Any mention of the Oak Street Cinema without mentioning it’s founder, Bob Cowgill, would be incomplete. Bob’s steadfast vision for film exhibition in Minneapolis is responsible for the Oak Street Cinema’s very existence. He reclaimed the theater from disrepair and brought a vision to Twin City movie lovers with a passion and intensity only rivaled by Al Milgrom of the U Film Society. Bob’s hard-nosed business sense is what kept the theater alive in difficult times. It was Bob who understood that in order to do the kind of programming he envisioned, the theater needed to become a non-profit and to obtain corporate sponsorship. It was Bob who struggled mightily to forge the merger with the difficult, temperamental, and recalcitrant Milgrom so that both the Oak Street and the U Film Society could survive. Both Bob and I managed the Campus Theater early in our ‘movie careers’. In 1975, I recruited him from the Campus Theater to manage the Cedar Theatre across the river. I am pleased to have had him as a friend all these years and to have the opportunity to acknowledge him here for making the Oak Street Cinema a treasure among the nation’s movie theaters.
Any mention of the Oak Street Cinema without mentioning it’s founder, Bob Cowgill, would be incomplete. Bob’s steadfast vision for film exhibition in Minneapolis is responsible for the Oak Street Cinema’s very existence. He reclaimed the theater from disrepair and brought a vision to Twin City movie lovers with a passion and intensity only rivaled by Al Milgrom of the U Film Society. Bob’s hard-nosed business sense is what kept the theater alive in difficult times. It was Bob who understood that in order to do the kind of programming he envisioned, the theater needed to become a non-profit and to obtain corporate sponsorship. It was Bob who struggled mightily to forge the merger with the difficult, temperamental, and recalcitrant Milgrom so that both the Oak Street and the U Film Society could survive. Both Bob and I managed the Campus Theater early in our ‘movie careers’. In 1975, I recruited him from the Campus Theater to manage the Cedar Theatre across the river. I am pleased to have had him as a friend all these years and to have the opportunity to acknowledge him here for making the Oak Street Cinema a treasure among the nation’s movie theaters.