Coronet Theatre

The Savoy was the second Yonge Street house for the Okun Bros. Biltmore Theatres, Ltd. chain, and the chain’s sixth theatre, when it opened on February 15, 1951. Early photos show the name “Biltmore Savoy” on the façade. Doug Taylor attributes the design of the house to Toronto architect S. Devore, who also designed the Yonge Street Biltmore and perhaps at least two other houses in the Biltmore chain during the same period.

The Downtown was before my day, it had already been converted to retail but I have memories of it as a kid but was never inside. I remember the Coronet showing skin flicks from the mid 70’s when I started hanging out downtown on weekends and watching movies all weekend then Odeon dumped it and it ran independently until it closed as a cinema. The Yonge was great and I could always get in there for “Restricted” double bills even though I was only 14 or 15 at the time and the program at the Yonge usually changed every week (sometimes they’d hold a program over for a second week) so it was bliss in there seeing all those cool films that I loved. Saw Fantasia in stereo sound for the first time after the Yonge “renovation” & rename to Elgin theatre plus Abba the Movie & The Last Waltz (all in stereo sound too). Then Famous Players dropped the first-run policy and went back to running action house double bills until it closed in the early 80’s. Fun fact: The Yonge was the Toronto cinema that opened the Texas Chainsaw Massacre exclusively in fall of 1974 on a double bill with “The Man Who Betrayed the Mafia” (also a drive-in too I think). Funny how what is now a classic film was dropped in to run one week – it ended up playing for several weeks before being moved over to the Imperial Six.

The picture of the Coronet in the above link actually appears to have been taken in or after 1978, not 1959, because of the movies featured on the theatre marquee: The George Burns comedy “Oh, God!” (1977) and the Clint Eastwood flick “Every Which Way but Loose” (1978).

After Odeon dropped it as a porn cinema it went through several changes in ownership. It was real bad by the late 70’s, entire rows of seats were missing or just laying willy-nilly on the ground. Soon after it closed for a short period and someone dumped some money into it. They actually had Polaroid photos taped up in the box office showing how nice it was inside now (photos of the repaired/refurbished seats, new screen, carpets, curtains with nice lighting, snack bar etc.). It was tacky but I guess it had developed a bad reputation & they wanted to break it. I was in a few times after the reno. (i.e. Frankenstein) and I noticed that there were no seats left in the balcony. Presumably they took what they needed from up there to fix the seats on the main level, maybe sold the rest off but the balcony was closed off and never used again.

I saw Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein in 3D at the Coronet too, about 1981! It was on a triple bill with Slap Shot and The Fog. The picture on the screen for Frankenstein was pretty small compared to The Fog & Slap Shot but the 3D sure did work good! The Coronet was my favorate grindhouse cinema in the late 70’s/early 80’s after they dropped their porn programme around ‘77 or '78. The Rio was a smelly, moldy smelling dump but the Biltmore was OK except it had some pretty dodgy charactors in there sometimes.
Good memories as a stupid, fearless teenager who loved movies.

Rock ‘n’ roll and cult film double bills on Saturday nights are what I recall seeing at the Coronet in the late ‘70s/early '80s. They seemed to have a devil may care attitude about the Ontario Film Censor Board, bringing in prints of excessive films that CLEARLY could not have undergone the scrutiny of the Ontario Film Censor Board. I vividly recall watching the betry gory 'Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein’ in 3-D while tripping….

As seen in June 2008

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And in an old postcard.
I am guessing this was in the early 1960s

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Here is the “Coronet Theatre” as it looks today.

This photo was taken in June 2008

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