Both Mike Rivest’s listings for Denver and its entry on CinemaTour show to have been at 3830 Federal. There’s a picture of it on the CinemaTour site that says it was taken in 2006. Rivest information indicates a closing year of 1975.
Three pictures of the Canon as the Imperial 6 can be found on the lower half of this page; one is of the Yonge Street entrance, one is of the Lower Lobby, and one is of the largest theater, essentially the former balcony.
It’s one of those films that one either likes or doesn’t; I think romantic souls tend to and realists don’t. I happen to like it, implausible story line and all, but then I love Mackinac Island.
I had an interesting experience once viewing the film in 1993; I was attending a conference held at what was then Mission Point Resort on the island. It had formerly been a small religiously-oriented college at the south end of the island. The hotel used the college’s former main building for conference facilities; these included a lecture/hall auditorium. A scene in the film was shot in this lecture hall, the one where Christopher Reeve’s character talks to a professor about whether time travel is possible. (Other scenes in the film were filmed at some of the other former college facilities which included a soundstage intended for religious broadcasting).
During the conference, the topic of the film came up and a number of people said they had never seen it, so the hotel arranged to have it
shown for the participants one evening – in that very lecture hall, on a good sized screen. It was the oddest sensation, when that scene came up, to realize that you were sitting in the room that you were looking into. A number of people felt a bit disoriented, including myself. Nothing had changed since the filming – same furniture, layout, paint job. It was a bit eerie.
Some people liked the film; others thought it was stupid.
You can find an excellent summary and comparison of the various aspect ratios using both 35mm anamorphic and 70mm processes at this page of the Widescreen Museum website:
Actually, there’s another picture of the Liberty on the same site that you cited earlier; View link
where, if one looks to the right, a set of framed exhibition photos for the film showing at the theater next door and what appears to be a neon letter ’S' on top of what is undoubtedly a marquee can be seen. Considering also the streetcar tracks in front of the theaters, I don’t think there’s any doubt about the location being St. Charles Street circa 1950.
The Mike Rivest website lists only one Liberty Theater in New Orleans, locating it at 420 St. Charles and further indicates that the operator was RKO from 1950-55. “Tarzan and the Leopard Woman” was re-released by RKO in 1950 (originally released in 1946).
CinemaTour, though, puts this theater on Canal Street (no number indicated). The picture matches, but I doubt that it was on Canal.
Dave-Bronx: Sorry to replicate much of what you said; it llks like we must have submitting right around the same time as yours wasn’t up when I was writing mine.
This is an area I know well from my childhood and I think I can help sort this out or least shed some light on why there may be confusion. The address for the theater is most likely incorrect or may have been changed.The theater is actually on the corner of East 152nd Street and McCauley Avenue, exactly at the point where East 152nd Street ends; it should have a an address on E. 152nd Street. From the west, Lakeshore Boulevard makes a ninety-degree turn to the left at exactly that point. So,if one is walking in front of the theater, one only has to walk straight across McCauley (which is just a side street) to go from walking on E. 152nd St. to walking on Lakeshore Blvd.; the same thing happens when one crosses E. 152nd in front of the theater. I remember that when one looked in the movie directory in the Cleveland Plain Dealer or the Cleveland Press in the 1950s and 60s, the address for the Commodore read either"East 152nd St. at Lakeshore Bl.“ or "Lakeshore Blvd. at E. 152nd St.”
St. Jerome is on Lakeshore, facing Lakeshore, just before the turn; it certainly would have a Lakeshore Boulevard address. The Food Mart, a former 7-Eleven, is almost exactly on the corner of McCauley and Lakeshore, across from the left side of the theater; but it’s just after the turn, so it too should have a Lakeshore Boulevard address. Perhaps the Post Office allowed or assigned a Lakeshore Boulevard address to the theater after St. Jerome acquired the theater for Bingo so as to better associate the building with the rest of the St. Jerome’s complex right across 152nd St. The theater would be, after all, in the elbow of the turn and giving it an even-numbered Lakeshore Boulevard address between that of St. Jerome and the Food Mart wouldn’t be illogical.
I used to work at a Lawson’s on Lakeshore which would have been just a few doors further north from the Food Mart.
I don’t know if here are any promotions unique to this Regal Theater but Regal offers (on its website) two types of “VIP Tickets”. The cheaper one is valid after a film’s opening period (usually about two weeks) and the more expensive one is valid anytime. These tickets are also available through AAA and possibly through other sources such as those “Entertainment” books.
