I honestly do not know. My dad remembers the same mall on 27th Ave you speak of. He specifically remembers eating at a drive-in restaurant across from that mall on 79th. He thinks it was a Frank and Bun.
So the Playtime is closing this weekend? Where did you hear this? What a bummer!
The Playtime started showing general release probably about 1991. I remember I was just graduating high school when they went legit and that was in 1991. They had an article in the Florida Times Union about the change and showed FORBIDDEN WORLD and THE GROOVE TUBE as they made the switch.
From what I understand, the New Amsterdam was closed at the time so the production probably had free reign. The place is set up like some swinger’s club with individual rooms so it’s possible it’s a mock-up on a set.
I can’t believe it hasn’t been brought up yet, but the Lyric is portrayed significantly in the 1988 Sam Elliott/Peter Weller actioner SHAKEDOWN.
Now since I can’t confirm the authenticity of the interior, somebody with first hand knowledge will have to chime in.
The theater is portrayed as undercover cop Eliott’s office. You’re shown a screen and auditorium. The movie showing is James Glickenhaus’s THE SOLDIER (he also directed SHAKEDOWN).
It’s definitely the interior lobby because Weller and Elliot are tracked from the concession stand to the outside and it’s obvious they came from inside the Lyric by then.
Lots of other 42nd Street theatres on display in the film including the interior of the New Amsterdam.
I agree that folks, including me, are possibly underestimating the value of the Roosevelt and what it stood for in terms of classic showmanship. However, it may be a generational thing. I take very seriously the exploitation and 70’s porn genre and the theatres that used to show such films, sometimes to obsession, as you obviously do the Cinerama Roadshow aspects of this house.
I was born in North Miami in 1973 and growing up, theatres like the Roosevelt, I remember as mostly porn. I was fascinated as a child driving past these older movie theatres and seeing the marquees promoting such questionable films. I’d always imagine what it would be like inside. Sometimes, it wasn’t even the movies that got me going as much as the thought of ambiance and what the architecture must look like within. But I usually think of them in the terms of the genres I mentioned above because basically, that’s the part of film history I’m into.
Unfortunately, it seems the only time news outlets would mention these theatres is in porn raids or closings of theatres. I’ve recently become fascinated with Leroy Griffith and think what a documentary on him would be like.
Once again, I agree with you on your above comment. I’d also like to say that your thoughtful and historically informative posts on Miami theatres have educated me on past glories these theatres once had, opening my mind to more than just the more lurid aspects that I seem to crave.
I think there’s room for all kinds of comments but I hope in no way have I, or any of my posts, detracted from your enjoyment here.
Rialto hangs tough with action films – Last downtown picture show has endured some hard times
The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution – July 28, 1985
Author: POUSNER, HOWARD, Howard Pousner Staff Writer: STAFF
The Rialto , the last picture show in downtown Atlanta , may be the only theater in the metropolitan area where the ushers are armed with billy clubs.
Since the Omni 6 closed last year, the 1,200-seat Rialto has gone it alone as the only movie theater in the heart of the city – an area where marquees bearing nostalgic names such as Grand, Paramount and Roxy once shone.
The theater at the corner of Forsyth and Luckie streets has endured some hard times since it opened in 1962, replacing the first Rialto , which had fueled Atlantans' film fantasies at the same site since 1916. But the theater’s longevity is less a matter of the survival of the fittest than of its ability to take a licking and come back kicking.
Once one of the city’s premier theaters, the Rialto is hanging tough today with “action” flicks starring the likes of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and that one-man demolition derby, Sylvester Stallone.
“We classify this as an action house,” said Rialto manager Bob Denham, “and it attracts an action crowd.”
That’s why there’s a sign at the entrance persuading patrons to permit the “doorman” to check all bags and coats, and laying down the Rialto law: “No alcohol, weapons, drugs, food or radios.”
Inside the immense auditorium, the matted carpeting and crudely restitched slashed curtains give the Rialto a desolate aura – like a setting from a Dirty Harry movie.
Appearances aside, Denham said, “Our customers are probably subjected to fewer disturbances than in most first-run theaters, where ushers are a thing of the past.” The in-house security force is a thing of the present at the Rialto , where overhead aisle lights are left on throughout the show so that troublemakers can be easily spotted and ejected.
Instead of the premieres of days gone by such as “It Happened One Night” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” the Rialto ’s coming attractions include “War of Dragons,” whose garish poster outside assails passers-by with the aphorism: “Life Is Cheap When Death Comes Fast!”
“If we put a love story or a Disney picture on the screen, we’d fall flat on our face,” said Denham, adding that the Rialto sells between 4,000 and 5,000 tickets in an average week. Admission is $2 for a double feature; tickets are two-for-one on Bargain Wednesdays.
The Rialto ’s success stems from giving the people what they want, said C.L. Patrick, chairman of the board of the 450-screen Carmike Cinemas chain, which owns the theater. “There’s a demand for the kind of movies the Rialto shows,” he said. “Those – what do you call them? – kung fu movies do really well there.”
Denham, an action fan himself, said the Oriental chop-‘em-ups and American-made gun-'em-downs such as Chuck Norris’ “Code of Silence” draw equally well. “Action movies have a tendency to get you involved,” he explained. “They’re far-fetched, but you can feed yourself into the picture – root for the good guy, hate the bad guy.”
Bob Moscow, who managed the theater from the late ‘40s until the early '60s, misses the time when Atlantans made a night of dining downtown and taking in Rialto presentations such as “On the Beach,” “High Noon” and “The Caine Mutiny.” “We used to fight with all the downtown theaters for product,” he said. “We wanted to play all the top pictures.”
