The Esquire, as well as the Drexel, were my “neighborhood theatres” when I was growing up. Although the first movie I recall being taken to was, in fact, SLEEPING BEAUTY downtown (I always thought it was at the Loew’s Ohio, but I was five; it well could have been Hunt’s Cinestage, especially since, with the exception of the road-shown SLEEPING BEAUTY, Disney films tended to play at the RKO Palace, an arrangement no doubt stemming from RKO’s longtime releasing of Disney films before Disney founded its own distributor, BuenaVista, in 1954).
The first movie I remember seeing at the Esquire was CINDERFELLA, with Jerry Lewis, in early 1961. Throughout the 1960s, the Esquire played second-run movies mostly. I had my first viewings of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, BEN-HUR, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (the 1971 reissue), and PATTON. After the theatre was remodeled, with a name change to Carousel East, the first film I saw there was CABARET in the Summer of 1972.
Unlike the Drexel, which enjoyed a distinguished turn as a first-run house from 1967 to the end of the 1970s, the Esquire, built for the old system of downtown palaces and what VARIETY termed “sub-run” “nabes,” never found its niche in the age of suburban first-run multi-plexes.
I would think the Chaplin festival was in the mid-‘70s. After Chaplin’s special Oscar in 1972, there was a great deal of interest, and Chaplin, who of course retained control of his movies, released his films as a series. I recall seeing a few of them at the World, the Bexley’s sister theater on the OSU campus, circa 1975.
I grew up just outside Bexley in the Berwick area, and the theater was nearing the height of its notoriety as I was entering my high school years in 1969. However, it tried a period of mainstream second-run in 1970, not long after Jerry Knight’s Drexel, up the road, went from second-run to a first-run house for prestige pictures. In 1970 and 1971 I saw sub-runs of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and LITTLE BIG MAN, respectively, at the Bexley.
Cool, Mark L. I stayed for 10 also—never passed up the chance for a double feature. I forgot—I also had my first screening of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY at Cinema East, in a reissue in the fall of 1971. Not the severely curved Cinerama screen experience I would have had at the film’s first-run at the Grand downtown in 1968, but close. My virgin 2001 voyage was followed a few weeks later by another MGM re-release (part of the same package): DOCTOR ZHIVAGO—also my first time. I saw that again around 1990 at the Ohio Theater Summer Movies and it didn’t look as clear and vivid.
I interviewed Charlie Sugarman and also Jerry Knight, another great Columbus showman who managed the Drexel before it was sold to Jeff Frank (whom I knew in his two earlier jobs, at the Columbus Museum of Art and at the Ohio Theater) for a feature in COLUMBUS MONTHLY (Mar. 1980). This was in the late ‘70s just before I left town for the next five years and Charlie sold the CINEMA EAST. By this time, he simply could not outbid the Loew’s, General Cinema, and AMC chains for films for this cinema and the twinplex he opened on Morse Road in 1974. It was sad.
The first movie I saw at CINEMA EAST was THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING in July 1966, when I was 12. I recall seeing THE ODD COUPLE, HELLO DOLLY (in 70mm—Eye-popping!), THE CANDIDATE, and Ross Hunter’s LOST HORIZON (Yes, Charlie played turkeys like everybody else.) In October 1979, Richard Rush previewed THE STUNT MAN, at a time when he and his producer, Melvin Simon, were taking it around the country, trying a populist approach to finding a distributor (Now Toronto would probably do the trick for him). The highlight of the late-‘80s period for me at CINEMA EAST was in 1989 when it presented the reconstruction of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA—one of the most glorious things I’ve ever seen.
in a movie theater!
I live out of state now, but I visit my mother in Reynoldsburg and drive by the lot that used to be CINEMA EAST. What a shame, but what wonderful memories!
Northland Cinema (1964-c.early ‘80s) was not only Columbus’s first suburban first-run theater, it was also Central Ohio’s first mall cinema. It opened with the mall, which was enclosed in the early '70s. Its first attraction was GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM, a Columbia comedy starring Jack Lemmon. It got into the roadshow business in Jan. 1965 with MARY POPPINS, followed in April by THE SOUND OF MUSIC, which played Northland until Nov. 1966. The first film I saw at Northland, which for my family involved a trip far across town, was THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE in July 1967. I was 13.
These first suburban theaters were transitional—somewhere between a downtown movie palace and the multiplexes that would be everywhere ten years after these single-auditorium places were built The cinema was twinned in the mid-‘70s, around the same time it was bought from its local owners by General Cinema. GCC closed it in the '80s to open a free-standing eight-cinema multiplex in Dec. '85. The first film I saw there was THE COLOR PURPLE.
kencmcintyre’s photo depicts the World Premiere engagement of THE STORY OF G.I. JOE in August 1945, just weeks after the end of World War II. Indianapolis’s own Ernie Pyle, the Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent, was killed in the final weeks of the war in Europe. His death came between the end of filming and the movie’s release. United Artists honored Pyle by opening the biopic starring Burgess Meredith and introducing Robert Mitchum in Pyle’s hometown. Great photo.
