Magic Bag Theatre
22920 Woodward Avenue,
Ferndale,
MI
48220
22920 Woodward Avenue,
Ferndale,
MI
48220
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1938 photo added via Edward C. Ungerman‎.
Only live venues listed on website. No movies scheduled.
Mid `60’s photo of Woodward Avenue added. The Studio Theatre is in the center. May need to download and enlarge to see fully.
Magic Bag got a new blade sign. 11/15/15 photo added, photo credit Ryn Weaver.
The initial entry that says the theater switched to adult films shortly after the name change in 1961 isn’t quite right. It ran foreign and and smaller/off-beat American films for probably around 15 years as a part of the multi-theater local Studio Theater chain (most of the others had numbers.. Studio-4, etc). In addition to the long Harold & Maude run that RDToo noted, there was an equally long Producers run in the 1960s. I saw a restoration of Chaplin’s Great Dictator there in the mid-seventies. After the Studio chain closed, it changed hands and that was when the porn and legal battles began.
Cool name and bar.
I have never been to the Magic Bag, but I remember this place as the Studio North. The movie “Harold and Maude” played there for like a year and a half around 1973. I attended a showing 2 or 3 times and it had a concert like atmosphere as this was a very special film.
Does anyone have any information about the Oakdale Theatre in Hazel Park? It was a neighborhood theatre with a balcony. It has, I believe, been demolished. I have a friend who attended this theatre as a boy. He’s going blind and would love to see a photo of it before he does.