Michael Todd Theatre
170 N. Dearborn Street,
Chicago,
IL
60601
170 N. Dearborn Street,
Chicago,
IL
60601
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When the theaters opened for a short time to play porno films, they were renamed the Dearborn Theaters.
Today I will be visiting the site, which is now the Goodman Theater, to see a David Mamet play, Life in the Theater.
The remodelings in 1957 were by reknowned architect Bertrand Goldberg.
The facades were landmarked; it would have been difficult (though not unprecedented) to tear them down.
I heard that when Elizabeth Taylor found out that the theaters were showing porno films, she closed the theaters.
Michael Todd Jr’s step Mom Elizabeth Taylor had a non-speaking walk on in the movie “Scent of Mystery”. Elizabeth Talylor owned the Micheal Todd theatre for many years following his death.brucec
Actually it was his son Michael Todd Jr.
Michael Todd introduced “Smelovision” here with his film Scent of Mystery. Various odors were pumped into the auditorium during the movie.
In doing some research I have discovered that the Todd actually re-opened in September of 1979 playing double features of either second run or revival films. Most of the revival films were kung fu or blaxploitation films that were very popular with loop theatergoers in the mid 70’s. One kung fu double feature even played there for three weeks. For whatever reason the theater closed six weeks after it re-opened with its final booking being a double feature of “Coffy” and “The Mack”. Perhaps local investors rented the building to see how it would go and decided the cost of keeping it open was too much.
The Michael Todd was a top exclusive run house in the Loop through the 60’s. In the 70’s it’s only major exclusive hits were “A Clockwork Orange” and “Sounder”. The booking policy was very odd there. After the long successful run of “Clockwork” the Todd replaced it with an X-rated film called “Female Animal”. The Todd also housed the exclusive premiere of “Flesh Gordon” and “Emmanuelle”. By 1975 the Todd became more known as the theater that played the hold overs from other theaters in the vicinity. I can remember both “Claudine” and “Tommy” moving from their original runs over to the Todd. Also the Todd played many re-releases sometimes more then once. Both “2001” and “Woodstock” played there at least 3 times. In 1976 the Todd’s life was winding down and it became a second run double feature house. The theater finally closed in February of 1977 with “Silver Streak” and “Carrie” as its final booking. In October of 1977 Sunn Classic pictures rented the theater for a two week run of their film “The Lincoln Conspiracy”. After that the theater closed for good until 1987. The Todd and its neighbor the Cinestage were combined into one building and became known as the Dearborn Cinemas which showed double features on both screens. This experiment didn’t hit and the building was shuttered a year later until the Goodman took over. I’m thrilled that the original facade still remains as a reminder of what was.