Framingham Cinema Shoppers' World

Is there anything on the site now? The name sounds like a video library.

It was actually invented in the early 1950’s by Ben Schlanger. Google it’s official name : RCA Synchro Screen.

The Cinema II screen installed was sometimes called a “Shadow Box Screen” General Cinema started using it in all of its new theatres in the sixties. Both theatres in the new Peabody Twin had them. Showcase Cinemas used it when they took over and re-modeled the Cleveland Circle when it was still a single house. It was simple to install and eliminated curtains and masking but made filing the projector aperture plates very difficult.

I can remember approaching the theater while “Earthquake” was screening and could hear the Sensurround a few hundred feet away in the parking lot! Big Cerwin Vega speakers! When Cinema II opened (not because of splitting – it was a completely seperate house in the same building as David W. said. The date seems correct. I saw Dr. Z. in ‘65) – it had one of the worst designs ever! The screen took up most of the end of the house and, to either side, the walls curved outward to join the side walls of the house. I guess it was supposed to give the feeling of drawing you into the picture except the curved walls were white and reflected the light from the screen. It must have been an experimental design because I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else.

October 4th, 1951 grand opening ad has been uploaded in the photo section for this theatre.

The split of Cinema I occurred no earlier than 1976. I remember seeing “Jaws” in the non-subdivided Cinema I in the summer of 1975 and “Murder By Death” in the same auditorium in the summer of 1976. The auditoriums that were initially named Cinemas III and IV opened before Cinema I was twinned—-I think those auditoriums opened in mid-1974. I recall seeing “Godfather II” in the larger of those two auditoriums in late 1974—you would have thought that “Godfather II” would have been screened in the (much larger) Cinema I at at that time, but “Earthquake”(with its expensive Sensurround equipment) was still playing in Cinema I. In early 1975, I saw “Murder on the Orient Express” in Cinema II and “Earthquake” was still rumbling along in Cinema I.

Cinema II wasn’t subdivided until the early 1980s. The last film I saw in the non-subdivided Cinema II was “Annie” in the summer of 1982.

In “George Lucas’s Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success” it’s m,entioned that this was the first mall cinema ever built and also that it has a claim to being the first multiplex. The claim against it is because it was not designed originally as a multiplex. This would mean it was the first split house but that’s not a thing it would want to be remembered for.

Mr. Schlanger’s role in a number of theatres in New York, DC and presumably this one was usually that of a consulting architect, advising the architect-of-record only on the technical aspects unique to a motion picture theatre. Specifically, things like acoustics, sight-lines, seating layout, floor and balcony pitch and arc, projection and audio equipment, electrical and space requirements for the projection booth were his expertise.

Actually, I’m looking at the picture in the Harcourt book with a magnifying glass and it quite clearly says ‘Thick Cabinets’. It’s a different photo than the one in Boxoffice, it is a photo of the building with signs on the edge of the roof. Is that another term for Frappe? For instance, carbonated soft drinks, i.e. Pepsi, in the midwest is called ‘Pop’, in NYC it’s called ‘Soda’ and my relatives in Worcester MA called it ‘Tonic’. I thought this might be another regional term that goes by other names in other areas.

dwodeyla, in a photo of Richards Drive-In in the Harcourt General book, the sign lists their specialties: Fried Jumbo Shrimp, Chicken-in-the-basket and Thick Cabinets. I guess it’s a New England thing, but what are Thick Cabinets?

Dean W. Working for GCC had one draw back for this Georgia boy,NO COKE PRODUCTS.I drank a lot of LOTTA LEMON in my years at GCC.

dwodeyla, do you know if the change from the company’s long-time architectural firm, Riseman Associates, to the Cambridge Seven group was due to the retirement or passing of Riseman or Joe Saunders (just speculating – I don’t know exactly when, in the scheme of things, those events happened.) or was it a ‘out with the old – in with the new’ type of decision once Paul Del Rossi ascended the throne?

Do you know approximately when Riseman became involved with the company? I see he isn’t credited with this theatre, the original architect here is Ben Schlanger. Mr Schlanger was a consulting architect on the Cinema I – Cinema II in New York (theatre #1075 on this site), opened in 1962. That theatre had the same ‘shadow box’ screen surrounds, the upper cinema was lit red, the lower cinema lit blue, and the gray Alpro paneling on the walls, elements used by General Cinema through the 1960s and 70s.