I thought that was a great place for a theater, right next to the Gulfgate shopping mall. I loved walking over the bridge to the theater on a nice afternoon. In those days, Houston theaters had curtains to hide the screen. In some theaters, the curtains opened and closed every time the feature started. They cycled the curtains even when the movies ran continuously, I guess it was to alert people that the feature was starting. The curtains weren’t really needed, maybe the curtains were left over from the days when theaters had vaudeville acts that played between movie showings. Anyway, my point is, the Gulfgate Twin was the first theater I ever saw that didn’t have a curtain for the screen. Instead, it had colored lights aimed at the screen to make it look interesting when a film wasn’t showing. I thought the clean look without curtains was super-modern. Later, when little shoe box multiplexes sprang up everywhere, it became common not to have curtains for the screen, but in the no-frills shoe box theaters, the missing curtains just looked like a way to save money.
The first film I saw at the Gulfgate twin was The Yellow Rolls Royce, which was about the adventures that happened to an old Rolls Royce car over a period of thirty or forty years and all the different people who owned the car. The Yellow Rolls Royce was a charming movie that featured a number of big stars who appeared in a series of short stories about the car. Over the years the car was owned by people as different as aristocrats and gangsters, and it was used for everything from a rendezvous where lovers have an extramarital affair, to life saving duty during World War Two, when it was used to transport people to safety. I thought it was the perfect movie to see at the brand new Gulfgate twin when it opened. I understand that the theater, which was once so bright and new is gone now. I wonder if I can still rent The Yellow Rolls Royce and relive the days when the world and I were both a lot younger.
I was old enough to go to movies by myself about ten years later than Rayfrazier. By the early nineteen fifties, the cost of a movie ticket for a kid under twelve had gone from the nickel he paid in the early forties all the way up to nine cents. The runaway inflation after WWII nearly doubled the price of everything, including movie tickets. I recall noticing that an adult ticket at the Wayside theater in the early fifties was sixty-five cents. But, I could still buy a Tootsie Roll in the theater for a penny and they still sold those wax things Rayfrazier mentioned that were full of flavored juice. Post-war inflation was so bad, I remember hearing my parents complain when the price of a can of coffee went up to an outrageous twenty-five cents!
Nine cents was the norm for a kids movie ticket until 1953 when movie tickets went up a nickel to cover the cost of the polarized 3-D glasses. Later that year, the 3-D fad was on the way out and The Robe opened downtown in CinemaScope, which was advertised as the 3-D miracle without glasses. CinemaScope was such a big deal in 1953 that I had to pay twenty-five cents for a kids ticket to see The Robe, which was the most money I ever paid to see a movie up to that time. In the fifties we still had the Three Stooges and Pete Smith shorts and every movie had a cartoon and a newsreel, plus the coming attractions. I think that practice continued until somewhere around 1960. By the end of the fifties everyone had a TV set. Television killed the need for newsreels and people got enough of cartoons and The Three Stooges on TV. But, movies still ran continuously in the fifties, except for the rare roadshow attractions that had reserved seats and an intermission.
Because movies ran continuously all day in the fifties, I almost never saw a movie from the beginning to end. I would usually come in around the middle of the picture and then have to figure out who all the characters were and what happened in the first half of the movie. But, I could stay to see the first half of the film when it repeated and then I would find out if I figured out the plot correctly. It sounds like a weird way to watch movies today, but I was used to it and it was probably a good problem solving exercise for a young mind.
By the fifties, serials had moved from theaters to TV, except for the Saturday Morning Fun Clubs which ran at nearly every Houston theater on Saturday morning. I saw the Gene Autry serial that Rayfrazier was talking about, but by the fifties it was only showing on TV. That serial was called The Phantom Empire and the people who lived in the futuristic underground city under Gene Autry’s Radio Ranch weren’t Martians. They were descendants of the lost tribe of Mu, who survived by going underground during the last ice age. For that reason, they had thousands of years to advance scientifically before humans reappeared on the surface of the earth. The Phantom Empire Serial was made in the nineteen thirties so it had a nineteen thirties concept of what a city of the future would look like. Styling that looked modern in the nineteen thirties changed greatly after WWII and The Phantom Empire was laughable by the nineteen fifties. The clothes of the Muranians and the cardboard box robots were hilarious in the nineteen fifties, even to a kid like myself.