Atlanta ’s suburban sprawl and increasing land values in the central city drew the curtain on downtown’s prominence as a movie showplace. Only the Rialto remains, and, said Moscow, “It’s a different business now.”
ILL-FATED PARAMOUNT THEATER NEEDS A REAL-LIFE HERO
Miami Herald, The (FL) – June 13, 1982
Author: BETH DUNLOP Herald Architecture Critic
Consider the plight of the Paramount: Nobody really wants to lose it, but nobody can figure out a good way to save it, either. It is a movietheater with no movies , a historic work of architecture with too few champions, an illustrious piece of Palm Beach’s history that may be doomed.
The Paramount Theater was designed by Joseph Urban, once an architect for the Austrian emperor Franz Josef, later an architect and set designer for the American impresario Florenz
Ziegfeld.
For the last two years — since the last movie – theater operator showed the last movie there — the Paramount has had a troubled status. It has been the subject of protracted negotiations between the owner, First Southern Holdings, and the Palm Beach Town Council, but that didn’t save the movietheater as a theater .
In the last year, the Palm Beach Preservation Foundation has searched vainly for a new theater operator or for someone to renovate and use the building. Richard Kearns, the preservation foundation president, has talked to movie – theater owners, film distributers, stage companies and others, to little avail. No one seems to want to run the Paramount, despite its architectural beauty and in-town Palm Beach location.
The latest idea to surface is to turn the 1,100-seat Paramount into a restaurant with a small theater . It is an idea that sparks some hope, and it certainly bodes better for the building than First Southern’s eventual plan of converting it into offices — a destiny incompatible with the Paramount’s past and its architecture.
The Paramount sits on a corner of South County Road, diagonally across from St. Edward’s Church. It has a covered arcade-like entrance, an open-air hallway flanked by shops that leads to a courtyard, which leads to the theater itself.
It is a beautifully proportioned, detailed building with a preposterous Islamic-style dome, invisible from inside the theater . The outside of the complex — the theater and the two- story extensions that wrap around the courtyard and form the
entrance — have delightfully inventive columns, some of which are capped with carved seagulls or masks of comedy and tragedy. There are Romanesque touches and Gothic arches.
Inside, the fan-shaped theater is a showcase of the best of Urban’s talents. It is as if one of his stage sets had come to life: wood ceilings and doweled wood doors and elongated chandeliers, wooden columns topped with the heads of bearded men — Neptune, possibly, or Shakespeare. Fish swim across iron grates, and a row of arches runs behind the balcony.
But all of that seems ordinary next to the extraordinary canvas murals covering the walls, floor to ceiling. The murals are painted in murky, luminescent sea colors — blues and greens and golds—and show huge fish swimming through lacy seaweed; they are much like storybook illustrations, decorative and enchanting.
Urban designed it all— the pattern in the rug, gold leaves set against a green background, the green geometric art deco pattern in the seat coverings. It was typical of him to orchestrate everything.
As an architect, Urban was ever the dramatist. He carefully chose the colors of his buildings, and the rich palettes he worked with ultimately got him his last commission, as the color specialist for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1932.
When the Paramount opened on Jan. 9, 1927 (the movie was Beau Geste with Ronald Colman), Urban asked the women of Palm Beach to dress in silks of seafoam green to blend with his color scheme. Or so legend has it.
Legend also has it that in attendance that night was Wilson Mizner, the journalist-pundit who wrote The Front Page and whose brother Addison was the primary architect of Palm Beach. Mizner, it is said, surveyed the crowds and the murals with all those gigantic fish. “My God,” he is reported to have muttered, “Harry Thaw shot the wrong man.”
(Harry Thaw was the Pittsburgh industrialist who two decades earlier—as the result of a love triangle— shot Stanford White, the architect of such magnificent New York City buildings as the old Penn Station, the old Madison Square Garden and the Villard houses. In a way, that was a compliment, even
from Wilson Mizner.)
Urban was born in Austria in 1872 and became an architect against family wishes. His first job was in Cairo, decorating the Abdin Palace for the Khedive of Egypt; in 1898, he designed a house for Count Esterhazy of Hungary. During that time he linked up with the Vienna Secessionists, among the earliest modern architects, and designed the Austrian exhibit for the Paris Exposition in 1900. Shortly after, he and 35 others resigned from the Secessionists to form their own organization, the Hagenbund.
Urban first came to the United States in 1904 as the designer of the Austrian Pavilion for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Four years later, he became the architect for the festival celebrating the 50th year of Franz Josef’s reign.
But in 1904, Urban also started his corollary career in set design, for the Royal Opera, then for the production of Pelleus and Melisande in Paris. In subsequent years, he would design sets for the Boston Opera, Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera. One writer estimated that Urban designed as many as 700 sets for 168 productions, including the Ziegfeld Follies. That doesn’t include the movie sets he designed.
As an architect, Urban designed only a few buildings, and even fewer of them still stand. His Ziegfeld Theater , built in 1926, was torn down in 1967 for the construction of Burlington House, and several of the Palm Beach buildings attributed to him — including three houses and the Oasis Club — are gone. But the Hearst Magazine Building, a fabulous seven-story building at West 57th Street and Eighth Avenue in New York, still stands with its statues and spires. And the New School for Social Research in New York remains a vanguard modern building, perpetually praised for its auditorium.
