Cinema
345 Michigan Street NE,
Grand Rapids,
MI
49503
345 Michigan Street NE,
Grand Rapids,
MI
49503
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The Family Theatre opened October 27, 1923 with “Strangers of the Night.” It initially closed at the end of its lease on October 5, 1958 with “Tammie and the Bachelor” and “The Kettles in the Ozarks.” Williams Heidman reopened the venue on March 7, 1959 retaining the Family Theater name and policy. He closed April 30, 1961 with Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson" and a Disney cartoon festival.
As the Cinema, it showed art films beginning October 21st, 1961 . It stopped advertising some ten years later on June 19, 1971 with “Precious Jewels” and “The Fabulous Bastard from Chicago.”
Closed 1958 and reopened as Cinema on October 21st, 1961, as an art cinema switching to an adult movie policy in 1967. Grand opening ad posted.
Closed in 1958. It may have been reopened in the 1960’s.
I worked at the Cinema for Earl Smith, who leased the old place. He tried to make a living running art films and we did some good business if the fil as a bit racy. Eventually, he started running nudist camp epics and later drifted into hard porn. Earl continued to operate the Cinema into the early 70’s.
345 Michigan N.E. Family Theater. Howard T. Reynolds, one of the sons-in-law of Joseph Poisson, owned this theater until he sold it, along with the Vogue and the Stocking, to Herbert R. Boshoven in early1946 for $135,000. The sale took place just after the theater suffered a devastating fire from a short circuit in the wiring at 6:38 p.m. on Tuesday, February 19, 1946. The extra alarm fire caused a loss of $26,745.43, while the theater’s total value was given as only $29,000. John Muzzal was listed as the occupant or operator of the theater at the time of the fire. It became a Boshoven-Busic theater, owned by Herbert Boshoven, Jr., and Joseph Busic. The 1941 seating capacity was 530. It was known as the Family from the time of its construction until the early 1960’s, when it became the Cinema. (Photo: G.R. Public Museum, in Lynn G. Mapes and Anthony Travis,