Hi, I’m waiting to win that same lottery and go on that same road trip. I’ve been collecting since I started working in old movie palaces way back in 1972 when there were large stashes of posters sitting around in theater basements. Even then I was a few years behind a guy who had gone to almost every theater in Wisconsin and got everything. This guy was so lucky he found a theater in Green Bay that was showing a re-release of Gone With The Wind and he was displaying the original 1939 one sheet, half sheet, insert, and lobby card sets. What I did over the years was research where the theaters were located in Milwaukee, (there was over 85 locations of theaters that operated between 1910 and 1980) and I went to every building left standing. Some I found nothing, sometimes I found a few, and a couple of times I found several hundred. About four years ago a plumber in Green Bay was hired to check the condition of the pipes at an old movie theater that somebody was renovating and he went into a room in the sub-basement and found over 2,000 movie posters. The best thing to do is check on the internet for movie collectible conventions around the country from small shows like the Milwaukee Movie Collectibles Show with about 20 dealers, Ray Courts' Hollywood Collectors Show in Chicago with about 50 dealers, Columbus Cine Event in Columbus, Ohio coming up Memorial Day weekend, to Western Film Fairs in Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Texas. When you attend one of these shows find the dealers who are 50 and older because we are generally the guys who worked in the old movie palaces and saved the posters before they got buried by the wrecking ball. There is still a chance, and I look at it like I’m searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I’m sorry to see that JDC was so negative. A lot of what he said is true in general, but you work around it. The way I look at it is, you have 164 seats and two screens, that is such a small number to fill. In Cedarburg, I had 260 seats, and the community is very active in high school sports, so there were times when we only had 30 to 50 patrons on a Friday night, so before the games I had a volunteer pass out fliers to remind the people about that week’s feature. On Friday nights during the summer there were concerts in the park two blocks away that took away customers. I concentrated on getting them in on other nights. On weeknights, we would average between 20 to 50 customers per show and Friday nights (without the mentioned competition) we’d have 150 to 200 people and on Saturday nights we would average 200 to 250 people. Plus, we had to put up with blizzards, in February, 2007 we had a 28" snowstorm on a Thursday that shut down the town until Sunday. On Friday we only had 23 people, but on Saturday evening we had 164 people who trudged through the snow, pulling their kids on sleds. We even had 8 people who came in on cross-country skis, which we put in our broom closet while they watched the movie.
Now, generally JDC is right about community support being mostly lip service, there are those rare gems like Cedarburg and the Gentry’s community that back it up with their patronage. Back in the 80’s in Milwaukee an old movie palace, the Uptown was trying to survive, the community wanted family movies, so the manager played a lot of Disney and family films. Attendance was low. After four months he started playing action and R-rated movies. Attendance was good, but neighbors complained. He tried Midnight Flicks on Fridays and occasional concerts (including a sold out performance by Bruce Springsteen) and made a lot of money. But the neighbors complained about the teenagers, the noise, the cigarette butts and broken glass outside the theater. The manager gave in and started showing G and PG movies only and business stunk. The manager got fed up and decided to show X-rated movies and made money for four months until the neighbors got him shut down. The theater was boarded up and was closed for 21 years until this great movie palace was torn down.
The problem with the 3-D movies and the IMax screens will draw some of your customers away, sure for a time or two, but with the number of 3-D films that are coming out, a family of five spending about $50.00 admission and $20.00 on concessions, they will soon go to the local theater to see the regular version at $7.50 each.
In Wisconsin, the Marcus Theatre Corp. owns the majority of theaters, and when they sold their smaller theaters they manipulated things with the studios so they couldn’t book first run films to compete with Marcus. It took about four years for the Times and the Rosebud to get around this and they now get first run films. At the Rivoli, Marcus had already been operating it as a budget, so we kept it as such. After the first year, when it was known we were building our attendance, I heard rumors from Marcus employees that the Marcus bosses wanted to shut us down. Two weeks later we had a surprise building inspection to find problems. We had to do some repairs, and I’m sure Marcus would have kept it up, except for the fact that one of our board of directors happens to be one of the biggest lawyers in Wisconsin.
As far as promotions costing a lot, if you know how to do it, it won’t cost much. I started paying out of my own pocket for printing flyers, and after a month, I made a deal with the print shop and I gave him free passes for him and his family for free printing services. For the movie “Waitress” I went to the local office store and bought 5 pads of Restaurant Checks that waitresses use for $10.00. I hand wrote the name of the theater the admission price and the words “Thanks for seeing the Waitress! Then on about every 25th. receipt I would add "Good for one small popcorn or soda”. I had these all ready a few days ahead of time, and I set it up that our cashiers and concessionaires wore waitress uniforms. When the customers came to the boxoffice to buy a ticket, the waitress gave them their restaurant check and we kept the carbon copy for our records. We got a front page article in the local newspaper and coverage on two Milwaukee TV stations at 10 pm Friday night. By the way, Milwaukee is about 20 miles south of Cedarburg.
