Viers Mill Theater

12202 Viers Mill Road,
Silver Spring, MD 20906

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Additional Info

Previously operated by: Sidney B. Lust Theaters

Architects: Richard L. Parli

Functions: Drugstore

Nearby Theaters

Viers Mill Theater

The Viers Mill Theater opened August 3, 1950 and closed in 1975.

Contributed by Lost Memory

Recent comments (view all 21 comments)

Lannesman
Lannesman on January 24, 2008 at 10:15 am

Thanks for the update, Jack. Wow, I remember the old Rodman’s Drug Store in the back of the shopping center. I am amazed it is still there! The theatre now…just a ghost. Life goes on.

trowe99
trowe99 on June 11, 2008 at 1:04 pm

In its heyday, Viers Mill was the only movie house from downtown Rockville to Downtown Silver Spring, an area crawling with thousands and thousands of little baby boomers, so it was THE place to be on a Saturday afternoon. I, too, was there when the manager came out onstage and told us that our parents would have to pay $50,000 for a new screen if we got caught pelting it with candy (or cups full of soda!). As newer theaters sprung up from Randolph Hills to Wheaton Plaza to Aspen Hill, Viers Mill was forced to go porno around 1968. I was working at Rodman’s when they took over in 1976, and by that time, the place was really gross. Rodman’s owners called an employees' meeting in the theater to explain their plans, and I can tell you nobody wanted to sit in those seats! I still have a mint condition National Bohemian can that we found during the demolition, inside a wall where some worker had entombed it during the original construction back in 1949. The stage became the pharmacy, and the old theater lobby now housed the optical department. The rest rooms were retained in their same location, but were updated for the employees. The marquee was kept for awhile and displayed store specials, until it caught fire a couple of times and had to be demolished. I believe the old poster frame shown in the photos was actually installed later for the drug store’s weekly ad, but it is possible that it was salvaged from an original location next to the box office. If you stand on the sales floor and look up, you can see perhaps the last remaining vestige of the original theater: the projection booth became the manager’s office, allowing them to watch for shoplifters using the same projection window through which such classics as Old Yeller and The Shaggy Dog once shone onto the silver screen (well, silver accented by orange Nehi and assorted colors of Jujubes!).

Beowulf
Beowulf on September 17, 2008 at 12:43 pm

I remember Viers Mill movie theater quite well. Born in 1947, yeah..I’m a geezer, I grew up in Wheaton on Edwin St. On Saturdays my mother would hand my older brother and I 50 cents each and off we’d go to the theater. Walking from Edwin St…Dalewood Dr, cut across Connecticut Ave, up “Suicide Hill”, (where the apartments are now that border Connecticut Ave and Viers Mill Road, to Viers Mill Village, now called Randolph Crossing, Huh??? Where did that name come from. That little shopping center had everything…a liquor store, where I was caught shop lifting, and getting a free ride home in a Monkey County cop car. The hardware store was awesome..you could buy a rool of fuse materal….light it off..!!! We’d go into the Rexall Drug Store and buy candy…candy was cheaper there the in the theater, and sneak it into the theather. It was a lot easier to sneak candy in during the winter months…big coats and all. I can’t tell you how many Godzilla, Rodan, movies I saw there..or the SciFi movies, Invaders From mars, The Mysterions…There was always a double feature on Saturday…you could walk in at any time, and stay all day. No one came in and told ya, ya had to leave. We’d sit and watch the movies twice. Then, if I remember correctly about 4:00PM the lights would come one, and we’d have to leave so the place could be cleaned and readied for the evening movie..always the hit of the day…Sink The Bismark, Strategic Air Command…etc. We’d leave the theater go across the street to The Plantation, where the McDonalds is now, and get an ice cream cone and off to home we’d go.
Yeah…that theater was awesome…even if the seats were uncomfortable as heck…and the big scary Janus kind of guy out front.

PJCooper
PJCooper on January 25, 2009 at 11:50 am

Another Randolph Hills kid here! Spent a good portion of my 50s/60s youth at the Viers Mill Theater on Saturdays. Yes there was always a double feature, and if you walked in after the movie had started, you would just stay until it started again—I think that was allowable in most area theaters at the time. We would also go to Rexall and buy candy—Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy was a fave because it lasted a long time—remember the ad campaigns, urging you to slam it on a surface to crack it? The theater seat armrest was just perfect for doing so. I remember lots of Vincent Price movie double features being advertised, although we were usually there for kiddie fare: Disney films and other family fare—I remember seeing “Snow White Meets the 3 Stooges” there-yikes. Our parents would just drop us off, no adults in attendance, and I remember the place just teeming with nothing but kids whose parents had done the same—can you imagine that happening today? The floors were quite sticky. I also remember the soda machine in the lobby—it was the kind where the cup came down and then the soda & syrup came in two streams to fill it and magically stop at the right place. Of course, there were lots of times when the cup failed to appear and you watched your soda going down the drain.

bocajoe
bocajoe on January 25, 2009 at 12:11 pm

hey PJ-

email me at , I’d love to talk more and find out where you lived in Randolph Hills.

Joe

Lannesman
Lannesman on January 26, 2009 at 10:17 am

Just a side comment about unchaperoned kids:
We all grew up in a time when our moms threw us out of the house and told us not to come back till the streetlights came on!
The times were not simpler, or safer back then. Just the fear mongering kid-snatcher-on-every-corner reporting of the 24 hour news channels today. It saddens me to see such a societal regression where an ederly man in a park dare not help a child who’s fallen down for fear of being accused of attempted molestation .

sconnell1
sconnell1 on December 28, 2013 at 1:41 pm

I saw “What’s Up Tiger Lily” here sometime between 1/30/67-2/4/67. It played at the Town theater in downtown D.C. for five weeks from 11/16/66-12/22/66.

gruff
gruff on January 19, 2015 at 8:48 pm

Wow you guys. I remember the monster double features, sticky floors, and someone mentioned the soda machine. No one mentioned the silver dollar prize between horror movies. I do remember the guy coming out on stage warning us about throwing food at the screen and that they were getting a new one. Memories

gruff
gruff on January 19, 2015 at 8:49 pm

I was a St. Judes guy

rivest266
rivest266 on June 21, 2015 at 11:45 pm

August 3rd, 1950 grand opening ad in photo section

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