Overlake Cinema
14505 NE 20th Street,
Bellevue,
WA
98007
14505 NE 20th Street,
Bellevue,
WA
98007
2 people
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Additional Info
Previously operated by: General Cinema Corp.
Previous Names: Overlake Cinema I & II
Nearby Theaters
This cinema opened as a twin-plex on February 13, 1973, and the larger auditorium was split into two a few years later. The architecture was simply suburban cinder block (cheap), but the lobby extended forward with a lower roof height for a pleasing effect. It was located in a small strip mall called Sternco Center between downtown Bellevue and Redmond at the SW corner of NE 20th Street and 148th Avenue NE.
The original large auditorium had about 600 seats, the smaller had about 400 seats (my memory fades a bit). The screens had black masking (not movable) and did not have the traditional General Cinema shadow box. There were no curtains, but it did have the blue screen lighting during intermissions.
The split job was terrible, an undecorated blue wall was put down the middle, and the seats were not even re-aligned to point to the centers of the screens (the seats near the new wall actually were oriented toward the wall). The wall did not match the wall on the other side anymore, and the effect was of being in a tunnel with a tiny screen. A terrible, terrible butcher job by General Cinema. Movies were generally first run (“Murder by Death”, 2Earthquake", “The Deep”), but they had trouble booking this cinema properly, and a lot of under-performing movies (“Bobby Deerfield”, “The Christmas that Almost Wasn’t”) were played, making life tough for the staff of a twin-plex.
The projection room originally had two Century 35mm projectors for each auditorium, with Christie lamp-houses and had automatic changeovers. Lenses had to be changed manually. When split, platter systems were added. Union projectionists (IATSE)were employed, and the staff also unionized within a year or two of opening.
The Overlake Cinema was closed in February 1993 and was demolished in the mid-1990’s.
Contributed by
Dave Ewing
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Recent comments (view all 31 comments)
Don’t know if anyone here has been there, but there’s a Tulsa site that pays homage to GCC, complete with jingle and policy trailers:
http://tulsatvmemories.com/gccvill.html
Thought you might want to check it out, seeing as you’re starting a GCC society and all…heh heh heh…
Thanks popcorn and roses.missed the part above earlier where the staff was unionized at this GCC.Bet, that was fun for and overworked,underpaid theatre manager.
While I’m over here, I hope someone can help me. I’m trying to pin down EVERY theater I’ve ever visited, and one of those is in Bellevue. My aunt lived here in the mid 70s, and we came to visit her in the spring of 1978. while in town, she and mom took me to see Disney’s “Return From Witch Mountain”. I know the theater we went to wasn’t that far from her house (don’t ask me the address, I can’t remember at all) and it was a twin, with the theater we were seated in being rather large – I remember commenting to my mom that I had only been in one other theater that was even larger, and that was the SouthCenter Cinema in Tukwila a couple years earlier. Could this have been the theater?
Anyone who might be able to help me shed some light on which cinema this might have been, I would be most appreciative and my theater list will be that much closer to being complete!
That is quite a task,Popcornroses to track down every theatre you visted,Good luck.
February 13th, 1973 grand opening ad placed here.
Good looking ads.
The address was 14505 NE 20th St
I think that the theatre visited by PopcornNRoses may have been the Crossroads in Bellevue. Originally a large single screen operated by National General Theatres, a smaller second auditorium was added across the lobby from the original house. Many years later, the large house was poorly split into 3 small auditoriums. It was later demolished and replaced with the “New” Crossroads Cinema
The Overlake closed in the early 1990s, and was demolished in the mid-1990s.
Closed February 1993.