An earlier Elliot Theatre, one with 275 seats, was listed as being across the street at 808 Lorenz Avenue. A long-ago patron recalled that it had a single restroom instead of the standard men’s and ladies'.
Just some notes on some incorrect and/or contradictory information in the posts above.
The theater’s official address is, and always has been, 1447 Potomac Avenue, although it consumes 1449 as well.
It was the much smaller of the two Dormont theaters (the other being the South Hills, later renamed Cinema 4).
The Hollywood is listed in some sources from the 1940s through the 1980s as having 794 seats. A different source indicates the theater had 630 orchestra seats and 184 balcony seats (814 total).
I never saw a movie from the balcony; I was never even up there because it was almost never open. It might have been open on nights when the theater entertained packed weekend houses as for the neighborhood debuts of “La Dolce Vita” and especially the Thanksgiving weekend showings of “West Side Story” in 1962.
The Hollywood never had anything resembling stadium seating; its balcony was a traditional one, accessed by two (as I recall)staircases in the lobby. The nearby, larger South Hills, however, DID have the sort of steeply sloped extension of the orchestra that today would be called stadium seating.
The Hollywood’s oddest feature, perhaps, was that its auditorium was sloped in such a way that a disproportionate number of seats in the front half were tilted upward.
As noted in TomB’s excellent post above, for most of its years the Hollywood played first neighborhood engagements of United Artists, Universal(-International), Warner, Disney and (until their demise in the late 1950s) RKO Radio films, generally a few weeks after their exclusive first-run Downtown engagements ended. (The South Hills, as Tom B noted, got the first-neighborhood runs of Columbia, MGM, Paramount and Fox films.)
Off and on from 1966-68, the Hollywood “day-dated” (played concurrently) with the Manor in Squirrel Hill in hosting the first-run-Pittsburgh showings of many movies.
A few were successful, especially “Endless Summer” and “Up the Down Staircase” (with the North Hills as a third partner), but too many flopped including “Shoot Loud … Louder, I Don’t Understand,” “The Day the Fish Came Out” and “Privilege,” and the Hollywood abandopned its semi-arthouse status. The first run of the original “The Producers” lasted a slim two weeks.
The latest incarnation of the Hollywood, after a thorough refurbishing by Bradley Center, lasted from March 30, 2007, to May 25, 2008. For nine days, through May 24, the theater played “Nim’s Island” and “Prom Night” (separate admissions for each). On Sunday, May 25, the theater opened just long enough to run a special 2:30 p.m. showing (probably a rental) of the Indian film “Kantri.”
For all of the appreciation reflected here by folks who visited the Hollywood one or more times during the 14 months it had reopened, it was defeated by a number of factors. It didn’t help, of course, that almost all parking in safe, nicely maintained Dormont is street parking, much of it with meters.
But the bigger problem is that when neighborhood theaters were constructed during the first 60-70 years of the 20th Century, they were designed (a.) to serve an audience within walking distance or convenient public transportation, and (b.) a very significant portion of the movie audience waited until films had played first run Downtown and then filtered through a pecking order of second, third and fourth runs at lower prices at handy neighborhood houses, generally on bargain double bills.
When a dollar was a dollar and a quarter was a quarter, teenagers and children routinely waited a few weeks until they could see films at affordable prices.
Today, full-price muiltiplexes/megaplexes around the world cater to a free-spending young audience that not only “must” see heavily hyped movies the first weekend but even the first day. Truly, it’s a different world.
Ane because we have so many screens playing first-run films for so long, there’s no blood left in the turnip by the time it’s available for showing at second-run theaters. (As of this moment, the Maxi-Saver in West Mifflin is the last surviving bargain house in the Greater Pittsburgh area, and it’s grosses are terrible. It can’t keep going indefinitely.)
And so, for all of the integrity and good intentions in reopening the Hollywood, it faced a nearly insurmountable challenge in drawing an audience regularly. Collectively, we pay fervent lip service to supporting such theaters; in practice, when we go to moviehouses, we go to big sterile complexes while the buzz is hot.