Back in the late nineteen forties, when I was around seven years old, I remember seeing a man in a gorilla suit pacing back and forth in front of a downtown theater and I think it was the Metropolitan theater. The gorilla was in chains and he would pretend to terrorize people walking in front of the theater. I’m not sure if the movie they were showing was a re-release of the 1933 King Kong, or it could have been advertising for Mighty Joe Young, another giant gorilla movie that came out in the late forties. My mother would not take me in to see the movie, but the man in the gorilla suit made a big impression on me and I’ll never forget that super-cool stunt.
Correction to my previous post: It seems that my mind was playing a trick on me after more than fifty years. 2001 did in fact open at the Windsor Cinerama Theater in Houston in 1968 and not at the Gaylynn Theater the way I remembered it. I just found a newspaper ad confirming that it was the Windsor theater. The newspaper ad says the theater was at Post Oak and Richmond, the funny thing is I can’t ever recall going to see a movie at that location.
I saw Thrillarama at the Metropolitan theater in 1956 and boy was it awful. The seams were bad enough in Cinerama, but having one big fuzzy line running directly down the middle of the screen was intolerable, because there was no way to ignore it. The only movie made in Thrillarama was a Texas travelogue and I don’t see how they could have ever used the process for a dramatic movie. I saw Windjammer in Cinemiracle at the Uptown in ‘59 and I loved that movie. Unlike Cinerama, the three-strip Cinemiracle seams were barely noticeable. A year later I saw This is Cinerama at the Rivoli in the original three-strip Cinerama. Before they converted the Rivoli in Houston to Cinerama one had to drive all the way to the Melba Theater in Dallas to see the original three-strip Cinerama films. The first thing I noticed about the remodeled Rivoli after the shock of the giant curved Cinerama screen wore off was how they installed two new projection booths on the sides of the theater for the two additional projectors. Not only were the seams noticeable in the original Cinerama, but the color of the sky in the three panels didn’t match in many scenes and there was noticeable distortion in the image. I’d swear that I saw 2001 in 70mm at the beautiful Gaylynn Theater in '68 but this page says it was shown at the Windsor at that time. My mind could be playing tricks on me, but I saw It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World at the Windsor and I don’t see how I could get the two theaters confused, because the Gaylynn had a spectacular lobby, which was not like the lobby in any other Houston theater at that time. 2001 had an intermission in the middle of the 70mm version, so I had plenty of time to roam around the lobby drinking my lemonade from an elegant little container. The Gaylynn was so fancy when it first opened with 2001 that they didn’t sell popcorn, only lemonade, which one had to drink in the lobby. And at night, men wore suit coats with ties or sport jackets to see 2001. It was really special to go the the Gaylynn back when it first opened. Years later I took a friend to see a revival of 2001 at a different theater. The re-issue was printed down to 35mm CinemaScope. Without the razor sharp image of 70mm shown on a giant curved screen, and without the 6-track stereo surround sound, the 2001 revival was like a completely different movie. In addition, the inferior CinemaScope print was so scratchy that we got up and walked out. 2001 is still my favorite movie, but if you’ve never seen it on a big screen in 70mm with six-track stereo surround sound, then you’ve never actually seen it.
I remember the tunnels that ran under downtown Houston. I didn’t know why they were built until now, but I thought they were very cool when I was a kid.
When I was a growing up, back in the nineteen fifties, the Kirby Theater was famous for a big box-office robbery that took place back in the thirties or forties. Adults were still talking about this hold-up in the fifties, but I never heard all the details. It seemed to me that the Lowes, Metropolitan and Majestic got first crack at the major Studio films and the Kirby got first crack at second rate movies. I saw some of the last new Abbott and Costello comedies at the Kirby. This was after the comedy team had been replaced by Martian and Lewis and they were no longer a big draw in theaters.
