Showcase Cinemas Dedham
950 Providence Highway,
Dedham,
MA
02026
950 Providence Highway,
Dedham,
MA
02026
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Three more screens were added in 1979 which brought a total to eight screens.
Opened on November 23, 1973 as the Showcase Cinemas 1-2-3. A fourth screen was added in 1977, followed by a fifth screen in 1978, and three more in 1979 bringing a total to eight. Two more were added in 1984 bringing a total to ten, and the final two screens were added in 1991 bringing the grand total to twelve screens.
This opened on November 23rd, 1973. Grand opening ad uploaded here.
The Cinema de Lux Legacy Place page is now up. Dan, would you like to repeat your long ‘review’ comment over there?
A piece of trivia: “Annual attendance (at the Dedham Showcase) has declined from more than 1 million in the late 1970s to about 400,000” in the 2000s. (Boston.com) That would put the old Dedham Showcase in its prime in the same league as Randolph Showcase is now. It was quite a powerhouse in its day.
Supposedly, in the early days, Sumner Redstone would walk over from National Amusements' headquarters to see how the box office was doing.
I’ll come up with the page. I’m doing research on it now.
OK then, could one of you who has actually visited this theatre create a new page for it? (I’ve never been to either the old or new one.)
My vote is for a new seperate Page, because it is a new building and is probably not on the exact footprint of the demolished cinema. And the new name is slightly different. Otherwise, there will be a situation like that of the Beacon Theater in downtown Boston where one Cinema Treasures page covers 2 different theaters, both with the same name, and both on the same approximate site.
Should this theatre’s status be changed back to ‘Open’ or should we have a new entry for it?
I went to the new Showcase Cinema de Lux at Legacy Place this weekend and I was very disappointed. After avoiding the Dedham Showcase ever since the Randolph Showcase opened up 11 years ago, I thought I would finally have a state-of-the-art theater a little more than a mile away from where I live.
I went to see Inglorious Basterds in Auditorium 6, and since this was the first film of the day, theaters 1-7 on the left side of the lobby were all empty and wide open. So I took a look.
Auditoriums 1-6 are small viewing rooms, having between 98 and 180 seats. Only auditorium 7 is on the large size with 420 seats.
The layouts are basically the same. The theaters have between 3 and 7 rows of seats on the flat (not sloping) floor in front of the screens. Auditorium seating starts about halfway back of the room. The rooms are narrow, so the screens are small, and like the old Dedham Showcase, there is a short black curtain that lowers from the top of the screen for Panavision films. So widescreen movies actually take up less space on the screen than non-widescreen movies. From the second row of auditorium seating in a 180-seat theater, I saw more of the theater than the movie image.
The cheap seats (non-Lux Level) are narrow and have the shortest armrests I’ve ever seen in a new theater. My forearms rested on the cup holder, and I actually had red circles pressed into my arms when I left.
I thought it was interesting that the video ads shown before the movie had the top and bottom of their images cut off by the screen masking as the picture was blown up to fill the screen from side-to-side, rather than shrinking the image to fit the widescreen ratio from top-to-bottom. I suspect the ads would have looked really small if they were projected properly.
The sound was OK, but nothing special.
The Cinema de Lux concept is set up to sell food and drink rather than show movies, and that’s evident. There’s a lounge right off the lobby, and the Lux Level is upstairs and away from the riff-raff.
Another interesting detail is the names of the movies are nowhere to be seen anywhere near the auditoriums, and the number of the theater is not displayed at the ticket booth, so you don’t know which movie is playing in which theater until you buy a ticket. I guess they’re trying to keep you from seeing another movie for free.
So all in all, I was extremely disappointed. The theater reminded me more of a fancier Copley Place with its viewing rooms squeezed into retail space, rather than the flagship cinema of National Amusements. I want big screens and big sound with auditorium seating, not small rooms with small screens. Unless the other side of the theater is different, I’m afraid I’m going to have to continue trekking out to Randolph.
