Strand Theatre

I was visiting family here in the summer of'75. Jaws was sold out. I was so disappointed, wasn’t old enough to see Rollerball, so I had to settle for The Apple Dumplin Gang.

Thanks to the Frank Theater chain, they ruined a great theater when they took it over from Shriver theaters and chopped it up into 5 screens. They also ruined all the theaters in Wildwood NJ. What a piece of crap theater chain. They were even worse when I worked briefly for them in 1975

1941 photo added via Paul Walton.

Nice. Why not show movies on that H-U-G-E screen and serve hot pizza and other food?

Ah, what memories this photo brings back. I was one of the movie projectionists at the Strand during the Summer of Jaws (1975). Then, the next summer, I was not only one of the projectionists, but the janitor. Did I really sweep under each of those 1450 seats every night? Yes, I did! Those days were as much hard-working as they were thrilling, so much so that they merited an entire chapter in my latest novel. I was very privileged to have worked in such a glorious temple of cinema.

Saw Jaws at this theater during July of 1975 while on vacation. Certainly the best movie to see while at the beach and the perfect film for a Boardwalk theater. There was a definite undercurrent of anxiety on the beach—I remember the lifeguards whistling people out of the water at least a couple of times.

The last I heard the Frank Company had sold it (and the Moorlyn) to an investment group who then sold the Moorlyn to the Ocean City Tabernacle. I don’t know the plan for the STRAND but I would like to find out.

Is it still closing at the end of this season?

I lived in OCNJ the summer of 89, lived on 8th street above a breakfast shop, owner owned the building, cannot remember his name though…I got a job at the Strand as the ticket girl. I loved the job and I worked in the ticket booth that appears to still stand vacant. I called it my vertical coffin but man what a view. It was the best summer of my life and I miss it. We showed Lethal Weapon 2 amongst others, The Abyss, Weekend at Bernie’s….all still some of my favorite movies of all time and I probably saw them 50 times each that summer. LOL So glad to find this page….Havent been there since 89 but I am in Sea Isle every summer with my family. It makes me sad that the theater didnt survive the times.

Wow. That is a great photo. I had taken one around the same time, but this one is much better. And that site has the Moorlyn and Village theaters too.

Thanks for the link!

They just ran a report on ABC’s World News Tonight earlier tonight (today being July 18, 2008) about how business is really booming at the box office this year. Check out the following link:

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=5387182&page=1

So if Ocean City, New Jersey’s Strand is in a slump this year in the face of this smashing movie theater success going on everywhere else, it makes a very loud and clear statement about the klutzes now running Ocean City. I also caught on the local news in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania tonight (WPVI Channel 6) a piece about how this weekend, while there’s a heatwave going on all throughout the tri-state region, there’s a ban on swimming in the Atlantic Ocean in Ocean City in the vicinity of 8th and 9th street (where the Strand is located) due to a sewer malfunction or whatever. See the following link:

View link

On the news report they showed the lifeguard stands there with signs attached to them saying swimming is prohibited, and police in uniforms patrolling the water line on ATVs to make sure the ban is upheld — as in, is this a scene straight out of THE PLANET OF THE APES or what?!

But that said, Jim-L, if Ocean City was being run right, and of course it hasn’t been for many many years now, you’d have absolutely no problem eating off the salary you’d make working at the Strand. For you’d be making that and then some right now, believe me. Most people who go to Ocean City nowadays, as well as many well-meaning people who try to operate businesses there, are not aware that as seashore resorts go Ocean City has been being run illegally for many many years now, and unquestioned at that. I stopped going there years ago in response to how it was illegally changed around, but was astonished how those who continued to go didn’t riot at some point. If it could be possible to round up the current Ocean City movers & shakers and lock them up in prison where they belong — and there certainly is the legal basis for doing this — Ocean City could be brought back to being a really beautiful seaside resort once more, complete with movie theaters galore. Right now all Ocean City is is a testament to how gullible and obsequious some American vacationers can be, apparently a sociological experiment of some sort in the eyes of those who refuse to intervene. I told the authors of THE SOPRANO STATE: NEW JERSEY’S CULTURE OF CORRUPTION not long ago that if they plan to write a sequel, Ocean City should be made a major chapter.

Anyhow, thanks to the Frank’s mismanagement, or whoever it is that’s mis-running it now, it can’t be enjoying the box office boom that other movie theaters throughout the U.S. are enjoying right now.

Jim,

Thank you for identifying “Adventure Village”. Until recently, I never knew that it was back there with all of the trees and undergrowth obscuring it. Driving past there for so many years, to and from Ocean City, I would have thought that I would have known it was there.
Thanks also for all of your hard work in creating and maintaing the Ocean City theater website. I loved all four of the theaters on the Boardwalk and truly miss that none are as I remember them. I had a special fondness for the interior decoration of the Village. I saw the movie “Rollercoaster” in “sensesurround” I believe it was called, and how it shook the building.
My favorite theater, though was always the Strand. It was so beautiful! I believe it was you that allowed me to photograph the interior one evening after the show. I still treasure those pictures. Looking at them I can almost smell the inside of the Strand and feel the fabric of the seats against my bare legs as I stared up at the screen.
Thanks again for keeping wonderful memories alive.

Rahn