Loews Cheri

Here’s a new 4-page 50th anniversary FIDDLER ON THE ROOF retrospective featuring a roadshow playdate chronology and historian Q&A. The Cheri’s dual-theater run is mentioned in the piece.

“Funny Girl” premiered here 50 years ago today in what was an industry first: a simultaneous three-screen roadshow booking. The film would go on to play five weeks on screen #3, nine weeks on screen #1, and a very successful 42 weeks on screen #2.

I worked there in 1975 when I was in high school at Copley Square High. The first week we showed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Man Who Would Be King, Emanuelle, and Lisztomania. I was in heaven. Sometimes I got to usher, though not for Emanuelle. I must have seen Cuckoo’s Nest a dozen times, but most of the time I worked the concession stand with two very smart and beautiful girls who had fled Ethiopia, who showed me how to count the candy and count it again, how to douse the popcorn with the soy “butter” substitute, how to alter the red/blue polyester uniform so that it looked a little less awful. I was sometimes sent up to work the ticket booth, which was outside on the Dalton Street sidewalk. When I was in the booth outside, my friends would stop by and smoke and keep me company for a minute. We got to see everything. We got passes to the other Sack cinemas if we asked. The screens weren’t that big, but they had great definition and vibrant color. The sound system was better than anywhere I’d ever been. I would see anything. On weekends there was a rent-a-cop named Jerry, with a gun and a german shepherd dog in his car. Sometimes he gave me a ride home even though he lived in like, Danvers, or something. The manager who hired me was a handsome, kind, and funny man named Steve Baruch. He somehow managed to make the mock tuxedo and black bowtie look elegant. He smoked like a move star. He loved old movies. I think he preferred them to the ones we showed. He had a whole other life outside the theater that I was very curious about but he never told. The boss was a florid man named Mr. Feeney, who carried a gun, and whose OCD compelled him to wash his hands obsessively until he scrubbed them raw. He spent most of his time in the little office, screaming on the phone, and I tried to stay out of his way. He screamed at Steve Baruch for letting me usher at Emanuelle because I was underage. There was another manager on weekends, Gene Hirai, who was the first person I’d ever met from Hawaii. He was always amused by me and my friends and our shenanigans. He was the first person I ever knew who talked about being “healthy” to me, as much as I smoked and drank and stayed up all night in high school. He told me candy was not dinner. HE said it was ok to have a book under the counter. There were a couple of outrageous boys who worked the candy stand when I first got there but they got fired for stealing. They were brilliantly funny, but I was a bit wary of them. One of them worked at the New England Home for Little Wanderers on weekends. I loved the name. Walking from Dalton Street down to Boylston at night to get on the Green Line at Copley was sometimes an adventure, sometimes an obstacle course, but since I went to school at Copley, I felt like I was in my own neighborhood, and pretty oblivious to danger. We were underage but could sometimes get into Paul’s Mall or the Jazz Workshop after we got off work. There was a bar next door to the theater. I don’t remember the name. More like a saloon. I ALWAYS changed out of that red/blue polyester dress with the zipper. I had an old mink coat that my aunt had given me. I never got any homework done at work. I couldn’t resist slipping in to the theater to see whatever. anything. After I went off to college in new york, I came back for a visit and Steve Baruch was still there. He told me I just HAD to see this new movie, Star Wars, and gave me and my friends complimentary tickets. We also saw Looking for Mr. Goodbar which had just come out, and might have freaked me out had I been into going to discos.

I have a few memories of the multiplex. Worst film I saw in cinema 1 Godfather 3. Cinema 2 saw the The Right Stuff and Titanic. either cinema 3 or 4 saw Edward Scissorhands (one or the other had a 70 mm projector. When it was a Sack Cinema 1st movie I saw was Semi-Tough (won passes to film) Did cinema 1 have a curtain?

While visiting in Boston in the late 1990s, I saw Saving Private Ryan there. It was still a very nice theater at the time.

February 17th, 1966 grand opening ad uploaded here.

Tom Kauycheck was the long-time manager of the Cheri after Joe Sasso was promoted. Tom’s assistant was Hugo Ugolini. Tommy was terrific and he tended to hire from Boston’s Asian community because (he told me) of their strong family relationships and therefore dependability. But he also hired a lot of Irish kids. The Cheri was the Sack (well before Loews and USA Cinema) flagship house and was touted as among the first mult-screen cinema in the United States. Cheri I and II were okay but Cheri III was a disaster with the projector mounted in the ceiling aiming down (thanks to the space available within the parking garage). By the way, my name is Nat Segaloff and I was the chain’s publicity director in 1973 and 1974, then became a critic.

Correct. I think Cheri 1 had a Century JJ 35/70mm projector and Cheri 2 had a Norelco AAll 35/70, both with platters. Originally, they had pairs of each before automation. They ran many 70mm films. “Chitty Bang Bang”, “Sleeping Beauty”, dozens of others. Small screens and very sharp image.

ahhh….good times…lots of Berklee students passed through here. I worked there during the school year in the mid-90s. Interesting place. I can’t recall the manager I originally worked for before he was pushed out. From what I recall he was a long-time employee. Looong time and maybe knew someone high up in the chain? He had this thing about hiring young Asian boys. An abundance of them worked there along with a lot of Berklee students and mostly the odd student from somewhere else. Good guys, but it always seemed like an odd hiring swing. They were the big game in town even in the mid-90s as EVERYONE hated that POS Copley. And the biggest theater at the Cheri still was great for opening blockbusters. Lots of nooks and cranies in that place, particularly as theater 4 was set off upstairs with no concession stand or ticket booth. By the time I worked there miscellaneous rolling concessions boxes were left to gather dust in the hallway up there. It was a reasonably fun place to work though, until TOM – now I remember his name – was pushed out for a newer, younger and much cockier guy. They used to do lots of sneak previews and premiers there as well as the Piper-Heisdrick award each year. I remember specifically Harvey Keitel one year (who I only saw from a distance) and Vanessa Redgrave. I was working the door (or the ticket taker spot at the bottom of the stairs really) and she came down by herself, very graceful and unassuming. She was an extraordinarily lovely woman, even to the nutball who was hounding her with questions. Two great (scary) memories were walking in one day back from Spring Break immediately after a robbery occured – complete with gunshot – before the cops came, and having to change that marquee. Which was only accessible through basically a hole in the wall in the adjacent parking garage. After which you had to stand on a rickity ladder almost near the top to change the first movie. Scary as s**t especially when it was windy.

Following up on some of the previous comments about the opening of the Cheri. The first screen opened in February 1966 with “The Chase.” The second screen opened in November of the same year with “The Fortune Cookie.” The third screen (i.e., the smaller auditorium on the upper level with the separate box office) opened in July 1967 with “A Guide to the Married Man.” The source for this info is Variety (back issues are now available online).

Interesting reading.

Well, if you squint, you can sort of see the cinema. Signs about street level use to be the marquee with the listing of films and times. The small glass “house” to the left of the large building was the ticket booth in its final iteration. (You use to buy tickets inside down the stairs, and then wait in the lobby, but later USA Cinemas changed the flow by trying to keep large and rowdy crowds on the street, which Boston Police did not like and forced them to hire paid details.) The main entrance was next to the ticket booth, and the other entrances were exits from the theaters.

I saw a number of movies at the Cheri. One thing I also remember about it was the fact that it was in kind of a secluded, isolated place.