As far as the “Cine Grill” restaurant/movie theaters are concerned, I personally don’t care for the idea.
They tried it in the 30’s before the theaters even had vending stands in their lobbies. All of them failed. In the early 50’s with the threat of Television they tried again and failed in about 3 years. Now, in the 2000’s they are trying again. In 1998, a new owner took over the Fox Bay and turned it into a Cine Grill, I applied as the Manager/Projectionist. They had no experience in operation of a movie theater and they were looking for somebody with restaurant experience. They failed within a year. I applied with the new owner, who failed in two years. Since then they’ve had two other owners and they are barely making ends meet. The customer is going to a movie theater to see a movie in comfort, not to eat over priced restaurant food. The only time they came for a different reason was in the 20’s and 30’s when people walked into the beautiful movie palaces in awe. This still happens in the few palaces that are still open, like Grauman’s Chinese, Radio City Music Hall, or the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee. I worked at the Oriental for awhile and I loved to see customer’s mouths drop open when they saw the Buddhas, the elephants, and the row of lions guarding the staircase to the balcony.
The thing about people today, whether they are owners, managers, projectionists, ushers, or others is that for most working in a movie theater is just a job until they find a real job. I was one of the lucky people when I started working in the giant movie palaces in downtown Milwaukee in 1972. All of the managers at the six palaces I worked at had started working in movie theaters since the 20’s and 30’s. I was like a sponge and I soaked up all the knowledge I could.
Hi. My name is Mark Zimmermann. I’ve been a manager/projectionist/every position since 1972 working at over a dozen movie theaters from 2500 seat downtown movie palaces to small town 250 seat theaters. I think the Gentry has great potential if the community has an interest in it and you have somebody who is devoted to showing movies to the citizens and become a part of the community.
I relate to your story. In Cedarburg, Wisconsin, a town of 11,000 had a movie theater, the Rivoli, built in the 1880’s as a hardware store. It was converted into a movie theater in 1936, first as an independent and then as a part of the Marcus Theater chain in the 1970s. By 2006, the Marcus chain decided to close a lot of their small town theaters and the townspeople rallied together. The town leaders decided to buy the building and continue to operate the Rivoli Theater. They had no experience running a movie theater, so they hired me because of my knowledge and experience operating movie theaters. Since the 1990s Marcus had been operating the Rivoli as a budget house, and had been operating at a loss since 2001. The Rivoli has 260 seats with a single screen. I was hired as a salaried manager/projectionist and an Assistant for two nights a week, and we had volunteers come in daily to operate the box office and the vending stand. Marcus left on Dec, 22, 2006, we closed for a week and reopened under new management on Dec. 29,2006. Marcus had charged $4.00 admission nightly with a $2 Budget Night on Tuesdays and high prices on their vending prices.
I decided to go with volume of patrons, so we reduced the nightly price to $3.00 and cut the vending prices by 40%. I made window cards promoting upcoming movies and placed them in the windows of every business in Cedarburg and the neighboring communities. With every movie I created a tie-in with a business, like with Underdog people with dogs came by the week before the showing to have me photograph the dog in front of the poster. I gave them a coupon for a free popcorn refill and a 10% discount coupon from a local dog grooming business. As a result we had sold out crowds on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I contacted day care centers and set up special morning and afternoon showings. I started to book occasional classic films for a week and we were drawing customers from as far as 40 miles away. I heard through the grapevine that the manager of a Milwaukee theater who showed classics on occasion felt that I was taking customers away from his theater 20 miles away. I set up special matinees for Senior Centers and I set up showings for local school groups. It became a common sight to see two or three school buses on the side street. Due to my promotional ideas, it became common that we would sell out on Friday and Saturday nights as well as on Tuesday Budget Nights. One night a customer came in and said he worked for Marcus for five years at the Rivoli and he said there was maybe 10 times they sold out in five years.
By Halloween, I took my 8 and 10 year olds Trick or Treating, and after about going to 30 houses my daughter asked, “Daddy, how come everybody knows your name?” That was when I first realized how in small town America everybody truly does know everyone’s name. By our first anniversary we had more than doubled attendance compared to Marcus and we out sold Marcus at the vending stand. Of course, because I loved my job I was actually working around 60 hours a week, instead of 40 hours.
