I visited this theatre at the start of my theatre fascination. The original 4-screens downstairs were the orange bowling alleys that Plitt built originally. The length of them always suggested to me that perhaps it was originally a twin that had walls built down the center of each auditorium. Seriously, each auditorium had a center aisle with four seats on either side, 30-rows deep. The box office was located outside in the mall passageway. At the entire opposite end of the mall, Cineplex Odeon built another 4-plex that matched more of their mid-90’s motif with the marble tile and purple seats.
A former employee of mine worked there, and the Hilltop Mall did not have the best clientelle. I was told that they performed all their banking at one of the theatres, which meant having to transport drops and deposits back and forth through the mall while being escorted by security.
The Galaxy 6 was actually remodelled by CinemaCal Enterprises and later operated by Century Theatres while the Del Monte 13 was being developed. The Galaxy was similar in design to a number of CinemaCal’s other locations, featuring the Brejfus sound panels of movie stars and film characters.
Is it likely that somebody is going through and starting a new listing just because it’s “AMC” now? Does the listing also exist as just “Springfield Mall 1-4” and “Springfield Mall "5-10”?
The GCC photos above were taken when I went to see U-571 there in the main house. (So sometime in APR or MAY of 2000).
I would have loved to take a bevvy of really nice photos, but that place was crawling with managers, and theatre managers usually freak out when they see people taking pictures, so I try to be discreet.
Oh and Ed — thanks for the permission for your photobucket pictures. We’ll be sure to give you proper credit when we get a chance to post them up on Cinematour.
I have from time to time been known to take pictures of the theatres without the management knowing about it. I’ll do that when I absolutely hafta gotta needta have pictures of a place, but I prefer to be able to setup a tripod and take some good steady un-blurry shots.
I’ve also taken detailed pictures inside various chain theatres that friend of mine have worked at. The photos aren’t published for the public to view at Cinema Tour since their corporate offices might be upset about it, but should the theatre ever close, we’ll be able to have record of what it looked like.
Well that’s always been an option, but sometimes people never take the time to take pictures of the theatres in their own backyard, whether it’s time constraints or technological constraints. That’s where we can help.
And how many times have you clicked one of those photobucket or flickr links, eager to see what picture is on the other end, only to get an error message?
Ed’s photos can be viewed over at CinemaTour. It doesn’t seem as though we could photoshop the interior auditorium photos as well as I had hoped, but hey, it’s something!
Ross Melnick, Adam Martin and I have all met and had lunch a few times. Both websites certainly compliment each other and we recognize the same strengths you mention above.
Ed, if you e-mail all your photos to me at we can do our best to Photoshop them to a viewable level. I’m sure anybody who liked this theatre would be happy to see ANY photos, no matter how blurry or limited they may be.
I found (by working for them) that Syufy/Century built a lot of their theatres in a very standard way: cinderblock walls, pepto-pink paint, crazy-acid red carpet. Though certainly not a nationwide presence, if you walk into a pre-1995 Century multiplex, you’ve walked into just about EVERY pre-1995 Century multiplex.
I visited this theatre at the start of my theatre fascination. The original 4-screens downstairs were the orange bowling alleys that Plitt built originally. The length of them always suggested to me that perhaps it was originally a twin that had walls built down the center of each auditorium. Seriously, each auditorium had a center aisle with four seats on either side, 30-rows deep. The box office was located outside in the mall passageway. At the entire opposite end of the mall, Cineplex Odeon built another 4-plex that matched more of their mid-90’s motif with the marble tile and purple seats.
A former employee of mine worked there, and the Hilltop Mall did not have the best clientelle. I was told that they performed all their banking at one of the theatres, which meant having to transport drops and deposits back and forth through the mall while being escorted by security.
The Galaxy 6 was actually remodelled by CinemaCal Enterprises and later operated by Century Theatres while the Del Monte 13 was being developed. The Galaxy was similar in design to a number of CinemaCal’s other locations, featuring the Brejfus sound panels of movie stars and film characters.
John — Bill Tannehill passed away a number of years back.
This was originally a UA build, built during that period in the mid-90’s before stadium seating caught on.
My guess is the Coronet, though possibly the Metro.
Is it likely that somebody is going through and starting a new listing just because it’s “AMC” now? Does the listing also exist as just “Springfield Mall 1-4” and “Springfield Mall "5-10”?
I was just looking at this listing the other day and apparently somebody had just taken a few exterior photos and submitted them to cinematour.
http://www.cinematour.com/tour/us/4579.html
MMmmm blue, red, gray and wood.
The GCC photos above were taken when I went to see U-571 there in the main house. (So sometime in APR or MAY of 2000).
I would have loved to take a bevvy of really nice photos, but that place was crawling with managers, and theatre managers usually freak out when they see people taking pictures, so I try to be discreet.
We must get in there to take photos of every last detail. Those sloped roofed houses always make me giddy.
This was operated by Syufy Enterprises / Century Theatres and was designed by architect Vincent Raney.
Oh and Ed — thanks for the permission for your photobucket pictures. We’ll be sure to give you proper credit when we get a chance to post them up on Cinematour.
I have from time to time been known to take pictures of the theatres without the management knowing about it. I’ll do that when I absolutely hafta gotta needta have pictures of a place, but I prefer to be able to setup a tripod and take some good steady un-blurry shots.
I’ve also taken detailed pictures inside various chain theatres that friend of mine have worked at. The photos aren’t published for the public to view at Cinema Tour since their corporate offices might be upset about it, but should the theatre ever close, we’ll be able to have record of what it looked like.
Well that’s always been an option, but sometimes people never take the time to take pictures of the theatres in their own backyard, whether it’s time constraints or technological constraints. That’s where we can help.
And how many times have you clicked one of those photobucket or flickr links, eager to see what picture is on the other end, only to get an error message?
We’re hoping to re-open the Santa Barbara Twin Drive-In at some point, hopefully you could make the rediculously long trek next year.
I’ve never seen Spartacus… maybe this will be a good excuse.
Ed’s photos can be viewed over at CinemaTour. It doesn’t seem as though we could photoshop the interior auditorium photos as well as I had hoped, but hey, it’s something!
http://www.cinematour.com/tour/us/2704.html
Mark,
Ross Melnick, Adam Martin and I have all met and had lunch a few times. Both websites certainly compliment each other and we recognize the same strengths you mention above.
Ed, if you e-mail all your photos to me at we can do our best to Photoshop them to a viewable level. I’m sure anybody who liked this theatre would be happy to see ANY photos, no matter how blurry or limited they may be.
Please do. We cross link to CinemaTreasures wherever possible.
We’d get a few others.
I found (by working for them) that Syufy/Century built a lot of their theatres in a very standard way: cinderblock walls, pepto-pink paint, crazy-acid red carpet. Though certainly not a nationwide presence, if you walk into a pre-1995 Century multiplex, you’ve walked into just about EVERY pre-1995 Century multiplex.
Does anybody have pictures of ANY of the GCCs in Southern California? Sadly, my love for GCC started too late. :(
Ed – I’ll let you know if my company gets high speed color scanners again. I scanned just about every issue of Box Office I owned this way.
And I meant to say as well, that if you have any photos of ANY theatres back from the day, we can scan them for you and return them unharmed.
Ed — If you managed to scan your SRO newsletters I’d be happy to try and get them archived over at Cinematour. We go nuts for that stuff over there.