There is no other movie theater on the planet that meant more to me than The Nile.
Especially on Saturday afternoons!
An always kid-crowded mass of wide eyes and excited noises, who paid their 35-cent admission (and doubled that for candy and popcorn) for the trip to a world of their own, few adults anywhere in sight, eager for a few hours entertainment geared strictly toward them.
The Nile was located in South Minneapolis but it doesn’t matter if one’s favorite memories are there or in South Philadelphia or South Dakota or South America, a favorite place has a reason for being so.
This was my neighborhood theater, from 1958 – 1968, a span of 10 years that took me from 3rd grade through graduation from High School.
Although we lived at 3 different addresses in South Minneapolis during that time, the only substantial difference was moving from west of Cedar Avenue to east of it, never more than 2 blocks either side of 38th Street.
The Nile was located almost at the intersection of 38th Street and 23rd Avenue, where those 2 streets form a ’T' intersection.
And in 10 years, we never lived more than 7 blocks away from it.
How much more important “going to the movies” was during a time when almost no one owned a color TV (ABC & CBS didn’t join NBC with prime time color broadcasts until 1965) and there was so much more to the experience than just seeing the feature attraction!
Multiple cartoons, of course, but short-subjects from ‘The Three Stooges’ or the short ‘B’ films of ‘The Bowery Boys,’ were inevitably a part of the several hours that culminated in the feature itself.
And what features they were!
During the late 50s and early 60s I saw almost every now-classic science fiction & fantasy flick at The Nile. Kerwin Matthews in Ray Harryhausen’s “7th Voyage of Sinbad” and again in “The Three Worlds of Gulliver,” George Pal’s “Time Machine,” William Castle’s “13 Ghosts” (with the red/blue cardboard viewer enabling you to see or not see the ghosts when they appeared in the story). Fantastic films feasted upon by an impressionable imagination down the aisles of The Nile Theater.
Other genres as well: Gangster movies such as “The Purple Gang” and combat dramas from WWII (“Battle of the Coral Sea”) or from the Civil War (“The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come”). A Western now and then, a few comedies of the “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein” variety, but never, ever, a single, girlish, ‘Romance Movie’ or any kind of boring, kissy-face ‘adult drama.’
The Nile management knew its audience and never disappointed!
By the time I was in Folwell Jr. High, 2 blocks from The Nile, I grew much more interested in the kind of movies girls like.
Thus began the ‘dating years’ and night-time movies.
Regardless of where THEY lived, The Nile was my theater-of-choice for taking dates. No co-incidence, of course, that it was a short walk thereafter, back to my place where smuggling a young lady into my basement was quick, easy and…let the curtain fall on the thought.
“Goldfinger,” “Bonnie & Clyde,” “Dr. Zhivago,” “Not With My Wife, You Don’t!,” are among the highly-memorable Nile-seen movies during the mid to late 1960s — not strictly because of the quality of the films!
When I left Minnesota in the summer of 1981, it never occurred to me that The Nile would soon be gone forever. Even though I returned for regular visits it had already been demolished by the time I heard about its closing. I’ve been back living in Minnesota for many years but visits to the old neighborhood are never quite what I want them to be.
Other people have told me that their worst fears of impermanence are realized when one of their childhood schools is torn down.
Bancroft Elementary, Folwell Jr. High, and Roosevelt Sr. High were the schools I attended during the time I’ve been describing. They all still stand.
But The Nile theater stands only in memory.
And in many ways it was the most important school of them all.
There is no other movie theater on the planet that meant more to me than The Nile.
Especially on Saturday afternoons!
An always kid-crowded mass of wide eyes and excited noises, who paid their 35-cent admission (and doubled that for candy and popcorn) for the trip to a world of their own, few adults anywhere in sight, eager for a few hours entertainment geared strictly toward them.
The Nile was located in South Minneapolis but it doesn’t matter if one’s favorite memories are there or in South Philadelphia or South Dakota or South America, a favorite place has a reason for being so.
This was my neighborhood theater, from 1958 – 1968, a span of 10 years that took me from 3rd grade through graduation from High School.
Although we lived at 3 different addresses in South Minneapolis during that time, the only substantial difference was moving from west of Cedar Avenue to east of it, never more than 2 blocks either side of 38th Street.
The Nile was located almost at the intersection of 38th Street and 23rd Avenue, where those 2 streets form a ’T' intersection.
And in 10 years, we never lived more than 7 blocks away from it.
How much more important “going to the movies” was during a time when almost no one owned a color TV (ABC & CBS didn’t join NBC with prime time color broadcasts until 1965) and there was so much more to the experience than just seeing the feature attraction!
Multiple cartoons, of course, but short-subjects from ‘The Three Stooges’ or the short ‘B’ films of ‘The Bowery Boys,’ were inevitably a part of the several hours that culminated in the feature itself.
And what features they were!
During the late 50s and early 60s I saw almost every now-classic science fiction & fantasy flick at The Nile. Kerwin Matthews in Ray Harryhausen’s “7th Voyage of Sinbad” and again in “The Three Worlds of Gulliver,” George Pal’s “Time Machine,” William Castle’s “13 Ghosts” (with the red/blue cardboard viewer enabling you to see or not see the ghosts when they appeared in the story). Fantastic films feasted upon by an impressionable imagination down the aisles of The Nile Theater.
Other genres as well: Gangster movies such as “The Purple Gang” and combat dramas from WWII (“Battle of the Coral Sea”) or from the Civil War (“The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come”). A Western now and then, a few comedies of the “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein” variety, but never, ever, a single, girlish, ‘Romance Movie’ or any kind of boring, kissy-face ‘adult drama.’
The Nile management knew its audience and never disappointed!
By the time I was in Folwell Jr. High, 2 blocks from The Nile, I grew much more interested in the kind of movies girls like.
Thus began the ‘dating years’ and night-time movies.
Regardless of where THEY lived, The Nile was my theater-of-choice for taking dates. No co-incidence, of course, that it was a short walk thereafter, back to my place where smuggling a young lady into my basement was quick, easy and…let the curtain fall on the thought.
“Goldfinger,” “Bonnie & Clyde,” “Dr. Zhivago,” “Not With My Wife, You Don’t!,” are among the highly-memorable Nile-seen movies during the mid to late 1960s — not strictly because of the quality of the films!
When I left Minnesota in the summer of 1981, it never occurred to me that The Nile would soon be gone forever. Even though I returned for regular visits it had already been demolished by the time I heard about its closing. I’ve been back living in Minnesota for many years but visits to the old neighborhood are never quite what I want them to be.
Other people have told me that their worst fears of impermanence are realized when one of their childhood schools is torn down.
Bancroft Elementary, Folwell Jr. High, and Roosevelt Sr. High were the schools I attended during the time I’ve been describing. They all still stand.
But The Nile theater stands only in memory.
And in many ways it was the most important school of them all.
— Mark Riley May 2008