The City of Belleville is contributing half the cost of demolishing the Quad Cinema; the Skyview now has to remain open for at least ten years, or the Skyview owner will have to reimburse the city for these half costs. There is an article with video here: View link
Two individuals in Tucson are attempting to build a sort of recreation of this theater, using screen parts salvaged from the site. The plan to give the new theater the De Anza’s original name, the Cactus. The project has a website and it has this page on it which relates some history of the Cactus/De Anza: http://www.cactusdriveintheater.com/history.html
An additional factor in the case of the demise of the Roxy, (which, as AlAlvarez points out was very much due to its connection to 20th Century-Fox and that studio’s lack of high-quality, high popularity product) was the unfortunate decision in 1958 to install Cinemiracle there, the Cinerama-like process that was promoted by National Theaters which was intimately connected to 20th-Century-Fox. The only feature produced in the process, “Windjammer,” flopped badly there. I am sure that its promoters hoped that it would match the success of Cinerama, turning the Roxy into a popular, reserved-seat house, like the Rialto or Loew’s Capitol, but it did not happen.
Simon, I’m not an expert on this, and a full discussion would fill books, (and has) but, based on my reading, essentially, the U.S. Supreme Court (not Congress) determined in 1948 that the major studios ownership of their large theater chains amounted to a vertical monopoly, thus creating an unfair “restraint of trade” as far as the distribution and exhibition of films was concerned. The decline of the central city movie houses can partially be attributed to this decision, as obviously studio interest in maintaining deluxe urban theaters gradually evaporated.
However, there were other factors as well – the flight of many people to the suburbs after WW II, the decline of American downtowns as central shopping centers, increasing street crime in some areas, the increasing use of cars as opposed to public transport (many movie palaces had no parking), and the maintenance costs of the huge old theaters all contributed to the decline of the big houses. Changes in exhibition practices (especially the gradual switchover from studios releasing a film in just one a or a few theaters in the downtown or uptown districts and then gradually spreading the release out to upper tier suburban houses, and then into second runs in neighborhood theaters to opening the film wide in several theaters through metropolitan areas) all took their toll. The rise of the multiplexes, which accelerated by the mid-1960s, with their wider choice of films, also has to be considered.
To learn more, use a search engine to research the term “Paramount Decision” or “Paramount Consent Decree”.
A new, local group has formed, the Zoe Preservation Society, which has launched efforts to fully restore the Zoe. Their first step is to restore the marquee which they hope to accomplish by Christmas, 2010. Story here: View link
This theater is shortly to reopen as The Edge Cinemas 12; story here: View link. The article says it was formerly the Regal Festival 12, so the number of screens it had seems to be in dispute.
That is what we were told during the introduction to HTWWW during the showings during the Cinerama revival in the 1990s in Dayton. If memory serves, we were told that there were basically four noticeable 70mm sequences so we could look for them and note the difference in color intensity and graininess: 1) the whitewater sequence when the Prescott raft takes the wrong fork in the river; 2) two short segments during the Civil War section (which were outtakes from “Raintree County” which was filmed in 70mm), and 3) a brief segment from “The Alamo” during one of Spencer Tracy’s narrative sequences. There may have been a few others, but the film is clearly over 95% three-lens, and although the print that was shown was that owned by John Harvey, pieced carefully together from several other prints, there’s no question that it was a Techinicolor IB print.
The Harvey print of “This is Cinerama,” also pieced together from other prints, did seem to have some Eastman-printed stock in it, notably a brief center-panel portion with German subtitling that was pinkish, though the vast majority was clearly a Technicolor IB print. It would not surprise me if the first print runs of “This is Cinerama” were IB prints, and that later print runs and subtitled prints used Eastman stock.
IB Technicolor prints were struck for both “This Cinerama” and “How the West Was Won” in 3-strip;
John Harvey showed both of his during the Cinerama revival in Dayton.
It probably would be more accurate to say that this theater was one of the earliest built at the beginning of the multiplex boom of the 1960s. There’s a chapter in the Cinema Treasures book about the evolution of purpose-built, multi-auditorium movie theaters. The Duplex, in Detroit, which had two side-by-side auditoriums, opened in 1919, and there are other early examples cited.
Huh? The picture shows the back of a screen (does not look like it was two-sided, as the screen was supposed to have been at this theater), and a section of a parking lot and what looks picnic tables.
