“The town also has a vibrant community theater, Country Gate Playhouse (908/475-1104), that offers a schedule of performances plus youth-oriented productions and workshops in a former movie theater built in 1939.” njskylands.com
This information would indicate that the photo in my post of 1/25/05 might be the opening day or shortly after opening.
Good catch guys. I normally use the imdb to date photos based on the movies on the marquee but in this instance I didn’t check since I thought that I could trust the MPTV. Who woulda thought!?
Caption: Grauman’s Chinese Theater at night with floodlights shining at the premiere of The Robe, first film made in Cinemascope, Hollywood, California, 1953.
I don’t think this photo has been posted yet: View link
Caption: View from above a subway station facing north on Times Square at 43rd Street showing the Paramount Theater just after an air raid drill, New York City, 1941.
Was turned into a quad before the recent demolition:
Home News Tribune, East Brunswick, N.J.Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jul. 13, 2004—LINDEN, N.J. — Demolition work has begun on the former Linden Quad Cinema on North Wood Avenue, which will make way for city’s new park, the Linden Promenade, which is expected to open next year.
“This incredible project will create a place which truly represents the renaissance and rejuvenation of Linden,” said Mayor John T. Gregorio, who supports the project that is being funded by the Union County Improvement Authority.
“An outdoor theater, which will be a clam shell type with a stage and plenty of seating, will be the new home of the Linden Summer Concert Series as well as many other cultural activities and shows,” Gregorio said.
In addition to the amphitheater, the project will include two new buildings, each three stories high to house office space on the top and commercial on the ground floor, such as retail shops and restaurants. The former theater, purchased by the city, closed about four years ago.
The park will also feature a fountain displaying plaques around the perimeter to honor Linden residents.
“We would like to honor those people who have been outstanding in their commitment to Linden. A plaque with a dedication is a nice way of saying thank you. We would like to recognize the people who have volunteered their time in helping to make Linden the thriving city it is today,” Gregorio said.
The city plans to install tables with umbrellas and chairs around the fountain in the park, so people will be able to enjoy a leisurely lunch.
“We also hope to attract more business to our downtown area by attracting people who work in Linden to come down and have lunch at the Linden Promenade. We want this to be a place that people visit daily,” Gregorio said.
Gregorio said many activities currently held in front of City Hall on Wood Avenue, such as the annual cultural heritage fair, holiday tree lighting and movies in the park, will be relocated to the new park.
“Our residents are going to be very pleased with the many ways in which they can utilize this new park. It is a spectacular addition to our community,” Gregorio said.
To Source: Home News Tribune (New Brunswick, NJ), Jul 13, 2004
Item: 2W62925157366
Mar. 1—ARDMORE, Pa.—StairMasters and treadmills have replaced the projector that once showed the first “talkies.”
Lockers and showers now stand where a stage once featured vaudeville acts.
After a five-month renovation that included gutting its run-down Beaux Arts interior, a branch of the high-end Philadelphia Sports Clubs will open today in the antique Ardmore Theater, marking the 21st-century reincarnation of a landmark built during Jazz Age opulence.
Although the old Ardmore is the first 1920s movie theater occupied by the health-club chain, Philadelphia Sports Clubs' parent company — Town Sports International — has tracked the status of about 100 one- and two-screen theaters in Philadelphia, New York, Washington, and Boston over the last two years.
“We really looked at every [small] theater that existed in the Philadelphia market,” said John Smallwood, development manager for Manhattan-based Town Sports, the nation’s third-largest fitness-club chain. Of those theaters, Smallwood picked about a dozen. Then, “we went to each owner and said: ‘If you’re planning on closing, we’d be interested.’ ”
Smallwood said Town Sports still wants to take over the 75-year-old Bryn Mawr Theater, even though Lower Merion rejected its plans last year. Smallwood said Town Sports will appeal the decision to the township’s Zoning Hearing Board.
Although the Bryn Mawr Theater is less than two miles down Lancaster Avenue from the Ardmore Theater, Smallwood said, industry figures suggest that the Main Line — and the Philadelphia area in general — is underserved by fitness clubs and could sustain two gyms that close together.