THE THING AT THE WAYSIDE In nineteen fifty one I was either nine or ten years old (depending on the month) and the Wayside Theater was in walking distance of my house. It was a long walk, but that was not a problem at that age. The price of admission for kids under twelve was nine cents and I could get a dime by turning in an empty milk bottle. In 1951 a movie opened at the Wayside Theater called The Thing, the full title was “The Thing from another World”. This is not to be confused with John Carpenter’s excellent 1982 remake with the same name. In 1951 flying saucers were a hot topic and many adults believed flying saucers came from Mars. It was a time of paranoia due to the cold war and many people were sure that either the Russians or men from Mars would soon attack the United States. That’s what the world was like on a Saturday afternoon in 1951 when I walked down to the Wayside Theater anxious to see the new movie about flying saucers. The “Thing” in the title of the film was the frozen pilot of a flying saucer that crashed in the arctic and was thawed out by a bunch of scientist working in an isolated arctic weather station. The saucer pilot was an alien monster who was determined to kill the scientists before they could warn other humans. There is a big scene at the end of the movie when the “Thing” is killed by the scientists. The scientists set up a trap so the monster had to walk down an isle which had been rigged up with high voltage cables. They believed the monster was made of vegetable material and they theorized that high voltage electricity would fry him. The monster had a halting way of walking down the isle; he took two or three steps, then paused. Then, he took two or three more steps, then paused again and kept up this irregular pace until he reached the high voltage cables where they zapped him. The sound of the monster’s steps were emphasized on the film’s soundtrack to build up suspense. When the monster was finally in position a scientist flipped a switch and lightening bolts shot out of the monster until it withered away and was burned to a crisp. It was a pretty scary scene for a nine year old kid. When the film was over I came out of the theater and discovered that the sun had set and I realized that I’d have to walk home alone in the dark. The last scene of The Thing was playing tricks on my nine year old mind as I walked home in the dark. Moonlight flickering through the trees seemed to cast ominous shadows all around me. We lived in a big two story duplex and one half of the house was vacant, so the house always felt spooky when I was home alone, especially at night. On this particular Saturday night, my parents were not home when I arrived and the house was completely dark. I always entered by the back door that opened into the kitchen. The kitchen door was wide open and I wondered if I forgot to close it when I went to the movie, or did someone else open it? As I entered the dark kitchen, I heard a sound coming from the upstairs bedroom. It sounded like someone was walking around upstairs and the walk had the same halting clump-clump-pause sound The Thing made as it walked down the isle in the movie just before it got electrocuted. I called out my parents names and nobody answered, but I continued to hear someone walking around upstairs. Who or WHAT was upstairs! Finally, I ran to the nearest house and told the man my parents were not home and I thought a prowler was walking around upstairs in my house. I said I wanted to stay in his house until my parents got home, because I was afraid to go back to my house. I didn’t mention that I just saw a scary movie at the Wayside Theater. The neighbor got a flashlight and a baseball bat and went over to my back door with his two teenage sons following behind him. When we got to my backdoor we all heard the footsteps upstairs. My neighbor called out like I did earlier and there was no reply. Finally, my neighbor decided to go into the house to investigate. After a few tense minutes, he came back with a grim look on his face, and then he broke into laughter. He turned on the lights and invited us to come upstairs and see who was walking around. My parents bedroom had Venetian blinds and a gentle breeze at the upstairs windows was causing the blinds to swing inward and when they fell back against the wooden window frame they bounced and made the clunk-clunk sound that sounded like footsteps. We were all having a good laugh when my parents came home wondering what the heck was going on. My parents felt guilty for getting home late, so I didn’t get in trouble for overreacting. After all, that sound also fooled the neighbor who was an adult. I didn’t want to push my luck and get in trouble for going to see a scary movie and walking home alone in the dark, so I never told anyone I went to see The Thing at the Wayside Theater.
Oops, my last sentence above contained a typo, I meant to say I don’t see how The Wayside Theater could have been demolished in 1957 when it was still going strong with a roadshow engagement of The Ten Commandments playing to packed audiences in 1956.
The information under the photo of the Wayside says" “The Wayside Theatre was closed and demolished in 1957”. I think that is an error, because I saw The Ten Commandments there in 1956. That film was such a huge blockbuster that the audience was packed and I even saw Catholic nuns in the audience wearing full habits. Also, it was presented as an exclusive vistaVision roadshow. They installed a special enlarged screen and stereophonic sound system for this special attraction and I think the seats were reserved, because I remember that they added tags to the seat arms with the row and seat number of each seat. For these reasons, The Ten Commandments was probably at the Wayside for months if not a full year. When they finally did stop showing movies at the Wayside, it became a dance hall or a supper club, or something like that. So, I don’t see how it could possibly have been closed and demolished in 1956.
