviegoers for about two hours, while the previous showing was in progress. (Loud explosions and music crescendos, punctuated by bursts of applause, were audible from the auditorium.) The other auditorium seemed to be about one-third the size and must have been an add-on. No 70mm, no stereo sound, and the “Exit” sign cast a distracting glow on the screen.
Like almost all of the theatres I went to at college (with the exception of the Garden Theatre in Princeton), the Eric is long gone. Anybody remember the AMC Quaker Bridge 4 (one of AMC’s typically minuscule early attempts), the Budco Prince Triplex, the GCC Mercer Mall triplex, the Director’s Chair Twin in Hamilton Square, or the Kings Fair Twin in East Windsor?
My experience with the Clairidge spans various phases of its existence. First time there was three days after “Jaws” opened in June 1975. At a Monday matinee, the place was packed. One of the greatest moveigoing experiences I’ve ever had: a mammoth Cinerama screen, a thoroughly involving movie, and a responsive (screaming, laughing and applauding as if on cue) but well-behaved audience. I saw the movie there three times more before it closed about five months later; each time I saw it, the projectionist left the maroon curtain closed for the first 30 seconds or so over the Universal Pictures header and the first couple of credits on a black screen, and then gradually opened it as the credits continued over that underwater “shark POV” shot and the familiar “Jaws” theme grew more menacing. A nice touch. I went to the Clairidge several more times while it was still a single-screen house, but the presentation seemed to decline after “Jaws” finished its run, particularly the sound.
The main auditorium of the Clairidge Triplex wasn’t too bad, actually; you still had the feeling of being in a movie theatre rather than a storage closet with a screen tacked up. I saw “Fanny and Alexander,” “Zelig,” “Back to the Future” and “Cape Fear” there, among others. More recently, I’ve been to the Clairidge in its “arthouse” six-screen configuration. A shame that a theatre with an often-interesting slate of movies now shows them in such dismal conditions. Not only are the auditoriums about the size of the restroom in the old place, but the projection and sound have been pretty ratty the last few times I’ve gone. It’s a good thing so many of the movies are shown with subtitles because I wouldn’t have been able to make out the dialogue if it was in English! I don’t plan on going there again unless I hear that conditions have improved.
Fisrt movie theatre I ever went to; I must have been about four years old. The movie was something or the other about Santa Claus vs. Satan(!). Sad to see the old place is now a parking lot; I still pass through town occasionally and subconsciously look for the marquee of a theatre that’s been gone for five years now. One of the few subdivided theatres I’ve seen that still offered decent-sized auditoriums and screens after twinning, even though you were always aware that the place had been divided. One look up at the ceiling and you saw HALF of the elaborate designs—clumsily divided with a plasterboard wall down the middle of the original auditorium.
One of the saddest chop-ups I’ve seen in a movie theatre. As a single-screen house, which at various times was owned by GCC and UA, this originally had a very large Panavision screen (although the aspect ratio only seemed to stretch to full 2.39:1 width in the last couple of years; before then, widescreen movies seemed to be projected at about 2.2:1) and a roomy, ‘60s vintage auditorium that probably seated about 800. For the first couple years that I went there, it was primarily a sub-run house, but then was modernized with 70mm projection and 6-track Dolby in time for Christmas 1977, when it played “Star Wars” to a packed house (it had played “Damnation Alley”—which was supposed to be 20th Century-Fox’s big sci-fi hit for '77, rather than the afterthought called “Star Wars”—in 4-track Dolby a couple months before). That sound system was always a little funny, though: it didn’t have good bass even in the subwoofer channel and the surrounds (all two of them) were always too obviously “on,” so that the sound coming from them didn’t blend with the sound coming from behind the screen. Even so, aside from this I never encountered subpar presentation there.