Often unprofitable, struggling small theaters represent “an opportunity for our company to get the space we’re seeking in some difficult markets,” Smallwood said. “Someone’s coal is someone else’s gold.”
Featuring an ornate facade with Grecian urns, balustrade and Palladian window, the Ardmore Theater was one of about a half-dozen movie palaces built along the Main Line before the Depression.
In addition to the theater in Bryn Mawr, Montgomery County, three continue to show films: the Anthony Wayne Cinema in Wayne, Delaware County; and the Narberth Theater and Bala Theater in Bala Cynwyd, both in Montgomery County.
Smallwood would not say whether any of these theaters is among the dozen he is pursuing in the area. He did say his company has looked at the theaters in Wayne, Narberth and Bala Cynwyd.
Built between 1925 and 1926, the Ardmore “somehow survived all manner of changes: talkies, Technicolor, 3-D, big screen, stereo sound, surround sound, and even multiplexing,” read the theater’s description from the Lower Merion Conservancy’s 2001 list of the township’s “Top Ten” threatened historical buildings.
But in August 2000, United Artists closed the Ardmore and Bryn Mawr Theaters, unable to compete with the plushy, high-tech amenities of the megaplex. Private investors are temporarily leasing the Bryn Mawr theater to keep showing films.
Mike Weilbacher, executive director of the Lower Merion Conservancy, said he wanted a community center to occupy the Ardmore site. But he said Town Sports, which contacted the theater’s owner the day after United Artists pulled out, moved in so quickly that center advocates did not have time to build support. “The shame is the renovation of the theater to a gym means that it’s never going to be a theater again,” Weilbacher said. “It’s not a very gentle use of the building.”
In fact, while the developers retained the classical-revival facade and original vaulted entryway, the gym’s interior is more of a tribute to drywall and drop-down ceilings. “There’s no attempt to take off on the theater,” Smallwood said over the sounds of last-minute sawing and hammering in the 24,000-square-foot building.
“That’s always the quandary we have when we take over a building with architectural details,” Smallwood said. “The purist in us would like to keep all the architectural details.”
But, ultimately, preservation cannot compete with the importance of corporate branding: Town Sports wants a “homogenized” appearance — “just like McDonald’s” — in each of its company’s 120 East Coast clubs, Smallwood said.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA), Mar 01, 2002
Item: 2W63317452585
Jul. 7—VENTNOR, N.J.—This could be the nicest movie theater at the Shore.
Or anywhere.
The owner gives you mints as you leave the theater. He smiles at you. He’ll make you coffee and offer to bring it to your seat if the movie is starting. The ushers say thank you.
Once a big movie town, Atlantic City hasn’t had a movie theater in decades. Its down-the-beach neighbors, Ventnor and Margate, saw their local theaters closed and boarded up.
But now there is a movie theater again on Absecon Island — home of Atlantic City, Ventnor, Margate and Longport — courtesy of the man who swept the floors of the old Ventnor Theater before it closed, bought the place, and renovated it into the kind of old-fashioned, big-screen movie palace that is disappearing elsewhere.
He even managed to keep the theater open all winter in this beach town.
And he still sweeps the floors every night.
“This is my line of work — theater repair,” said Thomas John Berezowski, whose reputation as the “nice movie guy” grows every day in this movie-bereft barrier island.
“When I leave here, I’ll sweep the floor here and a lot of other theaters, fixing chairs and drapes, scraping up Jujubes,” he said.
Clearly, Berezowski is bucking the trend. He could have chopped up the spacious 1938 art-deco theater on Ventnor Avenue into four theaters, but he chose to limit it to two 350-seat auditoriums, retaining many of the original architectural details.
“We won’t do it if it doesn’t look right, if it’s not aesthetically correct,” he said. “There are a lot of art-deco treasures hidden in here.”
The lobby still holds the original ticket grinder, and the grand staircases that lead up to second-floor restrooms remain. The auditoriums have art-deco flourishes and fake balconies, originally designed to evoke the grander theaters in adjacent Atlantic City.
But Berezowski also recently put in digital sound and held one of the area’s only midnight screenings on opening day of the new Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones. He has navigated the political intrigue of movie distribution to nail first-run films like Minority Report.
