Skillman Cinema 6

Saw a couple of movies here. Nothing much to say about the theater, wasnt spectacular.

This theatre actually opened in May 1979; I became a projectionist there in 1980. After UA ditched it in the early ‘90’s, someone else ran it for a while—probably until October 1997. The left part of the building became a hobby shop and the right part of the building became an English-style pub—the pub is still there but the hobby shop closed.
Two interesting things about this theatre: Apparently it wasn’t planned very well. The front of the building had the lobby and three small theatres; the rear had two large theatres with a smaller one in between. When building the large theatres, the screens were flush against the back wall; they made plans for the speaker in the center to be in a pod extending out on the building’s rear. However, this left no room for the left and right Dolby Stereo speakers; they were put on risers on either side of the screens. And because they wanted the two large theatres to be wide for optimum Panavision widescreen, the small screen in the middle was quite narrow—so narrow that they could only put in a 1.85:1 screen. Rather than letterbox only 'scope features, 2.35:1 was shown on a 1.85:1 screen! Hey, it didn’t matter because the movies were on platters—no changeovers—so who cared? And you wonder sometimes where movie showing is headed—although today, it’s a lot better than this!

I remember this theater from the days that I worked at the UA Prestonwood. The GM there was Billy Hill. The neighborhood around it was horrible. And the theater was constantly being robbed. We had nicknamed it the “Stop and Rob”.