Please change status to OPNE!! This theater will reopen on August 7th. Nice 1940 photo of Spencer Tracy / Rita Johnson in the print version of the Star Ledger:
A once-grand theater answers a curtain call
Sunday, July 31, 2005
BY KEVIN C. DILWORTH
Star-Ledger Staff
It was a rain-swept night on May 16, 1940, but the bad weather did not stop hundreds of New Jerseyans from converging on East Orange’s Hollywood Theatre to see Oscar-winner Spencer Tracy, his box office co-star Rita Johnson, and other celebrities.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “Edison the Man,” a biographical film about famed investor Thomas Edison, lured moviegoers to the theater at 634 Central Ave., off South Harrison Street.
It was the film’s world premiere, and the red carpet was rolled out along the busy thoroughfare.
Newspaper ads billed the motion picture event as “the proudest day in the amusement history of New Jersey,” and noted how then-Gov. A. Harry Moore planned to meet and greet “the greatest galaxy of Hollywood personalities, ever, in the East,” at that 1,629-seat film palace.
That spectacular event took place at the height of the era when the silver screen was the most popular entertainment escape.
However, patron interest in movie houses such as the Hollywood Theatre, and many other similar places around the state and nation, began to wane in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, the theater closed.
Now the Hollywood Theatre is making a cinematic comeback.
A week from tomorrow, the new Hollywood Cinemas — following a more than $1.2 million building gutting, and an extensive top-to-bottom and wall-to-wall renovation job — is set to be reborn as a five-screen theater.
Hollywood Cinemas will join the now six-screen Maplewood Theatre building on Maplewood Avenue in Maplewood, as the only two structures — out of 13 original movie houses that existed in the Essex County suburbs of the Oranges, Maplewood and Livingston, during the early 1950s — to survive as movie houses.
New York City investor Edmondo Schwartz, whose father used to be part of a consortium that owned and operated a chain of RKO movie theaters including the Hollywood in the 1970s, said he believes his investment in the Hollywood, and in East Orange, is worthwhile.
“The (area’s) population was really the bottom line,” Schwartz said the other day. “It’s so under-served with theaters. We saw it was the time, especially when we realized that 250,000 people live within three miles of East Orange. It’s tremendous.”
The two closest multiplex theaters are in West Orange and Newark.
Work crews gutted the Hollywood, replacing the theater’s hole-riddled roof, and removed all the old dingy seats, water-damaged plaster, the original stage and dressing rooms.
No remnants of the former theater’s interior remain, other than the original brick walls that are hidden behind draperies and other wall coverings.
“It probably would have been easier to knock down the building and start new, with the amount of steel (4,500 tons) we put into this building, but it came out beautiful, especially the oversized (movie) screens,” Schwartz said.
The five cinemas will seat a total of 944 people, including 27 seats set aside for the handicapped.
Four of the theaters feature stadium seating, with 23-inch-wide chairs, and one theater, in the spot where the Hollywood’s original stage and dressing rooms used to be, is a traditional theater with seating to match.
In preparation for the movie house’s grand reopening, all the sidewalks outside are scheduled to be replaced this week with a sort of Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The excitement, surrounding the Hollywood’s comeback, has been building since renovation began there a year ago.
“We’ve been waiting for this,” said Tristen Wright, 18, a Newfield Street resident who serves as a volunteer on Mayor Robert Bowser’s Youth Council advisory board. “My friends and I like the idea of being able to go to the movies right here in East Orange, as opposed to traveling to Essex Green (in West Orange) or to Newark.”
Hudson Avenue resident David Taylor, 19, agreed, joking that he has lost more than a few dates because female companions have tired of waiting up to 30 minutes to catch a bus to another city just to see a movie.
Young people are not the only ones who are excited about the theater’s rebirth. Older people are hyped up, too.
The area surrounding the Hollywood is packed with high-rise apartment buildings. The reopening of the Hollywood “is a good thing,” said Maudie Nelson, of Oakwood Avenue, who volunteers in Orange City Hall’s Office of Older Adults.
“Anything is an improvement. A lot of people like going to the movies, but we have (had) to travel all the way to Essex Green or downtown Newark on Bergen Street,” Nelson said. “In my building alone, there are 236 apartment units.”
Nelson, who turned 89 on July 12, said she just hopes municipal officials remember senior citizens especially need delayed street lights, at Central Avenue and South Harrison Street in East Orange, and at Central and Oakwood avenues in Orange, as well as pedestrian crossing lanes.