Aside from the Paramount, two of Urban’s great masterpieces remain in Palm Beach. The biggest and most famous of these is the palatial, mostly Moorish—Islamic Mar-a-Lago, which he designed for E.F. Hutton and which gained its much-ogled fame as the dwelling of Hutton’s widow, the late Marjorie Merriweather Post. When she died, Post willed Mar-a-Lago to the U.S. government, but it was deemed too expensive to operate so is now for sale. Urban also designed the oceanside Bath and Tennis Club, intended as a rival to Mizner’s Everglades Club.
For these two buildings Urban chose an elaborate, confected style, a Moorish-Spanish-Italian-Islamic architecture with a fairy-tale quality. The Paramount is a more subdued, transitional building, somewhere between Moroccan and art deco.
To lose it — or merely to lose the murals — would be a tragedy. This building is important to the townscape and to the town’s history. Will Rogers appeared on its skimpy stage, and so did Al Jolson, Babe Ruth and W.C. Fields.
But the Paramount is, more than anything, a remarkable building and an essential piece of Joseph Urban’s legacy. As a theater or a restaurant, it could regain a role in the daily life of Palm Beach.
I used to go to the Disney movies here. I also remember seeing that weird ass THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD with my dad at the Shores. It always struck me as a oddly designed but interesting theatre because of all the standing room at the back of the hall, which was where the bathrooms were located. You’d walk out of the bathroom and boom, back in the theatre. Wonder if they kept the turnstiles?
Apparently, if this website is correct, the City of North Miami is going to buy the theatre and re-open it for the community. Meaning no movies, just plays and other crap.
But if they let it exist, I’ll take it. There’s also a picture from 1954 here.
Washington Post, The (DC) – October 30, 1981
Author: Michael Kernan
IT IS 7:30 on a Saturday night, and the Ontario Theater is embarking on a marathon of the three “Omen” movies, one after the other. Thirty people are rattling around in the great dark chamber which has room for 1,100. The floor isn’t canted, to speak of, but the huge screen is so high that it doesn’t matter. A stage projects several yards in front of it. The place is clean, amazingly clean.
“We have three films every night,” says Seth Hurwitz, the former manager who now books pictures for the Ontario when he isn’t running his own booking company, IMP (“(It’s May Party”). “Three movies for $3, it’s a gimmick. I go to all the screenings of first-run pictures and only use proven hits. The neighborhood is changing, and we try to keep that in mind.”
The neighborhood is perhaps Washington’s most interesting, Adams-Morgan, the Columbia Road area between 16th and Connecticut. Blacks, whites, Latinos, artists, embassy people, white-haired apartment dwellers … and he’s right, it is changing, and the prices are going up.
“I tried ‘Elephant Man,’ and that didn’t go. I tried ‘Straw Dogs,’ which has plenty of violence, but it didn’t go. I put the classic ‘Freaks’ in with ‘The Fantastic Animation Festival,’ but that didn’t work either. But they loved ‘Gloria,’ which is a classy movie but violent.”
Now the audience is building. People drift in steadily, paying no attention to the movie times. A group, laden with cups, pails and bushel baskets of popcorn, files in and settles itself. On the screen, David Warner is being nastily beheaded by sheet glass, the sound track is screaming and blood is pumping, but the talkative newcomers don’t bother to look.
Recently a local magazine attacked the Ontario for running so much violence, notably the sadistic “I Spit on Your Grave.” Hurwitz and the present manager, Carlos Rosario, say they are doing their best to upgrade the product while still making a living. On weekends the theater shows Spanish-language films, mostly Mexican, with the occasional Cantinflas comedy (no subtitles). These do very well indeed.The live rock concerts also do well.
“It’s expensive to operate as a concert Hall,” Hurwitz says, “because there are no lights or sound, everything has to be brought in and taken out. We pick them carefully, charge $8 or $9, you have to be sure you have a hit. We had three this year, all sellouts.”
One problem is making the theater attractive to suburban kids who might feel threatened by the neighborhood and perhaps don’t understand the uninhibited Columbia Road audiences. The Ontario goes out of its way to have police protection at concerts and a couple of black-belt bouncers hanging around … “They’re kids themselves, and they’re concerned mainly with the fire regulations. It’s a happy group, a little noisy, but we’ve never had any trouble,” Hurwitz says.
The first “Omen” picture is over, and more people drift in from the black-marble-and-mirror lobby designed by Marvin Goldman when K-B Theaters took over the place in 1958. Someone calls to a friend clear across the theater. the friend shouts happily back. Small children run up and down the aisles. Everyone seems immune to the film’s determined spookiness. It is only when the action explodes that the chatter stops, like crickets in the country when a car passes.
“ Outrageous is our byword,” Hurwitz says. “We don’t do any X-rated stuff. I would say the ideal combination was ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘halloween II.’ The perfect Ontario movie. Sometimes they come in late and don’t like it and demand their money back, or they want to pay $1 just to see the last picture.”
For several years he tried to run hard-ticket reserved-seat programs at the Ontario , but it was no good. The turning point came in March 1979, when Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” opened, and receipts went through the roof. Since then, the Ontario Theater has provided a fascinating study in esthetics, teetering delicately on the razor’s edge between art and money. It’s also the last word in community movie theaters.
The other night they had a ridiculous picture called “Dracula’s Dog.” A guy came up to the box office and said, “I didnt know dracula had no dawg.” But he paid his $3 and went in anyway.
The brittle plastic sign, crumbling since the last movie flickered on the screen years ago, still advertises the North Dade Drive-in Theater.
It is but the tattered remains of the Wometco drive-in theater that opened in 1956 with searchlights fanning the sky, a blimp flying over the 10-acre site, and local celebrities such as newsman Ralph Renick attending the grand opening.