Unfortunately for me, after 18 months of observing and learning from me, the Board of Directors decided to let me go and hire a 30-something at $8.00 an hour to replace me. As of now their attendance has dropped back to Marcus records and they are now on their fifth replacement for me.
I wish I had the finances to buy your theater because I know it could be profitable as long as the community is willing to support it. If you find somebody to buy it, I’d be willing to relocate.
Hi. I wanted to mention an interesting thing about the Uptown. Back in around 1980 or 1981 there were occasional rock concerts at the Uptown. I was working at a different movie theater at the time,but word was out that they needed extra people to be ushers at the concert. Well the concert was Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band. The concert was great until they received a bomb threat. It was amazing how we were able to get about 900 people outside while the bomb squad searched the place.
Hi. My name is Mark Zimmermann and I’m writing a book on the history of the Riverside Theater. I was manager there in the mid-70’s when UA was running it. While there I secured several old storage rooms on the second floor from vandalism, and I found two old scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and reviews from approximately 1942-1950. Luckily, the manager back then was wise enough to save this for history. I saved them for all these years, and after the success of Larry Widen’s recent book I decided to research the entire history of the Riverside at the Milwaukee Public Library. It’s amazing how many stars came to Milwaukee to perform for an entire week at the Riverside, from Bob Hope, Frances Gumm and the Gumm Sisters, to Abbott and Costello, Chico Marx, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and Laurel and Hardy. The one thing I’m in need of is personal stories from people who went to the Riverside to see the Stage and Screen performances in person. I’ve interviewed 3 people who attended the Riverside regularly back in the 1950s. If there is anybody out there who attended shows from the 1940’s to the 1970’s and would like to share their stories please contact me at Thanks.
Hi, I’m waiting to win that same lottery and go on that same road trip. I’ve been collecting since I started working in old movie palaces way back in 1972 when there were large stashes of posters sitting around in theater basements. Even then I was a few years behind a guy who had gone to almost every theater in Wisconsin and got everything. This guy was so lucky he found a theater in Green Bay that was showing a re-release of Gone With The Wind and he was displaying the original 1939 one sheet, half sheet, insert, and lobby card sets. What I did over the years was research where the theaters were located in Milwaukee, (there was over 85 locations of theaters that operated between 1910 and 1980) and I went to every building left standing. Some I found nothing, sometimes I found a few, and a couple of times I found several hundred. About four years ago a plumber in Green Bay was hired to check the condition of the pipes at an old movie theater that somebody was renovating and he went into a room in the sub-basement and found over 2,000 movie posters. The best thing to do is check on the internet for movie collectible conventions around the country from small shows like the Milwaukee Movie Collectibles Show with about 20 dealers, Ray Courts' Hollywood Collectors Show in Chicago with about 50 dealers, Columbus Cine Event in Columbus, Ohio coming up Memorial Day weekend, to Western Film Fairs in Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Texas. When you attend one of these shows find the dealers who are 50 and older because we are generally the guys who worked in the old movie palaces and saved the posters before they got buried by the wrecking ball. There is still a chance, and I look at it like I’m searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I’m sorry to see that JDC was so negative. A lot of what he said is true in general, but you work around it. The way I look at it is, you have 164 seats and two screens, that is such a small number to fill. In Cedarburg, I had 260 seats, and the community is very active in high school sports, so there were times when we only had 30 to 50 patrons on a Friday night, so before the games I had a volunteer pass out fliers to remind the people about that week’s feature. On Friday nights during the summer there were concerts in the park two blocks away that took away customers. I concentrated on getting them in on other nights. On weeknights, we would average between 20 to 50 customers per show and Friday nights (without the mentioned competition) we’d have 150 to 200 people and on Saturday nights we would average 200 to 250 people. Plus, we had to put up with blizzards, in February, 2007 we had a 28" snowstorm on a Thursday that shut down the town until Sunday. On Friday we only had 23 people, but on Saturday evening we had 164 people who trudged through the snow, pulling their kids on sleds. We even had 8 people who came in on cross-country skis, which we put in our broom closet while they watched the movie.
Now, generally JDC is right about community support being mostly lip service, there are those rare gems like Cedarburg and the Gentry’s community that back it up with their patronage. Back in the 80’s in Milwaukee an old movie palace, the Uptown was trying to survive, the community wanted family movies, so the manager played a lot of Disney and family films. Attendance was low. After four months he started playing action and R-rated movies. Attendance was good, but neighbors complained. He tried Midnight Flicks on Fridays and occasional concerts (including a sold out performance by Bruce Springsteen) and made a lot of money. But the neighbors complained about the teenagers, the noise, the cigarette butts and broken glass outside the theater. The manager gave in and started showing G and PG movies only and business stunk. The manager got fed up and decided to show X-rated movies and made money for four months until the neighbors got him shut down. The theater was boarded up and was closed for 21 years until this great movie palace was torn down.
