The Walt Disney movie “Herbie Rides Again” opens with a series of implosions of old buildings during the titles. One of those is the Henry Grady / Roxy.
The Roxy auditorium shared a wall with the old Capitol which, as mentioned above was later taken over by the Davison’s department store. Since that was the extent of the demolition, about a third of the auditorium was not part of the implosion, but was removed by machine over the course of the next couple of months. inside this shell, some drapes, seats, and part of the balcony were visible, especially to those of us who rode the bus by the site.
I remember seeing “Viva Max”, “The Parent Trap” (reissue), and a Richard Brooks double feature of “The Professionals” and “In Cold Blood” here. In addition to “Willard”, I seem to recall that the first run engagement of “Bullitt” was here, and in the spring of 1970, the first run of “Z”. During its final weeks it played such epics as “The Thing With Two Heads”, with Rosey Grier and Ray Milland (as in Academy Award Winner: Ray Milland), “Big Bird Cage”, and “Caged Heat”. On opening day of “Caged Heat” they had some models in very skimpy prison outfits handing out flyers on the sidewalk in front of the box-office. Showmanship at its best, right up til the end.
For some reason, I have never noticed this page before, and only happened upon it while writing a comment for the 10th Street trying to sort out the identities of the four different theatres that were located along this four block section of Peachtree. I have little to add to the Peachtree Art part of this theatre’s history as I never attended a movie here during that time. One show that I did want to see was “Oh What A Lovely War”, but in those days I was not about to come down to this part of town, especially at night.
Starting in 1967, the section of Peachtree Street between 8th and 14th became the center of what would become known as the hippie, peacenik, Woodstock, (fill in your own favorite adjective here) scene. This lasted for about three or four years, and at night the area was gridlocked as thousands of people converged on the area surrounded by Peachtree, Piedmont, 8th and 14th to either participate or sightsee. By 1970, the fad was starting to fade away and the strip turned into a crime and drug infested dump, for lack of a better word. I observed this first hand as during those days I was riding the old Atlanta Transit Company busses through here twice a day while going to Georgia State.
It was during this time that the Peachtree Art closed, leaving the 10th Street Art and the Metro Art, both soft core porno houses as the only theatres in the area. The closest mainstream theatre was the Fox, about eight blocks south. In 1970, efforts were started to revitalize the area around Peachtree and 14th with the construction of the Colony Square office block. As part of this effort, Weis theatres reopened the Peachtree Art on July 30th under the name Weis Cinema with the Southeastern Premiere of “Catch 22”. In an effort to make suburbanites more comfortable coming to this area, free parking was offered in the Colony Square decks for the night time shows.
“Catch 22” must have done well because it played 19 weeks, leaving on Christmas Eve to make way for “Little Fauss and Big Halsey”, starring that well known comedy team of Robert Redford and Michael J. Pollard. With its 10 week run, “Halsey” was the last hit to play here for quite a while. These were the days of exclusive runs which required considerable up front money paid, in advance, to the film companies. Since blind bidding was legal in those days, it was even more of a gamble to put up a big guarantee for anything other than a sure fire hit, and there were not enough of those to go around. Weis also had the Fine Art, Broadview Plaza, and its flagship, the Capri (Garden Hills, Screening Room, and Buckhead Roxy on this site) to book, and since those locations were located further to the north in seemingly safer Buckhead with a better parking situation, it was less of a gamble to book the more expensive efforts there.
Following “Halsey” was a series of low profile first runs, reruns, fillers and reissues. Here is a list with the number of weeks in the run in ( ):
Little Murders (5)
Mephisto Waltz (3)
Percy (1)
Making It (1)
Left Handed Gun (2)
Joy In The Morning (2)
Grissom Gang (3)
Fortune In Mens Eyes (3)
Velvet Vampire (2)
Panic In Needle Park (4)
Beast of the Yellow Night (1)
Death In Venice (2)
The Touch (4)
Bless the Beasts and Children (6)
Cisco Pike (3) (Christmas attraction)
Goodbye Columbus (3)
“Goodbye Columbus” a filler after “Cisco Pike” bombed, was the first movie I saw here. As described above by Mike, I found the place to be dark, cavernous, and a little creepy since I was the only one in attendance for the weekday 5 PM show. The sound was pretty hollow and the auditorium did not seem big enough to hold the 800 seats I see listed for it here. Maybe there was a balcony that I did not notice. The lobby had been somewhat done over in the Weis style which has been described on other pages of this site as “mod”, “hip”, and groovy". Since everyone is entitled to their own opinion I will just say that I found it downright ugly, distracting, and unfortunate in that it ruined the old time appeal of older sites such as the Fine Art and Capri. The most obnoxious example here was the round frame built around the marquee overhanging the sidewalk which was covered with copper colored metal sheeting with a conflicting rectangular box cut in it to expose the sign itself. This type of stuff was fine for the newer Peachtree Battle (Silver Screen on this site) and the Broadview, but it certainly clashed with the traditional architecture of older sites like this one.