East Orange resident Michael Thompson, 22, of North Clinton Street said his main concern is how safe patrons will be inside the Hollywood Cinemas.
Schwartz said that in response to public safety concerns, closed circuit television cameras are being installed, “and we’re going to have a (city) police presence there.”
Last-minute construction work in and outside the restored movie house, Schwartz said, includes putting the final touches on a more than 43-foot-long concession stand inside the theater’s new lobby, laying down thick navy-blue carpeting with celestial designs, removing all the construction debris from the building’s west side, and creating an on-site 40-space paved parking lot there.
“For elegant movie viewing, we would sometimes visit that wonderful movie palace, the Collingswood Theater, which was my son’s favorite baseball card shop not too long ago. Standing out in my memory of the Collingswood are its red velvet curtains. Against this regal backdrop, the one film I remember seeing there was William Castle’s "Homicidal.” "
Please change status to OPNE!! This theater will reopen on August 7th. Nice 1940 photo of Spencer Tracy / Rita Johnson in the print version of the Star Ledger:
A once-grand theater answers a curtain call
Sunday, July 31, 2005
BY KEVIN C. DILWORTH
Star-Ledger Staff
It was a rain-swept night on May 16, 1940, but the bad weather did not stop hundreds of New Jerseyans from converging on East Orange’s Hollywood Theatre to see Oscar-winner Spencer Tracy, his box office co-star Rita Johnson, and other celebrities.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “Edison the Man,” a biographical film about famed investor Thomas Edison, lured moviegoers to the theater at 634 Central Ave., off South Harrison Street.
It was the film’s world premiere, and the red carpet was rolled out along the busy thoroughfare.
Newspaper ads billed the motion picture event as “the proudest day in the amusement history of New Jersey,” and noted how then-Gov. A. Harry Moore planned to meet and greet “the greatest galaxy of Hollywood personalities, ever, in the East,” at that 1,629-seat film palace.
That spectacular event took place at the height of the era when the silver screen was the most popular entertainment escape.
However, patron interest in movie houses such as the Hollywood Theatre, and many other similar places around the state and nation, began to wane in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, the theater closed.
Now the Hollywood Theatre is making a cinematic comeback.
A week from tomorrow, the new Hollywood Cinemas — following a more than $1.2 million building gutting, and an extensive top-to-bottom and wall-to-wall renovation job — is set to be reborn as a five-screen theater.
Hollywood Cinemas will join the now six-screen Maplewood Theatre building on Maplewood Avenue in Maplewood, as the only two structures — out of 13 original movie houses that existed in the Essex County suburbs of the Oranges, Maplewood and Livingston, during the early 1950s — to survive as movie houses.
New York City investor Edmondo Schwartz, whose father used to be part of a consortium that owned and operated a chain of RKO movie theaters including the Hollywood in the 1970s, said he believes his investment in the Hollywood, and in East Orange, is worthwhile.
“The (area’s) population was really the bottom line,” Schwartz said the other day. “It’s so under-served with theaters. We saw it was the time, especially when we realized that 250,000 people live within three miles of East Orange. It’s tremendous.”
The two closest multiplex theaters are in West Orange and Newark.
Work crews gutted the Hollywood, replacing the theater’s hole-riddled roof, and removed all the old dingy seats, water-damaged plaster, the original stage and dressing rooms.
No remnants of the former theater’s interior remain, other than the original brick walls that are hidden behind draperies and other wall coverings.
“It probably would have been easier to knock down the building and start new, with the amount of steel (4,500 tons) we put into this building, but it came out beautiful, especially the oversized (movie) screens,” Schwartz said.
The five cinemas will seat a total of 944 people, including 27 seats set aside for the handicapped.
Four of the theaters feature stadium seating, with 23-inch-wide chairs, and one theater, in the spot where the Hollywood’s original stage and dressing rooms used to be, is a traditional theater with seating to match.
In preparation for the movie house’s grand reopening, all the sidewalks outside are scheduled to be replaced this week with a sort of Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The excitement, surrounding the Hollywood’s comeback, has been building since renovation began there a year ago.
“We’ve been waiting for this,” said Tristen Wright, 18, a Newfield Street resident who serves as a volunteer on Mayor Robert Bowser’s Youth Council advisory board. “My friends and I like the idea of being able to go to the movies right here in East Orange, as opposed to traveling to Essex Green (in West Orange) or to Newark.”
