Prometheus- If you look at the back of the building you will notice that there are several stories that have no windows. This is the are that the theater occupies. Also there is a large double door on the Avery Street side this is the loading dock for the stage. The dressing rooms had bathtubs. The building has three sub basements. The original theater was indeed impressive. While it could be restored it is unlikely as cement was poured in an attempt to make the space usable for other things but to my knowledge the space where the balcony and upper lobby was never used for anything since this was done.
The story about the hundred dollar bill was told to me by George Nelson who worked as a projectionist at the Center Theater for years until it burned down. A manager left a plastic trash container near the furnace and that started the fire as I was told. George had a room in the Hyannis theater and worked summers on the cape until he retired. He was appalled that the manager at the Hyannis Theater didn’t just let Liz and Mike go in for free.
One interesting story few know is that after they ran Sound of Music all summer in the tent where Cinema 28 was later built the mag optical print was sitting in the lobby of the Center Theater waiting to be shipped back and George noticed it. Seeing it was a mag optical print and as the Center Theater was the only theater on Cape Cod that could run stereo he took a couple of reels up to the booth and ran them. The district manager walked in and commented on who good it sounded. His words were, “You mean I have been listening to this all summer in optical when it could have sounded like this.” The district manager hearing how good it sounded booked it to run the following summer at the Center Theater.
At one time there were sixteen, sixteen inch sub woofers and if fed with 4000W they could produce over 110db of base. That would literally be base you could feel. To really feel the explosions they sub woof channel would have to be set at least ten db over the normal setting. A sound call consists of playing pink noise on all channels one at a time then checking and setting sound levels and response. It also consists of checking the light output of the projector(s). Usually a rehearsal is done and the film the sound call is for is run.
No one has mentioned that the Center theater was the only one on Cape Cod to have a full four channel sound system. They ran the Sound of Music there for a full summer the year after they ran it at the Melody Tent. The Melody Tent wasn’t in Hyannis it was in Yarmouth on route 28. It later became the route 28 cinema.
Richard D. were you the manager when Liz Taylor attended. She has a hundred dollar bill there was trouble breaking it then she asked to sit in the balcony.
I don’t know what the last film run for a regular audience was. We were running Kung Fu films for a while and then started running more and more black exploitation films like Disco 9000 and Blackula. When it became a juice bar we had a few Planet of the Apes movies and a print of the Bible we would run just to put something on the screen. There was an article about the juice bar in either the Phoenix or the Real Paper and they commented on the movie the reviewer saw the night he attended. The last 70mm to run was two reels of 2001 but when they converted to a juice bar they cut the speaker feeds to the stage so there was no sound except what the disc jockey was playing.
I was the chief projectionist at the Astor for its last years of operation and ran the last film ever to be run there. The Astor had two Norelco Todd-AO projectors that were destroyed when the building was demolished. There were never three projectors in the Todd-AO booth. Raintree County never ran in 70mm as MGM never made a 70mm print. In the early 70’s it was taken over by the same company that ran the Orson Wells cinema in Cambridge. When gave up trying to run it the owner of the company that supplied security to the theater ran it for several years. The heating bill and rent were too high to make a go of it and it was closed in the mid seventies. Then it reopened as a juice bar but using the license as a theater. So while the sound system had been replaced by a night club type system and records were played so people could dance old movies were projected on the partially blocked screen. There were constant fights and incidents as it opened late at night and didnt close until in the early morning like four or five am. Shortly after opening as a juice bar the Federal Government shut them down as being a hazard. The building was vandalized and set fire many times until it was torn down in the early eighties.
The Old Colony closed in the early seventies sometime in 1972. A leak in the roof caused a section of plaster to fall one night and as the company that owned it, Interstate Theaters, was building a new twin cinema they decided to close the Old Colony. The original plan was to keep it open during the summer months. During the summer spring water was used to cool the theater and no refrigeration was ever needed. The was a rumor that the theater was haunted and one night after it was closed two police officers went to investigate a break in. They found the theater locked and one of the officers swears he saw a movie playing when he entered the auditorium.
It was renovated in the mid 1970’s and used as a live theater for a very short time when an investor tried to bring back vaudeville. His attempt failed miserably and the theater was closed for good and eventually turned into office space.
When Interstate sold it it in the early 70’s it was put in the deed that the site could not be used to show any type of movie or slide show.
Too bad such a historic theatre came to such a tragic end.