Following “Columbus”, were one week bookings of “Casino Royale” (the Woody Allen version) and “Ryan’s Daughter”. Next, on 2/16/72 came “Cabaret”, probably the most successful of the Weis efforts here. It probably played here by default since on the very same day the Broadview opened an 8 month reserved seat run of “Nicholas and Alexandra”, and the Fine Art opened its own four month run of “The Last Picture Show”, while the Capri had to be kept available for its upcoming run of “The Godfather”, opening in mid March. These three movies opening in the same week followed by “The Godfather” three weeks later certainly marked the high point of the Weis days in Atlanta during the 70’s.
“Cabaret” ran for five months but it probably did not perform up to expectations as Weis went to extremes to draw crowds. During this time the Weis Cinema consistently had the largest space in the Weis newspaper ad block. Nearing summer, the ad included a letter to Atlanta that was printed as part of the “Cabaret” ad. In it Albert Weis stated that he thought “Cabaret” was the outstanding picture of the year and encouraged Atlantans to come see it as he was confident that it would win more Oscars than any other film. He also stated that its was “no goody goody Julie Andrews type musical” which enraged a Julie Andrews fan from Brunswick to the point that he wrote a letter to the Weis company complaining about this disparagement and suggesting that Albert go see the striptease scene in “Star”. (To bad that “SOB” had not been made at that time.) Weis wrote the man a letter of apology and from that day on, there was a blank space in the middle of the ad where the offending sentence had been blacked out. The letter also offered a money back guarantee, later increased to “double your money back” if the patron did not think that “Cabaret” was indeed the movie of the year. I do not know how many, if any refunds were given, double or otherwise, but Albert was proved correct when “Cabaret” did indeed win more Oscars than any other film, although it was long gone from here by the time the Academy Awards rolled around the next spring.
After “Cabaret” it was back to the grind with:
Easy Rider (1)
Salzburg Connection (6)
Little Mother (2)
Play It Again Sam (1)
Twilight People (1)
Hello Dolly (1)
Bad Company (1)
Devil’s Widow (2)
Come Back Charleston Blue (2) (m/o from Coronet)
Hammersmith Is Out (4)
Black Girl (6) (Christmas attraction)
Heartbreak Kid (11)
Caesar and Rosalie (2)
Woodstock (3)
As you can see, the only one of these to have any success at all was “Heartbreak Kid”. The attraction for summer 1973 was “Day of the Jackal”, another big budget / big guarantee movie. I saw the movie here with a pretty good crowd, but I do not know how it did overall. Albert Weis tried to repeat his “Cabaret” act by using the newspaper ad to remind Atlanta how he had been right about “picking a winner”, and reviving his Academy Award prediction, this time with “Jackal” as the winner presumptive. Although I considered it a good movie, and still do, I thought that this was a bit of a reach. Later, I came across a Macon paper and noticed the same letter in the Weis ad, this time slightly adjusted to promote the current feature of the Riverside Twin, “Paper Moon” as the next big winner. I do not know what his prediction for Savannah was but it was probably whatever he had the most money up for.
During this time, the industry phrase “Go Black” was the motto for most of the downtown theatres as the white audience had mostly fled to the burbs. The Coronet was the first and most successful with these bookings followed by Loew’s Grand, The Atlanta, Martin’s Rialto, and occasionally even the Fox. The Weis Cinema was in something of a no mans land, customer wise, being too close to downtown to attract the white audience, especially at night, and too far north to be considered downtown. As indicated above, the Christmas 1972 feature was “Black Girl” starring Leslie Uggams which was not a bad movie but a dud at the box office. For Christmas of 1973, Weis Cinema presented Billy Dee Williams, and in a small role, Richard Pryor, in “Hit”. This one did better, but again, not a success. In 1975 the Christmas feature was “Uptown Saturday Night” but by then had Weis put most of its effort in this area into The Atlanta after they took over the lease from Walter Reade in the fall of 1973.
For Christmas of 1974, the Weis Cinema was booked with the X rated “Story of O”, not much of a Christmas movie for sure, but one that was sure to do big business if they could get away with it. By this time I was managing theatres and was not paying much attention to anything but my own problems, but I remember that this movie was either raided or threatened with a raid, and as a result the Christmas booking fell through. The Weis ended up playing the same feature as the Capri, “The Man Who Would Be King”. Another odd story was the booking of “The Savage Is Loose”. This movie is notable only for the way its star and owner, George C. Scott marketed it. Instead of renting it for a cut of the box as was the norm, he offered to sell the prints to theatre companies who would then keep all of the box office receipts. Weis bought several prints and two of them played at the Capri and Weis Cinema. Later those prints made the rounds of most of the Weis theatres in town whenever there was a gap in the schedule, and for years seemed to be the permanent co-feature at many of the Weis drive-ins.