Hudson Avenue resident David Taylor, 19, agreed, joking that he has lost more than a few dates because female companions have tired of waiting up to 30 minutes to catch a bus to another city just to see a movie.
Young people are not the only ones who are excited about the theater’s rebirth. Older people are hyped up, too.
The area surrounding the Hollywood is packed with high-rise apartment buildings. The reopening of the Hollywood “is a good thing,” said Maudie Nelson, of Oakwood Avenue, who volunteers in Orange City Hall’s Office of Older Adults.
“Anything is an improvement. A lot of people like going to the movies, but we have (had) to travel all the way to Essex Green or downtown Newark on Bergen Street,” Nelson said. “In my building alone, there are 236 apartment units.”
Nelson, who turned 89 on July 12, said she just hopes municipal officials remember senior citizens especially need delayed street lights, at Central Avenue and South Harrison Street in East Orange, and at Central and Oakwood avenues in Orange, as well as pedestrian crossing lanes.
East Orange resident Michael Thompson, 22, of North Clinton Street said his main concern is how safe patrons will be inside the Hollywood Cinemas.
Schwartz said that in response to public safety concerns, closed circuit television cameras are being installed, “and we’re going to have a (city) police presence there.”
Last-minute construction work in and outside the restored movie house, Schwartz said, includes putting the final touches on a more than 43-foot-long concession stand inside the theater’s new lobby, laying down thick navy-blue carpeting with celestial designs, removing all the construction debris from the building’s west side, and creating an on-site 40-space paved parking lot there.
Patsy:
Did you make your trip yet? Can you get inside? I am going to this area in August and the theaters in Ithaca/Geneva/Auburn are on my itinerary.
On page 97 of “This Fabulous Century 1950-1960” (Time Life Books, 1970) there is a photo of the Marine marquee.
Wording on the marquee:
FREE TO PUBLIC
KEFAUVER T V
SENATE CRIME HEARINGS
Caption: A New York moive theater drops its regular Hollywood fare to pick up television’s political spectacular, the Kefauver hearings.
Sounds all too familiar: Oliver North, OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson …
http://www.bayonnenj.org/movies.shtml
here is a small map. looks like a new road.
A Wurlitzer organ, opus 749, was installed on 12/10/1923 in support of the opening.
Listed in the 1951 FDY with 968 seats. Listing is under Atlantic City.
Al Capone was arrested in front of this theater on a “prearranged” weapons charge. See the last paragraph of this article:
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A Hillgreen-Lane organ, opus 922, was installed in this theater in 1927.
A Wurlitzer organ, opus 759, was installed in this theater on 12/31/1923.
A Kimball organ was installed in this theater in 1923.
A Robert-Morton organ was installed in this theater in 1926.
A Kimball organ was installed in the Garden Theatre in 1913. Yet another Kimball was installed in 1922.
A Barton organ was installed in this theater in 1921.
Photos of the Bijou and Hamblin Opera house at this link:
http://www2.willard.lib.mi.us/bcphotos/theaters/
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CAPTION:
In December 1948, about 450 carriers were treated to a party at the Lyric Theater in Camden.
“For elegant movie viewing, we would sometimes visit that wonderful movie palace, the Collingswood Theater, which was my son’s favorite baseball card shop not too long ago. Standing out in my memory of the Collingswood are its red velvet curtains. Against this regal backdrop, the one film I remember seeing there was William Castle’s "Homicidal.” "
Imdb lists Homicidal as a 1961 release
extracted from http://www.eticomm.net/~kelta/sjmemory.html
http://www.beerme.com/breweries/us/il/503.shtml
not sure if Mr. Rybinski owned the building or just the business.
Business operated from 1994 to 1998 at this theater.
2004 article about the last owner:
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Loews Troy Hills is listed in this 1969 ad for “2001” courtesy of Bill Huelbig:
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1969 ad for 2001 courtesy of Bill Huelbig:
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Was a GC theater back then as well.
1969 ad for 2001 courtesy of Bill Huelbig:
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Listed as a RKO-Stanley Warner theater in March 1969 when it showed 2001 (courtesy of Bill Huelbig):
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Listed as a “Florin’s” theater in March 1969 when it showed 2001 (courtesy of Bill Huelbig):
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Listed as a “Florin” theater in March 1969 when it showed 2001 (courtesy of Bill Huelbig):
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Was a “Triangle” theater in 1969 when it showed 2001 (courtesy of Bill Huelbig):
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