Bay Harbor 4 Theatres

@aeterna - Thanks for the information. He actually was born in 1898 so was about 77 when he retired He passed away in 1985. Can you post the clip from the magazine?

I am trying to find out more information regarding Jack Blum the theatre manager from 1972-1975. I believe he was a Loews lifer. If anybody knows whether he had any family, please let me know.

Does someone recall the year that it was twinned? If my memory serves, it was in the early 1980s. Perhaps 1981 or 1982. I remember seeing some films in 1980 but I think it was still a single screen venue at that point.

Reopened with four screens on July 3rd, 1987. Grand opening ad posted.

Arthur Porchert was the architect for the first new Miami Beach theatre in 15 years. It was built for Maurice Revitz and Sol Frankel with a $50,000 waterfall in its atmospheric lobby along with a 22 foot long chandelier. The $500,000 cinema also had a 20' curved snack bar and a 23'x54' Technikote Pearlescent screen. It launched February 17, 1966 with Sophia Loren in “Judith”.

It is amazing how time can eventually bring people back to where they began. I ushered at the Bay Harbor theatre back in 1974 and worked with both Scott and Jeff. I have also remained friends with Al Alvarez who has posted on this site. The Bay Harbor was the most elegant theatre in it’s day. It was great having the upstairs balcony all to yourself when the movie was running. It was also the day when some theatres had soda machines as well as a concession stand, but the coins in the soda machine always got stuck, memories. I did go back once when the theatre was converted to a fourplex, that was the end of an era.

I remember it well. I worked there as an usher/doorman/student assistant manager from December 21, 1971 to June 1975. Some of my co-workers are my friends to this very day.

The theater sat 972 people. It had an orchestra and loge. The biggest complaint people had about the theater was that the movies stayed there for so long. For example, Nicholas and Alexandra (a roadshow) played at the theater from February 2, 1972 until June of that year.

I will post photos in the near future.

The February 17th, 1966 grand opening ad has been uploaded here.

I think this must be the theater that was, in its original plans, to have been called the Broadway. A rendering of the Broadway Theatre, which was then under construction, appeared in Boxoffice of December 20, 1965. One of the owners of the proposed Broadway, Herb Kaplan, was mentioned in later issues of Boxoffice as a co-owner of the Bay Harbor Theatre. In even later issues of Boxoffice, Kaplan is mentioned as a director of Loew’s Florida division.

The caption of the drawing says that the Broadway was designed by architect Arthur Thomas. I’ve been unable to find anything about him on the Internet.

Originally operated by a partnership called Broadway Enterprises, by May, 1968, the Bay Harbor was being operated by Loew’s. A January 13, 1969, item about the planned benefit premier of “Oliver” referred to the house as “…Loew’s 972-seat Bay Harbor Theatre….”

I can still remember the new car smell of the vinyl seat backs of the Bay Harbor when our school took us from Little Havana to the Bay Harbor to see OLIVER!. Years later I took a first date there to see the x-rated FLESH GORDON and she did not speak to me for days.

This was a deluxe Loews roadshow house for many years before Wometco quaded it and one of the nicest theatres in the Miami area. The Bay Harbor often played day and date with the ABC Coral in Coral Gables or the Wometco Dadeland Twins with long runs of THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT, BILLY JACK, and NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA.