Ken, the Johnston (not “Johnson”) Theatre was in Thornton, a village in Johnston that straddles the Johnston-Cranston boundary along Plainfield Street at Atwood Avenue. It’s where I live. It was up one block from the Myrtle Theatre on Plainfield Street at Myrtle Avenue.
The place was run by Mr. Mario Votolato of Johnston, RI. It is/was located in the Thornton section of Johnston, which also includes a part of Cranston, on the other side of Plainfield Street which forms the boundary between Johnston and Cranston. He owned the Myrtle Hall block. In the Myrtle Theatre he ran films from the silent era (he mentioned “The Birth of a Nation”…possibly in revival) to the WWII era.
During its last years as a cinema (summer only, I believe) the place was run by Mr. Mario Votolato of Johnston, RI. He also ran the Burrillville Theatre in Harrisville for a spell, but who is most closely associated with the Myrtle Theatre in Johnston. He owned the Myrtle Hall block. After the Myrtle closed as a theatre, he ran the nearby Johnston Theatre for many years.
Thew Avon is doing well as far as I can tell. It is owned by Ken Dulgarian who owns the entire business block, not to mention other holdings throughout Providence’s East Side and elsewhere. The cinema has a large faithful core audience for the first-run art and independent films it programs and attracts an enormous number of students from nearby Brown University. There are four movie theatres open in Providence. Three of them are single screen: Avon, Cable Car, and the part-time multi-use Columbus. The other is the Providence Place Mall 16 Cinemas. When the Dulgarian-owned College Hill Bookstore closed a few months back, there was fear that the Avon would be next. But it seems to occupy an important niche and generates enormous prestige. Mr. Dulgarian is not likely to give that up. Too bad they don’t consider adding additional screens for versatility, not by carving up the current auditorium, but by building a second level over adjacent shops.
Hardbop, you are referring to the Avon, which is doing well as far as I can tell. It is owned by Ken Dulgarian who owns the entire business block, not to mention other holdings throughout Providence’s East Side and elsewhere. The Avon has a large faithful core audience for the first-run art and independent films it programs and attracts an enormous number of students from nearby Brown University. There are four movie theatres open in Providence. Three of them are single screen: Avon, Cable Car, and the part-time multi-use Columbus. The other is the Providence Place Mall 16 Cinemas. When the Dulgarian-owned College Hill Bookstore closed a few months back, there was fear that the Avon would be next. But it seems to occupy an important niche and generates enormous prestige. Mr. Dulgarian is not likely to give that up. Too bad they don’t consider adding additional screens for versatility (not by carving up the current auditorium) but by building a second level over adjacent shops.
Yes, it has funk coming out the wazoo. What it needs is better projection. I have never seen, in the nearly 30 years I’ve been going there, a film begin in frame and in focus. They start the picture, then spend 5-10 seconds to straighten it out. I know the theatre very well because, as I pointed out above, I used to rent the place for showings of Italian films over a period of 16 years. Last week I got asked by manager/owner Eric Bilodeau about some film and whether I recommended that he show it. (The six-hour Italian “The Best of Youth.” I said yes.) I told him that I had seen “The Chorus” there, a CinemaScope ratio film. It was projected with the right and left side substantially cut off, as is their custom with anamorphic films. I’ve been trying to get them to outfit the theatre with correct lenses, aperture plates, screen to accomodate the various aspect ratios.
His response was “CinemaScope, Schminascope.” He doesn’t care, won’t invest money in that. In all fairness, they do get some nice films here, often move-overs from the Avon but also first-run art house and independent films and they do some nice festivals in conjunction with Brown University and others. Brown uses the Cable Car because, shamefully, they have no 35mm capability or permanent facility! (Harvard has the fabulous state-of-the-art facility at Carpenter Center.)
There was a complete Todd Haynes retrospective a while ago, with the director, a Brown University graduate, on hand. (“I love the Cable Car Cinema,” he said.) But aspect ratio they don’t get or care about. Years ago director Lindsay Anderson visited the theatre to speak and show some of his early short films which were in old Academy ratio. He was appalled when they couldn’t show them properly.
No, the theatre survived…or else was damaged and rebuilt. I remember seeing it in the late 1940s or early 1950s when I went with my parents to Oakland Beach. That’s why I filed away a distinct memory of it and exactly where it was located. I seem to remember newspaper ads too for their programs during that period. Whether the place was gone or not by Hurricane Carol in 1954, I cannot say. But I saw the theatre’s exterior, and I was not yet born in 1938.
I went to a good number of very pleasant single-screen theatres in San Antonio in the latter half of 1966 when I was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base. I know I went to the Laurel a couple of times. I can’t remember what I saw, but “The Moment of Truth” is one possibility, and “The Bible” is another. I can’t be sure.