An opinion piece from the Baltimore Sun:
View link
A local group has formed in an effort to preserve this theater: View link
A related story: View link
The City of Belleville is contributing half the cost of demolishing the Quad Cinema; the Skyview now has to remain open for at least ten years, or the Skyview owner will have to reimburse the city for these half costs. There is an article with video here: View link
A third screen has been approved, to be built on adjacent property currently occupied by the defunct Quad Cinema: View link
This is apparently actually going to happen: View link
Here’s an article about AMC’s acquisition of this theater: View link
This article is a retrospective piece on the history of this theater: http://www.ohio.com/news/96776809.html
This other article has a picture of the exterior; it looks like Regal never bothered to put its name on it: View link
Two individuals in Tucson are attempting to build a sort of recreation of this theater, using screen parts salvaged from the site. The plan to give the new theater the De Anza’s original name, the Cactus. The project has a website and it has this page on it which relates some history of the Cactus/De Anza: http://www.cactusdriveintheater.com/history.html
Status should be Closed/Demolished: http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=12675433
An additional factor in the case of the demise of the Roxy, (which, as AlAlvarez points out was very much due to its connection to 20th Century-Fox and that studio’s lack of high-quality, high popularity product) was the unfortunate decision in 1958 to install Cinemiracle there, the Cinerama-like process that was promoted by National Theaters which was intimately connected to 20th-Century-Fox. The only feature produced in the process, “Windjammer,” flopped badly there. I am sure that its promoters hoped that it would match the success of Cinerama, turning the Roxy into a popular, reserved-seat house, like the Rialto or Loew’s Capitol, but it did not happen.
Simon, I’m not an expert on this, and a full discussion would fill books, (and has) but, based on my reading, essentially, the U.S. Supreme Court (not Congress) determined in 1948 that the major studios ownership of their large theater chains amounted to a vertical monopoly, thus creating an unfair “restraint of trade” as far as the distribution and exhibition of films was concerned. The decline of the central city movie houses can partially be attributed to this decision, as obviously studio interest in maintaining deluxe urban theaters gradually evaporated.
However, there were other factors as well – the flight of many people to the suburbs after WW II, the decline of American downtowns as central shopping centers, increasing street crime in some areas, the increasing use of cars as opposed to public transport (many movie palaces had no parking), and the maintenance costs of the huge old theaters all contributed to the decline of the big houses. Changes in exhibition practices (especially the gradual switchover from studios releasing a film in just one a or a few theaters in the downtown or uptown districts and then gradually spreading the release out to upper tier suburban houses, and then into second runs in neighborhood theaters to opening the film wide in several theaters through metropolitan areas) all took their toll. The rise of the multiplexes, which accelerated by the mid-1960s, with their wider choice of films, also has to be considered.
To learn more, use a search engine to research the term “Paramount Decision” or “Paramount Consent Decree”.
An article about the theater’s closing: View link
Follow-up story about the screen’s debut: View link
A new, local group has formed, the Zoe Preservation Society, which has launched efforts to fully restore the Zoe. Their first step is to restore the marquee which they hope to accomplish by Christmas, 2010. Story here: View link
This theater is shortly to reopen as The Edge Cinemas 12; story here: View link. The article says it was formerly the Regal Festival 12, so the number of screens it had seems to be in dispute.
That is what we were told during the introduction to HTWWW during the showings during the Cinerama revival in the 1990s in Dayton. If memory serves, we were told that there were basically four noticeable 70mm sequences so we could look for them and note the difference in color intensity and graininess: 1) the whitewater sequence when the Prescott raft takes the wrong fork in the river; 2) two short segments during the Civil War section (which were outtakes from “Raintree County” which was filmed in 70mm), and 3) a brief segment from “The Alamo” during one of Spencer Tracy’s narrative sequences. There may have been a few others, but the film is clearly over 95% three-lens, and although the print that was shown was that owned by John Harvey, pieced carefully together from several other prints, there’s no question that it was a Techinicolor IB print.
The Harvey print of “This is Cinerama,” also pieced together from other prints, did seem to have some Eastman-printed stock in it, notably a brief center-panel portion with German subtitling that was pinkish, though the vast majority was clearly a Technicolor IB print. It would not surprise me if the first print runs of “This is Cinerama” were IB prints, and that later print runs and subtitled prints used Eastman stock.
This theater is going on the auction block as the current owners are in default on a mortgage: View link
IB Technicolor prints were struck for both “This Cinerama” and “How the West Was Won” in 3-strip;
John Harvey showed both of his during the Cinerama revival in Dayton.
This theater is about to be demolished: View link
The new URL for this site is: http://www.friendsofhercules.org/cinerama.htm
It probably would be more accurate to say that this theater was one of the earliest built at the beginning of the multiplex boom of the 1960s. There’s a chapter in the Cinema Treasures book about the evolution of purpose-built, multi-auditorium movie theaters. The Duplex, in Detroit, which had two side-by-side auditoriums, opened in 1919, and there are other early examples cited.
Huh? The picture shows the back of a screen (does not look like it was two-sided, as the screen was supposed to have been at this theater), and a section of a parking lot and what looks picnic tables.
The theater has been closed since January, 2010, but will reopen under the ownership of the Chatham Film Club, not-for-profit group: View link