I thought that was a great place for a theater, right next to the Gulfgate shopping mall. I loved walking over the bridge to the theater on a nice afternoon. In those days, Houston theaters had curtains to hide the screen. In some theaters, the curtains opened and closed every time the feature started. They cycled the curtains even when the movies ran continuously, I guess it was to alert people that the feature was starting. The curtains weren’t really needed, maybe the curtains were left over from the days when theaters had vaudeville acts that played between movie showings. Anyway, my point is, the Gulfgate Twin was the first theater I ever saw that didn’t have a curtain for the screen. Instead, it had colored lights aimed at the screen to make it look interesting when a film wasn’t showing. I thought the clean look without curtains was super-modern. Later, when little shoe box multiplexes sprang up everywhere, it became common not to have curtains for the screen, but in the no-frills shoe box theaters, the missing curtains just looked like a way to save money.
The first film I saw at the Gulfgate twin was The Yellow Rolls Royce, which was about the adventures that happened to an old Rolls Royce car over a period of thirty or forty years and all the different people who owned the car. The Yellow Rolls Royce was a charming movie that featured a number of big stars who appeared in a series of short stories about the car. Over the years the car was owned by people as different as aristocrats and gangsters, and it was used for everything from a rendezvous where lovers have an extramarital affair, to life saving duty during World War Two, when it was used to transport people to safety. I thought it was the perfect movie to see at the brand new Gulfgate twin when it opened. I understand that the theater, which was once so bright and new is gone now. I wonder if I can still rent The Yellow Rolls Royce and relive the days when the world and I were both a lot younger.
I was old enough to go to movies by myself about ten years later than Rayfrazier. By the early nineteen fifties, the cost of a movie ticket for a kid under twelve had gone from the nickel he paid in the early forties all the way up to nine cents. The runaway inflation after WWII nearly doubled the price of everything, including movie tickets. I recall noticing that an adult ticket at the Wayside theater in the early fifties was sixty-five cents. But, I could still buy a Tootsie Roll in the theater for a penny and they still sold those wax things Rayfrazier mentioned that were full of flavored juice. Post-war inflation was so bad, I remember hearing my parents complain when the price of a can of coffee went up to an outrageous twenty-five cents!
Nine cents was the norm for a kids movie ticket until 1953 when movie tickets went up a nickel to cover the cost of the polarized 3-D glasses. Later that year, the 3-D fad was on the way out and The Robe opened downtown in CinemaScope, which was advertised as the 3-D miracle without glasses. CinemaScope was such a big deal in 1953 that I had to pay twenty-five cents for a kids ticket to see The Robe, which was the most money I ever paid to see a movie up to that time. In the fifties we still had the Three Stooges and Pete Smith shorts and every movie had a cartoon and a newsreel, plus the coming attractions. I think that practice continued until somewhere around 1960. By the end of the fifties everyone had a TV set. Television killed the need for newsreels and people got enough of cartoons and The Three Stooges on TV. But, movies still ran continuously in the fifties, except for the rare roadshow attractions that had reserved seats and an intermission.
Because movies ran continuously all day in the fifties, I almost never saw a movie from the beginning to end. I would usually come in around the middle of the picture and then have to figure out who all the characters were and what happened in the first half of the movie. But, I could stay to see the first half of the film when it repeated and then I would find out if I figured out the plot correctly. It sounds like a weird way to watch movies today, but I was used to it and it was probably a good problem solving exercise for a young mind.
By the fifties, serials had moved from theaters to TV, except for the Saturday Morning Fun Clubs which ran at nearly every Houston theater on Saturday morning. I saw the Gene Autry serial that Rayfrazier was talking about, but by the fifties it was only showing on TV. That serial was called The Phantom Empire and the people who lived in the futuristic underground city under Gene Autry’s Radio Ranch weren’t Martians. They were descendants of the lost tribe of Mu, who survived by going underground during the last ice age. For that reason, they had thousands of years to advance scientifically before humans reappeared on the surface of the earth. The Phantom Empire Serial was made in the nineteen thirties so it had a nineteen thirties concept of what a city of the future would look like. Styling that looked modern in the nineteen thirties changed greatly after WWII and The Phantom Empire was laughable by the nineteen fifties. The clothes of the Muranians and the cardboard box robots were hilarious in the nineteen fifties, even to a kid like myself.