Here is a photo of the Cinema Augusteo which I took in the summer of 1989. I believe I was more interested in getting a shot of the flower shop bearing my name than in capturing the cinema. The theatre was probably closed for the summer as most movie theatres were and, to a great extent, still are. Italians prefer open air cinemas during the summer, and a number of Italian cinemas, in addition to an indoor auditorium, have an open-air space for the warmer months with separate seating and a separate screen.
TWO PHOTOS HERE! Here is an exterior shot I took of the Pavone in 1971 when taking courses at the Università per Stranieri. To the left is the office of the local Italian Communist Party. To the right is an anti-communist graffito on the wall. It says “Prague teaches us, you red murderers!” It’s a reference, of course, to the Soviet crackdown on the liberal movement in Czechoslovakia. This second picture is a web shot of the interior. As you can see, it’s quite a beautiful theatre. I saw a movie here in August of 1971 called “Una città chiamata bastarda” which is the western “A Town Called Hell,” with Telly Savalas, Robert Shaw, and Stella Stevens. Movies from abroad that are shown in Italy are universally dubbed into Italian. In the bigger cities there has been a movement in recent years to show some movies, especially American and French ones, in their original languages on certain days, sometimes with, sometimes without subtitles. This is not motivated by purism but by the opportunity to add to the boxoffice receipts because there is a large number of Anglophones and Francophones in Rome and other big cities who would go enjoy the oportunity to see films spoken in their own languages.
Do you know exactly when it closed? I know it opened as the Art in 1958 because I went to the first film under that policy, “Gervaise.” How about when the theatre first opened as the Liberty? World War I era, I would guess.
I wonder if Lyric and Central were successive names for the same theatre. The recorded addresses for both are Broad Street, a very short street, I believe.
I wonder if Lyric and Central were successive names for the same theatre. The recorded addresses for both are Broad Street, a very short street, I believe.
Here is a link to the CT page for the Lyric Theatre, about a block from the Capitol. More precise information on both these Warren theatres and their histories would be appreciated.
The former theatre, no longer an antique store, is now a retail outlet called Lyric Twist. It has been given a new exterior look and specializes in china, giftware, children’s items, and other stuff. Here is a photo. The Lyric was located about a block from the Capitol Theatre on Market Street and replaced it as the sole town movie theatre by the time the sound era rolled in. More precise and detailed information on this and the Capitol Theatre of Warren would be appreciated.
I happened to visit this theatre once when touring Ottawa in August of 1983. That’s why I decided to post it. I went to see Eric Rohmer’s “Pauline at the Beach.” Sorry to hear the place is gone, but this is not a new story.
Here is a photo of the former Cercle Jacques Cartier which used to house the Capitol Theatre on the second floor many decades ago. The building is now owned by 2nd Story Theatre.
This photo shows Ingmar Bergman (right) with other officials at the opening of the Smultronstället Cinema. I’m guessing it was in the late 60s or early 70s. The film “Hets” on the poster was a 1944 film that was directed by Alf Sjöberg and written by Bergman. It played the U.S. as “Torment.”
Other cinemas I thought of that were named after movies are Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries) in Stockholm, named after the Ingmar Bergman movie, and Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale, named after the Italian movie or else the theatre portrayed in it.
Ken, the Johnston (not “Johnson”) Theatre was in Thornton, a village in Johnston that straddles the Johnston-Cranston boundary along Plainfield Street at Atwood Avenue. It’s where I live. It was up one block from the Myrtle Theatre on Plainfield Street at Myrtle Avenue.
Ken, Thornton is IN Johnston. It’s a village center that straddles Johnston and Cranston. I’ve lived here all my life.
The place was run by Mr. Mario Votolato of Johnston, RI. It is/was located in the Thornton section of Johnston, which also includes a part of Cranston, on the other side of Plainfield Street which forms the boundary between Johnston and Cranston. He owned the Myrtle Hall block. In the Myrtle Theatre he ran films from the silent era (he mentioned “The Birth of a Nation”…possibly in revival) to the WWII era.
The Myrtle Theatre opened in 1919. Mario was big on kiddie matinées and movie “clubs” such as the Popeye Club and used this kind of showmanship to promote his programs and provide fun for area kids. The theatre hall was also used for weddings, banquets, showers and similar events. The place was truly a community “Cinema Paradiso.” Although I never saw the interior of the Myrtle when it was a theatre, since it closed when I was an infant, I went to various activities there over the years, including a parish play to see my sister who was in it and to go to a halloween canteen dance in the 1950s. The theatre seeating must have been movable to accomodate these varying functiions.
