my cousin and family lived on Emery Rd. and their backyard gave way to the East Side parking lot and screen……..interesting summer evenings when you’re a kid in the late 50’s/early 60’s
does anyone have a Marquee picture (the year is inconsequential, but I am a child of the 1955-69)downtown Cleveland theater-wise, and have almost assembled marquee pictures of all my youthful haunts and memories……if someone wants to share, ……I remembering going there to view “The Fall of the Roman Empire”, but later, missing the opportunity to see/hear THE WHO w/opening act JAMES TAYLOR….my date and I went to see “Little Big Man” at one of the other venues…..Stupid is as stupid does !
I vividly remember watching “Goldfinger” on New Years Day the year of its release…I was a pre-teen, and I believe Mom picked me up after the show…But, sitting there when he gets his introduction to Honor Blackman, and utters her name, POOOSIE,and a wave, a tsunami, of unbridled and hysterical laughter swept over the entire audience……Later by a few years, a few of us ‘creatively cut school’(Cathedral Latin on 107th and Euclid)and ‘visited’ the pool hall located beneath the movie theater proper….Boy, was that adventurous !
Though I grew up in Garfield Heights, and the Harvard area of Cleveland, my ‘movie oriented’ parents together, and separately, “turned me on” to the Shaker Theater. As a pre-teen I travelled by bus, as a teen/home from college, I drove. I can remember “Dr.Strangelove”, “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here”, “The Great White Hope” etc….Nice clean place, nice clientele……I also remember,“katty korner” across the street was Mawby’s(?)where originally my mother introduced me to a “Western”, which was a big fat hamburger, mixed with egg and some seasonings, on a nice bun….I believe their fries were good, so too the chocolate milk shake (though any of the Rhoton’s locations had a better shake)…I think my mother especially enjoyed this theater because it was part of ‘Paul Newman’s home turf’….What can I say, them Goy girls were a pushover for the blue eyes…and we also bought sports oriented presents at Newman-Stern, the downtown location near the bridge to the West Side….Cleveland was such a series of ‘tribal villages’ in those days…Jews here, Polaks here, Italians here, Irish here et.al…..Very culturally significant….
I had an aunt,uncle etc. who lived farther up, off 55th, and my mother wound up buying a Black w/Red Interior 62 Dodge Dart convertible from Grabski not too far from the Olympia….I can remember seeing “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and hated it as a youngster, as a pre-teen, Marshall Thompson in “A Yank In Vietnam”, and as a teenager, Sean Connery in “The Hill”, it was almost a ‘ghost town’ atmosphere by that time….but, I never felt uncomfortable, in risk, and always seemed safe waiting for my ride home….My maternal family had a lot of roots in that neighborhood, going back to the woolen mills days before the Depression….My cousins both attended South High, and I was always impressed by the Catholic High School,Our Lady of Lourdes….“Kid Leo”(formerly of WMMS, now of Sirius radio) is an alumnus..I went to see bands perform in that auditorium…My father got re-married at the Polish National Catholic Church across the street from South High and that bakery ….oh, and a maternal great uncle was the custodian of the Union of Poles social hall on Broadway…cheers y'all
My parents introduced me to this theater in the late 1950’s,it was always treated like ‘a step up’ from some of the other neighborhood theaters in the suburbs closer to Cleveland. I remember “PT 109”, “Charade”, “Arabesque” and “Walk Don’t Run”(Cary Grant’s ‘swan song’)….I too remember the Howard Johnson’s across the street, and the Manners' father up Broadway into Bedford proper, and the Kenny King’s KFC on the way to Northfield Rd…..what an enjoyable and exciting youth I was allowed to have………
I believe this was one of the movie theaters my mother and her two brothers (Stralka)would have attended; when not ‘splurging on Downtown Cleveland)…..I just remember it being pretty much extinct in the late 50’s when my grandmother used to walk me from Broadway/132nd area below Dressler Rd. to Red Cross swimming lessons at the Garfield Pool…Garfield Heights used to be a marvelous place to grow up and raise a Middle Class family…Mom and uncles all graduated from the original high school on Turney Rd.(?)…My uncle Ken became the law director, lived on Grand Division, and later the regional Judge until his passing in the new Millenium.