I thoroughly enjoyed a visit to the Hollywood just before it closed – a visit I made a point of making once I learned the ax was about to fall. But I live closer to three first-run multiplexes. If I care to see something such as “Indiana Jones” or “The Happening,” my best intentions to support the Hollywood aren’t going to offset my desire to see a movie in its first month.
I would, though, have made a point of catching second-run art films at the Hollywood (such films premiere almost excluisvely in the city’s eastern sector) because no place else in Pittsburgh’s South Hills is playing them with any regularity.
This theater also was known just as the Family. I have seat estimates of both 300 and 500. I suspect it was closer to 500 when it opened in 1915 or 1917 and then closer to 300 by the time of its apparent closing in 1957.
By 1983 the property was a vacant lot covered with deep grass.
At present, that block of Pittsburgh’s North Side does not even appeal on the Allegheny County real estate web site.
The Crest definitely started as a late-run single-screen 600-seater opened and operated by Associated Theatres. If memory serves, it was twinned several years before it closed. The structure is still there, but it’s being used as retail space within a strip mall.
Showcase Cinemas West, in Robinson Township, west of Pittsburgh, opened with an 800-seater, a 400-seater, a 375-seater and two 550-seaters.
When Sumner Redstone of National Amusements, Viacom, et al, was building this multiplex in 1977-78, he flew down from Dedham, Mass., for a day or two. Among other things, he met with a reporter or two. He already had opened Showcase Cinemas East in Wilkins and soon would build Showcase Cinemas North in McCandless.
I recall asking him about the oddity that all of the parking lot was either behind the large building (upwards of 90 percent of the parking) or on sides. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to allow the entrance to face the parking lot? After all the site was somewhat isolated back then anyway.
He explained that he would not have purchased and built on the property at all had he not been able to angle the front of the building, facade and all, in such a way that it could be seen “from that freeway.”
Location, location, location.
We don’t use the term freeway in Pittsburgh, but I knew he meant Route 60 (usually called the Parkway West), which is the link from Downtown Pittsburgh to the airport. The multiplex’s front can also be seen from Routes 22 and 30.
Ironically, back then, and even now, it’s a bit tricky to find one’s way from the parkway to the theater.
Very impressive marquee, Warren. Never saw that one, so I gather it was replaced quite a number of years ago. The last time I walked past the Beacon, it still had a relatively interesting marquee by today’s lower (trim and dull and/or electronic) standards.
Agreed … all around. The Criterion of the 1950s and 1960s (and certainly earlier) was a nice house – stimulating to attend, especially if one had a sense of the great movies that had played there.
I was a little put off by the change when I went in their after the first subdivide and saw the sleeper “Taps” in one of the large upstairs auditoriums.
But I never returned after an experience in that filthy downstairs area.
When I attended the adjacent Roundabout Theater, I always wondered if the backstage area was sufficiently sealed off from the unpleasantness of the Criterion’s basement in the final years.
The theater had 572 seats and was located at 32 East Pike Street in Canonsburg, a town 18 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. Canonsburg was the birthplace of Perry Como, Bobby Vinton and the Four Coins.
Several days after submitting the entry above on the Basil Theatre, I found the following entry by Ken McIntyre on a live-performance theater called the Uptown:
The Basle Theater opened on September 15, 1939, and was hailed as “The Theater of Tomorrow.” It later became the Midtown, and survived until 1985, when it closed. A limited liability group purchased the theater in 2002 and now offers live performances. The theater is also used as a church.
It’s hard to be sure in this case if we’re talking about one and the same Coraopolis Theatre. (Sometimes when a theater is demolished, another by the same name turns up elsewhere in the same community.)
The one I located in research was at 1015 Fifth Avenue in Coraopolis, a borough west of Pittsburgh but within Allegheny County. But it was only a 715-seater.
By 1983 it had been demolished. The property was being used as a surface parking lot. This address no longer appears on the county real estate assessment website, which could mean the property is owned by someone who has several consecutive properties to the left or to the right of it.
The Colonial was one of the many drive-ins in the old Pittsburgh-based Associated Theatres circuit.