Now, he is even in the planning stages of opening a movie theater in Atlantic City, in the new retail development at the foot of the Atlantic City Expressway to be called the Walk.
“Customers come in constantly and talk about the theaters on the Boardwalk, the balconies, the orchestra pits and the 5-cent matinees,” he said, loading tickets into a dispenser before the start of the afternoon shows.
Atlantic City theaters fell victim to competition from the casinos and the explosion of multiscreen corporate chains that chose the year-round population centers on the mainland.
And even with the enthusiasm and affection audiences feel for older theaters like his, Berezowski explained that doesn’t always translate into “bodies in seats.” Which is why he is not giving up the janitorial side of the business just yet.
Movie-going at the Shore, always a dicey experience for those used to the renovated, state-of-the-art suburban and downtown theaters, has been upgraded somewhat in the last year.
There’s a huge, new Hoyt’s stadium-seating multiplex on the Black Horse Pike near Exit 12 of the Atlantic City Expressway. The recently renovated Tilton 9 in nearby Northfield is screening more independent, art and foreign films and has begun 3 p.m. and midnight weekend showings of old favorites, starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark this weekend.
But in Ocean City, the Hoyt company never bothered to reopen the Morlyn, one of two art-deco movie theaters on the boardwalk, and the Hoyt’s Somers Point theater also has closed.
In Ventnor, though, the movie scene is back, with lines out the door for Wednesday and bad-beach-day matinees, plenty of people within walking distance, and the friendliest staff around. So friendly, in fact, that Harry Tini, 74, volunteers his time just to be around them.
“I work for gratis,” he said. “There’s no better place around. Who else in the world is going to give you mints? They have such gracious people here.”
Customers regularly look for their favorite employees, including Yong Price, 51, a Thai who runs the concession stand, and ushers Mary, 52, and James Howard, 48, who live in the apartment upstairs and are always available to work on a minute’s notice.
“They’ve become real fixtures here,” said Berezowski, himself the main fixture, of course. “Yong is constantly bringing me curry dishes. Harry brings me raviolis.”
Berezowski is always striking up conversations with customers, and he can even talk movies, though he says he’s really more of a movie-theater buff than a movie buff. Still, make a joke about the Woody Allen rule of refusing to go into a movie even a minute late, and Johnny B. — Berezowski’s nickname — will quote the whole scene from Annie Hall.
He is more than just a nice guy, of course. His busy movie-maintenance and janitorial company has a hand in running 21 theaters nationwide, most of them theaters he has helped repair for owners who found themselves with more than they bargained for.
As for the mints and the polite staff, Berezowski says there’s no room on his payroll for ushers who can’t say thank you.
“Usually, when you go to a movie, everyone leaves the theater and you’re lucky if there’s anyone to open the door. We really appreciate when people come to the Ventnor. It’s not just standing there with a mint. It’s thank you from the bottom of our heart, especially if you brought your trash out.”
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA), Jul 07, 2002
Item: 2W60373139590
Thank YOU Bill. Your posts are great. I read your comments on the Totowa listing. In a “perfect” web site, we would be able to upload the photos and old ads and allow them to scroll in a slide show format, but for now, we’ll have to make do by posting links.
The best way to keep up with the recent comments to a particular theater is to post a comment on that theater and then click the “notify me” box.
PS I have a decent collection of recent digital photos that I need to upload to photobucket. I’ll keep you posted.
RC Theatres closed both this and the Castle Drive-In in Collinsville on the same night, Labor Day eve 1979. The final show was a triple feature of ‘70s AIP pics: “The Incredible Melting Man”, “The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant” and “The Thing with Two Heads”. Previously it had been managed by Mrs. Jessie C. Carper of Collinsville, who took it over in the '50s from its founders, Alton and Francis Davis and Stover Terry.
When in operation the road was known as Rich Acres Road.
The Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), June 8, 1997 p040
Like its audience, troupe still coming into its own. (SCANNER)
Byline: Susanna Chu
The Palace Theatre in Netcong hardly resembled a palace when the Growing Stage, under executive director Stephen Fredericks, acquired it from a moving and storage company two years ago.