I suppose this level of interest in the Uptown is, in its way, good news after all the years of aborted efforts to save and preserve it, but I am also somewhat disappointed that its future (if it really has one) probably lies in becoming a so-called “concert venue”. I think about what has happened to the Riviera in Chicago, the Palms-State in Detroit, and the Warfield in San Francisco, and while I am glad they are still around, their architectural integrity has been seriously violated. If it eventually becomes another Fox (Detroit), (which I think is best described as mixed use facility) I say terrific, but if it becomes just another mosh pit, I don’t think much will be gained.
“2001, A Space Odyssey” played here in 70mm Cinerama on a reserved seat basis in Cinema 1 when the theater was known as Cinema 1, 2, 3. I think it was originally built and operated by General Cinema as its architecture was similar to many theaters they built and operated in the 1960s.
The article I cited above does not make “a big mistake by assuming that this first Natural Vision process is 3D”. Although the whole article is about 3D, in the section referring to the first use of the term Natural Vision, it clearly indicates that when Spoor and Bergren first announced that they were working on it, it was “alleged” to be a 3D process, but the article also explicitly states that when the first feature length film presented in it was shown (at the State-Lake – “Danger Lights”), it had become a name for a wide-gauge film process promoted by RKO.
There are a number of brief references to this first use of Natural Vision in a book by John Belton called “Widescreen Cinema” published in 1992 by Harvard University. (A book that also is not error free). Belton quotes some ad copy for RKO used for “Danger Lights” that strongly implies that Natural Vision produced a 3D-like effect, however that term is not actually used.
Apparently, there was a period of experimentation in the 1920s with wide-gauge film by several studios; RKO was promoting this Natural Vision, Fox had a 70mm process called Grandeur, Paramount had something called Magnafilm. According to Belton, nothing much came of these primarily because of the relatively high conversion costs for theater owners who, by the end of the decade, were installing sound equipment at considerable expense, and because of an agreement with the Hays Office to limit the exhibition of these experimental widescreen films and processes to just ten cities. This fact limited the intial audience exposure to widescreen, and provided little challenge to standard 35mm presentation. Wide screen would not come into wide use until the 1950s when the introduction of Cinerama and the challenge of television forced studios and theaters to take another look at these processes and invent some new ones.
If you go this website: http://widescreenmovies.org/WSM11/3D.htm
you will find an article from “Widescreen Movies” magazine. In “The 1900s” section, this 63mm process is credited to a George K. Spoor and Paul J. Bergren.
I still find it hard to understand why a city like San Francisco can’t keep one or two good repertory theaters going, especially a theater like the venerable Castro, especially given its location. After all, while SF may not, in and of itself, be have a “massive population,” it’s still a part of the Bay Area, home to millions of arts-loving, well-educated people, and while public transportation may not be comparable to that in NY, one can get there relatively easily by BART and MUNI. If repertory still works in LA where one has to drive in order to get just about anywhere, it ought to viable in The City.
But there’s no doubt that the audience has diminished. I remember that well into the 90’s,one only had to turn to the Sunday edition of the SF Chronicle to see a wide array of repertory, alternative, and classic films at a number of venues around the Bay. Some of these still go on like The Red Vic and the Pacific Film Archive , but are obviously not traditional for-profit operations. The U.C. was probably the main rival to the Castro in terms of its programming; that closed some years ago now. The Avenue Theater out on San Bruno used to show silent and occasionally classic 3-D films; the Red Vic folks for awhile re-opened the a theater out by SF General and ran an eclectic program of films. In the summer, the Paramount in Oakland used to run some classic films too as did the Grand Lake on occasion. There was also revival programming at the Strand and Embassy (though things got rather seedy at those two now-gone theaters toward the end). If memory serves, the Parkside, before it was demolished, gave repertory a whirl for a time as well as did the Pagoda Palace up in North Beach.
A worrisome aspect of the Castro having difficulty maintaining an audience under its traditional business model is that its owners may reconsider twinning or triplexing this classic house; this unfortunate prospect has been raised before.
Comment on Patsy’s comment of Dec. 27, 2006 (above): the theater used in “Dreamgirls” turns out to be in fact the Palace on Broadway in Los Angeles. The marquee was given a temporary makeover just for the movie shoot. There’s a picture here: View link
that shows the marquee “dressed” for the shooting.
