I first went to the Blue Star Cinema in 1965 when I was 9 years old. I remember seeing Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. The cinema was very close to where I lived so my family went to the movies quite often. Some of the other films I remember seeing were The Dirty Dozen, You Only Live Twice, 2001 A Space Odyssey and Dr. Zhivago. Back then, it was a single theater with a balcony that seated about 1000. For an additional charge, you could sit in the balcony and smoke. In 1973, I went to work at the theater as an usher and I also worked as an early morning cleaner for a while. About a year later, Cinema 2 was built next door. It had about 750 seats with no balcony; however, the left side of the theater was for smokers. (Times have changed, huh?) The big films for the Christmas season of 1974 were The Towering Inferno and in Cinema 2, the Man With The Golden Gun. In about 1975-76, they put a wall down the center of both theaters, splitting them in two. Now there were 4 cinemas. The theaters were not designed to be multi-plexes and as a result, there was no real crowd control. It was relatively easy for people to walk from one theater to the other. It wasn’t the same after the split.
The cinemas are no longer there. They were gutted in the late 1990’s and ‘blended in’ to the rest of the strip mall where they were located. A Michaels Craft store is now on the spot of the old Cinema 1. Also, contrary to the notation in the Star Ledger article of August 18, 1998, Jaws didn’t play at the Cinema, at least not in 1975. I worked there at the time.
I first went to the Blue Star Cinema in 1965 when I was 9 years old. I remember seeing Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. The cinema was very close to where I lived so my family went to the movies quite often. Some of the other films I remember seeing were The Dirty Dozen, You Only Live Twice, 2001 A Space Odyssey and Dr. Zhivago. Back then, it was a single theater with a balcony that seated about 1000. For an additional charge, you could sit in the balcony and smoke. In 1973, I went to work at the theater as an usher and I also worked as an early morning cleaner for a while. About a year later, Cinema 2 was built next door. It had about 750 seats with no balcony; however, the left side of the theater was for smokers. (Times have changed, huh?) The big films for the Christmas season of 1974 were The Towering Inferno and in Cinema 2, the Man With The Golden Gun. In about 1975-76, they put a wall down the center of both theaters, splitting them in two. Now there were 4 cinemas. The theaters were not designed to be multi-plexes and as a result, there was no real crowd control. It was relatively easy for people to walk from one theater to the other. It wasn’t the same after the split.
The cinemas are no longer there. They were gutted in the late 1990’s and ‘blended in’ to the rest of the strip mall where they were located. A Michaels Craft store is now on the spot of the old Cinema 1. Also, contrary to the notation in the Star Ledger article of August 18, 1998, Jaws didn’t play at the Cinema, at least not in 1975. I worked there at the time.