Hollywood Cinemas

teecee on July 20, 2005 at 11:23 am

Still open in 1977, courtesy of Bill Huelbig:

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gstabc on November 2, 2004 at 3:49 pm

Here’s the latest update. As a former resident of East Orange, I remember!
Old star of stage and screen transformed into multiplex
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Star-Ledger Newspaper

The Hollywood Theatre is coming back to life in East Orange.
A major transformation is under way inside the Italianate-style building that has a red Spanish-tiled roof and ornate pressed-copper facade. After 20 years of being boarded up, a New York City developer has steel workers, electricians, masons, roofers and laborers working in and around the once-famed movie house — at 634 Central Ave., near the Orange border — for a grand reopening.

That will happen in three to four months. Developer Edmondo Schwartz is pumping about $1 million into creating what will become his dream-come-true multiplex: the Hollywood Cinemas. The five cinemas will have a total of 944 seats, including 27 set aside for the handicapped. And a new marquee — to replace the one dismantled over the building’s former eastern entrance, close to South Harrison Street — will be installed on the building’s western end. That is where a new entrance, vestibule and ticket office are being created.
In the days before television, VCRs, video rentals and DVDs, the Hollywood Theatre was the last of four great movie houses in East Orange. Constructed in 1925, the grand Hollywood Theatre featured ornate plaster columns, decorative molding, plush maroon seats and carpeting, a mezzanine-level projection room and bathrooms, a large stage and dressing rooms, a street-level ticket booth, and a 16-ton air conditioner that kept the 1,629-seat theater cool. Many of the building’s exterior physical characteristics will remain the same, but 18 workers are busy replacing the hole-filled roof, removing heavily water-damaged plaster, gutting the three ground-level stores that once existed there, installing 4,500 tons of new steel beams, creating a new mezzanine to house the theater’s projection room, a designing a new 17-foot-wide vestibule, 100-foot-long lobby and 24-foot-long concession stand.

The building’s original stage — where movies were shown on the silver screen, and where music acts, including R&B and soul acts from the 1960s and 1970s, once performed — will be transformed into the Hollywood Cinemas' only non-stadium-seating theater. It will be a conventional theater, with 159 seats, including four for the handicapped.

To coincide with the Hollywood’s rebirth, Bowser said, the city also is planning to work with an architect to create a “Walk of Fame” sidewalk — similar to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles — to honor some of the great personalities and celebrities who either lived, worked or passed through in East Orange. The city has a rich history. Singer-entertainer Dionne Warwick comes from East Orange, as does singer Whitney Houston, actor John Amos, and actress/rap singer/record company executive Dana (Queen Latifah) Owens. East Orange also was home to the late movie actress Joan Caulfield; singer/actor Gordon MacRae of “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel” fame; the late country pop singer Eddie Rabbitt; and even movie actress Bette Davis. Davis, a two-time Academy Award winner, lived in a now-demolished house on the southwest corner of North Arlington Avenue and William Street while she briefly attended East Orange High School as a teenager, and Clara Maas, famed nurse heroine who died during a 1901 experiment to see if yellow fever was caused by the bite of mosquitoes, used to live with her family on Main Street.

bamtino on September 14, 2004 at 8:12 pm

I haven’t been able to find the exact address yet, but the theatre is on Central Avenue, near South Harrison Street, in East Orange, NJ.