The problem with the 3-D movies and the IMax screens will draw some of your customers away, sure for a time or two, but with the number of 3-D films that are coming out, a family of five spending about $50.00 admission and $20.00 on concessions, they will soon go to the local theater to see the regular version at $7.50 each.
In Wisconsin, the Marcus Theatre Corp. owns the majority of theaters, and when they sold their smaller theaters they manipulated things with the studios so they couldn’t book first run films to compete with Marcus. It took about four years for the Times and the Rosebud to get around this and they now get first run films. At the Rivoli, Marcus had already been operating it as a budget, so we kept it as such. After the first year, when it was known we were building our attendance, I heard rumors from Marcus employees that the Marcus bosses wanted to shut us down. Two weeks later we had a surprise building inspection to find problems. We had to do some repairs, and I’m sure Marcus would have kept it up, except for the fact that one of our board of directors happens to be one of the biggest lawyers in Wisconsin.
As far as promotions costing a lot, if you know how to do it, it won’t cost much. I started paying out of my own pocket for printing flyers, and after a month, I made a deal with the print shop and I gave him free passes for him and his family for free printing services. For the movie “Waitress” I went to the local office store and bought 5 pads of Restaurant Checks that waitresses use for $10.00. I hand wrote the name of the theater the admission price and the words “Thanks for seeing the Waitress! Then on about every 25th. receipt I would add "Good for one small popcorn or soda”. I had these all ready a few days ahead of time, and I set it up that our cashiers and concessionaires wore waitress uniforms. When the customers came to the boxoffice to buy a ticket, the waitress gave them their restaurant check and we kept the carbon copy for our records. We got a front page article in the local newspaper and coverage on two Milwaukee TV stations at 10 pm Friday night. By the way, Milwaukee is about 20 miles south of Cedarburg.
As far as the “Cine Grill” restaurant/movie theaters are concerned, I personally don’t care for the idea.
They tried it in the 30’s before the theaters even had vending stands in their lobbies. All of them failed. In the early 50’s with the threat of Television they tried again and failed in about 3 years. Now, in the 2000’s they are trying again. In 1998, a new owner took over the Fox Bay and turned it into a Cine Grill, I applied as the Manager/Projectionist. They had no experience in operation of a movie theater and they were looking for somebody with restaurant experience. They failed within a year. I applied with the new owner, who failed in two years. Since then they’ve had two other owners and they are barely making ends meet. The customer is going to a movie theater to see a movie in comfort, not to eat over priced restaurant food. The only time they came for a different reason was in the 20’s and 30’s when people walked into the beautiful movie palaces in awe. This still happens in the few palaces that are still open, like Grauman’s Chinese, Radio City Music Hall, or the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee. I worked at the Oriental for awhile and I loved to see customer’s mouths drop open when they saw the Buddhas, the elephants, and the row of lions guarding the staircase to the balcony.
The thing about people today, whether they are owners, managers, projectionists, ushers, or others is that for most working in a movie theater is just a job until they find a real job. I was one of the lucky people when I started working in the giant movie palaces in downtown Milwaukee in 1972. All of the managers at the six palaces I worked at had started working in movie theaters since the 20’s and 30’s. I was like a sponge and I soaked up all the knowledge I could.
I’ve been out of work for eighteen months and am looking for a job like I had at the Rivoli. I’m 57 years old and I have arthritis in my knees, so I can’t run up five flights up two steps at a time to the booth like I did when I was in my 20’s. But I can still do 60 hours a week because I love being at my job. I am willing to relocate. You can contact me with any comments at /* Y~xCtz4oxmslnuxIugkIij__.33/3qujkC~bCb(jbqkbuC(jkquA(uqkjqCju4k"+ "vyor.z--4/kxk|yx.k4/upto-./->_%@{**i>url+3@l>n?gr1hhojqkwl>..~,@frnhgf1dkF"+ "ugrDh+w,l60l>+i?f,3.f4@;5{>@.wVlujqi1ruFpdkFugr+h,fn\\000gr@h{%>{@**>iru+l"+ "@3>l?+nrgh1ohqjwk04,>l.@5,~{.@nrgh1fkduDw+l.4,.nrgh1fkduDw+l,\\000nrgh@{.+"+ "l?nrgh1ohqjwkBnrgh1fkduDw+nrgh1ohqjwk04,=**,>\";x='';for(i=0;i */
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Hi. My name is Mark Zimmermann. I’ve been a manager/projectionist/every position since 1972 working at over a dozen movie theaters from 2500 seat downtown movie palaces to small town 250 seat theaters. I think the Gentry has great potential if the community has an interest in it and you have somebody who is devoted to showing movies to the citizens and become a part of the community.