The feature attraction was Marty and the Gunfighter.
In the heyday of the drive-in, the North Dade theater was one of 25 in Dade County. None outlived videocassette recorders and cable television. Only one drive-in survives in Broward County.
Wometco held onto the North Dade Drive-in until 1986.
Now, after sitting vacant and overgrown for years, a new sign has been posted in front of the property at 17175 NW 27th Ave.
Come October, construction begins there on a new shopping center, said Terry Francen, leasing director for Plaza Development Group.
“We’re building this, no question,” he said.
On July 27, the Metro Commission removed a covenant on the property, which was zoned for a flea market, to permit a proposed shopping center and to allow submission of a new site plan for a proposed 99,678-square-foot retail complex.
Those plans, 80 percent complete, call for a Winn-Dixie store, a McCrory’s and a Rite-Aid drug store, Francen said.
“It happens to be easy to build a shopping center there,” he said. “It’s pretty much ready to build on.”
The site was chosen because the Winn-Dixie store at Northwest 27th Avenue and 183rd Street had outgrown that location and needed room nearby to expand, he said.
“It’s a good area,” Francen said. “We’ve gotten a lot of response. We’ll probably be 80 to 90 percent leased before we
put a shovel in the ground.”
A Movie Stop sits on the property now along with Starbucks, Applebees, etc. I like to walk around the Movie Stop with my friends and say, “Hey, I saw that here.”
DRIVE – IN TO SHOW ITS LAST PICTURE
Miami Herald, The (FL) – July 10, 1987
Author: GEOFFREY TOMB Herald Staff Writer
A lot of firsts happened indrive – in movies: First kisses. Baby’s first night out. First swallows of beer. First scary movie.
Now you count lasts. Dade’s next-to-last drive – in , the Tropicaire at Bird Road and the Palmetto Expressway, will be closing down. It was called the South’s most modern drive – in when it opened in February 1949.
Gone will be the Americana of the Tropicaire ’s peeling green facade, pink and green neon and 10 palm trees poking out of planters behind the 40-foot screen. The palm fronds blow in the breeze as if summer nights are forever.
The Tropicaire will go the way of the Dixie (1979 for a Publix) and the Golden Glades (1981 for a warehouse). Dade, which had 19 drive – ins 25 years ago, will be left with just the
Turnpike Twin, at 12850 NW 27th Ave.
Thursday, the Metro Commission approved zoning changes that would allow developers to build a 287,000-square-foot shopping center on the 28-acre Tropicaire site, now used Thursday through Sunday nights for last-run, pre-video movies and on weekend days for a flea market. Its future is also dim.
“The flea market on Saturdays and Sundays was the only thing that really kept us going,” said Keith McComas, Tropicaire ’s owner. He is 69.
“It used to be we would have 1,500 to 2,000 on a good night. Now we are lucky if we get 200 people in there on a Friday or Saturday.”
There were 27 paid parked in the lot Thursday at 8:38 p.m. when Three Amigos flickered on. Platoon was the second feature.
Some views on drive – ins from Tropicaire customers:
“It is just being out of doors in the evening when the sun goes down,” said Arthur Brill. He drove from Homestead with his wife, Judy, and seven kids sitting in the bed of a blue Ford pick up.
“We can take all the neighbor’s kids,” said Judy Brill.
Kids under age 12 are free. Adults are $2.50. For $5 the Brills treated nine to a double feature show. No one at a drive – in calls them films.
“ Drive – ins are as American as apple pie,” said Jim Spittler of North Bay Village. “This one has the best corn dogs in Florida.”
“You can dress casual, relax, kick off your shoes and prop up your feet,” said Bill Freeland of South Carolina.
“It’s a shame,” said Terri Jaramillo of Homestead. “Now we will have to stay home and watch TV.”
Her bumper sticker read “Too Many Boys. Not Enough Men.”
“We will miss the place. There is enough shopping centers,” said Donna Stomick of Kendall.
Bill Ogden, president of Brancroft Development, said the group hopes to build a “Key West-style” shopping plaza of about 50 stores and more than 1,100 parking spaces on the spot. It will be called Tropicaire Center. This will happen in six months, said theater owner McComas.
Dade Mayor Steve Clark had his own views on the new shopping center: “It will be an upgrading of the property.”
Miami Herald, The (FL) – August 11, 1983
Author: Herald Staff
A half-eaten hot dog that someone left behind during a
break-in at the concession stand of the Boulevard Drive-In , 14301 Biscayne Blvd., attracted a large scorpion that nearly stung a member of the theater’s cleaning crew Saturday, police said.
Police said North Miami Beach Officer Theodore Miller, who responded to the burglary report, killed the scorpion.
Police said someone entered the concession stand between 2 and 11 a.m. The intruder broke the locks on the refrigerator, freezer and cabinets but took nothing.
The burglars did eat several hot dogs that had been left out but dropped one on the floor, police said. That attracted the scorpion.
A similar break-in occurred at the theater two months ago, police said.
Some Sun Theater ads here:
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Got an address on the Star Twin. 79th Street and 30th Ave in the Woolco Shopping Center. Google maps lists this intersection as NW.
Don,
I honestly do not know. My dad remembers the same mall on 27th Ave you speak of. He specifically remembers eating at a drive-in restaurant across from that mall on 79th. He thinks it was a Frank and Bun.
Harvey
Not to be confused with the 183rd Street Theater at 183rd and Collins Ave on Miami Beach.
Address was 12760 Biscayne Blvd.
