I remember vividly the theatres on Salina Street in Syracuse, primarily for the mostly superb films I saw there first-run, while being taught the Russian language at Syracuse University’s USAF “Skytop” facility during the 1950s: “Rio Bravo,” “Anatomy of a Murder,” “12 Angry Men” (the Henry Fonda version), “Ride Lonesome” and “Comanche Station,” the Tiomkin-scored “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” and “Tension at Table Rock,” “Sweet Smell of Success,” John Ford’s “The Horse Soldiers”—the list is endless. Even the schlock is memorable—Ray Harryhausen’s “20 Million Miles to Earth” gains considerably when first experienced in such a movie palace as the Loew’s State, across the street from the RKO Keith. (Happily, that particular venue remains today.) It’s the entire moviegoing experience, theatre plus cinema, that thrives in the memory. The movie by itself is only a portion of the event.
My background in journalism, plus my natural born talents as a writer, not to mention my fourteen years as a movie theatre manager, just might qualify me for what you’re looking for. If so, let me know, and let’s go to work! I have the time to spare!
My father managed the Midway while I was growing up, circa 1946-48. It was one of those wonderful movie houses around the advent of television which changed its double-feature bookings three times a week. I helped my Dad make out his booking sheets, a practice which, paired with my attendance at virtually every program shown there, led to my life-long obsession with movies of all sorts. (I followed in his footsteps twenty years later, when I managed theatres for the Laemmles in the Los Angeles area.) I finally tracked down a photo of the Midway at Oak Cliff’s Ice House Museum—I think I have this name right—recently. Dad also worked at the Texas, down the street, and a few of the other Robb and Rowley houses nearby, as well as “moonlighting” at Phil Isley’s Crest Theatre elsewhere in Oak Cliff. (It was at the Crest that I experienced my first horror movie, the Claude Rains “Phantom of the Opera,” which literally kept me awake all night!) The Midway is part of my heritage, and I would welcome any correspondence about it, accordingly.
I was born the year the Lakewood was built—1938—and my folks took me there to see just about every Disney film nearly first-run. For a while, I thought the surrounding shopping center was downtown Dallas! It is still an architectural wonder, the closest Fort Worth equivalent of which is the Ridglea. Talk about a true “Cinema Treasure!”
I remember the Sherman fondly, if only because it was there that I caught one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen, Jean Eustache’s “The Mother and The Whore.” What a test of endurance—it ran damn near four hours—but what a masterpiece!
I frequented all of Dallas’s Elm Street “theatre row” establishments back when I was a kid young enough to have been admonished by an usher—yes, we had ushers back in the 1950s—to go back down and walk up those Majestic stairs! And they were, indeed, “majestic!” I suggest that the main factor in booking differences between the Majestic and its down-the-street neighbor, the Rialto, was that the schlock booked at the Majestic was of a slightly higher class, if “class” can be applied here, than the Rialto. Randolph Scott’s initial Budd Boetticher-“Ranown” production, “The Tall T,” for instance, played the Majestic, while his subsequent fare mostly played the Rialto, if not citywide (In the Fifties, playing “citywide” largely meant booking “dismissal;” the term is wholely different now.) The Rialto also played an occasional misnamed “B-movie,” such as John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle,” arguably his finest single film. The Tower was for holdovers moved from the Majestic or the appropriately named Palace, which was exactly that, a palace, what with that magnificent intermission organ and all. Skip another block, and you had the Fox, which showed “nudies,” the Fifties equivalent on “porn;” my mother wouldn’t even let me look at that one out of the passing bus window! Oh, and the Capitol, directly next door to the Rialto: By the Fifties, it had really fallen on hard times, booking-wise. I remember catching two first-run masterworks there: “The Bowery Boys Meet the Monster,” and “Cat Women of the Moon.” Aaaah, for the good old days of 3-D!
I frequented the New Isis, when I was reviewing movies, among my other assignments, for the Star-Telegram back in the Sixties. The charm of the place was fairly tangible! I saw lots of Roger Corman quickies first-run there, a couple of them featuring a then-talentless newcomer named Jack Nicholson (he improved greatly, of course, with time and opportunity). I sincerely hope it can be brought back to life!
I share Meredith Rhule’s grief that the Esquire, which I managed for the Laemmles for four years beginning in 1980, is no more. I understand the Laemmles even used to schedule chamber music concerts there in earlier years. A little culture never hurt any neighborhood.
I managed the Music Hall for the Laemmles for five years, beginning in 1975. (And, my thanks to Richard von Busack for his kind remarks.) Like the Los Feliz beforehand, the Music Hall was truly celebrity city, located as it was two blocks away from the headquarters for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences: I saw Natalie Wood close-up (you get that way, when you’re tearing tickets) twice, and she was truly exquisite! Oh, I could go on and on: Steve McQueen, Jeff Morrow (a personal friend), William Castle, Diana Ross, Charlton Heston, Groucho Marx—the list is truly endless. Our biggest headache was the American Film Theatre, which sold its tickets by computer from a New York base, which continually screwed up! Ahhhh, the good old days!
I managed the Los Feliz for Max and Bob Laemmle for five years, beginning in 1970. During that period, we were, indeed, the primary art house in the Los Angeles area. Patrons would drive all the way from Long Beach, to line up around the block, say, for the latest first-run Truffaut film, or whatever. The Los Feliz was also celebrity city: Ray Bradbury came to see “King Kong” (the original) for, he told me, his 500th viewing, and Fritz Lang was a fairly regular customer. And, our Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin festivals were sell-outs, as well. The experience is vivid in my memory, so much so that I literally dream about it quite frequently. It was a wonderfully funky neighborhood, and I miss it. (I cannot imagine it as a triplex!)
