Loews Cheri
50 Dalton Street,
Boston,
MA
02115
50 Dalton Street,
Boston,
MA
02115
11 people
favorited this theater
Showing 51 - 75 of 76 comments
It may have been built as a twin, but it didn’t open as one. As I mentioned earlier, newspaper ads in September 1966 showed only one screen. And by then, the Symphony 1&2 already existed.
The Cheri was built as a twin, side by side auditoriums, and the third screen was added above, a couple of years later. This would have been Boston’s first multi-plex.
Perhaps the Cheri was built as a multiplex all along, but one screen opened earlier than the others?
One of the above posts mentions that the Cheri was originally a single screen that was “split” sometime during the 1960s. Was a large auditorium subdivided or a separate auditorium added? Given the configuration of the two lower level auditoriums, it’s hard to visualize what the theater would have looked like pre-subdivision (if that’s what happened).
Based on my visits to the Cheri triplex, I find it interesting that the auditorium mentioned above as Cinema 1 would be considered the “main theater.” Cinema 2, which was subdivided in 1989, was larger (although not by much) and the most popular attractions would, in my experience, be shown in Cinema 2 instead of Cinema 1. For example, I remember seeing “Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Kramer vs. Kramer” in Cinema 2 during the early weeks of their runs (I believe “Cuckoo’s Nest” was a Boston area exclusive). When I saw “The Abyss” in 70MM on opening day in 1989, it also was playing in Cinema 2 (one of the last films to play there before the subdivision).
Although the Cheri was never a favorite theater of mine, I enjoyed the large format customized advertising that Sack would feature on the outside wall of the Cheri (located between the two entrances to the lower level auditoriums) for current and future attractions; those ads provided a sense of showmanship for a complex that was otherwise lacking in that regard. The customized ads were discontinued by the late 1970s/early 1980s.
When you entered the lower lobby coming down the stairs from the street, you would have seen a concession stand in the center of the lobby in front of you. Behind it, Cinema I, which would be considered the “main theatre”. (as I remember it, anyway) To the right, up a couple of stairs, was auditorium number 2. Go up the elevator, and you would find another concession stand, and a small auditorium number 3.
Interesting factoid about the intermission for the reserved seat run of “Funny Lady.” The film was simultaneously shown at the Cheri on an unreserved seat basis in the auditorium on the upper level, which is where I saw the film. I don’t recall an intermission for the unreserved engagement.
Prior to the subdivision of one of the lower level auditoriums in 1989, I don’t think that the Cheri had what could be considered a “main theater.” Although the auditorium that was subdivided was larger than the other auditorium on the lower level, the difference in size between the two was not substantial.
The main thetaer here was great, the others were not as spacious or viewer-friendly. I saw the reserved seat engagement of “Funny Lady” here and remember that it actually had an intermission after “How Lucky Can You Get?”. I don’t know of any other engagements of this film that were roadshown. Great fun memory!
I’m not sure on when it happened, but when I worked there in the summer of 1968, I believe it was already a triple. I remember there was an elevator to go from the downstairs lobby to the theatre upstairs.
Do you know when it was twinned?
I looked at some Boston Globe microfilm from September 1966, and saw that the Cheri was then a single screen but the Symphony Cinemas were a twin. So the Herald obituary that I quoted above was incorrect.
The Cheri was a single theatre when it opened, and later split, with the third auditorium up on street level later.
This is where I saw my favorite movie of all time, Goodfellas, on opening night. On the way there, my buddy and I got to see a hit and run accident. We chased the car about 6 blocks before he finally got away from us.
The Cheri was a BIG disappointment. Coming from Louisville, where some of the multiplexes were quite excellent, most of the Boston theatres were a joke. I remember walking into the theatre and seeing a partially opened screen with curtains on either side. It seemed as though there were no good seats, with the screen being on the top of the slope and the back row at the bottom. I remember feeling like every seat forced you to look at the back of the head of the person in front of you.
At least the screen was big, I thought. So the movie started… and the curtains stayed where they are. What is this? A theatre this big with a screen that small. YUCK.
But hey, a great movie can overcome a lot. So this theatre holds memories for me.
For some reason, when Kings moved into this building, they changed the address from Dalton Street to the even more obscure 10 Scotia Street.
The Kings bowling alley and its various lanes and lounges occupy the former downstairs three-auditorium and lobby space, while the Summer Shack restaurant is housed in the former upstairs, fourth-auditorium space.
The two key elements which remain from the total property’s time as the Cheri include, with some signage changes, the overall form of the original marquee and three exterior one-sheet display cases incorporated into the Summer Shack space and presently used for advertising.
