Cadillac Palace Theatre
151 W. Randolph Street,
Chicago,
IL
60601
151 W. Randolph Street,
Chicago,
IL
60601
24 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 109 comments
You have quite an extensive online collection, however I don’t seem to find a source credited from where you got the material. So shouldn’t you just be posting links to your sources as well?
Hey Kinospotter,
Please remove all the photos you copied from my web site https://incinerama.com. You could have just posted a link to https://incinerama.com/ctchicago.htm
Hi m00se1111, Thanks for finding that error. I corrected it. Looking at the Overview, it was copied from the link - https://www.broadwayinchicago.com/chicago-theater-guide/cadillac-palace-theatre-chicago/ . Changes were made which created errors. Some of the errors for the above Overview:
Not converted to a movie palace in 1931. Live shows were not added in the 1950’s. Cinerama was not added in the late 1950’s. Not renamed Bismarck Palace on 11/12/65. The Bismarck Hotel did not purchase the theatre in the 1970’s. To see the correct info just go to Eitle’s Palace
157 Bismarck Convention Center ?
Click on link to see ads, articles, and pictures of the Palace Theatre. Please do not copy to this site.
Fox did for a while in the late 20s, acquired many Ascher Bros theatres. Warners controlled the Cooney Brothers circuit. B&K were part of Paramount. So they were mostly present, B&K just controlled the big downtown theatres and many neighborhood ones.
I was surprised that RKO operated theaters in Chicago. I thought B&K, always controlled the Chicago market. Does anyone know when and why major companies like RKO, Loews, Warners, Fox and Paramount didn’t have operations in Chicago?
The Bismarck Theatre Grand Opening as a concert venue was August 10, 1984. Steve Dahl & Teenage Radiation with Garry Meier was the inaugural show. Chicago Reader print ad credit Shelley Howard added. Long time graphic designer for JAM Productions.
The Stifel Theater (Kiel Opera House) in St Louis just screened The Brain there in October for Mystery Science Theater 3000. Does that mean it is now a “Cinema Treasure”?
Erlanger page is up. Searching for a suitable Overview photo, before I post the print ads.
http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/58910
It was the book’s author who concluded only the three. Which I found on a search after a friend found print ads for two of them. If there are more, it’s probably more than the Blackstone had, and it got added to CT. Erlanger hasn’t been added yet. But I credited about 5 people since I used bits from everywhere. We’ll see…
There’s more than that if you go digging. King of Kings, The Life of Emile Zola. I bet you could dig up many more. It was set up as a road show house. That’s a significant part of theater history and fits the site’s criteria.
Well contrary to the Overview, it turns out the Erlanger Theatre did screen 3 motion pictures in it’s 50 year history. Per the book “Downtown Chicago’s Historic Movie Theatres” By Konrad Schiecke On October 30, 1927 it screened “Wings”, on February 8, 1933 it premiered Noel Coward’s “Cavalcade” and on April 10, 1936 “The Great Ziegfeld”. I have added a CT page for the Erlanger Theatre.
Sure, Jan…
Just found a stage mechanic who was an employee of the Iroquois in 1903 and worked at the Erlanger in 1942. Arthur Marshall. Don’t know if he was at the Iroquois the day of the fire, tho.
There’s a new retrospective article out on “Camelot” which gives an overview of its roadshow run (including mention of its engagement here) and a historian interview.
Some of my fondest memories from my childhood were going to see movies at the then named Bismarck (Cadillac) Palace Theater in the mid to late 60’s. I was only seven years old at the time but remember how special it was to go to the movies back then and the Bismarck made it even more special and memorable. Thunderball, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Patton, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid were some of the films that I remember seeing at the Bismarck. My parents and I always sat on the main floor about twenty rows back but it was the lobby, the huge screen, massive sweeping balcony and all of the detail and lighting that stood out and made going to the cinema an awesome experience.
November 12th, 1965 reopening ad as Bismarck Palace in the photo section.
1958 photo added courtesy of the AmeriCar The Beautiful Facebook page.
Your wish is my command: Link
★★★★ | Roger Ebert
October 14, 1968 | ☄ 0
“Finian’s Rainbow” is the best of the recent roadshow musicals, perhaps because it’s the first to cope successfully with the longer roadshow form. The best musicals of the past (Astaire and Rogers in the 1930s, Gene Kelly’s and Stanley Donen’s productions in the 1950s) were rather modest in length and cost. They depended on charm and the great talents of their performers.