I remember vividly the theatres on Salina Street in Syracuse, primarily for the mostly superb films I saw there first-run, while being taught the Russian language at Syracuse University’s USAF “Skytop” facility during the 1950s: “Rio Bravo,” “Anatomy of a Murder,” “12 Angry Men” (the Henry Fonda version), “Ride Lonesome” and “Comanche Station,” the Tiomkin-scored “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” and “Tension at Table Rock,” “Sweet Smell of Success,” John Ford’s “The Horse Soldiers”—the list is endless. Even the schlock is memorable—Ray Harryhausen’s “20 Million Miles to Earth” gains considerably when first experienced in such a movie palace as the Loew’s State, across the street from the RKO Keith. (Happily, that particular venue remains today.) It’s the entire moviegoing experience, theatre plus cinema, that thrives in the memory. The movie by itself is only a portion of the event.
Blame the computer for these repeats, please, and get rid of two of them. Thanks!
My background in journalism, plus my natural born talents as a writer, not to mention my fourteen years as a movie theatre manager, just might qualify me for what you’re looking for. If so, let me know, and let’s go to work! I have the time to spare!
My father managed the Midway while I was growing up, circa 1946-48. It was one of those wonderful movie houses around the advent of television which changed its double-feature bookings three times a week. I helped my Dad make out his booking sheets, a practice which, paired with my attendance at virtually every program shown there, led to my life-long obsession with movies of all sorts. (I followed in his footsteps twenty years later, when I managed theatres for the Laemmles in the Los Angeles area.) I finally tracked down a photo of the Midway at Oak Cliff’s Ice House Museum—I think I have this name right—recently. Dad also worked at the Texas, down the street, and a few of the other Robb and Rowley houses nearby, as well as “moonlighting” at Phil Isley’s Crest Theatre elsewhere in Oak Cliff. (It was at the Crest that I experienced my first horror movie, the Claude Rains “Phantom of the Opera,” which literally kept me awake all night!) The Midway is part of my heritage, and I would welcome any correspondence about it, accordingly.
I was born the year the Lakewood was built—1938—and my folks took me there to see just about every Disney film nearly first-run. For a while, I thought the surrounding shopping center was downtown Dallas! It is still an architectural wonder, the closest Fort Worth equivalent of which is the Ridglea. Talk about a true “Cinema Treasure!”
I remember the Sherman fondly, if only because it was there that I caught one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen, Jean Eustache’s “The Mother and The Whore.” What a test of endurance—it ran damn near four hours—but what a masterpiece!
I frequented all of Dallas’s Elm Street “theatre row” establishments back when I was a kid young enough to have been admonished by an usher—yes, we had ushers back in the 1950s—to go back down and walk up those Majestic stairs! And they were, indeed, “majestic!” I suggest that the main factor in booking differences between the Majestic and its down-the-street neighbor, the Rialto, was that the schlock booked at the Majestic was of a slightly higher class, if “class” can be applied here, than the Rialto. Randolph Scott’s initial Budd Boetticher-“Ranown” production, “The Tall T,” for instance, played the Majestic, while his subsequent fare mostly played the Rialto, if not citywide (In the Fifties, playing “citywide” largely meant booking “dismissal;” the term is wholely different now.) The Rialto also played an occasional misnamed “B-movie,” such as John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle,” arguably his finest single film. The Tower was for holdovers moved from the Majestic or the appropriately named Palace, which was exactly that, a palace, what with that magnificent intermission organ and all. Skip another block, and you had the Fox, which showed “nudies,” the Fifties equivalent on “porn;” my mother wouldn’t even let me look at that one out of the passing bus window! Oh, and the Capitol, directly next door to the Rialto: By the Fifties, it had really fallen on hard times, booking-wise. I remember catching two first-run masterworks there: “The Bowery Boys Meet the Monster,” and “Cat Women of the Moon.” Aaaah, for the good old days of 3-D!
I frequented the New Isis, when I was reviewing movies, among my other assignments, for the Star-Telegram back in the Sixties. The charm of the place was fairly tangible! I saw lots of Roger Corman quickies first-run there, a couple of them featuring a then-talentless newcomer named Jack Nicholson (he improved greatly, of course, with time and opportunity). I sincerely hope it can be brought back to life!
I share Meredith Rhule’s grief that the Esquire, which I managed for the Laemmles for four years beginning in 1980, is no more. I understand the Laemmles even used to schedule chamber music concerts there in earlier years. A little culture never hurt any neighborhood.
I managed the Music Hall for the Laemmles for five years, beginning in 1975. (And, my thanks to Richard von Busack for his kind remarks.) Like the Los Feliz beforehand, the Music Hall was truly celebrity city, located as it was two blocks away from the headquarters for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences: I saw Natalie Wood close-up (you get that way, when you’re tearing tickets) twice, and she was truly exquisite! Oh, I could go on and on: Steve McQueen, Jeff Morrow (a personal friend), William Castle, Diana Ross, Charlton Heston, Groucho Marx—the list is truly endless. Our biggest headache was the American Film Theatre, which sold its tickets by computer from a New York base, which continually screwed up! Ahhhh, the good old days!
I managed the Los Feliz for Max and Bob Laemmle for five years, beginning in 1970. During that period, we were, indeed, the primary art house in the Los Angeles area. Patrons would drive all the way from Long Beach, to line up around the block, say, for the latest first-run Truffaut film, or whatever. The Los Feliz was also celebrity city: Ray Bradbury came to see “King Kong” (the original) for, he told me, his 500th viewing, and Fritz Lang was a fairly regular customer. And, our Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin festivals were sell-outs, as well. The experience is vivid in my memory, so much so that I literally dream about it quite frequently. It was a wonderfully funky neighborhood, and I miss it. (I cannot imagine it as a triplex!)