The last movie I saw in the original single-screen Cinema 23 was “Casualties of War” with Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox. Next time I went back was 1990, after it had been carved up into five very small closets. Even the “main” auditorium was tiny, and evidently none of the theatres had ‘scope screens (and from what I hear, still don’t). After two or three visits (I remember the two-hour “Pretty Woman” stretching out to two-and-a-half hours because the projector kept breaking down), I gave up on the place. It’s been operating ever since, so I assume it does business, but it won’t get any more of mine.
My experience with the Center predates its being twinned. It was an okay neighborhood theatre, never very comfortable, that got kinda run down by the time I stopped going there in the late ‘80s. I think it may have switched to all-Indian films before Roberts bought it, twinned it and renamed it the Lost Picture Show (I’ve been to the original Lost Picture Show in Union, which I believe is now closed). It had been in the downtown area of Bloomfield probably since the 1930s, and while it probably did have live shows in its early years—as I recall, it had a stage although the screen was pretty far forward in the stage area—my experience with it was strictly as a moviegoer. I grew up in Bloomfield, and so this was within walking distance for me. I recall seeing “Taxi Driver,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoos’s Nest,” “The Exorcist,” “Black Sunday,” “Sorcerer,” and a couple dozen other movies there in the late '70s and early '80s. Probably about 500 seats including a balcony, decent-sized 'scope screen (no curtain) and sightlines, cramped lobby. Did not get stereo sound until after Roberts bought it; in fact, sound and projection got progressively more murky from about 1983 on.
Looking at that ad, if I have counted correctly there are only six of the 22 theatres listed that are still open today, and only one—the Lafayette in Suffern—in the same configuration it was back in 1969. The Wayne, the Hudson Plaza, the Warner (Ridgewood), the Warner-Route 4, and the Washington Cinema all still exist but have been subdivided since then.
The two smaller auditoriums in the Essex Green Cinema weren’t add-ons; the original Theater #2 was subdivided, in 1979 I think, and Dolby Stereo was installed in all three halls at that time. The two original (identical) auditoriums both had huge “light board” screens, and the remaining full-sized auditorium eventually was equipped with 70mm projection and may have been the first theatre in NJ to receive THX certification. I have many good moviegoing memories of the place as a teen and into my early 30s; its successor, a nine-screen stadium complex originally opened by GCC in its final few years before being sold to AMC, is pretty unmemorable.
My own most vivid memory of Cinema 46—the original auditorium, anyway—is that it had to be the most comfortable theatre I’ve ever been in. Plushy seats and more legroom than I’ve encountered anywhere else. Felt that the screen was maybe a little undersized for such a big auditorium, but I enjoyed a number of 70mm blowups on that screen regardless (“1941” and “Superman II” come to mind). I think the last movie I saw there was “Unforgiven,” which looked and sounded pretty spiffy, so I guess I was lucky enough not to experience what other posters describe as the place’s sad decline in its last few years. The two tacked-on theatres really suffered by comparison to the main hall in all departments—screen size, picture and sound quality, decor, comfort—suggesting a juxtaposition of two completely different eras and philosophies (showmanship vs. sheetrock) in building theatres.
Haven’t been to the Bellevue since it was converted from a triple into a quad, and have no desire to do so. At least when it was a triple, the upstairs auditorium (the former balcony) still had the big screen from the theatre’s glory days as a single-screen showcase house, which used to run exclusive New Jersey engagements before the movies went into wider release (“The Sound of Music” played there for more than a year in the mid-‘60s, I believe). This was a glorious venue before it was subdivided. One of the first movies I saw there was the cheesy sci-fi flick “Logan’s Run”—but what a riot of futuristic Todd-AO images and stereophonic sound it seemed to be on that massive screen!