I, too, remember attending “Man of La Mancha” at the McVickers in, I think, 1966 or 1967 – in fact twice, as the first time I was in that balcony mentioned above and the it was rather far from the stage; later I saw it from the third row in the orchestra and it was an entirely different experience. I also remember the draping, and I also seem to recall that much of the ceiling plasterwork was painted over either a rose or a blue color. The orchestra level booths for Cinerama projection were still there then, also draped over. If memory serves, I also saw a production of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” there too.
At that particular time period, considering too that Cinerama product was drying up, converting the McVickers to a legitimate theater was probably also due to the fact that Chicago had very few theaters available for Broadway shows. Then, most musicals played the Shubert (now the LaSalle Bank Theater – dreadful name) and comedies and plays usually went to the Blackstone on Balbo (now the Merle Reskin operated by DePaul University). In the late 60s and 70s, many Broadway shows in Chicago were resident or “sit-down” professional companies and played long runs, rather than the touring companies that play most cities today, including Chicago, where the runs typically run from a few weeks or, at best, a few months. (“Wicked” is an exception and is a throwback to the resident company era). After the demise of the McVickers, the problem of available space remained. By the 70s, big shows for awhile started going into the Arie Crown Theater in McCormick Place (a horrendous barn of a place). The problem was partially solved, at least for the mega-musicals, by the 80s, when the famous Auditorium Theater was restored and made available. With the restoration of the Oriental and the Bismarck (Cadillac Palace) as legit houses – in addition to the LaSalle Bank Theatre, the situation is considerably different today. But I still think it’s tragic that so many famous theaters in the Loop, in addition to the McVickers (State-Lake, United Artists, Woods, Roosevelt, Michael Todd, Cinestage, etc.) didn’t make it.
I am sure of only one theater originally opened by Cineplex Odeon that is still operating within Chicago and that is the 600 North Michigan Avenue multiplex which opened in 1996.
An artist’s impression of the Federal Theater is here:
View link
and an article about closed Denver theaters that mentions the Federal’s history after closing as a theater is here:
View link
This website contains a 2006 article about Denver’s lost and decaying movie theaters; it includes some history about the Federal:
View link
A picture of the Fairlawn can be found here:
View link
Interesting; what was underneath Cinema 1’s floor?
Both Mike Rivest’s listings for Denver and its entry on CinemaTour show to have been at 3830 Federal. There’s a picture of it on the CinemaTour site that says it was taken in 2006. Rivest information indicates a closing year of 1975.
Picture of the Upper Lobby during its Imperial 6 Days:
View link
Three pictures of the Canon as the Imperial 6 can be found on the lower half of this page; one is of the Yonge Street entrance, one is of the Lower Lobby, and one is of the largest theater, essentially the former balcony.
View link
Looking at the theater now, in its splendid restored condition, it’s hard to believe it was once made to look so garish and “modern”.
A picture of the Embassy can be seen here:
View link
It’s one of those films that one either likes or doesn’t; I think romantic souls tend to and realists don’t. I happen to like it, implausible story line and all, but then I love Mackinac Island.
I had an interesting experience once viewing the film in 1993; I was attending a conference held at what was then Mission Point Resort on the island. It had formerly been a small religiously-oriented college at the south end of the island. The hotel used the college’s former main building for conference facilities; these included a lecture/hall auditorium. A scene in the film was shot in this lecture hall, the one where Christopher Reeve’s character talks to a professor about whether time travel is possible. (Other scenes in the film were filmed at some of the other former college facilities which included a soundstage intended for religious broadcasting).
During the conference, the topic of the film came up and a number of people said they had never seen it, so the hotel arranged to have it
shown for the participants one evening – in that very lecture hall, on a good sized screen. It was the oddest sensation, when that scene came up, to realize that you were sitting in the room that you were looking into. A number of people felt a bit disoriented, including myself. Nothing had changed since the filming – same furniture, layout, paint job. It was a bit eerie.
Some people liked the film; others thought it was stupid.
You can find an excellent summary and comparison of the various aspect ratios using both 35mm anamorphic and 70mm processes at this page of the Widescreen Museum website:
View link
This website:
View link
shows the facade of the former theater as it looks today.
Actually, there’s another picture of the Liberty on the same site that you cited earlier;
View link
where, if one looks to the right, a set of framed exhibition photos for the film showing at the theater next door and what appears to be a neon letter ’S' on top of what is undoubtedly a marquee can be seen. Considering also the streetcar tracks in front of the theaters, I don’t think there’s any doubt about the location being St. Charles Street circa 1950.