Ad for the 79th Street Art
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This had nothing to with the Star II, which as I understand was located in the 79th Street Mall, correct?
So the Playtime is closing this weekend? Where did you hear this? What a bummer!
The Playtime started showing general release probably about 1991. I remember I was just graduating high school when they went legit and that was in 1991. They had an article in the Florida Times Union about the change and showed FORBIDDEN WORLD and THE GROOVE TUBE as they made the switch.
From what I understand, the New Amsterdam was closed at the time so the production probably had free reign. The place is set up like some swinger’s club with individual rooms so it’s possible it’s a mock-up on a set.
SHAKEDOWN Lyric shots and one SHAKEDOWN New Amsterdam
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I can’t believe it hasn’t been brought up yet, but the Lyric is portrayed significantly in the 1988 Sam Elliott/Peter Weller actioner SHAKEDOWN.
Now since I can’t confirm the authenticity of the interior, somebody with first hand knowledge will have to chime in.
The theater is portrayed as undercover cop Eliott’s office. You’re shown a screen and auditorium. The movie showing is James Glickenhaus’s THE SOLDIER (he also directed SHAKEDOWN).
It’s definitely the interior lobby because Weller and Elliot are tracked from the concession stand to the outside and it’s obvious they came from inside the Lyric by then.
Lots of other 42nd Street theatres on display in the film including the interior of the New Amsterdam.
Address listed as 222 NE 1 AVE in a Feb. 1980 Miami Herald.
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Very nice. Thanks for sharing it.
Al,
I agree that folks, including me, are possibly underestimating the value of the Roosevelt and what it stood for in terms of classic showmanship. However, it may be a generational thing. I take very seriously the exploitation and 70’s porn genre and the theatres that used to show such films, sometimes to obsession, as you obviously do the Cinerama Roadshow aspects of this house.
I was born in North Miami in 1973 and growing up, theatres like the Roosevelt, I remember as mostly porn. I was fascinated as a child driving past these older movie theatres and seeing the marquees promoting such questionable films. I’d always imagine what it would be like inside. Sometimes, it wasn’t even the movies that got me going as much as the thought of ambiance and what the architecture must look like within. But I usually think of them in the terms of the genres I mentioned above because basically, that’s the part of film history I’m into.
Unfortunately, it seems the only time news outlets would mention these theatres is in porn raids or closings of theatres. I’ve recently become fascinated with Leroy Griffith and think what a documentary on him would be like.
Once again, I agree with you on your above comment. I’d also like to say that your thoughtful and historically informative posts on Miami theatres have educated me on past glories these theatres once had, opening my mind to more than just the more lurid aspects that I seem to crave.
I think there’s room for all kinds of comments but I hope in no way have I, or any of my posts, detracted from your enjoyment here.
Sincerely,
Eric Harvey
Rialto hangs tough with action films – Last downtown picture show has endured some hard times
The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution – July 28, 1985
Author: POUSNER, HOWARD, Howard Pousner Staff Writer: STAFF
The Rialto , the last picture show in downtown Atlanta , may be the only theater in the metropolitan area where the ushers are armed with billy clubs.
Since the Omni 6 closed last year, the 1,200-seat Rialto has gone it alone as the only movie theater in the heart of the city – an area where marquees bearing nostalgic names such as Grand, Paramount and Roxy once shone.
The theater at the corner of Forsyth and Luckie streets has endured some hard times since it opened in 1962, replacing the first Rialto , which had fueled Atlantans' film fantasies at the same site since 1916. But the theater’s longevity is less a matter of the survival of the fittest than of its ability to take a licking and come back kicking.
Once one of the city’s premier theaters, the Rialto is hanging tough today with “action” flicks starring the likes of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and that one-man demolition derby, Sylvester Stallone.
“We classify this as an action house,” said Rialto manager Bob Denham, “and it attracts an action crowd.”
That’s why there’s a sign at the entrance persuading patrons to permit the “doorman” to check all bags and coats, and laying down the Rialto law: “No alcohol, weapons, drugs, food or radios.”
Inside the immense auditorium, the matted carpeting and crudely restitched slashed curtains give the Rialto a desolate aura – like a setting from a Dirty Harry movie.
Appearances aside, Denham said, “Our customers are probably subjected to fewer disturbances than in most first-run theaters, where ushers are a thing of the past.” The in-house security force is a thing of the present at the Rialto , where overhead aisle lights are left on throughout the show so that troublemakers can be easily spotted and ejected.
Instead of the premieres of days gone by such as “It Happened One Night” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” the Rialto ’s coming attractions include “War of Dragons,” whose garish poster outside assails passers-by with the aphorism: “Life Is Cheap When Death Comes Fast!”
“If we put a love story or a Disney picture on the screen, we’d fall flat on our face,” said Denham, adding that the Rialto sells between 4,000 and 5,000 tickets in an average week. Admission is $2 for a double feature; tickets are two-for-one on Bargain Wednesdays.
The Rialto ’s success stems from giving the people what they want, said C.L. Patrick, chairman of the board of the 450-screen Carmike Cinemas chain, which owns the theater. “There’s a demand for the kind of movies the Rialto shows,” he said. “Those – what do you call them? – kung fu movies do really well there.”
Denham, an action fan himself, said the Oriental chop-‘em-ups and American-made gun-'em-downs such as Chuck Norris’ “Code of Silence” draw equally well. “Action movies have a tendency to get you involved,” he explained. “They’re far-fetched, but you can feed yourself into the picture – root for the good guy, hate the bad guy.”
