I have some great photos of the Ridge that I will try to place on the site. And Rodney Layne and I bought hundreds of seats, lots of curtains and as much scrap screen as we could carry. We’re eventually going to make little momentos from it all.
When I was a teenager attending Patrick Henry High School, I met Sam Craver who was general manager of the Grandin/Jefferson/Lee Theatres. He gave me a stack of pressbooks and spent hours showing me how movies were promoted and advertised. A year later we moved to Richmond where I got a job as an usher at a reserved seat 70mm house and eventually became the advertising director for the circuit of 100 screens from 1974 to 1996, all from the seed Mr. Craver planted. Nice folks in Roanoke!
When we had the roadshow premiere of SWEET CHARITY there in the summer of 1969, the only celebrity we could muster up was Shirley Maclaine’s childhood ballet teacher, who remembered her fondly for the sell out crowd.
Does anybody remember the 70MM film festival we held in 1990, with ten great prints of classic 70mm prints like BRIDGE ON RIVER KWAI, SOUND OF MUSIC, 2001? And how about those midnight movies of mine, especially SEXWORLD and CALIGULA that broke box office records.
When we operated the CAPITOL theatre (I was ad manager for Neighborhood Theatres), it was the premiere theatre from 1965 until the Ridge opened in 1970. Movies like “MASH” and “THE EXORCIST” ran for weeks to sell out crowds. It had no waiting lobby to speak of, and manager Charlie Hulbert used to enjoy running a long line down towards the hotel, claiming “nothing draws a line like a line” and he seemed to be right. In 1984, we had scheduled “PURPLE RAIN” to show there that summer. A buyer came by and claimed he needed it immediately, so we reluntantly sold the theatre, and then he let it sit idle for two or three years. In the meantime, the Broad Street Cinema just past Willow Lawn opened PURPLE RAIN and grossed $175,000. I believe we sold the Capitol for something like $250,000. Sad we couldn’t have waited.
The theatre opened in 1967 with IN LIKE FLINT on a giant curved screen called ULTRAVISION (a poor man’s Cinerama). IN LIKE FLINT was especially fun for Roanoker’s because one of the undercover female spies claimed she was just a “little ol school teacher from Roanoke, VA”, a line that was used at least three times in the film. I bought the video just to hear it again.
I ran one of the last shows at the FOX. I rented the theatre regularly from Bill Milgram and held giant ALL NIGHT MOVIETHONS that started at midnight and lasted til dawn. The police came by and asked us to stop them because we were flooding breakfast merchants with 1,000-1,500 people at 7am and they were harassing customers and clerks. We hired security and things calmed down. When the FOX closed we moved to the MILGRAM, but it didn’t hold as many people and when we turned them away, they became unruly. This was the end of the martial arts and blaxploitation era.
During the 1980’s I rented the Lincoln theatre once a month and featured all night movies, usually martial arts, blaxploitation or horrorthons. The shows would start at midnight and last until dawn, and occassionally we would include a hardcore sex film at the end to wake everybody up. We always drew from 1500 to 2500 each weekend and often held the same shows in Baltimore (at the Hippodrome). The theatre was a twin, so we would show movies both up and down and rotate the prints.
In the last years of the earlier Hippodrome incarnation, I rented the theatre the first weekend of each month and held giant ALL NIGHT MOVIE fests that started at midnight and lasted til dawn. We ran these from 1978 to 1986. Huge crowds, generally well behaved. Some of the best included an all night FRIDAY THE 13th fest, a gangsterthon with SCARFACE, and a Freak-a-thon including John Waters PINK FLAMINGOES. We drew from 1500 to 3500 people each weekend.
I have some great photos of the Ridge that I will try to place on the site. And Rodney Layne and I bought hundreds of seats, lots of curtains and as much scrap screen as we could carry. We’re eventually going to make little momentos from it all.
When I was a teenager attending Patrick Henry High School, I met Sam Craver who was general manager of the Grandin/Jefferson/Lee Theatres. He gave me a stack of pressbooks and spent hours showing me how movies were promoted and advertised. A year later we moved to Richmond where I got a job as an usher at a reserved seat 70mm house and eventually became the advertising director for the circuit of 100 screens from 1974 to 1996, all from the seed Mr. Craver planted. Nice folks in Roanoke!
This theatre had stadium seating before anybody preferred it
When we had the roadshow premiere of SWEET CHARITY there in the summer of 1969, the only celebrity we could muster up was Shirley Maclaine’s childhood ballet teacher, who remembered her fondly for the sell out crowd.
Does anybody remember the 70MM film festival we held in 1990, with ten great prints of classic 70mm prints like BRIDGE ON RIVER KWAI, SOUND OF MUSIC, 2001? And how about those midnight movies of mine, especially SEXWORLD and CALIGULA that broke box office records.
When we operated the CAPITOL theatre (I was ad manager for Neighborhood Theatres), it was the premiere theatre from 1965 until the Ridge opened in 1970. Movies like “MASH” and “THE EXORCIST” ran for weeks to sell out crowds. It had no waiting lobby to speak of, and manager Charlie Hulbert used to enjoy running a long line down towards the hotel, claiming “nothing draws a line like a line” and he seemed to be right. In 1984, we had scheduled “PURPLE RAIN” to show there that summer. A buyer came by and claimed he needed it immediately, so we reluntantly sold the theatre, and then he let it sit idle for two or three years. In the meantime, the Broad Street Cinema just past Willow Lawn opened PURPLE RAIN and grossed $175,000. I believe we sold the Capitol for something like $250,000. Sad we couldn’t have waited.
The theatre opened in 1967 with IN LIKE FLINT on a giant curved screen called ULTRAVISION (a poor man’s Cinerama). IN LIKE FLINT was especially fun for Roanoker’s because one of the undercover female spies claimed she was just a “little ol school teacher from Roanoke, VA”, a line that was used at least three times in the film. I bought the video just to hear it again.
I ran one of the last shows at the FOX. I rented the theatre regularly from Bill Milgram and held giant ALL NIGHT MOVIETHONS that started at midnight and lasted til dawn. The police came by and asked us to stop them because we were flooding breakfast merchants with 1,000-1,500 people at 7am and they were harassing customers and clerks. We hired security and things calmed down. When the FOX closed we moved to the MILGRAM, but it didn’t hold as many people and when we turned them away, they became unruly. This was the end of the martial arts and blaxploitation era.
During the 1980’s I rented the Lincoln theatre once a month and featured all night movies, usually martial arts, blaxploitation or horrorthons. The shows would start at midnight and last until dawn, and occassionally we would include a hardcore sex film at the end to wake everybody up. We always drew from 1500 to 2500 each weekend and often held the same shows in Baltimore (at the Hippodrome). The theatre was a twin, so we would show movies both up and down and rotate the prints.
In the last years of the earlier Hippodrome incarnation, I rented the theatre the first weekend of each month and held giant ALL NIGHT MOVIE fests that started at midnight and lasted til dawn. We ran these from 1978 to 1986. Huge crowds, generally well behaved. Some of the best included an all night FRIDAY THE 13th fest, a gangsterthon with SCARFACE, and a Freak-a-thon including John Waters PINK FLAMINGOES. We drew from 1500 to 3500 people each weekend.