I was a teen in 1960, specifically the last weekend in April, when two recent foreign language films that had played in local art houses opened at seven Pittsburgh area drive-ins including the Colonial.
The German “The Devil Strikes at Night” (provacative in title only) was the co-feature to Louis Malle’s French “The Lovers,” which was one of the biggest art house films in some time. It was famous for a steamy scene involving Jeanne Moreau.
The large drive-in display ad said: “This is a picture that children will neither enjoy nor understand.” (The MPAA ratings system was not designed and implemented until November 1968. In 1960s movies were still simply being billed as “adults only.”
I was still young enough to have a parental curfew. A friend with wheels agreed to drive out to the Colonial. “The Devil Strikes at Night” came on first. Finally, at about 10:30 p.m., “The Lovers” came on.
I’ve never forgotten the tension that night of knowing there was no way I could make curfew and deciding “The Lovers” was worth the penalties … But also the anticipation of my first racy French sex scene, which was very tame by the standards that would prevail a few years later but still quite something for its day.
We left immediately after the big scene.
Since then I’ve seen hundreds of sex scenes, from porn to, uh, art, but the experience never again had that don’t-dare-blink excitement of seeing “The Lovers” at the Colonial.
Every now and then in the years after the Colonial closed, I drove along Route 51 and up Elliot Road, and got out of my car where the Colonial’s box office used to be. The screen was still up there for a few years. The property was shabbier each visit. Still, there was a pleasant buzz from having seen “The Lovers” there all those years ago.
The theater is in the Norwin Hills Shopping Plaza. It’s an independent moviehouse run by Ross Falvo, who has decades of experience in the local movie business. He also runs the company Cinema Consultants, with equips theaters.
Constructed as a twin cinema, Cinemette South was odd in its day for a new twin in that there was a considerable imbalance in the size of the auditoriums. One contained 556 seats, the other 294.
Though the theater was nice and was within walking distance of what was then a Samurai Restaurant, Cinemette South was tucked up on a steep hill, with the unadorned back of the building facing down on Greentree Road.
The theater faced its own parking lot, which was not visible to the road below.
Though located at 2090 Greentree Road and carrying the Greentree zipcode 15220, the twin was in Scott Township, a southwestern suburb of Pittsburgh.
It was designed as a first-run South Hills theater, sometimes picking up pictures that had just concluded exclusive Downtown engagements.
But despite the densely residential suburban area in which it was located, it never managed to establish itself as a high-grossing destination. It was peculiarly isolated.
A personal recollection: Never one to let weather interfere with moviegoing plans, I drove to Cinemette South on what became a very snowy evening. When I left the virtually empty theater a couple of hours later, I was taken aback by the slipperiness of the steep road leading back down to Greentree Road. I recall creeping down in my car inch by inch for a very long time.
Since the twin cinemas closed, the building has been used mainly as office and possibly retail space.
The property was purchased July 1, 2005, by Allegheny Agony LP.
The official name of this 18-screen megaplex seems to be Cinemark 18 at the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills. Can you imagine anyone chewing over that while trying to explain where they’re seeing something?
The theaters are in what seems to be the largest building in the sprawling, multi-building mall. Entry is from the interior of the mall.
It opened July 14, 2005, with 17 regular stadium-seating screens and a 349-seat IMAX auditorium.
The total capacity is 3,695. There are 237 in No. 1 and 18, 140 in 7 and 12, 137 in 2 and 17, 291 in 8 and 11, 188 in No. 10 and 156 in 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 14, 15 and 16.
The multiplex is outside the Pittsburgh city limits in McCandless Township. Of the original eight auditoriums, two had 480 seats and the other six had 540 seats.
Showcase Cinemas East’s four original auditoriums consisted of two 400-seaters and two 375-seaters.
Though considered part of the Monroeville moviehouse community, Showcase Wast was located in adjacent, if lesser-known, Wilkins Township, just west of Monroeville.
For a brief time in the beginning, movies were advertised as being in a specific autorium (Showcase East #3, for example), which, as I recall, were numbered from left (west) to right (east).