Bob Moscow, who managed the theater from the late ‘40s until the early '60s, misses the time when Atlantans made a night of dining downtown and taking in Rialto presentations such as “On the Beach,” “High Noon” and “The Caine Mutiny.” “We used to fight with all the downtown theaters for product,” he said. “We wanted to play all the top pictures.”
Atlanta ’s suburban sprawl and increasing land values in the central city drew the curtain on downtown’s prominence as a movie showplace. Only the Rialto remains, and, said Moscow, “It’s a different business now.”
Patsy: Very cool. Please let me know what she has to say.
ILL-FATED PARAMOUNT THEATER NEEDS A REAL-LIFE HERO
Miami Herald, The (FL) – June 13, 1982
Author: BETH DUNLOP Herald Architecture Critic
Consider the plight of the Paramount: Nobody really wants to lose it, but nobody can figure out a good way to save it, either. It is a movietheater with no movies , a historic work of architecture with too few champions, an illustrious piece of Palm Beach’s history that may be doomed.
The Paramount Theater was designed by Joseph Urban, once an architect for the Austrian emperor Franz Josef, later an architect and set designer for the American impresario Florenz
Ziegfeld.
For the last two years — since the last movie – theater operator showed the last movie there — the Paramount has had a troubled status. It has been the subject of protracted negotiations between the owner, First Southern Holdings, and the Palm Beach Town Council, but that didn’t save the movietheater as a theater .
In the last year, the Palm Beach Preservation Foundation has searched vainly for a new theater operator or for someone to renovate and use the building. Richard Kearns, the preservation foundation president, has talked to movie – theater owners, film distributers, stage companies and others, to little avail. No one seems to want to run the Paramount, despite its architectural beauty and in-town Palm Beach location.
The latest idea to surface is to turn the 1,100-seat Paramount into a restaurant with a small theater . It is an idea that sparks some hope, and it certainly bodes better for the building than First Southern’s eventual plan of converting it into offices — a destiny incompatible with the Paramount’s past and its architecture.
The Paramount sits on a corner of South County Road, diagonally across from St. Edward’s Church. It has a covered arcade-like entrance, an open-air hallway flanked by shops that leads to a courtyard, which leads to the theater itself.
It is a beautifully proportioned, detailed building with a preposterous Islamic-style dome, invisible from inside the theater . The outside of the complex — the theater and the two- story extensions that wrap around the courtyard and form the
entrance — have delightfully inventive columns, some of which are capped with carved seagulls or masks of comedy and tragedy. There are Romanesque touches and Gothic arches.
Inside, the fan-shaped theater is a showcase of the best of Urban’s talents. It is as if one of his stage sets had come to life: wood ceilings and doweled wood doors and elongated chandeliers, wooden columns topped with the heads of bearded men — Neptune, possibly, or Shakespeare. Fish swim across iron grates, and a row of arches runs behind the balcony.
But all of that seems ordinary next to the extraordinary canvas murals covering the walls, floor to ceiling. The murals are painted in murky, luminescent sea colors — blues and greens and golds—and show huge fish swimming through lacy seaweed; they are much like storybook illustrations, decorative and enchanting.
Urban designed it all— the pattern in the rug, gold leaves set against a green background, the green geometric art deco pattern in the seat coverings. It was typical of him to orchestrate everything.
As an architect, Urban was ever the dramatist. He carefully chose the colors of his buildings, and the rich palettes he worked with ultimately got him his last commission, as the color specialist for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1932.
When the Paramount opened on Jan. 9, 1927 (the movie was Beau Geste with Ronald Colman), Urban asked the women of Palm Beach to dress in silks of seafoam green to blend with his color scheme. Or so legend has it.
Legend also has it that in attendance that night was Wilson Mizner, the journalist-pundit who wrote The Front Page and whose brother Addison was the primary architect of Palm Beach. Mizner, it is said, surveyed the crowds and the murals with all those gigantic fish. “My God,” he is reported to have muttered, “Harry Thaw shot the wrong man.”
(Harry Thaw was the Pittsburgh industrialist who two decades earlier—as the result of a love triangle— shot Stanford White, the architect of such magnificent New York City buildings as the old Penn Station, the old Madison Square Garden and the Villard houses. In a way, that was a compliment, even
from Wilson Mizner.)
Urban was born in Austria in 1872 and became an architect against family wishes. His first job was in Cairo, decorating the Abdin Palace for the Khedive of Egypt; in 1898, he designed a house for Count Esterhazy of Hungary. During that time he linked up with the Vienna Secessionists, among the earliest modern architects, and designed the Austrian exhibit for the Paris Exposition in 1900. Shortly after, he and 35 others resigned from the Secessionists to form their own organization, the Hagenbund.
Urban first came to the United States in 1904 as the designer of the Austrian Pavilion for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Four years later, he became the architect for the festival celebrating the 50th year of Franz Josef’s reign.
But in 1904, Urban also started his corollary career in set design, for the Royal Opera, then for the production of Pelleus and Melisande in Paris. In subsequent years, he would design sets for the Boston Opera, Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera. One writer estimated that Urban designed as many as 700 sets for 168 productions, including the Ziegfeld Follies. That doesn’t include the movie sets he designed.
As an architect, Urban designed only a few buildings, and even fewer of them still stand. His Ziegfeld Theater , built in 1926, was torn down in 1967 for the construction of Burlington House, and several of the Palm Beach buildings attributed to him — including three houses and the Oasis Club — are gone. But the Hearst Magazine Building, a fabulous seven-story building at West 57th Street and Eighth Avenue in New York, still stands with its statues and spires. And the New School for Social Research in New York remains a vanguard modern building, perpetually praised for its auditorium.