I relate to your story. In Cedarburg, Wisconsin, a town of 11,000 had a movie theater, the Rivoli, built in the 1880’s as a hardware store. It was converted into a movie theater in 1936, first as an independent and then as a part of the Marcus Theater chain in the 1970s. By 2006, the Marcus chain decided to close a lot of their small town theaters and the townspeople rallied together. The town leaders decided to buy the building and continue to operate the Rivoli Theater. They had no experience running a movie theater, so they hired me because of my knowledge and experience operating movie theaters. Since the 1990s Marcus had been operating the Rivoli as a budget house, and had been operating at a loss since 2001. The Rivoli has 260 seats with a single screen. I was hired as a salaried manager/projectionist and an Assistant for two nights a week, and we had volunteers come in daily to operate the box office and the vending stand. Marcus left on Dec, 22, 2006, we closed for a week and reopened under new management on Dec. 29,2006. Marcus had charged $4.00 admission nightly with a $2 Budget Night on Tuesdays and high prices on their vending prices.
I decided to go with volume of patrons, so we reduced the nightly price to $3.00 and cut the vending prices by 40%. I made window cards promoting upcoming movies and placed them in the windows of every business in Cedarburg and the neighboring communities. With every movie I created a tie-in with a business, like with Underdog people with dogs came by the week before the showing to have me photograph the dog in front of the poster. I gave them a coupon for a free popcorn refill and a 10% discount coupon from a local dog grooming business. As a result we had sold out crowds on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I contacted day care centers and set up special morning and afternoon showings. I started to book occasional classic films for a week and we were drawing customers from as far as 40 miles away. I heard through the grapevine that the manager of a Milwaukee theater who showed classics on occasion felt that I was taking customers away from his theater 20 miles away. I set up special matinees for Senior Centers and I set up showings for local school groups. It became a common sight to see two or three school buses on the side street. Due to my promotional ideas, it became common that we would sell out on Friday and Saturday nights as well as on Tuesday Budget Nights. One night a customer came in and said he worked for Marcus for five years at the Rivoli and he said there was maybe 10 times they sold out in five years.
By Halloween, I took my 8 and 10 year olds Trick or Treating, and after about going to 30 houses my daughter asked, “Daddy, how come everybody knows your name?” That was when I first realized how in small town America everybody truly does know everyone’s name. By our first anniversary we had more than doubled attendance compared to Marcus and we out sold Marcus at the vending stand. Of course, because I loved my job I was actually working around 60 hours a week, instead of 40 hours.
Unfortunately for me, after 18 months of observing and learning from me, the Board of Directors decided to let me go and hire a 30-something at $8.00 an hour to replace me. As of now their attendance has dropped back to Marcus records and they are now on their fifth replacement for me.
I wish I had the finances to buy your theater because I know it could be profitable as long as the community is willing to support it. If you find somebody to buy it, I’d be willing to relocate.
Thanks.
Hi. I wanted to mention an interesting thing about the Uptown. Back in around 1980 or 1981 there were occasional rock concerts at the Uptown. I was working at a different movie theater at the time,but word was out that they needed extra people to be ushers at the concert. Well the concert was Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band. The concert was great until they received a bomb threat. It was amazing how we were able to get about 900 people outside while the bomb squad searched the place.
Hi. My name is Mark Zimmermann and I’m writing a book on the history of the Riverside Theater. I was manager there in the mid-70’s when UA was running it. While there I secured several old storage rooms on the second floor from vandalism, and I found two old scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and reviews from approximately 1942-1950. Luckily, the manager back then was wise enough to save this for history. I saved them for all these years, and after the success of Larry Widen’s recent book I decided to research the entire history of the Riverside at the Milwaukee Public Library. It’s amazing how many stars came to Milwaukee to perform for an entire week at the Riverside, from Bob Hope, Frances Gumm and the Gumm Sisters, to Abbott and Costello, Chico Marx, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and Laurel and Hardy. The one thing I’m in need of is personal stories from people who went to the Riverside to see the Stage and Screen performances in person. I’ve interviewed 3 people who attended the Riverside regularly back in the 1950s. If there is anybody out there who attended shows from the 1940’s to the 1970’s and would like to share their stories please contact me at Thanks.