Back in the late nineteen forties, when I was around seven years old, I remember seeing a man in a gorilla suit pacing back and forth in front of a downtown theater and I think it was the Metropolitan theater. The gorilla was in chains and he would pretend to terrorize people walking in front of the theater. I’m not sure if the movie they were showing was a re-release of the 1933 King Kong, or it could have been advertising for Mighty Joe Young, another giant gorilla movie that came out in the late forties. My mother would not take me in to see the movie, but the man in the gorilla suit made a big impression on me and I’ll never forget that super-cool stunt.
Correction to my previous post: It seems that my mind was playing a trick on me after more than fifty years. 2001 did in fact open at the Windsor Cinerama Theater in Houston in 1968 and not at the Gaylynn Theater the way I remembered it. I just found a newspaper ad confirming that it was the Windsor theater. The newspaper ad says the theater was at Post Oak and Richmond, the funny thing is I can’t ever recall going to see a movie at that location.
I saw Thrillarama at the Metropolitan theater in 1956 and boy was it awful. The seams were bad enough in Cinerama, but having one big fuzzy line running directly down the middle of the screen was intolerable, because there was no way to ignore it. The only movie made in Thrillarama was a Texas travelogue and I don’t see how they could have ever used the process for a dramatic movie. I saw Windjammer in Cinemiracle at the Uptown in ‘59 and I loved that movie. Unlike Cinerama, the three-strip Cinemiracle seams were barely noticeable. A year later I saw This is Cinerama at the Rivoli in the original three-strip Cinerama. Before they converted the Rivoli in Houston to Cinerama one had to drive all the way to the Melba Theater in Dallas to see the original three-strip Cinerama films. The first thing I noticed about the remodeled Rivoli after the shock of the giant curved Cinerama screen wore off was how they installed two new projection booths on the sides of the theater for the two additional projectors. Not only were the seams noticeable in the original Cinerama, but the color of the sky in the three panels didn’t match in many scenes and there was noticeable distortion in the image. I’d swear that I saw 2001 in 70mm at the beautiful Gaylynn Theater in '68 but this page says it was shown at the Windsor at that time. My mind could be playing tricks on me, but I saw It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World at the Windsor and I don’t see how I could get the two theaters confused, because the Gaylynn had a spectacular lobby, which was not like the lobby in any other Houston theater at that time. 2001 had an intermission in the middle of the 70mm version, so I had plenty of time to roam around the lobby drinking my lemonade from an elegant little container. The Gaylynn was so fancy when it first opened with 2001 that they didn’t sell popcorn, only lemonade, which one had to drink in the lobby. And at night, men wore suit coats with ties or sport jackets to see 2001. It was really special to go the the Gaylynn back when it first opened. Years later I took a friend to see a revival of 2001 at a different theater. The re-issue was printed down to 35mm CinemaScope. Without the razor sharp image of 70mm shown on a giant curved screen, and without the 6-track stereo surround sound, the 2001 revival was like a completely different movie. In addition, the inferior CinemaScope print was so scratchy that we got up and walked out. 2001 is still my favorite movie, but if you’ve never seen it on a big screen in 70mm with six-track stereo surround sound, then you’ve never actually seen it.
I remember the tunnels that ran under downtown Houston. I didn’t know why they were built until now, but I thought they were very cool when I was a kid.
When I was a growing up, back in the nineteen fifties, the Kirby Theater was famous for a big box-office robbery that took place back in the thirties or forties. Adults were still talking about this hold-up in the fifties, but I never heard all the details. It seemed to me that the Lowes, Metropolitan and Majestic got first crack at the major Studio films and the Kirby got first crack at second rate movies. I saw some of the last new Abbott and Costello comedies at the Kirby. This was after the comedy team had been replaced by Martian and Lewis and they were no longer a big draw in theaters.