After the Myrtle closed as a theatre in the early 1940s, Mr. Votolato ran the nearby Johnston Theatre for many years. (That other place was where I got my childhood pre-TV movie education.) The Sunday matinée there would be the Roy Rogers Club. But in his last years of retirement he could often be seen in or around the flag store on the street level of his Myrtle Building. An amiable man blessed with a good memory, he used to show me memorabilia from the old Myrtle Theatre and the now-demolished Johnston Theatre, which he also ran for many years. He had numerous stories about area cinemas he had had some part in over the decades, such as the Rainbo on Dyer Avenue in Cranston. He had photos, posters, window-cards…some of which he gave me. He also sold me, in the 1980s, an old 35mm projector lens and aperture plate from the Myrtle that I used at the Cable Car Cinema in Providence to shown Academy-ratio films for my Italian Film Society of R.I. screenings since the Cable Car did not have the appropriate lenses and plates to show older films…and still doesn’t. In my teen years the Myrtle Theatre was known as the Myrtle Canteen, and was host to weekend teen dances accompanied by early rock records on 45 R.P.M. discs. The cinema/hall had a flat floor suitable for such events as well as a stage for amateur theatricals. The old St. Rocco’s Church a block away on Clemence Street in Cranston sometimes used it for Christmas plays and such.
Photo 1: The Popeye Club in 1939
Photo 2: The Myrtle in the 1930s or so.
Photo 3: The Myrtle Block recently Note flag shop.
Photo 4: Door of Myrtle Hall
During its last years as a cinema (summer only, I believe) the place was run by Mr. Mario Votolato of Johnston, RI. He also ran the Burrillville Theatre in Harrisville for a spell, but who is most closely associated with the Myrtle Theatre in Johnston. He owned the Myrtle Hall block. After the Myrtle closed as a theatre, he ran the nearby Johnston Theatre for many years.
Thew Avon is doing well as far as I can tell. It is owned by Ken Dulgarian who owns the entire business block, not to mention other holdings throughout Providence’s East Side and elsewhere. The cinema has a large faithful core audience for the first-run art and independent films it programs and attracts an enormous number of students from nearby Brown University. There are four movie theatres open in Providence. Three of them are single screen: Avon, Cable Car, and the part-time multi-use Columbus. The other is the Providence Place Mall 16 Cinemas. When the Dulgarian-owned College Hill Bookstore closed a few months back, there was fear that the Avon would be next. But it seems to occupy an important niche and generates enormous prestige. Mr. Dulgarian is not likely to give that up. Too bad they don’t consider adding additional screens for versatility, not by carving up the current auditorium, but by building a second level over adjacent shops.
Hardbop, you are referring to the Avon, which is doing well as far as I can tell. It is owned by Ken Dulgarian who owns the entire business block, not to mention other holdings throughout Providence’s East Side and elsewhere. The Avon has a large faithful core audience for the first-run art and independent films it programs and attracts an enormous number of students from nearby Brown University. There are four movie theatres open in Providence. Three of them are single screen: Avon, Cable Car, and the part-time multi-use Columbus. The other is the Providence Place Mall 16 Cinemas. When the Dulgarian-owned College Hill Bookstore closed a few months back, there was fear that the Avon would be next. But it seems to occupy an important niche and generates enormous prestige. Mr. Dulgarian is not likely to give that up. Too bad they don’t consider adding additional screens for versatility (not by carving up the current auditorium) but by building a second level over adjacent shops.
Hardbop, yes, still there, vacant, but a real unique eye-opener.
Hardbop, www.drive-ins.com says it closed in 1968 with the construction of Route 295.
Yes, it has funk coming out the wazoo. What it needs is better projection. I have never seen, in the nearly 30 years I’ve been going there, a film begin in frame and in focus. They start the picture, then spend 5-10 seconds to straighten it out. I know the theatre very well because, as I pointed out above, I used to rent the place for showings of Italian films over a period of 16 years. Last week I got asked by manager/owner Eric Bilodeau about some film and whether I recommended that he show it. (The six-hour Italian “The Best of Youth.” I said yes.) I told him that I had seen “The Chorus” there, a CinemaScope ratio film. It was projected with the right and left side substantially cut off, as is their custom with anamorphic films. I’ve been trying to get them to outfit the theatre with correct lenses, aperture plates, screen to accomodate the various aspect ratios.
His response was “CinemaScope, Schminascope.” He doesn’t care, won’t invest money in that. In all fairness, they do get some nice films here, often move-overs from the Avon but also first-run art house and independent films and they do some nice festivals in conjunction with Brown University and others. Brown uses the Cable Car because, shamefully, they have no 35mm capability or permanent facility! (Harvard has the fabulous state-of-the-art facility at Carpenter Center.)
