Parkwood Cinema 3
1335 W. Taylor Street,
Griffin,
GA
30223
1335 W. Taylor Street,
Griffin,
GA
30223
1 person
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Previously operated by: United Artists Theater Circuit Inc.
Previous Names: Parkwood Cinema, Parkwood Twin Cinema
Nearby Theaters
Located on W. Taylor Street at the junction with N. Expressway. The 401-seat Parkwood Cinema was opened as an independent theatre on November 6, 1969 with Shirley MacLaine in “Sweet Charity”. It was twinned in June 1972. It was tripled in 1977. It was taken over by United Artists around 1980. This cinema closed in the late-1990’s. The building is still standing, and looking very much like a cinema, just boarded up.
Contributed by
Chuck
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Recent comments (view all 6 comments)
I’m not sure what year Parkwood opened but it was definitely around in the 70s and 80s. This was the main theater my parents took me to all during the 80s. I saw The Neverending Story and The Goonies there. Pretty sure we saw The Last Starfighter at that theater. It was a great place. It was more the “family” theater with the four screener across town being the one that teenagers hung out at on weekends.
Definitely around in the ‘70s. I lived in Griffin from 1972 to 1975 and went to this theater nearly every Saturday. They played The Carpenters before the movie started, and to this day that music reminds me of this theater.
My father was friends with Jimmy Goolsby, who started the Parkwood, and much of my family worked there when they were in high school in the 70s. It was a single screen originally but I do not remember when it was converted. I will discuss with my family this weekend.
I saw Close Encounters there since my brother was managing the theater at the time. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/110408628337567433/
Since the seating capacity went from 401 to 640 one can assume that the third screen was a new construction rather than another alteration to the original auditorium. Who was the original operator of the Parkwood? It has the trademarks of a Martin theatre.
The theater was originally planned by Jimmy Goolsby and Joe Johnson, owners of the Jim And Joe’s Photographic Center on 11th Street in Griffin. Goolsby was the original owner of the theater and started life as independently-operated. It was still independently-operated when it was twinned in June 1972 as well as its tripling in 1977. United Artists didn’t took the theater over until either the late-1970s or early-1980s.
On its grand opening on November 6, 1969 at 7:00 PM that evening, Arthur Bolton, the Georgia attorney general who is the chairman of the workshop fund raising project delivered a brief opening statement in front of the 401-seat auditorium before the start of the theater’s first film “Sweet Charity”.
And yes, the layout of the Parkwood Cinema also confused me. I looked through almost every single newspaper headline involving the opening of the Parkwood Cinema as a single-screener but it never said anything about this being a Martin operated theater rather than Jimmy Goolsby himself.