Aside from the Paramount, two of Urban’s great masterpieces remain in Palm Beach. The biggest and most famous of these is the palatial, mostly Moorish—Islamic Mar-a-Lago, which he designed for E.F. Hutton and which gained its much-ogled fame as the dwelling of Hutton’s widow, the late Marjorie Merriweather Post. When she died, Post willed Mar-a-Lago to the U.S. government, but it was deemed too expensive to operate so is now for sale. Urban also designed the oceanside Bath and Tennis Club, intended as a rival to Mizner’s Everglades Club.
For these two buildings Urban chose an elaborate, confected style, a Moorish-Spanish-Italian-Islamic architecture with a fairy-tale quality. The Paramount is a more subdued, transitional building, somewhere between Moroccan and art deco.
To lose it — or merely to lose the murals — would be a tragedy. This building is important to the townscape and to the town’s history. Will Rogers appeared on its skimpy stage, and so did Al Jolson, Babe Ruth and W.C. Fields.
But the Paramount is, more than anything, a remarkable building and an essential piece of Joseph Urban’s legacy. As a theater or a restaurant, it could regain a role in the daily life of Palm Beach.
I used to go to the Disney movies here. I also remember seeing that weird ass THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD with my dad at the Shores. It always struck me as a oddly designed but interesting theatre because of all the standing room at the back of the hall, which was where the bathrooms were located. You’d walk out of the bathroom and boom, back in the theatre. Wonder if they kept the turnstiles?
Apparently, if this website is correct, the City of North Miami is going to buy the theatre and re-open it for the community. Meaning no movies, just plays and other crap.
But if they let it exist, I’ll take it. There’s also a picture from 1954 here.
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Our Own Outrageous Ontario
Washington Post, The (DC) – October 30, 1981
Author: Michael Kernan
IT IS 7:30 on a Saturday night, and the Ontario Theater is embarking on a marathon of the three “Omen” movies, one after the other. Thirty people are rattling around in the great dark chamber which has room for 1,100. The floor isn’t canted, to speak of, but the huge screen is so high that it doesn’t matter. A stage projects several yards in front of it. The place is clean, amazingly clean.
“We have three films every night,” says Seth Hurwitz, the former manager who now books pictures for the Ontario when he isn’t running his own booking company, IMP (“(It’s May Party”). “Three movies for $3, it’s a gimmick. I go to all the screenings of first-run pictures and only use proven hits. The neighborhood is changing, and we try to keep that in mind.”
The neighborhood is perhaps Washington’s most interesting, Adams-Morgan, the Columbia Road area between 16th and Connecticut. Blacks, whites, Latinos, artists, embassy people, white-haired apartment dwellers … and he’s right, it is changing, and the prices are going up.
“I tried ‘Elephant Man,’ and that didn’t go. I tried ‘Straw Dogs,’ which has plenty of violence, but it didn’t go. I put the classic ‘Freaks’ in with ‘The Fantastic Animation Festival,’ but that didn’t work either. But they loved ‘Gloria,’ which is a classy movie but violent.”
Now the audience is building. People drift in steadily, paying no attention to the movie times. A group, laden with cups, pails and bushel baskets of popcorn, files in and settles itself. On the screen, David Warner is being nastily beheaded by sheet glass, the sound track is screaming and blood is pumping, but the talkative newcomers don’t bother to look.
Recently a local magazine attacked the Ontario for running so much violence, notably the sadistic “I Spit on Your Grave.” Hurwitz and the present manager, Carlos Rosario, say they are doing their best to upgrade the product while still making a living. On weekends the theater shows Spanish-language films, mostly Mexican, with the occasional Cantinflas comedy (no subtitles). These do very well indeed.The live rock concerts also do well.
“It’s expensive to operate as a concert Hall,” Hurwitz says, “because there are no lights or sound, everything has to be brought in and taken out. We pick them carefully, charge $8 or $9, you have to be sure you have a hit. We had three this year, all sellouts.”
One problem is making the theater attractive to suburban kids who might feel threatened by the neighborhood and perhaps don’t understand the uninhibited Columbia Road audiences. The Ontario goes out of its way to have police protection at concerts and a couple of black-belt bouncers hanging around … “They’re kids themselves, and they’re concerned mainly with the fire regulations. It’s a happy group, a little noisy, but we’ve never had any trouble,” Hurwitz says.
The first “Omen” picture is over, and more people drift in from the black-marble-and-mirror lobby designed by Marvin Goldman when K-B Theaters took over the place in 1958. Someone calls to a friend clear across the theater. the friend shouts happily back. Small children run up and down the aisles. Everyone seems immune to the film’s determined spookiness. It is only when the action explodes that the chatter stops, like crickets in the country when a car passes.
“ Outrageous is our byword,” Hurwitz says. “We don’t do any X-rated stuff. I would say the ideal combination was ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘halloween II.’ The perfect Ontario movie. Sometimes they come in late and don’t like it and demand their money back, or they want to pay $1 just to see the last picture.”
For several years he tried to run hard-ticket reserved-seat programs at the Ontario , but it was no good. The turning point came in March 1979, when Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” opened, and receipts went through the roof. Since then, the Ontario Theater has provided a fascinating study in esthetics, teetering delicately on the razor’s edge between art and money. It’s also the last word in community movie theaters.
The other night they had a ridiculous picture called “Dracula’s Dog.” A guy came up to the box office and said, “I didnt know dracula had no dawg.” But he paid his $3 and went in anyway.