Soon it became apparent that while “Silent Movie,” for example, might play its whole Showcase East engagement in #3, patrons soon found that #3 might be the lefthand auditorium one day and a smaller one the next night.
As management tinkered with which movies got to play in the bigger auditoriums, the staff moved the numerical names of the auditoriums from day to day or at least from week to week to make sure “Silent Movie” was always in an auditorium labeled #3.
This was because of an old practice that distributors had been enforcing Downtown: When a movie jumped from one Downtown theater to another, the second theater was supposed to pay “first week” (higher) rentals, which in practice did not normally happen.
The flexibility of multiplexes, which kept film prints shifting around while still under the same roof, forced distributors to give up on the notion of keeping track of which movie was in which auditorium.
Soon there was no pretense of one movie playing its whole engagement in #3. The auditoriums in megaplexes thereafter were permanently numbered for purely practical reasons. No film was advertised as being in this one versus that one unless it was in an IMAX auditorium.
Showcase East enjoyed the biggest grosses per screen for several years but lost its box-office footing steadily in the 1990s and then plummeted as competition stiffened.
Although the 20-screen megaplex Loews North Versailles came and went within a year and a half, Showcase East was thrashed business-wise by two new state-of-the-art megaplexes with stadium seating, Destinta North Versailles (aka Plaza 22) and especially by Loews Waterfront, now called AMC Waterfront, which has become the highest-grossing complex within more than 100 miles.
It was a case of the mighty falling. Roughly 30 years earlier, Showcase East had sucked up so much movie patronage that it contributed more than any other film emporium to the dismantling of the Downtown first-run moviehouse district as well as to the closing of the Monroe and Cinema 22 single-screen theaters in Monroeville.
An earlier Elliot Theatre, one with 275 seats, was listed as being across the street at 808 Lorenz Avenue. A long-ago patron recalled that it had a single restroom instead of the standard men’s and ladies'.
Just some notes on some incorrect and/or contradictory information in the posts above.
The theater’s official address is, and always has been, 1447 Potomac Avenue, although it consumes 1449 as well.
It was the much smaller of the two Dormont theaters (the other being the South Hills, later renamed Cinema 4).
The Hollywood is listed in some sources from the 1940s through the 1980s as having 794 seats. A different source indicates the theater had 630 orchestra seats and 184 balcony seats (814 total).
I never saw a movie from the balcony; I was never even up there because it was almost never open. It might have been open on nights when the theater entertained packed weekend houses as for the neighborhood debuts of “La Dolce Vita” and especially the Thanksgiving weekend showings of “West Side Story” in 1962.
The Hollywood never had anything resembling stadium seating; its balcony was a traditional one, accessed by two (as I recall)staircases in the lobby. The nearby, larger South Hills, however, DID have the sort of steeply sloped extension of the orchestra that today would be called stadium seating.
The Hollywood’s oddest feature, perhaps, was that its auditorium was sloped in such a way that a disproportionate number of seats in the front half were tilted upward.
As noted in TomB’s excellent post above, for most of its years the Hollywood played first neighborhood engagements of United Artists, Universal(-International), Warner, Disney and (until their demise in the late 1950s) RKO Radio films, generally a few weeks after their exclusive first-run Downtown engagements ended. (The South Hills, as Tom B noted, got the first-neighborhood runs of Columbia, MGM, Paramount and Fox films.)
Off and on from 1966-68, the Hollywood “day-dated” (played concurrently) with the Manor in Squirrel Hill in hosting the first-run-Pittsburgh showings of many movies.
A few were successful, especially “Endless Summer” and “Up the Down Staircase” (with the North Hills as a third partner), but too many flopped including “Shoot Loud … Louder, I Don’t Understand,” “The Day the Fish Came Out” and “Privilege,” and the Hollywood abandopned its semi-arthouse status. The first run of the original “The Producers” lasted a slim two weeks.
The latest incarnation of the Hollywood, after a thorough refurbishing by Bradley Center, lasted from March 30, 2007, to May 25, 2008. For nine days, through May 24, the theater played “Nim’s Island” and “Prom Night” (separate admissions for each). On Sunday, May 25, the theater opened just long enough to run a special 2:30 p.m. showing (probably a rental) of the Indian film “Kantri.”
