Willowbrook Cinema

This was rebuilt with four screens on November 25th, 1977 and closed in 1984. It was operated by the Colonial Cinema Circuit and Devisser Theatres. Grand opening ad posted.

Come next year, the movies will return to willowbrook with cinemark opening up a 12 plex where the Sears auto shop used to be.

I remember seeing “The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh” here in April 1979. I was 10 years old.

I grew up in neighboring Verona, and I loved this cinema. It was mod-60s comfort and style with nice size. The area-exclusive run of HELLO DOLLY, mentioned in an above posting, was accompanied by a lavish display of costumes from the film all around the mall. The promotional posters and displays were everywhere in the then almost brand-new mall. It was thrilling for a kid with a growing interest in movies. The Willowbrook was different from the other cinema inside the mall, the Little, which was indeed showing porn films by the late 70s on at least one of their screens. It was also different than the better known RKO Theatre outside the mall which lasted longer. The Loewes multiuplex on the other side of the parking lot came much later (maybe the 80s) and has nothing to do with the three theatres (image that, three for 1 mall) in and around the mall dating from the mall’s construction in the 60s and expansion in the early 70s. The Willowbrook was packed for the Bond film “Diamonds are Forever” and later (in the twin phase) I remember lines deep into the mall for “Saturday Night Fever” in Dec. 1977. I’m sorry it was demolished, but I’m glad that it was spared becoming one of those theatres of ugly cut up boxes. It was wonderful as a single-screen, and at least acceptable as a twin. Does anyone remember any more? When did it close?

It is in Wayne; Willowbrook is just the name of the mall the theater was in, and of a nearby road, on which is located the AMC Loew’s Wayne 14. The heading should be corrected.

Before Hollywood revamped its rating system to eliminate the X rating, which had been co-opted by the porn industry, a number of mainstream movies (“Midnight Cowboy” for example) did get an X rating, and the Willowbrook did run some of those films. One Boxoffice item from 1970 reported on the local controversy that erupted in Wayne when the Willowbrook Cinema ran the X-rated Swedish film “I Am Curious (Yellow)” It’s likely that the Little Cinema also ran early X-rated films too, though I don’t know if they ever ran out-and-out porn.

I vaguely remember two twin theaters, one where the current food court is and one where Macy’s Furniture is at the edge of the mall. I have no additional info to offer up, sorry.

Here’s something from Boxoffice of September 22, 1969: “Spyros Lenas is scheduled to open his newest indoor, a 1,500-seater in the Willowbrook Shopping Center complex Wednesday (24).” Other Boxoffice items give a seating capacity as low as 1,200 for this house, though.

As far as I’ve been able to discover, Lenas' house was the first movie theater in the Willowbrook Shopping Center. The house appears to have been quite successful in its early years. Boxoffice of August 24, 1970, reported that the Willowbrook Cinema had just completed a six month area exclusive run of “Hello Dolly,” with five months as a hard ticket road show event and one month as a continuous performance presentation.

The single-screener was twinned in 1977, and was then advertised in conjunction with the adjacent Little Cinema 1 and 2 as the Willowbrook 4 or the Willowbrook Quad. It’s mentioned frequently as a Lenas operation from 1969 to 1978, but I’ve been unable to find anything about it as a Loew’s house. I haven’t found it mentioned in Boxoffice under any name after 1978.

I’ve posted about the Willowbrook Cinema on the Cinema Treasures page for the Little Cinema, which gives the same address as this page does.

The Willowbrook Shopping Center was designed by the Los Angeles architectural firm Welton Becket and Associates, architects of the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.