I saw “The Sound of Music” at the Capri in 1965, when my family drove down from Ames. I was five years old. It was my first movie and I thought it was the biggest place I’d ever seen. Pure theatrical magic. I remember an upstairs loge area (for smoking?). We moved to Des Moines in 1969, and I later saw movies there during high school. It wasn’t as big as I remembered, but it still had style and class — a certain “chic.” It was a small gem of a theater, and to me looked like a place right out of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
My uncle Edward “Eddie” Miller worked there for years, until he was hit by a car at the drive-in and suffered a compound leg fracture that prevented him from performing his duties.
The four theaters (two main level, two lower level) are still there, pretty much intact. Contrary to a previous post, none are “gutted,” although much of the currently unused 42,000 sq. ft. of lower level mall space was damaged by a flood at some point and subsequently cleaned up. Regarding the theaters, only one of the screens remains undamaged. Overall, they appear to be in surprisingly good condition (seating, carpeting, walls, projection rooms, concessions, bathrooms), and look like they’d require minimal expense and refurbishing to bring them back into usable shape. Unfortunately, there are no reported plans at this point to resurrect the theater. To add to Lord Lione’s post, at one point the entire Knollwood Mall complex was scheduled to be remodeled, with the addition of underground parking and multiple theaters to create the planned 16-plex. A schematic was posted prominently in the mall showing the proposed changes. I also came across some old “auditorium check logs” that indicate some of the movies shown there including House Party III, Warlock II, Scent of a Woman, Life With Mikey, Hook, and Jurassic Park. It seems a shame that nobody would make the investment to bring the mall and its theaters back to their former glory. Who knows? Perhaps it could still happen.
I saw “The Sound of Music” at the Capri in 1965, when my family drove down from Ames. I was five years old. It was my first movie and I thought it was the biggest place I’d ever seen. Pure theatrical magic. I remember an upstairs loge area (for smoking?). We moved to Des Moines in 1969, and I later saw movies there during high school. It wasn’t as big as I remembered, but it still had style and class — a certain “chic.” It was a small gem of a theater, and to me looked like a place right out of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
My uncle Edward “Eddie” Miller worked there for years, until he was hit by a car at the drive-in and suffered a compound leg fracture that prevented him from performing his duties.
The four theaters (two main level, two lower level) are still there, pretty much intact. Contrary to a previous post, none are “gutted,” although much of the currently unused 42,000 sq. ft. of lower level mall space was damaged by a flood at some point and subsequently cleaned up. Regarding the theaters, only one of the screens remains undamaged. Overall, they appear to be in surprisingly good condition (seating, carpeting, walls, projection rooms, concessions, bathrooms), and look like they’d require minimal expense and refurbishing to bring them back into usable shape. Unfortunately, there are no reported plans at this point to resurrect the theater. To add to Lord Lione’s post, at one point the entire Knollwood Mall complex was scheduled to be remodeled, with the addition of underground parking and multiple theaters to create the planned 16-plex. A schematic was posted prominently in the mall showing the proposed changes. I also came across some old “auditorium check logs” that indicate some of the movies shown there including House Party III, Warlock II, Scent of a Woman, Life With Mikey, Hook, and Jurassic Park. It seems a shame that nobody would make the investment to bring the mall and its theaters back to their former glory. Who knows? Perhaps it could still happen.