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Memrose Theatre
Colley Avenue and Raleigh Avenue,
Norfolk,
VA
23507
Colley Avenue and Raleigh Avenue,
Norfolk,
VA
23507
4 people
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Previously operated by: Levine Theatrical Enterprises
Styles: Art Deco
Nearby Theaters
News About This Theater
- Oct 30, 2009 — Happy 50th, "Sleeping Beauty"
The Memrose Theatre was on Colley Avenue somewhere between Redgate Avenue and and Raleigh Avenue in the Ghent section of town. I think it was torn down when Colley Avenue was widened to a four lane divided road in this area. If I remember right it played mostly Walt Disney films. I think “Mary Poppins” played here for a long time, before anywhere else in Norfolk/Portsmouth.
Contributed by
Bob Jensen
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Recent comments (view all 12 comments)
Chuck, thanks for finding the address.
wsasser, thanks so much for the photo!
I also remember The Memrose only showing Disney Movies. Bambi broke my heart. If I remember correctly there was a drugstore across the street (Colley Ave) and you could see Norfolk General Hospital. Was there also a ‘Highs’?
I grew up right down the street from the Memrose, on Raleigh Avenue. I think that’s where my Mom took me to “see” my first movie — Captain From Castile — when I was six months old. When I was old enough to go on my own, my mother would give me 50 cents — which was enough to pay for the ticket, a box of popcorn and a soda. Those were the days!
The Melrose was located on Colley Avenue, in the middle of the block between Raleigh and Red Gate Avenue.
Ah, i have happy memories of getting tossed out of the Memrose by an usher back in the late 60s … my mom took me to my first movie (I think it was Snow White) here and i recall i was a vocal little embryonic film critic at the tender age of 3 :) . Even 49 years later i can still see in my mind’s eye his smart uniform and his flashlight.
Years later in a suburban multiplex no longer extant, across the river (which happily is still extant), i repeated the experiment with my two young daughters. This time it was the Little Mermaid. After 10 minutes, my younger daughter kept saying “I wanna get outta here!” so we did. Of course by then in the early 90s ushers were something you’d only see at a funeral anymore. Does anybody even know how to ush anymore?
Now my daughter who wanted to “get outta here” is a new mom herself. I can’t wait for my grandchild to become a toddler so I can keep up the family tradition and go disrupt some 21st century flick in a couple years. Of course with the mobile phone use and our greatly coarsened culture of today probably no one will even be able to hear her :(
opened February 20th, 1947. small ad posted.
As I recall, the Memrose was the first theater in Norfolk to have the anamorphic lens required to screen Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” (1959) upon its original release.
Sharing the link to a recently-published chronology of the Tidewater region’s 70mm presentation history. The Memrose is mentioned quite a few times in the piece.