Some pictures of the Poche/Civic Theater:
Entrance:
View link
From the stage:
View link
Stage entrance:
View link
The Mike Rivest website lists only one Liberty Theater in New Orleans, locating it at 420 St. Charles and further indicates that the operator was RKO from 1950-55. “Tarzan and the Leopard Woman” was re-released by RKO in 1950 (originally released in 1946).
CinemaTour, though, puts this theater on Canal Street (no number indicated). The picture matches, but I doubt that it was on Canal.
Based on Dave-Bronx’s earlier comment (above) the first theater you refer to could well be the Oriental.
Dave-Bronx: Sorry to replicate much of what you said; it llks like we must have submitting right around the same time as yours wasn’t up when I was writing mine.
This is an area I know well from my childhood and I think I can help sort this out or least shed some light on why there may be confusion. The address for the theater is most likely incorrect or may have been changed.The theater is actually on the corner of East 152nd Street and McCauley Avenue, exactly at the point where East 152nd Street ends; it should have a an address on E. 152nd Street. From the west, Lakeshore Boulevard makes a ninety-degree turn to the left at exactly that point. So,if one is walking in front of the theater, one only has to walk straight across McCauley (which is just a side street) to go from walking on E. 152nd St. to walking on Lakeshore Blvd.; the same thing happens when one crosses E. 152nd in front of the theater. I remember that when one looked in the movie directory in the Cleveland Plain Dealer or the Cleveland Press in the 1950s and 60s, the address for the Commodore read either"East 152nd St. at Lakeshore Bl.“ or "Lakeshore Blvd. at E. 152nd St.”
St. Jerome is on Lakeshore, facing Lakeshore, just before the turn; it certainly would have a Lakeshore Boulevard address. The Food Mart, a former 7-Eleven, is almost exactly on the corner of McCauley and Lakeshore, across from the left side of the theater; but it’s just after the turn, so it too should have a Lakeshore Boulevard address. Perhaps the Post Office allowed or assigned a Lakeshore Boulevard address to the theater after St. Jerome acquired the theater for Bingo so as to better associate the building with the rest of the St. Jerome’s complex right across 152nd St. The theater would be, after all, in the elbow of the turn and giving it an even-numbered Lakeshore Boulevard address between that of St. Jerome and the Food Mart wouldn’t be illogical.
I used to work at a Lawson’s on Lakeshore which would have been just a few doors further north from the Food Mart.
I don’t know if here are any promotions unique to this Regal Theater but Regal offers (on its website) two types of “VIP Tickets”. The cheaper one is valid after a film’s opening period (usually about two weeks) and the more expensive one is valid anytime. These tickets are also available through AAA and possibly through other sources such as those “Entertainment” books.
I suppose this level of interest in the Uptown is, in its way, good news after all the years of aborted efforts to save and preserve it, but I am also somewhat disappointed that its future (if it really has one) probably lies in becoming a so-called “concert venue”. I think about what has happened to the Riviera in Chicago, the Palms-State in Detroit, and the Warfield in San Francisco, and while I am glad they are still around, their architectural integrity has been seriously violated. If it eventually becomes another Fox (Detroit), (which I think is best described as mixed use facility) I say terrific, but if it becomes just another mosh pit, I don’t think much will be gained.
“2001, A Space Odyssey” played here in 70mm Cinerama on a reserved seat basis in Cinema 1 when the theater was known as Cinema 1, 2, 3. I think it was originally built and operated by General Cinema as its architecture was similar to many theaters they built and operated in the 1960s.
The article I cited above does not make “a big mistake by assuming that this first Natural Vision process is 3D”. Although the whole article is about 3D, in the section referring to the first use of the term Natural Vision, it clearly indicates that when Spoor and Bergren first announced that they were working on it, it was “alleged” to be a 3D process, but the article also explicitly states that when the first feature length film presented in it was shown (at the State-Lake – “Danger Lights”), it had become a name for a wide-gauge film process promoted by RKO.
There are a number of brief references to this first use of Natural Vision in a book by John Belton called “Widescreen Cinema” published in 1992 by Harvard University. (A book that also is not error free). Belton quotes some ad copy for RKO used for “Danger Lights” that strongly implies that Natural Vision produced a 3D-like effect, however that term is not actually used.