The Colony was indeed converted into a triplex in its final years, and so an awful lot of the Art Deco ambience (or any ambience, for that matter) was destroyed. A pity. I had gone there a couple of times in the ‘80s when it was still a single-screen theatre, and by 1992, when I went back, it had been tripled. Projection and sound weren’t bad, but you KNEW you were sitting in a subdivided auditorium. without a single good seat. Having grown up in the '60s and '70s, I’ve seen a number of single-screen houses get carved up into little boxes. For me the worst part is that even in the “big” auditoriums in the nearby 14-plexes or 16-plexes, the screens are smaller than what you would’ve routinely encountered 30 or 35 years ago.
I had been to this theatre once in its single-screen days (I saw “Jaws” there in early 1976—probably about the sixth time I saw the movie—and I remember that the packed house of what seemed like mostly high-school girls screamed loudly enough to drown out the sound at key moments) and a couple of times after it was subdivided a few years later. Nice and not too shabby neighborhood theatre of about 1,000 seats before it was converted into a quad, although the sightlines made the screen (a decent-size Panavision screen, if I remember) seem very far away. After it was quad-ed, any positive feelings about it pretty much vanished; the quality of the moviegoing experience seriously declined, which is why I only went back there twice. I do remember sitting in one of the upstairs theatres and feeling as though I was in a storage room that somebody had outfitted with a few rows of seats and a tiny screen.
When I went to the Allwood in the last couple years of its single-screen days (the mid-‘70s; I believe it was twinned for Christmas '78), it seemed to play primarily United Artists/MGM releases (“Rocky,” “The Spy Who Loved Me,” the Brando/Nicholson flop “The Missouri Breaks”). It was usually listed in the co-op ads along with other so-called “Red Carpet Theatres” for UA/MGM releases, whereas Universal’s wide releases in the New York City area were at “Blue Ribbon Theatres” and Warner Bros. wide releases played at “Flagship Theatres.” Anybody have any background on where these collective terms came from (or why they’re no longer used)? The studios themselves? Film bookers? Were they used anywhere else in the country at that time?
The Loews Wayne 14 might also occupy some of the land formerly given over to the Anthony Wayne. One of the last drive-ins to close in northern New Jersey, and also the only D/I I’ve ever been to. I think it was around 1978 or ‘79. The budding cinephile in me kinda sneered at the drive-in experience then (picture too dark, audio coming out of a froggy-sounding speaker, people POSSIBLY NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO THE MOVIE), but there was also a communal, summer-outdoorsy vibe that I haven’t forgotten. The closest I’ve come to it since then has been at outdoor concerts. Now I actually envy people who can visit a drive-in without having to make a road trip out of it. Today, if I want a drive-in experience (and I just might, one of these summers), I’ll have to go either out of state to upstate New York or northeastern Pennsylvania, or down to Vineland in South Jersey, where a new drive-in has opened in NJ for the first time in what seems like about 200 years. Either way, I’m talking about a drive of 70 to 100 miles.
Did not ever visit the Jerry Lewis/5 Points, although for a few years I worked a couple of miles away from it and would pass by it from time to time after it had been twinned. I do have a couple of Union, NJ-related questions: Anybody else remember the old Fox Theatre on U.S. 22 (it has been a Chuck E. Cheese for several years, and was probably similar to the Fox Theatre in Woodbridge), and does anybody else remember going to either the Lost Picture Show (now closed) or the old RKO Theatre in Union, which lives on as the present-day Union Sevenplex?
I probably haven’t been to this theatre since I saw “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” which at that time monopolized five of the complex’s six decent-sized screens. Judging by some of the comments posted here, I haven’t missed much except a serious decline in upkeep; in 1997 the place was still reasonably well-run. Over the 20 years that I did patronize the Route 4 Theatre, in whatever configuration (triplex, eightplex, tenplex), I had a very mixed bag of moviegoing experiences, some very good to outstanding, and some pretty poor. Lest anybody think that the poor experiences have all been confined to more recent times, let me point out that on my second time seeing the original “Star Wars” in the supersized Theatre #1 back in the day, the surround channels failed to work for most of the show, the projectionist TWICE failed to synchronize the changeover from one reel to the next, and the film broke when Luke, Leia, and Han were in the trash compactor. Whereas the first time I saw it there, about a week and a half after it opened, the “only” problem was the sound going off at one point. Six years later, during “Return of the Jedi,” there was another film break. On the other hand, seeing a “Star Wars” movie (or any other, for that matter) on that enormous screen was a treat, and when Theatre #1 was subdivided into one okay-sized auditorium and two shoeboxes, the place lost much of its allure.