For all of the appreciation reflected here by folks who visited the Hollywood one or more times during the 14 months it had reopened, it was defeated by a number of factors. It didn’t help, of course, that almost all parking in safe, nicely maintained Dormont is street parking, much of it with meters.
But the bigger problem is that when neighborhood theaters were constructed during the first 60-70 years of the 20th Century, they were designed (a.) to serve an audience within walking distance or convenient public transportation, and (b.) a very significant portion of the movie audience waited until films had played first run Downtown and then filtered through a pecking order of second, third and fourth runs at lower prices at handy neighborhood houses, generally on bargain double bills.
When a dollar was a dollar and a quarter was a quarter, teenagers and children routinely waited a few weeks until they could see films at affordable prices.
Today, full-price muiltiplexes/megaplexes around the world cater to a free-spending young audience that not only “must” see heavily hyped movies the first weekend but even the first day. Truly, it’s a different world.
Ane because we have so many screens playing first-run films for so long, there’s no blood left in the turnip by the time it’s available for showing at second-run theaters. (As of this moment, the Maxi-Saver in West Mifflin is the last surviving bargain house in the Greater Pittsburgh area, and it’s grosses are terrible. It can’t keep going indefinitely.)
And so, for all of the integrity and good intentions in reopening the Hollywood, it faced a nearly insurmountable challenge in drawing an audience regularly. Collectively, we pay fervent lip service to supporting such theaters; in practice, when we go to moviehouses, we go to big sterile complexes while the buzz is hot.
I thoroughly enjoyed a visit to the Hollywood just before it closed – a visit I made a point of making once I learned the ax was about to fall. But I live closer to three first-run multiplexes. If I care to see something such as “Indiana Jones” or “The Happening,” my best intentions to support the Hollywood aren’t going to offset my desire to see a movie in its first month.
I would, though, have made a point of catching second-run art films at the Hollywood (such films premiere almost excluisvely in the city’s eastern sector) because no place else in Pittsburgh’s South Hills is playing them with any regularity.
The theater was owned and operated by Associated Theatres initially. Its two auditoriums contained 826 and 558 seats.
This theater also was known just as the Family. I have seat estimates of both 300 and 500. I suspect it was closer to 500 when it opened in 1915 or 1917 and then closer to 300 by the time of its apparent closing in 1957.
By 1983 the property was a vacant lot covered with deep grass.
At present, that block of Pittsburgh’s North Side does not even appeal on the Allegheny County real estate web site.
The Crest definitely started as a late-run single-screen 600-seater opened and operated by Associated Theatres. If memory serves, it was twinned several years before it closed. The structure is still there, but it’s being used as retail space within a strip mall.
Showcase Cinemas West, in Robinson Township, west of Pittsburgh, opened with an 800-seater, a 400-seater, a 375-seater and two 550-seaters.
When Sumner Redstone of National Amusements, Viacom, et al, was building this multiplex in 1977-78, he flew down from Dedham, Mass., for a day or two. Among other things, he met with a reporter or two. He already had opened Showcase Cinemas East in Wilkins and soon would build Showcase Cinemas North in McCandless.
I recall asking him about the oddity that all of the parking lot was either behind the large building (upwards of 90 percent of the parking) or on sides. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to allow the entrance to face the parking lot? After all the site was somewhat isolated back then anyway.
He explained that he would not have purchased and built on the property at all had he not been able to angle the front of the building, facade and all, in such a way that it could be seen “from that freeway.”
Location, location, location.
We don’t use the term freeway in Pittsburgh, but I knew he meant Route 60 (usually called the Parkway West), which is the link from Downtown Pittsburgh to the airport. The multiplex’s front can also be seen from Routes 22 and 30.
Ironically, back then, and even now, it’s a bit tricky to find one’s way from the parkway to the theater.
Very impressive marquee, Warren. Never saw that one, so I gather it was replaced quite a number of years ago. The last time I walked past the Beacon, it still had a relatively interesting marquee by today’s lower (trim and dull and/or electronic) standards.
