UA East Park I & II

1posterfan4sure on July 16, 2007 at 7:33 pm

Hi John! No, I never worked at the Trans Lux but I wish I had. Of the theaters built in the Harrisburg area in the 60s and 70s, the Trans Lux was my favorite. Modern design, yet tasteful and elegant. Bright, comfortable and inviting. Projection and sound without equal. I saw “Doctor Zhivago” shortly after it opened in 1966, and later “Grand Prix” and “The Godfather.” I also saw “200l: A Space Odyssey” at the Trans Lux, the most mind-blowing presentation of that film I’ve ever seen. Too bad they had to go ruin it by twinning it in the 70s.

The Union Deposit Twin opened around 1972 as I recall. Saw “The Poseidon Adventure” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” there. I don’t know what company ran that place before Sameric acquired it. I do recall it fell on hard times, showed XXX flicks and closed for a while before Sameric stepped in.

When I was working at the Eric they were talking about building another Eric just like the one on Derry Street on land adjacent to the Keystone Drive-In, near the Harrisburg East Mall. That never happened, as they twinned the Eric and took over Union Deposit and the Trans Lux at Colonial Park. They were also talking about building an Eric in Lancaster, which they did in 1970. I’ve always wondered if that Eric was similar to the one on Derry Street, before they were both twinned. I had a friend in Philadelphia who had an Eric near him that was a duplicate of the Derry Street theater.

I never worked in a theater again, though I’ve had a lifelong interest in the theater business. I was offered a job as the Assistant Manager of the Eric in 1972, but I had already gone into the Broadcasting field by then and passed it up, probably for the best! I really enjoy this site and have found your comments and those of DennisZ and others about theaters in South Central PA to be quite interesting. I hope to add some thoughts and insight of my own to the discussion.

1posterfan4sure on July 16, 2007 at 4:53 pm

Just want to add some details and minor corrections to what Dennis and John posted about the Eric. I grew up nearby and worked there in high school as an usher. The Eric was the Sameric Corporation’s hardtop entry into Harrisburg. (They were already operating the Keystone Drive-In, a first-run year-round venue less than a mile away.) The opening feature was indeed “Lawrence of Arabia” in the summer of 1963. Governor William Scranton attended the Grand Opening and dedicated the theater. The Eric was Harrisburg’s first theater with 70mm capability and six-track stereo sound. It was also the area’s first shopping center theater, in the East Park Center.

That “airplane hangar” criticism stuck to the Eric from the start. Even by 1960s standards, the Eric was drab. Gold curtains covered the screen and to the sides and were the only real color the place had. The walls were a sort-of corrugated sheet metal, medium-gray in color, and the carpeting was red with narrow black striping. There was no wall between the lobby and the auditorium, only a short partition with perhaps a foot of framed glass above it. Light streamed into the theater every time the front door was opened, and noise from the lobby was always a problem. The restrooms were ridiculously small for a theater that large. And those preposterous clouds on the ceiling…

I was told that the Eric had 1350 seats, 1250 ordinary gray seats and about 100 larger plush maroon rocking-chairs in the loges on the extreme left and right. You paid more to sit in the loges during reserved-seat shows but your view of the screen was actually worse, since you were seeing it at an angle, and it just got worse the further down you sat.

The poor design extended to the projection booth. The Chief Projectionist was an old guy (to us anyway) named Paul Hipple, who had formerly worked at the old Loew’s Regent downtown. He was one of the best and really knew his craft. He told me that the booth should have been placed about 15 feet further back. He said the short throw distance to the screen made it nearly impossible to focus anamorphic widescreen pictures, although flat 35mm and 70mm were fine. He was right. Panavision etc. always looked blurry but 70mm looked really sharp.

Like many theaters, the Eric struck gold with “The Sound of Music,” which ran for 67 weeks at reserved seats. It left for a couple of months, then came back at general admission prices for another two or three months. They kept on trying to recapture that magic with every Julie Andrews picture that came along. “Star!” showed at reserved seats when I worked there, and while people didn’t hate it exactly, they didn’t come back for a second view. One lady saw “TSOM” 73 times! They showed the same print for the entire run, and it was as pristine the day it left as the day it arrived. The Eric ran a lot of road shows but in between showed your ordinary pictures. I think “Fiddler on the Roof” might have been the last reserved seat picture shown there.

The Eric was twinned in the mid-70s which actually improved it. They had to wall-off the theatres from the lobby and the light and noise problems were gone. But typically of Sameric, one of the cheapest outfits I ever saw, the wall between the theatres was not sufficiently soundproof. When Sameric sold out to UA in 1988, the Harrisburg theaters weren’t part of the deal for some reason and went to Creative Entertainment. They ran them for a couple years and eventually sold them to UA. The Eric became shabbier as time went on and UA finally closed it in 1995. They brought in a giant dumpster and stripped the place to the walls in one day. It was used for storage for a decade and continued to deteriorate with large pieces of that curved roof regularly blowing off. Toward the last it was a real eyesore. The Eric was finally, mercifully demolished in 2006.

John S. in York

dennisczimmerman on July 14, 2007 at 7:49 pm

This theatre opened in the early 1960’s as a single screen location. It had the capability of 70mm projection. In fact, if memory serves me right, the opening attraction was a 70mm reserved seat engagement of “Lawrence of Arabia.” This was a strange theatre. The auditorium reminded you of an airplane hanger or a gymnasium. It had a rounded roof like an airplane hanger and the interior had exposed steel beams and roof which were painted blue with “white clouds” painted on the ceiling. The curtains and side wall curtains were yellow. There was a “loge” section on either side of the auditorium and for the reserved seat attractions, tickets were priced higher for those seats. “Sound of Music” played in 70mm reserved seat here for over a year. I believe it opened in 1966. Sometime years later it was twinned. I am pretty sure it sat empty for a number of years before being demolished. Do not even remember whether this theatre was still in operation when the Shapiro family sold out to United Artists, which was in 1998 or 1999 I believe.

kencmcintyre on July 14, 2007 at 5:29 pm

This sounds like the same group that ran the theaters in Philly when I lived there. Sam Eric and all those. Can anyone confirm?