So if there’s going to be a new 16-plex to replace it (and, one assumes, the Route 17 triplex), it may simply be that the Route 4 tenplex has reached the end of its useful life.
You’re right about that, and I would encourage anyone who hasn’t ever been to a single-screen venue to try finding one, if it’s at all convenient. As for the memories of single-screen moviegoing, I’m glad to have quite a few and not as glad that in so many cases, the memories of these places are now the only opportunities to “visit” them.
I guess I’ve been to the Clifton Commons about a dozen times in the past few years and have yet to warm up to the place. Maybe it’s because so much that is off-putting about present-day moviegoing is in abundance here: the chintzy decor, the bored-looking high-schoolers behind the obscenely overpriced concession counters who don’t know how to enunciate, “moviegoers” who just can’t put their cell phones away, the amped-up digital sound that actually detracts from the experience, and last but not least, 15 or 20 minutes of the damn commercials. My wife and I went there one evening this summer, found that the movie we came for was sold out, and decided to see “Star Wars Episode III” instead. We made this decision at 7:02 p.m., bought our tickets, stood in line at the candy counter, and had plenty of time to search for seats in a crowded auditorium before the movie began. The advertised start time of that showing was 7 p.m.
A competent Loews multiplex with decent-sized screens and multichannel sound. Not too much different from the Mountainside 10, which Loews opened about 15 miles away at roughly the same time. My one complaint about this place is that the sound, ratcheted up so loud that the dialogue was unintelligible whenever the actors shouted (which was very often), made a very bad choice for a “date” movie—“William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet,” with Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes—even worse. I’ve had complaints about sound at other Loews multis over the years, come to think of it.
The Verona had a cozy neighborhood-theatre feel to it. The flipside was that you wouldn’t want to see “Lawrence of Arabia” or “Star Wars” here—the screen was not ‘scope width and was not even vertically masked to accommodate a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, so any movies with an aspect ratio wider than 1.85:1 were simply chopped off at the sides.
Theatre #1 (actually, I think it was labeled #2) of the Eric Twin was a favorite of mine in college days, as I went to school just about a mile from the theatre and would sometimes walk there. At that time it was the only theatre in the Trenton/Princeton area equipped with 70mm projection. I remember going there on opening day for “Return of the Jedi” in 1983 and waiting out in the lobby with several hundred other moviegoers for about two hours, while the previous showing was in progress. (Loud explosions and music crescendos, punctuated by bursts of applause, were audible from the auditorium.) The other auditorium seemed to be about one-third the size and must have been an add-on. No 70mm, no stereo sound, and the “Exit” sign cast a distracting glow on the screen.
Like almost all of the theatres I went to at college (with the exception of the Garden Theatre in Princeton), the Eric is long gone. Anybody remember the AMC Quaker Bridge 4 (one of AMC’s typically minuscule early attempts), the Budco Prince Triplex, the GCC Mercer Mall triplex, the Director’s Chair Twin in Hamilton Square, or the Kings Fair Twin in East Windsor?
My experience with the Clairidge spans various phases of its existence. First time there was three days after “Jaws” opened in June 1975. At a Monday matinee, the place was packed. One of the greatest moveigoing experiences I’ve ever had: a mammoth Cinerama screen, a thoroughly involving movie, and a responsive (screaming, laughing and applauding as if on cue) but well-behaved audience. I saw the movie there three times more before it closed about five months later; each time I saw it, the projectionist left the maroon curtain closed for the first 30 seconds or so over the Universal Pictures header and the first couple of credits on a black screen, and then gradually opened it as the credits continued over that underwater “shark POV” shot and the familiar “Jaws” theme grew more menacing. A nice touch. I went to the Clairidge several more times while it was still a single-screen house, but the presentation seemed to decline after “Jaws” finished its run, particularly the sound.
