Tenafly Cinema 4

This theater never reopened after it closed in 2020. Looks like it’ll be good now and turned into apartments or maybe retail and apartments. Another nice theater gone in Bergen County New Jersey. Definitely a loss for Tenafly. It would bring in a good amount of people to the restaurants right on the main street

This reopened as a 4-plex as Tenafly Cinema 4 on December 25th, 1987. Ad posted.

The theater is reopening today!

http://www.northjersey.com/news/owner-of-tenafly-cinema-testing-market-interest-in-leasing-theater-building-1.1337972

A correction…..the Tenafly theater was bought by Clearview the same year it was founded, in 1994.

This from Variety, November 14, 1956. Kids today!!!

“Wealthy” Tenafly, N.J., Kids Called Monsters

“Malicious mischief committed by disorderly teenagers in the Bergen Theatre, Tenafly, N. J., has reached the point where operator Ray Rhone has barred the teenagers unless accompanied by adults. Among nuisances perpetrated, he said, were ripping seats, stripping tiles from lavatory walls and throwing eggs and other objects.

Particularly on Friday nights, Rhone asserted, the noise and general disorder were so bad that patrons could neither concentrate on what was on the screen nor hear the sound. In his opinion the ill behavior of the teenagers stems from lack of proper parental supervision. Tenafly area, incidentally, is a wealthy suburban district near New York with the price of homes ranging from $20,000 to $60,000."

I worked here as a usher in the summer of 1974. It was my very first job out of high school and was very excited. The only movie I saw during my whole tenure there was The Exorcist. It must have played the whole summer. The manager was an old woman, Mrs. Hallad, who was too cheap to sell fresh popcorn or fountain soda, so one of my jobs was to handle a cigar box with change in it, so customers could feed the vending machines that dispensed these items. She did'nt believe in snack bars! After seeing The Exorcist about 10 times, and since we were bored out of our minds, myself and another usher would amuse ourselves by taking Tic Tacs and throwing them one by one over the partition that separated the auditorium from the vending machines, hoping to bean a innocent customer on the head! I know, my bad.
I do remember the projection booth had 2 projectors that used carbon rods. The lobby had 1 wall that was mirrored, to give the effect of it being bigger than it was. There were 4 poster cases on the walls, with frames to hold 30x40 posters, instead of the usual 27x41 1-sheets. Along the mirrored wall was a small utility closet, with among other things, a huge stack of presskits and trade magazines like Independent Film Journal and Boxoffice. Several copies of these magazines made it home with me; I recall one time I accidentially knocked over the stack and they made a hell of a loud thud. Mrs. Hallad was not pleased with me! Her office was located upstairs in the balcony next to the projection booth. She had a large box of folded 1-sheets on the floor at the time, and I plotted and scheemed to break in and steal as many as I could, but I chickened out.
The theatre is currently carved up into 4 screens. Probably the worst screen to see anything on is the upstairs screen. You enter the room in front of the screen, which you can touch and, if you dont like the movie, shake or smear chocolate onto. There is a storage room on the right side of the room, which ushers continually go in and out of with bags of popcorn, cups, etc. You can’t help but hear and see them, thereby destroying any involvement with the movie you are watching. Very annoying and not very pretty!

The Bergen Theater had a WurliTzer Stlye B, 2 manual, 4 rank theater organ installed August 12th, 1926. During the war effort, all the metal pipework was removed. The console, blower, and relay, entombed under the covered orchestra pit and in the basement crawlspace, were destroyed by repeated basement flooding. The remains of the organ were sold “as-is” in the early 1970’s.

Brandt was running this in the 70’s,

I’m sure Joe would know but I thought Port Washington was Clearviews first theater.