The floorboards were rotting. Clearing out the debris from its days as a storage warehouse took hundreds of volunteers and 14 dumpsters.
Two years, 10 productions and 10,000 playgoers later, the Growing Stage is living up to its name – and hoping that the Palace Theatre will, as well. The Growing Stage, a nonprofit organization, accepted an anonymous $75,000 donation to repair the building’s decaying exterior.
Currently, Growing Stage productions have audiences averaging about 150, leaving half its 299 seats empty. The restored Art Deco facade, Fredericks hopes, will make the theater even more attractive to playgoers. “Ideally, we’d love to fill all the seats,” said Fredericks, noting 60 to 70 percent of the budget comes from ticket sales, with the rest from donations.
The Growing Stage started as a term paper that Fredericks wrote while he was an undergraduate at Arizona State University.
“I took an elective in theater for young audiences, thinking it would be a class for an easy grade,” Fredericks admitted, “But I was fortunate to have a professor, Don Doyle, who made theater come alive for me.”
When Fredericks discussed his dream theater with an interviewer at Rutgers, where he applied for graduate school, the interviewer suggested that he go ahead with his plans. It happened through a combination of personal savings and money that his parents had given him for graduate school.
Since the realization of his dream in 1982, the Growing Stage has evolved into a family effort. Fredericks' wife, Lori, directs. Their three children, Stephen Jr., 7, Benjamin, 5, and Emma, 2, regularly attend performances.
For Ann and Steve Nitka of Washington Township in Morris County, working with the Growing Stage has also been a family experience. Both husband and wife volunteer at the theater, and their two children attend the summer camp and theater arts classes during the school year.
“I think the theater has had a positive impact on the lives of the people involved,” said Ann Nitka. “My kids are getting more and more excited about it.”
The Growing Stage holds theater arts classes throughout the year and hosts a summer arts day camp for children from kindergarten through eighth grade. It also sponsors a summer internship program for high school and college students.
Located in the northern corner of Morris County, near the borders of Sussex and Warren counties, the Palace is ideally situated to become the arts center that Fredericks envisions. Once renovation on the upper stories of the building is completed, much of the space will be used for classrooms, he said.
The history of the Growing Stage has been a give-and-take effort between the community and the theater. When the Growing Stage moved from its first home, in Chester, to Netcong, hundreds of volunteers helped clean up the new building.
In March 1996, when the Growing Stage opened its first season in the Palace with “The Wizard of Oz,” many of the same volunteers came to help, despite freezing temperatures in the unheated theater.
In return, the Growing Stage had produced relatively inexpensive exposure to live theater for young people in the community. The theater charges school groups $3 per seat, and often takes productions to schools and hospitals.
At last week’s production of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Jefferson Township kindergarten students gazed with wonder at the two actors, Fredericks and Michelle Merriman, who doubles as producer of the Growing Stage.
Two lines at the beginning of that production summed up the mission of the Growing Stage. When Fredericks and Merriman, as Peter and Lucy, narrators of the story, contemplate how to show the audience what happens in Narnia, their mythical kingdom, Peter exclaims, “I’ve got it! No … we don’t have Steven Spielberg’s budget.” But finally, the two hit on the solution: “Hey! Magic theater!”
With that, the lights go out and the magic begins.
CAPTION(S):
Kindergartners roar like lions at the invitation of the cast at a Growing Stage production in Netcong. In the front row Friday are, from left, Joseph Geib, Christopher Bastecki and Alaina Pisani of Milton School in Jefferson Township. <par>
Scratch the last post. The Baker Opera house is a different building.
Was located near the Quantico Marine corps base. Current use is a roofing supply yard.
Locals may appreciate this one. The present corner of the theater was once a traffic circle:
View link
“The town also has a vibrant community theater, Country Gate Playhouse (908/475-1104), that offers a schedule of performances plus youth-oriented productions and workshops in a former movie theater built in 1939.” njskylands.com
This information would indicate that the photo in my post of 1/25/05 might be the opening day or shortly after opening.
That Moller is opus 5139, installed in 1928 at a cost of $10500.00.
Good catch guys. I normally use the imdb to date photos based on the movies on the marquee but in this instance I didn’t check since I thought that I could trust the MPTV. Who woulda thought!?