Showcase ran a big ad in the Quincy Patriot Ledger yesterday stating that today will be a “Special Preview Day” with free admission to a Disney Film Festival and to a Silver Screen Classics program. The cinema will officially open on Friday, Aug. 28th. They have opened on or ahead of schedule, because I seem to recall that the target day for opening was in the Fall. The cinema’s name at the top of their ad is “Showcase Cinema de Lux at Legacy Place”.
(By the way, could someone who is familiar with Showcase at Patriot Place please add that theatre to this site?)
Showcase Cinema de Lux – Legacy Place will open this Friday, August 28. They are running an ad on the front page of Boston.com, pointing to this page.
Tenants are beginning to move into the new Legacy Place mall on the site of the Showcase Dedham. The most prominent of these new tenants is LL Bean whose new store will open on July 24. Supposedly, the new Showcase Cinema de Lux is set to open in late-August.
I saw “Be Kind Rewind” here, among the last films shown at this theater. As I recall, the theater was not particularly memorable, and looked very worn and weathered.
It was also very quiet inside. but seeing as this was midday and midweek, that probably was no surprise.
Even though I lived less than 10 miles away from the Showcase Dedham in the 70s and 80s, I typically bypassed it in favor of more comfortable multiplexes such as the GC Chestnut Hill or GC Shoppers World.
One of my rare visits to the Showcase Dedham was in January 1982 for a sneak preview of “Victor/Victoria.” This was a true old-style sneak preview—-for example, the newspaper advertisement didn’t reveal the title (if memory serves, the ad mentioned a sneak preview of the new film from the director of “10”). The sneak was only at the Showcase Dedham—-not in Boston or at any other suburban location. The audience response seemed favorable, but nothing compared to when I saw the film again a couple of months later early in its exclusive run at the Ziegfeld in NYC.
It is hoped to open the new Dedham Showcase Cinemas de Lux during Thanksgiving week in 2009. I don’t know if the new office building for National Amusements on the site will open at the same time. The office staff is currently in rented space somewhere in Norwood. Meanwhile, the new Showcase Cinemas de Lux (not “de luxe”) opened a few days ago at Patriot Place next to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. The new cinema has 14 screens and occupies the right portion of the building, while Showcase Live is on the left side. The latter is a venue for music acts.
Yes, Mr. Redstone is not high on cinemas at all anymore, but his daughter Shari is, and she is the head of National Amusements. She sees a future for movies in cinemas. She also sees the cinema as a focal point for other entertainments, such as live comedy, live TV feed of sports, the Met. opera, etc.
Actually, it’s Sumner who’s not too high on cinemas.
Unlike many of the classic theaters in the area (the old Wellesley Community Playhouse, for ex.), this theater was a depressing mess. With its overly huge parking lot in back, tiny theaters and cold, rundown atmosphere, it was like stepping back into another era – and not necessarily an era worth revisiting.
How far along is the demolition? Guess it’s time to change the Status of this one.
The local 10PM news on Fox-TV had video from May 14 2008 showing demolition in progress at the Dedham Showcase.
From the Dedham News-Transcript:
Reel change – about the closing of Showcase Cinemas Dedham
On with the Show – about the groundbreaking for Legacy Place and the new Cinema de Luxe
From the Boston Globe (South suburban edition):
The curtain drops: Generations of memories play on, but tonight will be Dedham cinema’s final act
History of Dedham Showcase Cinemas (and Dedham Drive-In next door, open from 1948 to 1982)
Closing day was Thursday April 10, 2008. TV news coverage showed the 71-year-old projectionist, who had been there since Day One, in the booth. Ticket prices were rolled back to $2.50 for all shows which included the 1971 flick “The Last Picture Show”. The head of National Amusements, Shari Redstone, is notably bullish on the future of cinemas.
The Showcase Cinemas Dedham is to be demolished soon. It will be replaced by the Showcase Cinemas de Lux Dedham which will have 15 screens, 4 of which will be “de Lux”. The head office of National Amusements will remain on the site. The cinema opened in the 1970s on a highly visible, high-traffic 38-acre parcel on US Route 1,Providence Highway, just east of the interchange with Route 128. The new development on the parcel is called Legacy Place and will feature 75 shops and restaurants plus the new cinema. It is hoped to open it in mid- or late-2009.