This was a nice theater, usually great selections, and a nice clientele….I believe that last movie I saw there was “The Revolutionary” with Duvall and Voight around 1970…I usually was on good behavior when I went there, my uncle wound up being the judge for Independence and 6 neighboring communities (Judge Kenneth R. Stralka, “The Hanging Judge”, especially family members before the bench)
Basically, this started as my father’s ‘movie house’ during his youth…….I had paternal family on Harvard above 131st, and maternal family down 131st and on Dressler Rd. which is technically Garfield Heights. A few doors down from the theater was the Avalon lounge, and next door to the theater toward Harvard was a laundrymat, parking lot drive, then a bakery (my spelling is bad, but I attended with their daughter, Susie Aukewchevski/phonetically). My parents took me there when it was remodeled and reopened early 60’s roadshow performance of “From Here To Eternity” (by that time it was already about 11 or 12 yrs. old)…during my elementary school years I experienced the Saturday afternoon all-day marathons of mixed cartoons, films et.al…….for my pre-teen years I had the pleasure of the “Beach” movie franchise, I saw the Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night” presentation where the large/wide b&w tickets had the Beatles group photo, in those cardigan, collarless suits…..My Catholic grade school on Harvard (Our Lady of Czestochowa) ‘promoted the shit’ out of “Lillies of the Field” …..well, it did have nuns !………..Of course, when I reached the upper teens, a driver’s license led to an exodus downtown, the suburbs, etc. However, the Avalon left many great memories. As a cinephile you’d be surprised at the number of ‘hits’, ‘B-movies’ and oddities that I have tracked down and archived because they reminded me of my ‘days at the Avalon’………..btw, as an older teen, I wound up as a movie usher at another great location, the Mapletown Theater on Broadway and Libby Rd. in Maple Heights (this one was my immediate family theater from my toddler era until I was almost 8 and my parents divorced, the first time). We lived on Morgan Street up Broadway just before Lee Rd., and it was ‘walking distance’….Saw Elvis in “Jailhouse Rock”, James Dean in “Rebel….”, and my all-time favorite, John Wayne whistling his way through “The High and The Mighty”………..cheers y'all
my cousin and family lived on Emery Rd. and their backyard gave way to the East Side parking lot and screen……..interesting summer evenings when you’re a kid in the late 50’s/early 60’s
does anyone have a Marquee picture (the year is inconsequential, but I am a child of the 1955-69)downtown Cleveland theater-wise, and have almost assembled marquee pictures of all my youthful haunts and memories……if someone wants to share, ……I remembering going there to view “The Fall of the Roman Empire”, but later, missing the opportunity to see/hear THE WHO w/opening act JAMES TAYLOR….my date and I went to see “Little Big Man” at one of the other venues…..Stupid is as stupid does !
I vividly remember watching “Goldfinger” on New Years Day the year of its release…I was a pre-teen, and I believe Mom picked me up after the show…But, sitting there when he gets his introduction to Honor Blackman, and utters her name, POOOSIE,and a wave, a tsunami, of unbridled and hysterical laughter swept over the entire audience……Later by a few years, a few of us ‘creatively cut school’(Cathedral Latin on 107th and Euclid)and ‘visited’ the pool hall located beneath the movie theater proper….Boy, was that adventurous !
Though I grew up in Garfield Heights, and the Harvard area of Cleveland, my ‘movie oriented’ parents together, and separately, “turned me on” to the Shaker Theater. As a pre-teen I travelled by bus, as a teen/home from college, I drove. I can remember “Dr.Strangelove”, “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here”, “The Great White Hope” etc….Nice clean place, nice clientele……I also remember,“katty korner” across the street was Mawby’s(?)where originally my mother introduced me to a “Western”, which was a big fat hamburger, mixed with egg and some seasonings, on a nice bun….I believe their fries were good, so too the chocolate milk shake (though any of the Rhoton’s locations had a better shake)…I think my mother especially enjoyed this theater because it was part of ‘Paul Newman’s home turf’….What can I say, them Goy girls were a pushover for the blue eyes…and we also bought sports oriented presents at Newman-Stern, the downtown location near the bridge to the West Side….Cleveland was such a series of ‘tribal villages’ in those days…Jews here, Polaks here, Italians here, Irish here et.al…..Very culturally significant….