View link
Source: MPTV
Caption: Hollywood and Los Angeles Landmarks Egyptian Theater Marquee: “My Fair Lady” 1964
View link
Caption: “Academy Awards: 31st Annual,” Pantages Theater. 1959.
Source: MPTV
Great clear night shot:
View link
Caption: Grauman’s Chinese Theater at night with floodlights shining at the premiere of The Robe, first film made in Cinemascope, Hollywood, California, 1953.
View link
Source: MPTV
Caption: Martin Scorsese in front of the Shubert Theater in Chicago Il, 1977.
I don’t think this photo has been posted yet:
View link
Caption: View from above a subway station facing north on Times Square at 43rd Street showing the Paramount Theater just after an air raid drill, New York City, 1941.
View link
Source: MPTV
Caption: Four Star Theater 1921 Copyright John Swope Trust / MPTV
Nice close up image from 1955:
View link
Source: MPTV
Was turned into a quad before the recent demolition:
Home News Tribune, East Brunswick, N.J.Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jul. 13, 2004—LINDEN, N.J. — Demolition work has begun on the former Linden Quad Cinema on North Wood Avenue, which will make way for city’s new park, the Linden Promenade, which is expected to open next year.
“This incredible project will create a place which truly represents the renaissance and rejuvenation of Linden,” said Mayor John T. Gregorio, who supports the project that is being funded by the Union County Improvement Authority.
“An outdoor theater, which will be a clam shell type with a stage and plenty of seating, will be the new home of the Linden Summer Concert Series as well as many other cultural activities and shows,” Gregorio said.
In addition to the amphitheater, the project will include two new buildings, each three stories high to house office space on the top and commercial on the ground floor, such as retail shops and restaurants. The former theater, purchased by the city, closed about four years ago.
The park will also feature a fountain displaying plaques around the perimeter to honor Linden residents.
“We would like to honor those people who have been outstanding in their commitment to Linden. A plaque with a dedication is a nice way of saying thank you. We would like to recognize the people who have volunteered their time in helping to make Linden the thriving city it is today,” Gregorio said.
The city plans to install tables with umbrellas and chairs around the fountain in the park, so people will be able to enjoy a leisurely lunch.
“We also hope to attract more business to our downtown area by attracting people who work in Linden to come down and have lunch at the Linden Promenade. We want this to be a place that people visit daily,” Gregorio said.
Gregorio said many activities currently held in front of City Hall on Wood Avenue, such as the annual cultural heritage fair, holiday tree lighting and movies in the park, will be relocated to the new park.
“Our residents are going to be very pleased with the many ways in which they can utilize this new park. It is a spectacular addition to our community,” Gregorio said.
To Source: Home News Tribune (New Brunswick, NJ), Jul 13, 2004
Item: 2W62925157366
Mar. 1—ARDMORE, Pa.—StairMasters and treadmills have replaced the projector that once showed the first “talkies.”
Lockers and showers now stand where a stage once featured vaudeville acts.
After a five-month renovation that included gutting its run-down Beaux Arts interior, a branch of the high-end Philadelphia Sports Clubs will open today in the antique Ardmore Theater, marking the 21st-century reincarnation of a landmark built during Jazz Age opulence.
Although the old Ardmore is the first 1920s movie theater occupied by the health-club chain, Philadelphia Sports Clubs' parent company — Town Sports International — has tracked the status of about 100 one- and two-screen theaters in Philadelphia, New York, Washington, and Boston over the last two years.
“We really looked at every [small] theater that existed in the Philadelphia market,” said John Smallwood, development manager for Manhattan-based Town Sports, the nation’s third-largest fitness-club chain. Of those theaters, Smallwood picked about a dozen. Then, “we went to each owner and said: ‘If you’re planning on closing, we’d be interested.’ ”
Smallwood said Town Sports still wants to take over the 75-year-old Bryn Mawr Theater, even though Lower Merion rejected its plans last year. Smallwood said Town Sports will appeal the decision to the township’s Zoning Hearing Board.
Although the Bryn Mawr Theater is less than two miles down Lancaster Avenue from the Ardmore Theater, Smallwood said, industry figures suggest that the Main Line — and the Philadelphia area in general — is underserved by fitness clubs and could sustain two gyms that close together.