The main auditorium of the Clairidge Triplex wasn’t too bad, actually; you still had the feeling of being in a movie theatre rather than a storage closet with a screen tacked up. I saw “Fanny and Alexander,” “Zelig,” “Back to the Future” and “Cape Fear” there, among others. More recently, I’ve been to the Clairidge in its “arthouse” six-screen configuration. A shame that a theatre with an often-interesting slate of movies now shows them in such dismal conditions. Not only are the auditoriums about the size of the restroom in the old place, but the projection and sound have been pretty ratty the last few times I’ve gone. It’s a good thing so many of the movies are shown with subtitles because I wouldn’t have been able to make out the dialogue if it was in English! I don’t plan on going there again unless I hear that conditions have improved.
Fisrt movie theatre I ever went to; I must have been about four years old. The movie was something or the other about Santa Claus vs. Satan(!). Sad to see the old place is now a parking lot; I still pass through town occasionally and subconsciously look for the marquee of a theatre that’s been gone for five years now. One of the few subdivided theatres I’ve seen that still offered decent-sized auditoriums and screens after twinning, even though you were always aware that the place had been divided. One look up at the ceiling and you saw HALF of the elaborate designs—clumsily divided with a plasterboard wall down the middle of the original auditorium.
One of the saddest chop-ups I’ve seen in a movie theatre. As a single-screen house, which at various times was owned by GCC and UA, this originally had a very large Panavision screen (although the aspect ratio only seemed to stretch to full 2.39:1 width in the last couple of years; before then, widescreen movies seemed to be projected at about 2.2:1) and a roomy, ‘60s vintage auditorium that probably seated about 800. For the first couple years that I went there, it was primarily a sub-run house, but then was modernized with 70mm projection and 6-track Dolby in time for Christmas 1977, when it played “Star Wars” to a packed house (it had played “Damnation Alley”—which was supposed to be 20th Century-Fox’s big sci-fi hit for '77, rather than the afterthought called “Star Wars”—in 4-track Dolby a couple months before). That sound system was always a little funny, though: it didn’t have good bass even in the subwoofer channel and the surrounds (all two of them) were always too obviously “on,” so that the sound coming from them didn’t blend with the sound coming from behind the screen. Even so, aside from this I never encountered subpar presentation there.
The last movie I saw in the original single-screen Cinema 23 was “Casualties of War” with Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox. Next time I went back was 1990, after it had been carved up into five very small closets. Even the “main” auditorium was tiny, and evidently none of the theatres had ‘scope screens (and from what I hear, still don’t). After two or three visits (I remember the two-hour “Pretty Woman” stretching out to two-and-a-half hours because the projector kept breaking down), I gave up on the place. It’s been operating ever since, so I assume it does business, but it won’t get any more of mine.
My experience with the Center predates its being twinned. It was an okay neighborhood theatre, never very comfortable, that got kinda run down by the time I stopped going there in the late ‘80s. I think it may have switched to all-Indian films before Roberts bought it, twinned it and renamed it the Lost Picture Show (I’ve been to the original Lost Picture Show in Union, which I believe is now closed). It had been in the downtown area of Bloomfield probably since the 1930s, and while it probably did have live shows in its early years—as I recall, it had a stage although the screen was pretty far forward in the stage area—my experience with it was strictly as a moviegoer. I grew up in Bloomfield, and so this was within walking distance for me. I recall seeing “Taxi Driver,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoos’s Nest,” “The Exorcist,” “Black Sunday,” “Sorcerer,” and a couple dozen other movies there in the late '70s and early '80s. Probably about 500 seats including a balcony, decent-sized 'scope screen (no curtain) and sightlines, cramped lobby. Did not get stereo sound until after Roberts bought it; in fact, sound and projection got progressively more murky from about 1983 on.