I had an aunt,uncle etc. who lived farther up, off 55th, and my mother wound up buying a Black w/Red Interior 62 Dodge Dart convertible from Grabski not too far from the Olympia….I can remember seeing “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and hated it as a youngster, as a pre-teen, Marshall Thompson in “A Yank In Vietnam”, and as a teenager, Sean Connery in “The Hill”, it was almost a ‘ghost town’ atmosphere by that time….but, I never felt uncomfortable, in risk, and always seemed safe waiting for my ride home….My maternal family had a lot of roots in that neighborhood, going back to the woolen mills days before the Depression….My cousins both attended South High, and I was always impressed by the Catholic High School,Our Lady of Lourdes….“Kid Leo”(formerly of WMMS, now of Sirius radio) is an alumnus..I went to see bands perform in that auditorium…My father got re-married at the Polish National Catholic Church across the street from South High and that bakery ….oh, and a maternal great uncle was the custodian of the Union of Poles social hall on Broadway…cheers y'all
My parents introduced me to this theater in the late 1950’s,it was always treated like ‘a step up’ from some of the other neighborhood theaters in the suburbs closer to Cleveland. I remember “PT 109”, “Charade”, “Arabesque” and “Walk Don’t Run”(Cary Grant’s ‘swan song’)….I too remember the Howard Johnson’s across the street, and the Manners' father up Broadway into Bedford proper, and the Kenny King’s KFC on the way to Northfield Rd…..what an enjoyable and exciting youth I was allowed to have………
I believe this was one of the movie theaters my mother and her two brothers (Stralka)would have attended; when not ‘splurging on Downtown Cleveland)…..I just remember it being pretty much extinct in the late 50’s when my grandmother used to walk me from Broadway/132nd area below Dressler Rd. to Red Cross swimming lessons at the Garfield Pool…Garfield Heights used to be a marvelous place to grow up and raise a Middle Class family…Mom and uncles all graduated from the original high school on Turney Rd.(?)…My uncle Ken became the law director, lived on Grand Division, and later the regional Judge until his passing in the new Millenium.
This was a nice theater, usually great selections, and a nice clientele….I believe that last movie I saw there was “The Revolutionary” with Duvall and Voight around 1970…I usually was on good behavior when I went there, my uncle wound up being the judge for Independence and 6 neighboring communities (Judge Kenneth R. Stralka, “The Hanging Judge”, especially family members before the bench)
btw….if any of you have a pic of the Avalon marquee etc, I would appreciate your sharing……thanks
Basically, this started as my father’s ‘movie house’ during his youth…….I had paternal family on Harvard above 131st, and maternal family down 131st and on Dressler Rd. which is technically Garfield Heights. A few doors down from the theater was the Avalon lounge, and next door to the theater toward Harvard was a laundrymat, parking lot drive, then a bakery (my spelling is bad, but I attended with their daughter, Susie Aukewchevski/phonetically). My parents took me there when it was remodeled and reopened early 60’s roadshow performance of “From Here To Eternity” (by that time it was already about 11 or 12 yrs. old)…during my elementary school years I experienced the Saturday afternoon all-day marathons of mixed cartoons, films et.al…….for my pre-teen years I had the pleasure of the “Beach” movie franchise, I saw the Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night” presentation where the large/wide b&w tickets had the Beatles group photo, in those cardigan, collarless suits…..My Catholic grade school on Harvard (Our Lady of Czestochowa) ‘promoted the shit’ out of “Lillies of the Field” …..well, it did have nuns !………..Of course, when I reached the upper teens, a driver’s license led to an exodus downtown, the suburbs, etc. However, the Avalon left many great memories. As a cinephile you’d be surprised at the number of ‘hits’, ‘B-movies’ and oddities that I have tracked down and archived because they reminded me of my ‘days at the Avalon’………..btw, as an older teen, I wound up as a movie usher at another great location, the Mapletown Theater on Broadway and Libby Rd. in Maple Heights (this one was my immediate family theater from my toddler era until I was almost 8 and my parents divorced, the first time). We lived on Morgan Street up Broadway just before Lee Rd., and it was ‘walking distance’….Saw Elvis in “Jailhouse Rock”, James Dean in “Rebel….”, and my all-time favorite, John Wayne whistling his way through “The High and The Mighty”………..cheers y'all