Laurel Cinema Cafe

thanks for the pics-I’ll pass them along – pretty sad – last time I drove by that way there was a broken window – the people that bought the building last live in Florida and my guess is that they couldn’t get an alcohol license and gave up because I saw the sign on the door and then it was gone. There is a Petruccis Dinner Theater facebook page that is fun to read – lots of people that worked for my family in the 70s as actors or waiters or other reminiscing about their time there. It was like a great big family. It was a fun time while it lasted…but that building was always hard to take care of and required a lot of tlc :)

Carlo Petrucci, a father of 9 and his wife Angie purchased Pal-Jack’s Pizza at 310 Main Street in Laurel, MD in 1970. Five years later in 1975, the historic Main Street movie theater owner placed a sign on the theater marquis “CLOSED FOREVER” ( according to a Laurel Maryland historic site, the movie theater initially opened in the 1920s (http://www.laurelhistory.org/pages/history.html)). Mr. Petrucci, his wife and their 9 children all worked at the two businesses in varying degrees for the next 17 years. In 1992 the dinner theater was closed (http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1017065.html) and the building was sold as well as the pizza shop a few years later and the apartment building connected to the shop which was also owned by the family. Mr. and Mrs. Petrucci had both retired before the businesses were sold and their children had been running the businesses.

The Laurel must have undergone a remodeling in 1948. The September 4 issue of Boxoffice said “The Laurel Theatre Corp. reopened its new Laurel in Laurel, Md., with ‘The Mating of Millie.’”

The April 26, 1976, Boxoffice said that Carlo Petrucci, owner of the Pal-Jack Restaurant adjacent to the Laurel Theatre had bought the house from Neighborhood Theatres. Petrucci planned to keep the theater operating.