Often unprofitable, struggling small theaters represent “an opportunity for our company to get the space we’re seeking in some difficult markets,” Smallwood said. “Someone’s coal is someone else’s gold.”
Featuring an ornate facade with Grecian urns, balustrade and Palladian window, the Ardmore Theater was one of about a half-dozen movie palaces built along the Main Line before the Depression.
In addition to the theater in Bryn Mawr, Montgomery County, three continue to show films: the Anthony Wayne Cinema in Wayne, Delaware County; and the Narberth Theater and Bala Theater in Bala Cynwyd, both in Montgomery County.
Smallwood would not say whether any of these theaters is among the dozen he is pursuing in the area. He did say his company has looked at the theaters in Wayne, Narberth and Bala Cynwyd.
Built between 1925 and 1926, the Ardmore “somehow survived all manner of changes: talkies, Technicolor, 3-D, big screen, stereo sound, surround sound, and even multiplexing,” read the theater’s description from the Lower Merion Conservancy’s 2001 list of the township’s “Top Ten” threatened historical buildings.
But in August 2000, United Artists closed the Ardmore and Bryn Mawr Theaters, unable to compete with the plushy, high-tech amenities of the megaplex. Private investors are temporarily leasing the Bryn Mawr theater to keep showing films.
Mike Weilbacher, executive director of the Lower Merion Conservancy, said he wanted a community center to occupy the Ardmore site. But he said Town Sports, which contacted the theater’s owner the day after United Artists pulled out, moved in so quickly that center advocates did not have time to build support. “The shame is the renovation of the theater to a gym means that it’s never going to be a theater again,” Weilbacher said. “It’s not a very gentle use of the building.”
In fact, while the developers retained the classical-revival facade and original vaulted entryway, the gym’s interior is more of a tribute to drywall and drop-down ceilings. “There’s no attempt to take off on the theater,” Smallwood said over the sounds of last-minute sawing and hammering in the 24,000-square-foot building.
“That’s always the quandary we have when we take over a building with architectural details,” Smallwood said. “The purist in us would like to keep all the architectural details.”
But, ultimately, preservation cannot compete with the importance of corporate branding: Town Sports wants a “homogenized” appearance — “just like McDonald’s” — in each of its company’s 120 East Coast clubs, Smallwood said.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA), Mar 01, 2002
Item: 2W63317452585
Jul. 7—VENTNOR, N.J.—This could be the nicest movie theater at the Shore.
Or anywhere.
The owner gives you mints as you leave the theater. He smiles at you. He’ll make you coffee and offer to bring it to your seat if the movie is starting. The ushers say thank you.
Once a big movie town, Atlantic City hasn’t had a movie theater in decades. Its down-the-beach neighbors, Ventnor and Margate, saw their local theaters closed and boarded up.
But now there is a movie theater again on Absecon Island — home of Atlantic City, Ventnor, Margate and Longport — courtesy of the man who swept the floors of the old Ventnor Theater before it closed, bought the place, and renovated it into the kind of old-fashioned, big-screen movie palace that is disappearing elsewhere.
He even managed to keep the theater open all winter in this beach town.
And he still sweeps the floors every night.
“This is my line of work — theater repair,” said Thomas John Berezowski, whose reputation as the “nice movie guy” grows every day in this movie-bereft barrier island.
“When I leave here, I’ll sweep the floor here and a lot of other theaters, fixing chairs and drapes, scraping up Jujubes,” he said.
Clearly, Berezowski is bucking the trend. He could have chopped up the spacious 1938 art-deco theater on Ventnor Avenue into four theaters, but he chose to limit it to two 350-seat auditoriums, retaining many of the original architectural details.
“We won’t do it if it doesn’t look right, if it’s not aesthetically correct,” he said. “There are a lot of art-deco treasures hidden in here.”
The lobby still holds the original ticket grinder, and the grand staircases that lead up to second-floor restrooms remain. The auditoriums have art-deco flourishes and fake balconies, originally designed to evoke the grander theaters in adjacent Atlantic City.
