Arrowhead 3 Theatre

This was another theater of my youth. In the early 70’s you could see any first run movie here (These include Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.)

I remember going to see matinees here after working all night. When AMC took over, they made the lobby look better. I guess now it could survive as an art house. Unfortunately it is probably gutted out and is now a trade school.

I hate to see all the old things go.

Here is what the Arrowhead 3 looks like today.
www.flickr.com/photos/jfb57/4751677883/

As a northsider, I never attended this theatre and only drove past it once. I believe it opened Christmas 1974 with its prime feature being Godfather Part 2.

Starting in 1971 Weis went on a big expansion in Atlanta converting the old Peachtree Art into the Weis Cinema, opening and then twinning the Broadview, buying the Peachtree Battle Mini Cinema and then in the summer of ‘74 the rest of the mini cinema chain, finishing and opening the Franklin triple, and then building this one. I never worked for Weis so I can not say for sure, but I think that Arrowhead and Broadview were the only ones that were Weis built. All of the others were pick ups of existing theatres and since the Broadview was a conversion in an existing shopping center that would make this one the only one built new from the the ground up.

Weis used the same decorator in all of their Atlanta locations and this resulted in a lot of curves, bends, odd colors and strange lighting in the lobby areas as described above. I personally did not care for the style, but it certainly attracted attention. Mike Rogers has described the Weis Cinema in Augusta as having some sort of lighted tunnel that you walked through.

Weis was a believer in putting up big advances to outbid the competition for the best movies, and in the first half of the 70’s this worked well for him, especially in the Buckhead theatres, Capri and Fine Art. Love Story, Ryans Daughter, Poseidon Adventure, Godfather, American Graffiti, Last Picture Show, just to name a few. When the exclusive run practice started to ease up and outlying areas started to get the big bookings Weis started building places like this. He hit it especially big with Star Wars when he opened it here, Franklin Road, and Doraville on opening day. Loew’s Tara was the only non Weis booking for Star Wars.

In the late 70’s some bad booking choices combined with the arrival and / or expansion of national chains AMC and GCC caused Weis to sell off most of his properties outside of his hometown of Savannah. Some locations went to AMC, Lefont, and Drafthouses and others closed up. This one hung on for a while but the birth of the multi-plex and mega-plex meant the end for anything less thatn 12 screens.

Surprisingly, AMC operated this theatre after Weis and likely did so until it closed in the mid/late 80’s.

Last operated as a $1 second-run house, and it closed on March 30, 1989.