Since “The Sound of Music,” unhappily, musicals have been locked into the reserved-seat format. That, in turn, apparently means they have to be long, expensive, weighed down with unnecessary production values and filled with pretension. It was a gloomy sight to see the great songs and performances of “Camelot” trying to get out from beneath the dead weight of its expensive, unnecessary, distracting sets and costumes. [Note: Camelot played at this theater too…!]
Movies are a faster medium than the stage. They don’t have entrances, exits, curtains, scene changes. Yet recent film “versions” actually tend to be longer than Broadway productions, and the second half is often an ordeal. Movie musicals shouldn’t be much more than two hours long, I think.
“Finian’s Rainbow” is an exception. It gives you that same wonderful sense you got from “Swing Time” or “Singin' in the Rain” or any of the great musicals: that it knows exactly where it’s going, and is getting there as quickly and with as much fun as possible. Remarkably, because it is only Francis Ford Coppola’s second film, it is the best-directed musical since “West Side Story.” It is also enchanting, and that’s a word I don’t get to use much.
A lot of the fine things in the film come from Fred Astaire, who possibly danced better 30 years ago but has never achieved a better characterization. In most of the Astaire musicals we remember, he was really playing himself, and the plot didn’t make much of an effort to conceal that. This time he plays arthritic, wizened, wise Finian McLonergan (with some songs and dances the original stage Finian didn’t have). And it is a remarkable performance.
It is so good, I suspect, because Astaire was willing to play it as the screenplay demands. He could have rested on his laurels and his millions easily enough, turning out a TV special now and then, but instead he created this warm old man, Finian, and played him wrinkles and all. Astaire is pushing 70, after all, and no effort was made to make him look younger with common tricks of lighting, makeup and photography. That would have been unnecessary: He has a natural youthfulness. I particularly want to make this point because of the cruel remarks on Astaire’s appearance in the New York Times review by Renata Adler. She is mistaken.
All the same, this isn’t Astaire’s movie. One of its strengths is that a lot of characters are involved, and their roles are well balanced. The story is familiar: Finian and his daughter (Petula Clark) journey to America with a pot of gold stolen from a leprechaun (Tommy Steele). They pitch up in Rainbow Valley, a rural co-operative near Fort Knox. It is inhabited by black and white farmers who raise tobacco, by a redneck sheriff and by a Southern senator (Keenan Wynn) who is even more stereotyped than Strom Thurmond. There is an intrigue involving the back taxes on the co-op, a couple of romances, race relations, and the pot of gold.
Petula Clark is a surprise. I knew she could sing, but I didn’t expect much more. She is a fresh addition to the movies: a handsome profile, a bright personality, and a singing voice as unique in its own way as Streisand’s. Tommy Steele, as always, is a shade overdone, but perhaps a leprechaun should be a shade overdone.
Al Freeman Jr., who plays an earnest young Negro botanist, has a hilarious moment as he brings the senator a bromo with the official darky shuffle. Barbara Hancock, an accomplished dancer, is fetching as Susan the Silent. Don Francks, as Petula’s boyfriend, is clean-cut and pleasant, alas. And after the racist senator (Wynn) is magically turned black, there’s a bravura scene. He joins up with one of the most improbable gospel quartets ever assembled.
The movie’s message is a sort of subliminal plea for racial understanding but not much is made of it. Perhaps that’s just as well. “Camelot” got mired in its involved philosophy, and “My Fair Lady” succeeded because it dumped most of Shaw’s preaching.
For the rest, “Finian’s Rainbow” is a marvelous evening right up to its last shot of Astaire walking away down a country road. Unfortunately, the management of the Bismarck turned on the house lights before Astaire was finished walking; for that, I would gladly turn them into little green toads.
This house was mentioned in Roger Ebert’s review of Finian’s Rainbow:
“Finian’s Rainbow” is a marvelous evening right up to its last shot of Astaire walking away down a country road. Unfortunately, the management of the Bismarck turned on the house lights before Astaire was finished walking; for that, I would gladly turn them into little green toads.
1968 photo as the Bismarck added courtesy of John P. Keating Jr.
The last movie shown here was in 1972, the reserved seat presentation of “Nicholas and Alexandra.”
Never visited the Palace Theatre until it reopened as the Cadillac Palace Theatre for the show “The Producers”. Wonderful place!
Here is a 1960 photo