Village 4 Theatre

Opened as an 800-seat single screen on June 8, 1967. First movie shown was for a private group and was “Barefoot in the Park” starring Jane Fonda. It was supposed to be called the Village 70 at opening but the “70” was dropped before opening as it was not equipped for 70mm at the time and then it was just known as the Village Theatre. Was built by Highland Theatres. Upper arms, projector heads, lamphouses and rewind were new at opening. Bases, lower arms and soundhead were used. Lamphouses were Ashcraft Corelight 135 that burned a ½" negative and 13.6" positive carbons. Projector heads were Simplex 35, soundheads were Simplex 4 Star and bases were Simplex. Speaker backstage was an Altec A4. In about 1975 4-track magnetic sound was added for the re-release of Walt Disney’s “Fantasia”. The magnetic system was from a closed theatre in Kansas and was an original Simplex XL magnetic. Opening union booth operator was E.L. Kittfield. When he left to open the Regency Theatre, Jack Quinn took over and then Roger McGraff took over for him. He was then replaced by Roger Armstrong who was succeeded by Tim Callihan. When he (Callihan) left, Earle Templeton (John Templeton’s father) took over in August of 1973. The Templeton’s were the last Union operators.

Closed for 3 days in December of 1977 to upgrade the booth in preparation of the addition of 3 new screens in the upstairs back (main 800-seat theatre remained intact). This new equipment in the main house was an ORC lamphouse, automation and platters. The original projectors and soundheads remained & projector #1 was moved to the center for use and projector #2 stayed in its original place and was used for parts. Dolby was installed in the main theatre and on its reopening on December 23, 1977 the reopening picture was “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Theatre 2 opened with “Pete’s Dragon”, theatre 3 with “Saturday Night Fever” and theatre 4 with “Telefon”. Theatres 2, 3 & 4 were equipped with ORC projectors (basically Century knockoffs) and consoles but at some point these were replaced with Simplex 35 projector heads, Simplex soundheads and Strong Super Lumex lamphouses. Earle Templeton, John Templeton and Vern Diaz were the operators for the reopening.

Went non-union roughly in 1992. 70mm was installed at some point in the 1990’s with the installation of a Century JJ in the main house. Another 35/70 JJ was installed in theatre 2 but 70mm was never run there. The only 70mm film ever run in the theatre (as far as I know was “Hoffa”. Closed on January 7, 2007.

History dictated by John Templeton.

Building is now a grocery store as of April 23, 2015.

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