SHOPPING PLAZA PLANNED AT DRIVE-IN SITE
Miami Herald, The (FL) – August 13, 1989
Author: AMINDA MARQUES GONZALEZ Herald Staff Writer
The brittle plastic sign, crumbling since the last movie flickered on the screen years ago, still advertises the North Dade Drive-in Theater.
It is but the tattered remains of the Wometco drive-in theater that opened in 1956 with searchlights fanning the sky, a blimp flying over the 10-acre site, and local celebrities such as newsman Ralph Renick attending the grand opening.
The feature attraction was Marty and the Gunfighter.
In the heyday of the drive-in, the North Dade theater was one of 25 in Dade County. None outlived videocassette recorders and cable television. Only one drive-in survives in Broward County.
Wometco held onto the North Dade Drive-in until 1986.
Now, after sitting vacant and overgrown for years, a new sign has been posted in front of the property at 17175 NW 27th Ave.
Come October, construction begins there on a new shopping center, said Terry Francen, leasing director for Plaza Development Group.
“We’re building this, no question,” he said.
On July 27, the Metro Commission removed a covenant on the property, which was zoned for a flea market, to permit a proposed shopping center and to allow submission of a new site plan for a proposed 99,678-square-foot retail complex.
Those plans, 80 percent complete, call for a Winn-Dixie store, a McCrory’s and a Rite-Aid drug store, Francen said.
“It happens to be easy to build a shopping center there,” he said. “It’s pretty much ready to build on.”
The site was chosen because the Winn-Dixie store at Northwest 27th Avenue and 183rd Street had outgrown that location and needed room nearby to expand, he said.
“It’s a good area,” Francen said. “We’ve gotten a lot of response. We’ll probably be 80 to 90 percent leased before we
put a shovel in the ground.”
A Movie Stop sits on the property now along with Starbucks, Applebees, etc. I like to walk around the Movie Stop with my friends and say, “Hey, I saw that here.”
There is a commercial realtor sign out in front. Uh-oh.
DRIVE – IN TO SHOW ITS LAST PICTURE
Miami Herald, The (FL) – July 10, 1987
Author: GEOFFREY TOMB Herald Staff Writer
A lot of firsts happened indrive – in movies: First kisses. Baby’s first night out. First swallows of beer. First scary movie.
Now you count lasts. Dade’s next-to-last drive – in , the Tropicaire at Bird Road and the Palmetto Expressway, will be closing down. It was called the South’s most modern drive – in when it opened in February 1949.
Gone will be the Americana of the Tropicaire ’s peeling green facade, pink and green neon and 10 palm trees poking out of planters behind the 40-foot screen. The palm fronds blow in the breeze as if summer nights are forever.
The Tropicaire will go the way of the Dixie (1979 for a Publix) and the Golden Glades (1981 for a warehouse). Dade, which had 19 drive – ins 25 years ago, will be left with just the
Turnpike Twin, at 12850 NW 27th Ave.
Thursday, the Metro Commission approved zoning changes that would allow developers to build a 287,000-square-foot shopping center on the 28-acre Tropicaire site, now used Thursday through Sunday nights for last-run, pre-video movies and on weekend days for a flea market. Its future is also dim.
“The flea market on Saturdays and Sundays was the only thing that really kept us going,” said Keith McComas, Tropicaire ’s owner. He is 69.
“It used to be we would have 1,500 to 2,000 on a good night. Now we are lucky if we get 200 people in there on a Friday or Saturday.”
There were 27 paid parked in the lot Thursday at 8:38 p.m. when Three Amigos flickered on. Platoon was the second feature.
Some views on drive – ins from Tropicaire customers:
“It is just being out of doors in the evening when the sun goes down,” said Arthur Brill. He drove from Homestead with his wife, Judy, and seven kids sitting in the bed of a blue Ford pick up.
“We can take all the neighbor’s kids,” said Judy Brill.
Kids under age 12 are free. Adults are $2.50. For $5 the Brills treated nine to a double feature show. No one at a drive – in calls them films.
“ Drive – ins are as American as apple pie,” said Jim Spittler of North Bay Village. “This one has the best corn dogs in Florida.”
“You can dress casual, relax, kick off your shoes and prop up your feet,” said Bill Freeland of South Carolina.
“It’s a shame,” said Terri Jaramillo of Homestead. “Now we will have to stay home and watch TV.”
Her bumper sticker read “Too Many Boys. Not Enough Men.”
“We will miss the place. There is enough shopping centers,” said Donna Stomick of Kendall.
Bill Ogden, president of Brancroft Development, said the group hopes to build a “Key West-style” shopping plaza of about 50 stores and more than 1,100 parking spaces on the spot. It will be called Tropicaire Center. This will happen in six months, said theater owner McComas.
Dade Mayor Steve Clark had his own views on the new shopping center: “It will be an upgrading of the property.”
POLICE SEEK CLUES IN SECOND BREAK-IN AT DRIVE-IN
Miami Herald, The (FL) – August 11, 1983
Author: Herald Staff
A half-eaten hot dog that someone left behind during a
break-in at the concession stand of the Boulevard Drive-In , 14301 Biscayne Blvd., attracted a large scorpion that nearly stung a member of the theater’s cleaning crew Saturday, police said.
Police said North Miami Beach Officer Theodore Miller, who responded to the burglary report, killed the scorpion.
Police said someone entered the concession stand between 2 and 11 a.m. The intruder broke the locks on the refrigerator, freezer and cabinets but took nothing.
The burglars did eat several hot dogs that had been left out but dropped one on the floor, police said. That attracted the scorpion.
A similar break-in occurred at the theater two months ago, police said.