But Berezowski also recently put in digital sound and held one of the area’s only midnight screenings on opening day of the new Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones. He has navigated the political intrigue of movie distribution to nail first-run films like Minority Report.
Now, he is even in the planning stages of opening a movie theater in Atlantic City, in the new retail development at the foot of the Atlantic City Expressway to be called the Walk.
“Customers come in constantly and talk about the theaters on the Boardwalk, the balconies, the orchestra pits and the 5-cent matinees,” he said, loading tickets into a dispenser before the start of the afternoon shows.
Atlantic City theaters fell victim to competition from the casinos and the explosion of multiscreen corporate chains that chose the year-round population centers on the mainland.
And even with the enthusiasm and affection audiences feel for older theaters like his, Berezowski explained that doesn’t always translate into “bodies in seats.” Which is why he is not giving up the janitorial side of the business just yet.
Movie-going at the Shore, always a dicey experience for those used to the renovated, state-of-the-art suburban and downtown theaters, has been upgraded somewhat in the last year.
There’s a huge, new Hoyt’s stadium-seating multiplex on the Black Horse Pike near Exit 12 of the Atlantic City Expressway. The recently renovated Tilton 9 in nearby Northfield is screening more independent, art and foreign films and has begun 3 p.m. and midnight weekend showings of old favorites, starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark this weekend.
But in Ocean City, the Hoyt company never bothered to reopen the Morlyn, one of two art-deco movie theaters on the boardwalk, and the Hoyt’s Somers Point theater also has closed.
In Ventnor, though, the movie scene is back, with lines out the door for Wednesday and bad-beach-day matinees, plenty of people within walking distance, and the friendliest staff around. So friendly, in fact, that Harry Tini, 74, volunteers his time just to be around them.
“I work for gratis,” he said. “There’s no better place around. Who else in the world is going to give you mints? They have such gracious people here.”
Customers regularly look for their favorite employees, including Yong Price, 51, a Thai who runs the concession stand, and ushers Mary, 52, and James Howard, 48, who live in the apartment upstairs and are always available to work on a minute’s notice.
“They’ve become real fixtures here,” said Berezowski, himself the main fixture, of course. “Yong is constantly bringing me curry dishes. Harry brings me raviolis.”
Berezowski is always striking up conversations with customers, and he can even talk movies, though he says he’s really more of a movie-theater buff than a movie buff. Still, make a joke about the Woody Allen rule of refusing to go into a movie even a minute late, and Johnny B. — Berezowski’s nickname — will quote the whole scene from Annie Hall.
He is more than just a nice guy, of course. His busy movie-maintenance and janitorial company has a hand in running 21 theaters nationwide, most of them theaters he has helped repair for owners who found themselves with more than they bargained for.
As for the mints and the polite staff, Berezowski says there’s no room on his payroll for ushers who can’t say thank you.
“Usually, when you go to a movie, everyone leaves the theater and you’re lucky if there’s anyone to open the door. We really appreciate when people come to the Ventnor. It’s not just standing there with a mint. It’s thank you from the bottom of our heart, especially if you brought your trash out.”
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA), Jul 07, 2002
Item: 2W60373139590
Thank YOU Bill. Your posts are great. I read your comments on the Totowa listing. In a “perfect” web site, we would be able to upload the photos and old ads and allow them to scroll in a slide show format, but for now, we’ll have to make do by posting links.
The best way to keep up with the recent comments to a particular theater is to post a comment on that theater and then click the “notify me” box.
PS I have a decent collection of recent digital photos that I need to upload to photobucket. I’ll keep you posted.
Bill: here is your 1953 ad which shows a lot of the area drive ins:
View link
Note the S3 designation for this theater.
Bill: here is your 1953 ad which shows a lot of the area drive ins:
View link
Photos:
http://driveins.4t.com/va-keysville.htm
Photos & history:
http://driveins.4t.com/va-lynchburg-forttwin.htm
RC Theatres closed both this and the Castle Drive-In in Collinsville on the same night, Labor Day eve 1979. The final show was a triple feature of ‘70s AIP pics: “The Incredible Melting Man”, “The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant” and “The Thing with Two Heads”. Previously it had been managed by Mrs. Jessie C. Carper of Collinsville, who took it over in the '50s from its founders, Alton and Francis Davis and Stover Terry.
