AMC Franklin 3
1033 Franklin Road SE,
Marietta,
GA
30067
1033 Franklin Road SE,
Marietta,
GA
30067
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I hope they do sonething about those thugs!
I live in Northeast Atlanta. This shopping center has recently been demolished. There’s a lot of re-development going on in that area.
I saw it in an add posted at another theaters page here on cinema treasures. I don’t recall which one, my guess would be a scan of the AJC from then. Anyone recall what location in the metro opened around March 82?
I mean 1982?
Rstewart can I see the ad for Wayne Theaters from 1972?
Drove by last week, the entire shopping center has been demolished.
When this theater was part of the Weis chain, it was a sister theater of the Arrowhead theater.
Showing in one advertisement as “Wayne Theaters” in March of 82.
This opened on May 23rd, 1975 by Weis theatres as Cinema 75 and became the AMC Franklin 3 on May 9th, 1980 and Cinema ‘n’ Drafthouse on 1987 and closed (or unable to afford newspaper ads) in 1989. Reopened under different owners 1992-1995.
I don’t have anything on that theatre.
Maybe Mike Rogers will have somemore info on this Georgia theatre.
Thanks for the info. My memory’s a bit fuzzy after 30+ years, and it is possible that I didn’t get my license until late June or early July (now that I think about it some, I do recall having to bug my dad a lot to take me to go get my license…but almost a month? Jeez!)
I definitely know that seeing STAR WARS was the first drive I took after I got my license, and it had been playing in Atlanta for at least a couple of days already, because one of the friends I saw it with had already seen it. I saw it on a Saturday, so it must’ve been July 2. Wow, its nice to know the exact date…funny how details like that get smudged in your brain over time.
Well, for starters, DaveNewton, I possess a list of all of the first-run bookings of “Star Wars,” complete with starting date, theater name, number of weeks it played, projection format, etc. So, for those Cinema Treasures readers who haven’t been able to put two and two together, this is how I’m able to call up so much precise info on that film in my comment postings here.
To answer your question specifically, simply reference microfilm of Atlanta area newspapers and you’ll see that “Star Wars” didn’t open in the Atlanta area until the date I cited in my previous post.
(“Star Wars” actually opened in the Atlanta market on a Wednesday [June 29]; the July 1 date I previously cited represented the Friday of the film’s first week.)
It may be difficult to believe that a popular movie such as “Star Wars” took as long as it did to get to a market the size of Atlanta…but that’s how the biz worked back then for some films. Except for a mid-June opening in Fort Oglethorpe (a Georgia/Tennessee border city arguably a part of the Chattanooga market), no theater in Georgia played “Star Wars” until its sixth week of release.
I can’t remember how long after my 16th birthday I got my license, but I doubt if I waited close to a month, although I suppose I may have. Where did you get your info, MichaelCoate?
The Cinema 75’s 25-week first-run engagement of “Star Wars” began the week of July 1, 1977. Long story short, DaveNewton: you could not have seen “Star Wars” here in early June.
The first drive I ever took after I got my drivers license was to pick up a couple of buddies and go see STAR WARS at this theater, back in early June 1977. What a great day that was.
I don’t think that I ever saw a movie here, but the marquee stayed up for years proclaiming that Devil In A Blue Dress was playing. Years, without wind or vandals causing any letter loss.
Here is a 2005 photo of the former cinema.
I believe this location has turned into a spanish nightclub. I drove past it about a year ago Last I remember it was a dollar theatre back in the mid to late 90’s.
Jack, I go by the Franklin about 4 times a year in my travels and it is so sad to see it now, along with the whole area. Thanks for your efforts to document some of our old treasures, even if everyone doesn’t consider them to be treasures.
When they first opened it I was about 12 or so and delivered papers along Franklin Rd. I remember walking over to deliver my papers one Sunday morning and smelling smoke and finding that everything from the small breezeway to the left was destroyed by a fire sometime overnight. (The Brandyhouse, My Fair Lady’s Spa and a few other businesses)
I worked for AMC for a short time at the Franklin. As I recall they made their entrance into the Atlanta market by buying up some of the Weis locations. As best I can recall, the back auditorium, the largest was about 550 seats, the middle was 250 and the front was 175. I still remember seeing Midway and Battlestar Galactica in “Sensurround” there. The booth hung over part of the auditorium in the big house so it was somewhat deceptively large. The last guy who ran it told me he had planned on splitting it into two, but he ran out of money.
I saw quite a few movies there, as it was within walking distance from my childhood home, and on these hot summer afternoons there was no better place to be than in a nice, cool theater watching a film.
Again, thanks for your effort and interest in these old theaters!
This oughta give you a warm, fuzzy feeling, a photo of what remains of the Franklin/Cinema 75 as of spring 2005: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maincourse/
Was the seating configuration for the Cinema 75 100, 200 and 300?
I am working on a page for the Arrowhead just now. If my finite memory serves me well, it was a very minimalist structure with 3 large square auditoriums, each with the same seating capacity, big screens and dynamite sound. Maybe that was why it was one of the elite four theatres in the metro Atlanta area to get first booking on the original Star Wars in 1977.
I lived by, worked at and remember the Franklin 3 well. Was closed by the police for showing “Felix the Cat” or some other risque film of the time.
Half the shopping center it is in was gutted by a fire one Saturday night in 1975 or 1976, but the theater was un-touched.
Very 70’s style, foil wallpaper in the tiny lobby, carpeted walls in the auditoriums, non-ADA compliant restrooms upstairs by the booths. After Weis, AMC took it over. I think the Arrowhead Triple south of town was a twin of the Franklin. After AMC closed it, Storey took it over and ran it a few years, primarily as a discount house. It ran as a Cinema Grill for a while and half the seats were stripped out. Next, Capitol Cinemas ran it as a discount house. At the end it was run by one of the Capitol owners by himself as Allen Entertainment before it closed the last time. Before it closed some of the pink seats from the Phipps Penthouse found their way into one auditorium as the owner was trying to increase seating capacity.
I saw quite a few of the blockbusters there and the largest auditorium was a great place to see a film. Big screen, good projection, good sound system. I was in there a few weeks before it closed and it was in very sad shape; the projector was being run without an aperature plate, so the picture was all over the side walls and ceiling. The sadest part was that no one that worked there had any idea what was wrong or how to fix it!