Prometheus- If you look at the back of the building you will notice that there are several stories that have no windows. This is the are that the theater occupies. Also there is a large double door on the Avery Street side this is the loading dock for the stage. The dressing rooms had bathtubs. The building has three sub basements. The original theater was indeed impressive. While it could be restored it is unlikely as cement was poured in an attempt to make the space usable for other things but to my knowledge the space where the balcony and upper lobby was never used for anything since this was done.
The story about the hundred dollar bill was told to me by George Nelson who worked as a projectionist at the Center Theater for years until it burned down. A manager left a plastic trash container near the furnace and that started the fire as I was told. George had a room in the Hyannis theater and worked summers on the cape until he retired. He was appalled that the manager at the Hyannis Theater didn’t just let Liz and Mike go in for free.
One interesting story few know is that after they ran Sound of Music all summer in the tent where Cinema 28 was later built the mag optical print was sitting in the lobby of the Center Theater waiting to be shipped back and George noticed it. Seeing it was a mag optical print and as the Center Theater was the only theater on Cape Cod that could run stereo he took a couple of reels up to the booth and ran them. The district manager walked in and commented on who good it sounded. His words were, “You mean I have been listening to this all summer in optical when it could have sounded like this.” The district manager hearing how good it sounded booked it to run the following summer at the Center Theater.
At one time there were sixteen, sixteen inch sub woofers and if fed with 4000W they could produce over 110db of base. That would literally be base you could feel. To really feel the explosions they sub woof channel would have to be set at least ten db over the normal setting. A sound call consists of playing pink noise on all channels one at a time then checking and setting sound levels and response. It also consists of checking the light output of the projector(s). Usually a rehearsal is done and the film the sound call is for is run.
I stand corrected then it was the Music Box that was a tent where they played movies in the summer and dismantled it during the winter.
No one has mentioned that the Center theater was the only one on Cape Cod to have a full four channel sound system. They ran the Sound of Music there for a full summer the year after they ran it at the Melody Tent. The Melody Tent wasn’t in Hyannis it was in Yarmouth on route 28. It later became the route 28 cinema.
Richard D. were you the manager when Liz Taylor attended. She has a hundred dollar bill there was trouble breaking it then she asked to sit in the balcony.
I don’t know what the last film run for a regular audience was. We were running Kung Fu films for a while and then started running more and more black exploitation films like Disco 9000 and Blackula. When it became a juice bar we had a few Planet of the Apes movies and a print of the Bible we would run just to put something on the screen. There was an article about the juice bar in either the Phoenix or the Real Paper and they commented on the movie the reviewer saw the night he attended. The last 70mm to run was two reels of 2001 but when they converted to a juice bar they cut the speaker feeds to the stage so there was no sound except what the disc jockey was playing.
I was the chief projectionist at the Astor for its last years of operation and ran the last film ever to be run there. The Astor had two Norelco Todd-AO projectors that were destroyed when the building was demolished. There were never three projectors in the Todd-AO booth. Raintree County never ran in 70mm as MGM never made a 70mm print. In the early 70’s it was taken over by the same company that ran the Orson Wells cinema in Cambridge. When gave up trying to run it the owner of the company that supplied security to the theater ran it for several years. The heating bill and rent were too high to make a go of it and it was closed in the mid seventies. Then it reopened as a juice bar but using the license as a theater. So while the sound system had been replaced by a night club type system and records were played so people could dance old movies were projected on the partially blocked screen. There were constant fights and incidents as it opened late at night and didnt close until in the early morning like four or five am. Shortly after opening as a juice bar the Federal Government shut them down as being a hazard. The building was vandalized and set fire many times until it was torn down in the early eighties.
The Old Colony closed in the early seventies sometime in 1972. A leak in the roof caused a section of plaster to fall one night and as the company that owned it, Interstate Theaters, was building a new twin cinema they decided to close the Old Colony. The original plan was to keep it open during the summer months. During the summer spring water was used to cool the theater and no refrigeration was ever needed. The was a rumor that the theater was haunted and one night after it was closed two police officers went to investigate a break in. They found the theater locked and one of the officers swears he saw a movie playing when he entered the auditorium.
It was renovated in the mid 1970’s and used as a live theater for a very short time when an investor tried to bring back vaudeville. His attempt failed miserably and the theater was closed for good and eventually turned into office space.
When Interstate sold it it in the early 70’s it was put in the deed that the site could not be used to show any type of movie or slide show.