Looking at that ad, if I have counted correctly there are only six of the 22 theatres listed that are still open today, and only one—the Lafayette in Suffern—in the same configuration it was back in 1969. The Wayne, the Hudson Plaza, the Warner (Ridgewood), the Warner-Route 4, and the Washington Cinema all still exist but have been subdivided since then.
The two smaller auditoriums in the Essex Green Cinema weren’t add-ons; the original Theater #2 was subdivided, in 1979 I think, and Dolby Stereo was installed in all three halls at that time. The two original (identical) auditoriums both had huge “light board” screens, and the remaining full-sized auditorium eventually was equipped with 70mm projection and may have been the first theatre in NJ to receive THX certification. I have many good moviegoing memories of the place as a teen and into my early 30s; its successor, a nine-screen stadium complex originally opened by GCC in its final few years before being sold to AMC, is pretty unmemorable.
My own most vivid memory of Cinema 46—the original auditorium, anyway—is that it had to be the most comfortable theatre I’ve ever been in. Plushy seats and more legroom than I’ve encountered anywhere else. Felt that the screen was maybe a little undersized for such a big auditorium, but I enjoyed a number of 70mm blowups on that screen regardless (“1941” and “Superman II” come to mind). I think the last movie I saw there was “Unforgiven,” which looked and sounded pretty spiffy, so I guess I was lucky enough not to experience what other posters describe as the place’s sad decline in its last few years. The two tacked-on theatres really suffered by comparison to the main hall in all departments—screen size, picture and sound quality, decor, comfort—suggesting a juxtaposition of two completely different eras and philosophies (showmanship vs. sheetrock) in building theatres.
Haven’t been to the Bellevue since it was converted from a triple into a quad, and have no desire to do so. At least when it was a triple, the upstairs auditorium (the former balcony) still had the big screen from the theatre’s glory days as a single-screen showcase house, which used to run exclusive New Jersey engagements before the movies went into wider release (“The Sound of Music” played there for more than a year in the mid-‘60s, I believe). This was a glorious venue before it was subdivided. One of the first movies I saw there was the cheesy sci-fi flick “Logan’s Run”—but what a riot of futuristic Todd-AO images and stereophonic sound it seemed to be on that massive screen!
The Colony was indeed converted into a triplex in its final years, and so an awful lot of the Art Deco ambience (or any ambience, for that matter) was destroyed. A pity. I had gone there a couple of times in the ‘80s when it was still a single-screen theatre, and by 1992, when I went back, it had been tripled. Projection and sound weren’t bad, but you KNEW you were sitting in a subdivided auditorium. without a single good seat. Having grown up in the '60s and '70s, I’ve seen a number of single-screen houses get carved up into little boxes. For me the worst part is that even in the “big” auditoriums in the nearby 14-plexes or 16-plexes, the screens are smaller than what you would’ve routinely encountered 30 or 35 years ago.
I had been to this theatre once in its single-screen days (I saw “Jaws” there in early 1976—probably about the sixth time I saw the movie—and I remember that the packed house of what seemed like mostly high-school girls screamed loudly enough to drown out the sound at key moments) and a couple of times after it was subdivided a few years later. Nice and not too shabby neighborhood theatre of about 1,000 seats before it was converted into a quad, although the sightlines made the screen (a decent-size Panavision screen, if I remember) seem very far away. After it was quad-ed, any positive feelings about it pretty much vanished; the quality of the moviegoing experience seriously declined, which is why I only went back there twice. I do remember sitting in one of the upstairs theatres and feeling as though I was in a storage room that somebody had outfitted with a few rows of seats and a tiny screen.