Agreed … all around. The Criterion of the 1950s and 1960s (and certainly earlier) was a nice house – stimulating to attend, especially if one had a sense of the great movies that had played there.
I was a little put off by the change when I went in their after the first subdivide and saw the sleeper “Taps” in one of the large upstairs auditoriums.
But I never returned after an experience in that filthy downstairs area.
When I attended the adjacent Roundabout Theater, I always wondered if the backstage area was sufficiently sealed off from the unpleasantness of the Criterion’s basement in the final years.
I believe the theater had 865 seats.
The theater had 572 seats and was located at 32 East Pike Street in Canonsburg, a town 18 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. Canonsburg was the birthplace of Perry Como, Bobby Vinton and the Four Coins.
Several days after submitting the entry above on the Basil Theatre, I found the following entry by Ken McIntyre on a live-performance theater called the Uptown:
The Basle Theater opened on September 15, 1939, and was hailed as “The Theater of Tomorrow.” It later became the Midtown, and survived until 1985, when it closed. A limited liability group purchased the theater in 2002 and now offers live performances. The theater is also used as a church.
It’s hard to be sure in this case if we’re talking about one and the same Coraopolis Theatre. (Sometimes when a theater is demolished, another by the same name turns up elsewhere in the same community.)
The one I located in research was at 1015 Fifth Avenue in Coraopolis, a borough west of Pittsburgh but within Allegheny County. But it was only a 715-seater.
By 1983 it had been demolished. The property was being used as a surface parking lot. This address no longer appears on the county real estate assessment website, which could mean the property is owned by someone who has several consecutive properties to the left or to the right of it.
The Colonial was one of the many drive-ins in the old Pittsburgh-based Associated Theatres circuit.
I was a teen in 1960, specifically the last weekend in April, when two recent foreign language films that had played in local art houses opened at seven Pittsburgh area drive-ins including the Colonial.
The German “The Devil Strikes at Night” (provacative in title only) was the co-feature to Louis Malle’s French “The Lovers,” which was one of the biggest art house films in some time. It was famous for a steamy scene involving Jeanne Moreau.
The large drive-in display ad said: “This is a picture that children will neither enjoy nor understand.” (The MPAA ratings system was not designed and implemented until November 1968. In 1960s movies were still simply being billed as “adults only.”
I was still young enough to have a parental curfew. A friend with wheels agreed to drive out to the Colonial. “The Devil Strikes at Night” came on first. Finally, at about 10:30 p.m., “The Lovers” came on.
I’ve never forgotten the tension that night of knowing there was no way I could make curfew and deciding “The Lovers” was worth the penalties … But also the anticipation of my first racy French sex scene, which was very tame by the standards that would prevail a few years later but still quite something for its day.
We left immediately after the big scene.
Since then I’ve seen hundreds of sex scenes, from porn to, uh, art, but the experience never again had that don’t-dare-blink excitement of seeing “The Lovers” at the Colonial.
Every now and then in the years after the Colonial closed, I drove along Route 51 and up Elliot Road, and got out of my car where the Colonial’s box office used to be. The screen was still up there for a few years. The property was shabbier each visit. Still, there was a pleasant buzz from having seen “The Lovers” there all those years ago.
The Fairgrounds had one of the larger capacities and for years was one of the higher grossing drive-ins in Western Pennsylvania.
It was south of South Park and sat up on a hill.
On nights when the fog rolled in, it could interfere with the image reaching the unusually large outdoor screen.
Can anyone provide an update?
The theater is in the Norwin Hills Shopping Plaza. It’s an independent moviehouse run by Ross Falvo, who has decades of experience in the local movie business. He also runs the company Cinema Consultants, with equips theaters.
Wow. That photo was taken way before my time. At it happens, it was taken on my future birthday.
Thank you for clarifying that the staircase was in the Monroe rather than in Cinema 22, Will.
Constructed as a twin cinema, Cinemette South was odd in its day for a new twin in that there was a considerable imbalance in the size of the auditoriums. One contained 556 seats, the other 294.
