My father was a projectionist at the Ritz. It closed after a fire of unknown origin in probably the early 6o’s. 70 mm Machines did go to the Madison, where my father later worked after a stint at Hellman’s and the Delaware. He was quite saddened when the big screen at the Ritz was folded as the building was closed making it unusable. I spent many afternoon with my father in the booth and he would let me start the generator and load the carbon arc rod into the projectors. Learned how to rewind the reels and both my brother and I learned to thread the projectors and to watch for the dots in the upper right of the screen indicating the need to step on the changeover.
Unlike today with the ads before movies, the Ritz had a record player and each of the projectionist would bring records from home to play to the waiting audience
He hated to go to movies at the multiplex after his retirement because of the small screen size. Ritz was in the 3,000 seat range, I think the Madison was in the 1200 range and the Delaware in the 800 seat range. I remember as a kid I was admonished not to go to the Palace, maybe because it wasn’t Warner’s
My father was a projectionist at the Ritz. It closed after a fire of unknown origin in probably the early 6o’s. 70 mm Machines did go to the Madison, where my father later worked after a stint at Hellman’s and the Delaware. He was quite saddened when the big screen at the Ritz was folded as the building was closed making it unusable. I spent many afternoon with my father in the booth and he would let me start the generator and load the carbon arc rod into the projectors. Learned how to rewind the reels and both my brother and I learned to thread the projectors and to watch for the dots in the upper right of the screen indicating the need to step on the changeover.
Unlike today with the ads before movies, the Ritz had a record player and each of the projectionist would bring records from home to play to the waiting audience
He hated to go to movies at the multiplex after his retirement because of the small screen size. Ritz was in the 3,000 seat range, I think the Madison was in the 1200 range and the Delaware in the 800 seat range. I remember as a kid I was admonished not to go to the Palace, maybe because it wasn’t Warner’s