Advertising for this theatre always gave its address as “Dalton St. Opp. Sheraton Boston”. Dalton Street is an obscure side street, but the Sheraton Boston hotel is a well-known local landmark on the city skyline.
According to Boston Globe articles published at the time, the Cheri’s fourth screen opened on Friday, November 17, 1989. The third paragraph of the description above should be corrected.
From an obituary of Ben Sack, published in the Boston Herald on April 5, 2003:
“Opened in 1966, the Cheri was the city’s first multiplex cinema. He named it after a cruise ship he and his second wife had made a trip on.”
The Cheri’s last movies were shown on Thursday, November 8, 2001. The current Kings bowling alley and nightclub opened in March, 2003. It also includes a Jasper White’s Summer Shack restaurant.
I worked at the Sack Cheri for a couple of months in the summer of 1968 as an usher/concessionaire. The Manager was Joe Sasso, who went to work at Pasek Lock when he retired. There was an assistant manager who’s name I’ve forgotten, who would cruise the city after work, chasing ambulances, I think. Sorry I don’t have any anecdotes, but it was so long ago.
I do remember parking my 63 Volkswagon on the side street and having a sign in the window which said “Theatre Employee” which helped prevent getting a parking ticket.
And one day, while walking past the Uptown, which was nearly around the corner, and being torn down at the time, I found some old painted movie posters. (read my story about that under the Uptown thread).
The original 2 theatres, side by side, both had 70mm
Norelco’s. The 3rd house was added a year or two later by
constructing it on top of the 2 existing houses and facing the
opposite direction by sandwiching it in the first parking garage level. The rear of the screen was in back of the Dalton St.
marquee. There was no room in this house for the projection booth
at the rear of the auditorium so it was located in the ceiling about
30 feet back with a 45 degree keystone angle. The projection booth
was literally a cinder block structure near the end of the level 1
parking garage. The projection keystone problem by solved by obtaining special lenses from Germany, flat projection was ok, scope
projection did have a little abberation but most people never looked for it. It reportedly took BEN SACK a little while to convince the
Architects to squezze this house in.
Everybody at Loews always called it “Sher-rEE”, except when making fun of it by calling it the Cherry.
The official web site of Kings bowling alley and nightclub (which the Cheri has turned into) is:
http://www.backbaykings.com/
I have a two-part question that has always been hounding me: Is the theater name prounounced “Sherry” or “Sher-rEE?” And what is behind the name? Is it the theater owner’s daughter or maybe the owner just thought something French-sounding would be nice? If anyone could please solve this little mystery, you would much have my gratitude. :)
When ‘Funny Girl’ opened at the Cheri it played in all three theaters or awhile. Also the Cheri was the theater showing ‘The Killing of Sister George’ and had trouble because of the X rating.
I agree that the Cheri became a quad in 1989, not in the mid-1980s as I originally wrote. The last film that I saw in the largest Cheri auditorium before it was twinned was “The Abyss” in the summer of 1989.
When in Boston in the 1960s and 1970s I used to go to the Cheri frequently, less so after that. I lived in Providence, where films generally used to open much later than in Boston. Sometimes, with friends or alone, I would make the rounds of movie theatres, from the West End to the Exeter Street, the Paris to the Brattle. One strong memory I have from April of 1970 was taking a small group of high school seniors, students of Italian, to see “Fellini Satyricon” at the Cheri 3. Given the subject matter of the film and the fact that this was a Catholic school I taught in, I could have been fired.
The Cheri was converted from a triplex to a quad in 1989 and formally became such in November of that year (notably enough, the same week the Berlin Wall fell). Business (and the quality of its bookings) fell off as soon as the Fenway opened in June of 2000, subsisting mostly from that point on Paramount releases, other random major-studio offerings, a handful of genre flicks, and scattered move-overs from other Boston moviehouses.
The day the Loews Boston Common opened in late June of 2001, the Cheri became a discount house with a $5 admission policy. The ticket price was soon slashed to $3 but, by then, the Cheri’s fate was sealed and what had been the most popular place to catch a flick in the city closed its doors for good the following October, with ‘Hardball’, ‘Hearts in Atlantis’, ‘Memento’, and ‘The Score’ being its final offerings. (Just to list a handful of films I caught there over the years: ‘Back to School’, ‘The Breakfast Club’, ‘The Quick and the Dead’, ‘GoldenEye’, ‘Copycat’, ‘Titanic’, ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’, ‘Shrek’, and far, far, too many more to list.)