The Esquire, as well as the Drexel, were my “neighborhood theatres” when I was growing up. Although the first movie I recall being taken to was, in fact, SLEEPING BEAUTY downtown (I always thought it was at the Loew’s Ohio, but I was five; it well could have been Hunt’s Cinestage, especially since, with the exception of the road-shown SLEEPING BEAUTY, Disney films tended to play at the RKO Palace, an arrangement no doubt stemming from RKO’s longtime releasing of Disney films before Disney founded its own distributor, BuenaVista, in 1954).
The first movie I remember seeing at the Esquire was CINDERFELLA, with Jerry Lewis, in early 1961. Throughout the 1960s, the Esquire played second-run movies mostly. I had my first viewings of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, BEN-HUR, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (the 1971 reissue), and PATTON. After the theatre was remodeled, with a name change to Carousel East, the first film I saw there was CABARET in the Summer of 1972.
Unlike the Drexel, which enjoyed a distinguished turn as a first-run house from 1967 to the end of the 1970s, the Esquire, built for the old system of downtown palaces and what VARIETY termed “sub-run” “nabes,” never found its niche in the age of suburban first-run multi-plexes.
I would think the Chaplin festival was in the mid-‘70s. After Chaplin’s special Oscar in 1972, there was a great deal of interest, and Chaplin, who of course retained control of his movies, released his films as a series. I recall seeing a few of them at the World, the Bexley’s sister theater on the OSU campus, circa 1975.
I grew up just outside Bexley in the Berwick area, and the theater was nearing the height of its notoriety as I was entering my high school years in 1969. However, it tried a period of mainstream second-run in 1970, not long after Jerry Knight’s Drexel, up the road, went from second-run to a first-run house for prestige pictures. In 1970 and 1971 I saw sub-runs of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and LITTLE BIG MAN, respectively, at the Bexley.
Cool, Mark L. I stayed for 10 also—never passed up the chance for a double feature. I forgot—I also had my first screening of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY at Cinema East, in a reissue in the fall of 1971. Not the severely curved Cinerama screen experience I would have had at the film’s first-run at the Grand downtown in 1968, but close. My virgin 2001 voyage was followed a few weeks later by another MGM re-release (part of the same package): DOCTOR ZHIVAGO—also my first time. I saw that again around 1990 at the Ohio Theater Summer Movies and it didn’t look as clear and vivid.
I interviewed Charlie Sugarman and also Jerry Knight, another great Columbus showman who managed the Drexel before it was sold to Jeff Frank (whom I knew in his two earlier jobs, at the Columbus Museum of Art and at the Ohio Theater) for a feature in COLUMBUS MONTHLY (Mar. 1980). This was in the late ‘70s just before I left town for the next five years and Charlie sold the CINEMA EAST. By this time, he simply could not outbid the Loew’s, General Cinema, and AMC chains for films for this cinema and the twinplex he opened on Morse Road in 1974. It was sad.
The first movie I saw at CINEMA EAST was THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING in July 1966, when I was 12. I recall seeing THE ODD COUPLE, HELLO DOLLY (in 70mm—Eye-popping!), THE CANDIDATE, and Ross Hunter’s LOST HORIZON (Yes, Charlie played turkeys like everybody else.) In October 1979, Richard Rush previewed THE STUNT MAN, at a time when he and his producer, Melvin Simon, were taking it around the country, trying a populist approach to finding a distributor (Now Toronto would probably do the trick for him). The highlight of the late-‘80s period for me at CINEMA EAST was in 1989 when it presented the reconstruction of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA—one of the most glorious things I’ve ever seen. in a movie theater!
I live out of state now, but I visit my mother in Reynoldsburg and drive by the lot that used to be CINEMA EAST. What a shame, but what wonderful memories!
Northland Cinema (1964-c.early ‘80s) was not only Columbus’s first suburban first-run theater, it was also Central Ohio’s first mall cinema. It opened with the mall, which was enclosed in the early '70s. Its first attraction was GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM, a Columbia comedy starring Jack Lemmon. It got into the roadshow business in Jan. 1965 with MARY POPPINS, followed in April by THE SOUND OF MUSIC, which played Northland until Nov. 1966. The first film I saw at Northland, which for my family involved a trip far across town, was THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE in July 1967. I was 13.
These first suburban theaters were transitional—somewhere between a downtown movie palace and the multiplexes that would be everywhere ten years after these single-auditorium places were built The cinema was twinned in the mid-‘70s, around the same time it was bought from its local owners by General Cinema. GCC closed it in the '80s to open a free-standing eight-cinema multiplex in Dec. '85. The first film I saw there was THE COLOR PURPLE.
kencmcintyre’s photo depicts the World Premiere engagement of THE STORY OF G.I. JOE in August 1945, just weeks after the end of World War II. Indianapolis’s own Ernie Pyle, the Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent, was killed in the final weeks of the war in Europe. His death came between the end of filming and the movie’s release. United Artists honored Pyle by opening the biopic starring Burgess Meredith and introducing Robert Mitchum in Pyle’s hometown. Great photo.