Cameron Village Theatre
511 Woodburn Road,
Raleigh,
NC
27605
511 Woodburn Road,
Raleigh,
NC
27605
1 person
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CinemaScope arrives
Better quality ad from February 22nd, 1951
Village theatre opening Thu, Feb 22, 1951 – 8 · The News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) · Newspapers.com
The Martin Valley Twin reopened on June 20th, 1975. Grand opening ad posted.
Ralph Daniel:
KING OF KINGS also played at the Cameron Village as a reserved seat engagement for it’s Eastern North Carolina premiere on January 26, 1962. Presented in Super Technirama 70mm and 6 Channel Stereophonic Sound.
I saw Ben-Hur at Cameron Village when I was a student at NCSU. A fellow student (really from the sticks)went with me, and he had never before seen a theatrical movie, so I didn’t know what to expect from him. Oddly, he thought the goriest scenes were hilarious. Go figure.
This theater got a lot of the MGM and Columbia product. Not to mention the longest-running engagement that this theater booked was on June 12, 1967 for it showing of THE DIRTY DOZEN that brought it records crowds for 15 weeks.
Jay, The same thing happen when I tried to see RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK on its opening weekend of June 12,1981. The lines for this movie snaked all the way to the opposite end of the Cameron Village Shopping Center were it was completely sold out within minutes and that went for its matinee showings too on its opening weekend. Raleigh played it at two cinemas..the other was the Tower Theatres 1 & 2 in East Raleigh.
In April 1984, tried to see Friday the 13th The Final Chapter at the Village Twin, but was sold out.
The Cameron Village Theater got a lot of the movies made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Columbia, Disney and Universal. During the 60’s a ton of the Elvis Presley films made by MGM played here first-run.
The theater once stood where K&W Cafeteria is located now. Information regarding this theater should be revised as “closed”, “demolished”, “750 seats”
Correction: William Wyler’s BEN-HUR played here as a reserved seat engagement at Raleigh’s Cameron Village Theater on August 10, 1960 for its Eastern North Carolina premiere event.
The other reserved seat engagement in the Carolinas played at Charlotte’s Plaza Theater on June 10, 1960 as the reserved seat engagement showing.
Raleigh and Charlotte were the only two cities in the state that presented BEN-HUR as a roadshow engagement. Other cities didn’t get the film until late-1960 or early-1961 as a general release even though it was originally released in 1959.
The first LETHAL WEAPON movie played here first-run in 1987.
David Lean’s LAWRENCE OF ARABIA played at Raleigh’s Cameron Village Theatre as an exclusive engagement showing on November 17,1963.
From the ads: DIRECT FROM IT’S ROADSHOW ENGAGEMENT,YOU CAN SEE LAWRENCE OF ARABIA NOW AT POPULAR PRICES FOR IT’S EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT!
The Cameron Village Theatre,aka The Village Twin became a center of controversy and spark numerous protests by civic leaders and angry parents when a screening of “SILENT NIGHT,DEADLY NIGHT” was booked there in December of 1984. This movie spark outrage as lines were picketed around the theatre and in the parking lot across the street from the cinema. The situation got so out of hand,that by the following week,the manager pulled the film from the venue. It was replaced by a Disney flick.
I have the original ads for BEN HUR where it played in Raleigh and Charlotte in 1960.
This theatre was still going strong by 1989. It didn’t closed until March of 1990. I have the ads for it’s original closing.
The Cameron Village when it was a single screen theatre mostly got a lot of the MGM product. A lot of the Elvis Presley films released by MGM got played here first-run.
A lot of great films played here. The Cameron Village on November 17,1963 played LAWRENCE OF ARABIA for it’s only first-run engagement showing. A Raleigh Premiere.
Also played here: Lee Marvin in THE DIRTY DOZEN
Mel Brooks' BLAZING SADDLES
JAWS played here on June 20,1975
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK played here on June 12, 1981.
STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER
When I get extra time I like to look at the Raleigh theater descriptions. I have found many mistakes in nearly all of the main theater descriptions for the Raleigh theaters. In the case of the Village Twin, the original auditorium was not left intact after the twinning. The auditorium was split down the middle creating two horrible shoe-box auditoriums with smallish screens.
Raysson, How are you defining “roadshow”?
K&W Cafeterias is still listed at this address,as the header states.
Thanks raysson. I see you had an “i think” by WILD BUNCH,I will be surprized if someone does not get on and either agree or correct it.How some of these guys get facts on what a theatre plays when they don’t even live there amazes me.
The Village Theatre remained a single screen cinema until 1975. On June 20,1975,the Cameron Village Theatres were twinned with the original 750 seat auditorium still intact,and adding another side that expanded the seating to over 900.
The opening of Steven Spielburg’s 1975 blockbuster “Jaws” was the featured opener for the Village Twin that opened to capacity crowds in Screen 1. Screen 2 played a Disney flick “Escape To Witch Mountain” that lasted one week before it booked another flick “The Other Side Of The Mountain” a week later. “Jaws” however was the potential sell-out and crowd pleaser each week where it played at the Village for 26 weeks.
The theatre was a single screen theatre during the late 1940’s all the way through the mid-to-late 1970’s when it was the Cameron Village Theatre. The auditorium at that time was HUGE and it seated over 800 people.
Somewhere in the late-1970’s or early 1980’s,the original auditorium was split in two,making it a twin cinema renamed the Village Twin Theatre,and it remained that way until it closed in the early 1990’s.
This theater was the first theater that I ever went to as a child in 1973 and what they were showing was the old movie serials from the 30’s, 40’s and the 50’s. I remember seeing Lethal Weapon 2 and Star Trek V there the last summer that it was open.
Where K&W Cafeteria is now where the Village Twin Theatre once stood.
One of the oldest moviehouses in Raleigh until it closed in the early 1990’s. The last picture show that played at the Village Twin Theatre was an animated Disney flick “The Little Mermaid”.