THE THING AT THE WAYSIDE In nineteen fifty one I was either nine or ten years old (depending on the month) and the Wayside Theater was in walking distance of my house. It was a long walk, but that was not a problem at that age. The price of admission for kids under twelve was nine cents and I could get a dime by turning in an empty milk bottle. In 1951 a movie opened at the Wayside Theater called The Thing, the full title was “The Thing from another World”. This is not to be confused with John Carpenter’s excellent 1982 remake with the same name. In 1951 flying saucers were a hot topic and many adults believed flying saucers came from Mars. It was a time of paranoia due to the cold war and many people were sure that either the Russians or men from Mars would soon attack the United States. That’s what the world was like on a Saturday afternoon in 1951 when I walked down to the Wayside Theater anxious to see the new movie about flying saucers. The “Thing” in the title of the film was the frozen pilot of a flying saucer that crashed in the arctic and was thawed out by a bunch of scientist working in an isolated arctic weather station. The saucer pilot was an alien monster who was determined to kill the scientists before they could warn other humans. There is a big scene at the end of the movie when the “Thing” is killed by the scientists. The scientists set up a trap so the monster had to walk down an isle which had been rigged up with high voltage cables. They believed the monster was made of vegetable material and they theorized that high voltage electricity would fry him. The monster had a halting way of walking down the isle; he took two or three steps, then paused. Then, he took two or three more steps, then paused again and kept up this irregular pace until he reached the high voltage cables where they zapped him. The sound of the monster’s steps were emphasized on the film’s soundtrack to build up suspense. When the monster was finally in position a scientist flipped a switch and lightening bolts shot out of the monster until it withered away and was burned to a crisp. It was a pretty scary scene for a nine year old kid. When the film was over I came out of the theater and discovered that the sun had set and I realized that I’d have to walk home alone in the dark. The last scene of The Thing was playing tricks on my nine year old mind as I walked home in the dark. Moonlight flickering through the trees seemed to cast ominous shadows all around me. We lived in a big two story duplex and one half of the house was vacant, so the house always felt spooky when I was home alone, especially at night. On this particular Saturday night, my parents were not home when I arrived and the house was completely dark. I always entered by the back door that opened into the kitchen. The kitchen door was wide open and I wondered if I forgot to close it when I went to the movie, or did someone else open it? As I entered the dark kitchen, I heard a sound coming from the upstairs bedroom. It sounded like someone was walking around upstairs and the walk had the same halting clump-clump-pause sound The Thing made as it walked down the isle in the movie just before it got electrocuted. I called out my parents names and nobody answered, but I continued to hear someone walking around upstairs. Who or WHAT was upstairs! Finally, I ran to the nearest house and told the man my parents were not home and I thought a prowler was walking around upstairs in my house. I said I wanted to stay in his house until my parents got home, because I was afraid to go back to my house. I didn’t mention that I just saw a scary movie at the Wayside Theater. The neighbor got a flashlight and a baseball bat and went over to my back door with his two teenage sons following behind him. When we got to my backdoor we all heard the footsteps upstairs. My neighbor called out like I did earlier and there was no reply. Finally, my neighbor decided to go into the house to investigate. After a few tense minutes, he came back with a grim look on his face, and then he broke into laughter. He turned on the lights and invited us to come upstairs and see who was walking around. My parents bedroom had Venetian blinds and a gentle breeze at the upstairs windows was causing the blinds to swing inward and when they fell back against the wooden window frame they bounced and made the clunk-clunk sound that sounded like footsteps. We were all having a good laugh when my parents came home wondering what the heck was going on. My parents felt guilty for getting home late, so I didn’t get in trouble for overreacting. After all, that sound also fooled the neighbor who was an adult. I didn’t want to push my luck and get in trouble for going to see a scary movie and walking home alone in the dark, so I never told anyone I went to see The Thing at the Wayside Theater.
Oops, my last sentence above contained a typo, I meant to say I don’t see how The Wayside Theater could have been demolished in 1957 when it was still going strong with a roadshow engagement of The Ten Commandments playing to packed audiences in 1956.
The information under the photo of the Wayside says" “The Wayside Theatre was closed and demolished in 1957”. I think that is an error, because I saw The Ten Commandments there in 1956. That film was such a huge blockbuster that the audience was packed and I even saw Catholic nuns in the audience wearing full habits. Also, it was presented as an exclusive vistaVision roadshow. They installed a special enlarged screen and stereophonic sound system for this special attraction and I think the seats were reserved, because I remember that they added tags to the seat arms with the row and seat number of each seat. For these reasons, The Ten Commandments was probably at the Wayside for months if not a full year. When they finally did stop showing movies at the Wayside, it became a dance hall or a supper club, or something like that. So, I don’t see how it could possibly have been closed and demolished in 1956.