There was a complete Todd Haynes retrospective a while ago, with the director, a Brown University graduate, on hand. (“I love the Cable Car Cinema,” he said.) But aspect ratio they don’t get or care about. Years ago director Lindsay Anderson visited the theatre to speak and show some of his early short films which were in old Academy ratio. He was appalled when they couldn’t show them properly.
The bulk of their profits comes from the café, which is open all day and draws RISD students as faithful customers all the time. Bagels, roll-up sandwiches, espresso: yes, they care. Projection: they don’t care. So frustrating. I will only see movies here if I can’t see them anywhere else. And they don’t have matinée prices or senior discounts. And I can get into the Avon, with its better projection, for free.
No, the theatre survived…or else was damaged and rebuilt. I remember seeing it in the late 1940s or early 1950s when I went with my parents to Oakland Beach. That’s why I filed away a distinct memory of it and exactly where it was located. I seem to remember newspaper ads too for their programs during that period. Whether the place was gone or not by Hurricane Carol in 1954, I cannot say. But I saw the theatre’s exterior, and I was not yet born in 1938.
I went to a good number of very pleasant single-screen theatres in San Antonio in the latter half of 1966 when I was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base. I know I went to the Laurel a couple of times. I can’t remember what I saw, but “The Moment of Truth” is one possibility, and “The Bible” is another. I can’t be sure.
Here is a photo of the Cinema Augusteo which I took in the summer of 1989. I believe I was more interested in getting a shot of the flower shop bearing my name than in capturing the cinema. The theatre was probably closed for the summer as most movie theatres were and, to a great extent, still are. Italians prefer open air cinemas during the summer, and a number of Italian cinemas, in addition to an indoor auditorium, have an open-air space for the warmer months with separate seating and a separate screen.
TWO PHOTOS HERE! Here is an exterior shot I took of the Pavone in 1971 when taking courses at the Università per Stranieri. To the left is the office of the local Italian Communist Party. To the right is an anti-communist graffito on the wall. It says “Prague teaches us, you red murderers!” It’s a reference, of course, to the Soviet crackdown on the liberal movement in Czechoslovakia. This second picture is a web shot of the interior. As you can see, it’s quite a beautiful theatre. I saw a movie here in August of 1971 called “Una città chiamata bastarda” which is the western “A Town Called Hell,” with Telly Savalas, Robert Shaw, and Stella Stevens. Movies from abroad that are shown in Italy are universally dubbed into Italian. In the bigger cities there has been a movement in recent years to show some movies, especially American and French ones, in their original languages on certain days, sometimes with, sometimes without subtitles. This is not motivated by purism but by the opportunity to add to the boxoffice receipts because there is a large number of Anglophones and Francophones in Rome and other big cities who would go enjoy the oportunity to see films spoken in their own languages.
Both those photos are of the interior and identical.
Do you know exactly when it closed? I know it opened as the Art in 1958 because I went to the first film under that policy, “Gervaise.” How about when the theatre first opened as the Liberty? World War I era, I would guess.
I wonder if Lyric and Central were successive names for the same theatre. The recorded addresses for both are Broad Street, a very short street, I believe.
I wonder if Lyric and Central were successive names for the same theatre. The recorded addresses for both are Broad Street, a very short street, I believe.
Finally. Hallelujah!
Here is a link to the CT page for the Lyric Theatre, about a block from the Capitol. More precise information on both these Warren theatres and their histories would be appreciated.
The former theatre, no longer an antique store, is now a retail outlet called Lyric Twist. It has been given a new exterior look and specializes in china, giftware, children’s items, and other stuff. Here is a photo. The Lyric was located about a block from the Capitol Theatre on Market Street and replaced it as the sole town movie theatre by the time the sound era rolled in. More precise and detailed information on this and the Capitol Theatre of Warren would be appreciated.
I happened to visit this theatre once when touring Ottawa in August of 1983. That’s why I decided to post it. I went to see Eric Rohmer’s “Pauline at the Beach.” Sorry to hear the place is gone, but this is not a new story.
Funny, but I too saw “Desperate Characters” there in December of 1970, according to my film-viewing log.
Here is a photo of the former Cercle Jacques Cartier which used to house the Capitol Theatre on the second floor many decades ago. The building is now owned by 2nd Story Theatre.
This photo shows Ingmar Bergman (right) with other officials at the opening of the Smultronstället Cinema. I’m guessing it was in the late 60s or early 70s. The film “Hets” on the poster was a 1944 film that was directed by Alf Sjöberg and written by Bergman. It played the U.S. as “Torment.”
Other cinemas I thought of that were named after movies are Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries) in Stockholm, named after the Ingmar Bergman movie, and Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale, named after the Italian movie or else the theatre portrayed in it.