When in operation the road was known as Rich Acres Road.
Currently the site is an apartment complex.
Photo & information:
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The Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), June 8, 1997 p040
Like its audience, troupe still coming into its own. (SCANNER)
Byline: Susanna Chu
The Palace Theatre in Netcong hardly resembled a palace when the Growing Stage, under executive director Stephen Fredericks, acquired it from a moving and storage company two years ago.
The floorboards were rotting. Clearing out the debris from its days as a storage warehouse took hundreds of volunteers and 14 dumpsters.
Two years, 10 productions and 10,000 playgoers later, the Growing Stage is living up to its name – and hoping that the Palace Theatre will, as well. The Growing Stage, a nonprofit organization, accepted an anonymous $75,000 donation to repair the building’s decaying exterior.
Currently, Growing Stage productions have audiences averaging about 150, leaving half its 299 seats empty. The restored Art Deco facade, Fredericks hopes, will make the theater even more attractive to playgoers. “Ideally, we’d love to fill all the seats,” said Fredericks, noting 60 to 70 percent of the budget comes from ticket sales, with the rest from donations.
The Growing Stage started as a term paper that Fredericks wrote while he was an undergraduate at Arizona State University.
“I took an elective in theater for young audiences, thinking it would be a class for an easy grade,” Fredericks admitted, “But I was fortunate to have a professor, Don Doyle, who made theater come alive for me.”
When Fredericks discussed his dream theater with an interviewer at Rutgers, where he applied for graduate school, the interviewer suggested that he go ahead with his plans. It happened through a combination of personal savings and money that his parents had given him for graduate school.
Since the realization of his dream in 1982, the Growing Stage has evolved into a family effort. Fredericks' wife, Lori, directs. Their three children, Stephen Jr., 7, Benjamin, 5, and Emma, 2, regularly attend performances.
For Ann and Steve Nitka of Washington Township in Morris County, working with the Growing Stage has also been a family experience. Both husband and wife volunteer at the theater, and their two children attend the summer camp and theater arts classes during the school year.
“I think the theater has had a positive impact on the lives of the people involved,” said Ann Nitka. “My kids are getting more and more excited about it.”
The Growing Stage holds theater arts classes throughout the year and hosts a summer arts day camp for children from kindergarten through eighth grade. It also sponsors a summer internship program for high school and college students.
Located in the northern corner of Morris County, near the borders of Sussex and Warren counties, the Palace is ideally situated to become the arts center that Fredericks envisions. Once renovation on the upper stories of the building is completed, much of the space will be used for classrooms, he said.
The history of the Growing Stage has been a give-and-take effort between the community and the theater. When the Growing Stage moved from its first home, in Chester, to Netcong, hundreds of volunteers helped clean up the new building.
In March 1996, when the Growing Stage opened its first season in the Palace with “The Wizard of Oz,” many of the same volunteers came to help, despite freezing temperatures in the unheated theater.
In return, the Growing Stage had produced relatively inexpensive exposure to live theater for young people in the community. The theater charges school groups $3 per seat, and often takes productions to schools and hospitals.
At last week’s production of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Jefferson Township kindergarten students gazed with wonder at the two actors, Fredericks and Michelle Merriman, who doubles as producer of the Growing Stage.
Two lines at the beginning of that production summed up the mission of the Growing Stage. When Fredericks and Merriman, as Peter and Lucy, narrators of the story, contemplate how to show the audience what happens in Narnia, their mythical kingdom, Peter exclaims, “I’ve got it! No … we don’t have Steven Spielberg’s budget.” But finally, the two hit on the solution: “Hey! Magic theater!”
With that, the lights go out and the magic begins.
CAPTION(S):
Kindergartners roar like lions at the invitation of the cast at a Growing Stage production in Netcong. In the front row Friday are, from left, Joseph Geib, Christopher Bastecki and Alaina Pisani of Milton School in Jefferson Township. <par>
PHOTO BY ROBERT SCIARRINO
Article CJ81951635
Was a Fabian theater in 1963 (courtesy of Bill Heulgig:
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