My first movie, shot in Atlantic City and called The Money, premiered at The Charles. Charles Tannenbaum was a family friend and actually did us a favor, as the film was a tiny independent movie and hardly played anywhere theatrically. On the night of the “gala” opening, a few people showed up, including my parents who lived nearby. Since my stepfather was a local celebrity, the Atlantic City Press wrote about the premiere and said that the family would all be there. This information proved useful to some and my parents' house was robbed when they were at the movie.
I went often to the Charles, and also to other theaters owned by Charles, and I think a lot of how I feel about movies came from the offbeat films I saw there, and at the Astor and some of the other smaller AC theaters. Charles loved exhibition and told me he often would stop in to one of his theaters, like the Tilton, when he was a successful casino executive, and just hang out, take tickets, and smell the popcorn.
Years later I thought about buying the Margate (the Ventnor was too expensive) but never got very far with that. I watched so many movies in AC as I grew up, mostly at the Ventnor and Margate, but in uptown Atlantic City too as I got older, and so many of the films I used to use in movie montages I probably first saw on some rainy summer day at an Atlantic City theater.
The Money is out on dvd, probably available on Amazon, now called by the distributor Atlantic City Jackpot. The biggest star in it was Danny DeVito, who had three lines, but of course they put his picture on the box.
My first movie, shot in Atlantic City and called The Money, premiered at The Charles. Charles Tannenbaum was a family friend and actually did us a favor, as the film was a tiny independent movie and hardly played anywhere theatrically. On the night of the “gala” opening, a few people showed up, including my parents who lived nearby. Since my stepfather was a local celebrity, the Atlantic City Press wrote about the premiere and said that the family would all be there. This information proved useful to some and my parents' house was robbed when they were at the movie.
I went often to the Charles, and also to other theaters owned by Charles, and I think a lot of how I feel about movies came from the offbeat films I saw there, and at the Astor and some of the other smaller AC theaters. Charles loved exhibition and told me he often would stop in to one of his theaters, like the Tilton, when he was a successful casino executive, and just hang out, take tickets, and smell the popcorn.
Years later I thought about buying the Margate (the Ventnor was too expensive) but never got very far with that. I watched so many movies in AC as I grew up, mostly at the Ventnor and Margate, but in uptown Atlantic City too as I got older, and so many of the films I used to use in movie montages I probably first saw on some rainy summer day at an Atlantic City theater.
The Money is out on dvd, probably available on Amazon, now called by the distributor Atlantic City Jackpot. The biggest star in it was Danny DeVito, who had three lines, but of course they put his picture on the box.