Though the theater was nice and was within walking distance of what was then a Samurai Restaurant, Cinemette South was tucked up on a steep hill, with the unadorned back of the building facing down on Greentree Road.
The theater faced its own parking lot, which was not visible to the road below.
Though located at 2090 Greentree Road and carrying the Greentree zipcode 15220, the twin was in Scott Township, a southwestern suburb of Pittsburgh.
It was designed as a first-run South Hills theater, sometimes picking up pictures that had just concluded exclusive Downtown engagements.
But despite the densely residential suburban area in which it was located, it never managed to establish itself as a high-grossing destination. It was peculiarly isolated.
A personal recollection: Never one to let weather interfere with moviegoing plans, I drove to Cinemette South on what became a very snowy evening. When I left the virtually empty theater a couple of hours later, I was taken aback by the slipperiness of the steep road leading back down to Greentree Road. I recall creeping down in my car inch by inch for a very long time.
Since the twin cinemas closed, the building has been used mainly as office and possibly retail space.
The property was purchased July 1, 2005, by Allegheny Agony LP.
The official name of this 18-screen megaplex seems to be Cinemark 18 at the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills. Can you imagine anyone chewing over that while trying to explain where they’re seeing something?
The theaters are in what seems to be the largest building in the sprawling, multi-building mall. Entry is from the interior of the mall.
It opened July 14, 2005, with 17 regular stadium-seating screens and a 349-seat IMAX auditorium.
The total capacity is 3,695. There are 237 in No. 1 and 18, 140 in 7 and 12, 137 in 2 and 17, 291 in 8 and 11, 188 in No. 10 and 156 in 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 14, 15 and 16.
Each of the Cinema World auditoriums had 304 seats.
The theater opened as the Jerry Lewis Cinema. As Cinema Wexford it functioned as a late-run bargain house.
My reference to Dollar General above is incorrect. The theater has become a Family Dollar store.
The multiplex is outside the Pittsburgh city limits in McCandless Township. Of the original eight auditoriums, two had 480 seats and the other six had 540 seats.
Showcase Cinemas East’s four original auditoriums consisted of two 400-seaters and two 375-seaters.
Though considered part of the Monroeville moviehouse community, Showcase Wast was located in adjacent, if lesser-known, Wilkins Township, just west of Monroeville.
For a brief time in the beginning, movies were advertised as being in a specific autorium (Showcase East #3, for example), which, as I recall, were numbered from left (west) to right (east).
Soon it became apparent that while “Silent Movie,” for example, might play its whole Showcase East engagement in #3, patrons soon found that #3 might be the lefthand auditorium one day and a smaller one the next night.
As management tinkered with which movies got to play in the bigger auditoriums, the staff moved the numerical names of the auditoriums from day to day or at least from week to week to make sure “Silent Movie” was always in an auditorium labeled #3.
This was because of an old practice that distributors had been enforcing Downtown: When a movie jumped from one Downtown theater to another, the second theater was supposed to pay “first week” (higher) rentals, which in practice did not normally happen.
The flexibility of multiplexes, which kept film prints shifting around while still under the same roof, forced distributors to give up on the notion of keeping track of which movie was in which auditorium.
Soon there was no pretense of one movie playing its whole engagement in #3. The auditoriums in megaplexes thereafter were permanently numbered for purely practical reasons. No film was advertised as being in this one versus that one unless it was in an IMAX auditorium.
Showcase East enjoyed the biggest grosses per screen for several years but lost its box-office footing steadily in the 1990s and then plummeted as competition stiffened.
Although the 20-screen megaplex Loews North Versailles came and went within a year and a half, Showcase East was thrashed business-wise by two new state-of-the-art megaplexes with stadium seating, Destinta North Versailles (aka Plaza 22) and especially by Loews Waterfront, now called AMC Waterfront, which has become the highest-grossing complex within more than 100 miles.
It was a case of the mighty falling. Roughly 30 years earlier, Showcase East had sucked up so much movie patronage that it contributed more than any other film emporium to the dismantling of the Downtown first-run moviehouse district as well as to the closing of the Monroe and Cinema 22 single-screen theaters in Monroeville.