Apparently, there was a period of experimentation in the 1920s with wide-gauge film by several studios; RKO was promoting this Natural Vision, Fox had a 70mm process called Grandeur, Paramount had something called Magnafilm. According to Belton, nothing much came of these primarily because of the relatively high conversion costs for theater owners who, by the end of the decade, were installing sound equipment at considerable expense, and because of an agreement with the Hays Office to limit the exhibition of these experimental widescreen films and processes to just ten cities. This fact limited the intial audience exposure to widescreen, and provided little challenge to standard 35mm presentation. Wide screen would not come into wide use until the 1950s when the introduction of Cinerama and the challenge of television forced studios and theaters to take another look at these processes and invent some new ones.
If you go this website: http://widescreenmovies.org/WSM11/3D.htm
you will find an article from “Widescreen Movies” magazine. In “The 1900s” section, this 63mm process is credited to a George K. Spoor and Paul J. Bergren.
I still find it hard to understand why a city like San Francisco can’t keep one or two good repertory theaters going, especially a theater like the venerable Castro, especially given its location. After all, while SF may not, in and of itself, be have a “massive population,” it’s still a part of the Bay Area, home to millions of arts-loving, well-educated people, and while public transportation may not be comparable to that in NY, one can get there relatively easily by BART and MUNI. If repertory still works in LA where one has to drive in order to get just about anywhere, it ought to viable in The City.
But there’s no doubt that the audience has diminished. I remember that well into the 90’s,one only had to turn to the Sunday edition of the SF Chronicle to see a wide array of repertory, alternative, and classic films at a number of venues around the Bay. Some of these still go on like The Red Vic and the Pacific Film Archive , but are obviously not traditional for-profit operations. The U.C. was probably the main rival to the Castro in terms of its programming; that closed some years ago now. The Avenue Theater out on San Bruno used to show silent and occasionally classic 3-D films; the Red Vic folks for awhile re-opened the a theater out by SF General and ran an eclectic program of films. In the summer, the Paramount in Oakland used to run some classic films too as did the Grand Lake on occasion. There was also revival programming at the Strand and Embassy (though things got rather seedy at those two now-gone theaters toward the end). If memory serves, the Parkside, before it was demolished, gave repertory a whirl for a time as well as did the Pagoda Palace up in North Beach.
A worrisome aspect of the Castro having difficulty maintaining an audience under its traditional business model is that its owners may reconsider twinning or triplexing this classic house; this unfortunate prospect has been raised before.
Comment on Patsy’s comment of Dec. 27, 2006 (above): the theater used in “Dreamgirls” turns out to be in fact the Palace on Broadway in Los Angeles. The marquee was given a temporary makeover just for the movie shoot. There’s a picture here:
View link
that shows the marquee “dressed” for the shooting.
I, too, remember attending “Man of La Mancha” at the McVickers in, I think, 1966 or 1967 – in fact twice, as the first time I was in that balcony mentioned above and the it was rather far from the stage; later I saw it from the third row in the orchestra and it was an entirely different experience. I also remember the draping, and I also seem to recall that much of the ceiling plasterwork was painted over either a rose or a blue color. The orchestra level booths for Cinerama projection were still there then, also draped over. If memory serves, I also saw a production of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” there too.
At that particular time period, considering too that Cinerama product was drying up, converting the McVickers to a legitimate theater was probably also due to the fact that Chicago had very few theaters available for Broadway shows. Then, most musicals played the Shubert (now the LaSalle Bank Theater – dreadful name) and comedies and plays usually went to the Blackstone on Balbo (now the Merle Reskin operated by DePaul University). In the late 60s and 70s, many Broadway shows in Chicago were resident or “sit-down” professional companies and played long runs, rather than the touring companies that play most cities today, including Chicago, where the runs typically run from a few weeks or, at best, a few months. (“Wicked” is an exception and is a throwback to the resident company era). After the demise of the McVickers, the problem of available space remained. By the 70s, big shows for awhile started going into the Arie Crown Theater in McCormick Place (a horrendous barn of a place). The problem was partially solved, at least for the mega-musicals, by the 80s, when the famous Auditorium Theater was restored and made available. With the restoration of the Oriental and the Bismarck (Cadillac Palace) as legit houses – in addition to the LaSalle Bank Theatre, the situation is considerably different today. But I still think it’s tragic that so many famous theaters in the Loop, in addition to the McVickers (State-Lake, United Artists, Woods, Roosevelt, Michael Todd, Cinestage, etc.) didn’t make it.
I am sure of only one theater originally opened by Cineplex Odeon that is still operating within Chicago and that is the 600 North Michigan Avenue multiplex which opened in 1996.