Given the right movie, any theatre will do big business regardless of where it is located. This was proven true here in May 1975. The feature of the moment was “The Great Waldo Pepper” not exactly a hit, but more importantly a Universal release. This meant that when Universal ran their sneak preview of “Jaws”, a common practice in those days, they placed it at the Weis so that it would play with their own current release. The name of the movie was not advertised, but the jaws artwork was included in the ad so everyone knew what the feature was. As a result, for one night at least, the Weis Cinema had the hottest ticket in town. By 1975, the Weis chain was in big trouble from poor bookings and overexpansion. In 1972 they had bought out the Peachtree Battle Mini Cinema, in 1973 the Atlanta, followed by the rest of the mini cinema chain in 1974. The last big effort to return to the glory days was during Christmas 1976 when they put up big money for “7% Solution” at the Capri, and “King Kong” at almost every other theatre. The next year they tried again with “Ode To Billy Joe”, and you don’t need me to tell you how that worked out.
Since I was busy with my own theatre I do not recall when this location closed, but by 1978 or 79, Weis was gone from Atlanta, only six years or so removed from their years of being home to most of the big, high profile movies that came out. There may have been some efforts to reopen this location but I am not aware of any. In the late 80’s or perhaps early 90’s the entire block was demolished and the Peachtree Art went to the landfill to join so many other once proud Atlanta theatres.
This location operated under many different names and formats during the 60’s and early 70’s. Prior to its Gay Paree days it was known as the Walton Street Art and was operated, I recall, by George Ellis. George left the location in 1971 to take over the Ansley Mall Mini Cinema which he renamed the Film Forum.
With its slightly more suburban, shopping center location, the Film Forum became the best known and most successful of all art and indie film venues of its time.
The Walton, located downtown, became the Gay Paree. It must have been successful to some extent because for years it had the largest ad in the XXX section of the Atlanta paper.
Those of you who were alive in those days may recall the nature of the XXX movie theatre business in those pre video years. In Atlanta, there were several hard and soft-core locations located in the central downtown area which I walked through every day on my way to class at Georgia State. The soft-core locations, such as the 10th Street Art, Metro Art, and Buckhead Art, seemed to run 35MM and the booths were Union operated. The hardcore locations, such as the Ashby Street Art, were 16MM and non Union. This was before my days working in theatres, but I have been told that one of these, the Houston Street Art, was a twin where one side was soft-core 35MM and the other was hardcore 16MM. Also notice how all of these locations used the word “Art” in their name, a matter of no small discomfort to the Peachtree Art Theatre located at 13th Street, which was Atlanta’s one true “Art” theatre at that time. It was during this time that the Peachtree Art closed down and was reopened by the Weis chain as the Weis Cinema, showing standard first run product.
I did not intend for this to become a history of the XXX theatres of Atlanta, but only mention it to set the stage for the most well known incident involving the Gay Paree Theatre which occurred in the summer of 1973 when it made a short lived departure from its “gay” theme. The most notorious example of the XXX type of product was “Deep Throat”. By this time I had been working in theatres for a couple of years and had heard stories of private, borrowed, or bootleg versions of this film being shown privately in mainstream theatres around town after hours. However, it had never had a public engagement in Atlanta because it was almost sure to be raided. The Fulton County Solicitor of the day, Hinson McAuliffe, rarely bothered the low profile hardcore locations downtown, but never missed a chance for the free publicity to be garnered by a raid on a suburban location playing a movie like “Oh Calcutta”. (If you are interested, I have described an example of this in my post on the North Springs Theatre: /theaters/11778/)) Hard to believe now, but the United Artists release of “Last Tango In Paris” did not open in Atlanta for months after its national release date due to McAuliffe’s vow, in advance, to raid any theatre that dared play it.
This was the situation in Atlanta in July 1973 when the morning paper had a large ad for the “ALL NEW” Gay Paree announcing that it was proud to present “Deep Throat” with showings from 9:30 AM until 1:30 AM. It looked like the late hours would not be necessary since the theatre was raided at noon and the owner / manager, the projectionist, and the cashier were hauled off to jail. The owners were obviously ready for this as the owners wife brought out another print and was back onscreen by mid afternoon. For the next couple of days, the Gay Paree did the volume of business that the mainstream theatres in town only saw in their dreams, with lines around the block. The theatre was raided again and without a third print on hand, it was back to the regular fare for the Gay Paree.
At a court hearing later in the week, a large crowd of mostly county courthouse employees showed up for the hearing since it had been rumored that the movie would be screened for the judge. The sheriff tried to close the courtroom to the public, but since that was apparently illegal, the public was admitted and the judge cancelled the plans to show the film, if such plans ever existed. I never heard what happened to the case and since the main point, being the publicity, had been achieved, the whole issue disappeared from view. Until this theatre was posted, I was not aware that it was still in operation in 1977. The next time I am downtown I will look to see if the building is still there, but I doubt it.
For anyone interested in Birmingham history in general, there is an outstanding website named Birmingham Rewound and it is mentioned in several of the postings of Birmingham theatres on this site. This link:
will take you to the downtown theatre page. About half way down the page are several paragraphs on the Empire including several pictures.
I remember attending this theatre many times while growing up in Birmingham. Among the pictures I recall seeing there are: Nicky: Wild Dog Of The North, 633 Squadron, Is Paris Burning?, and Goldfinger, which is the subject of one of the pictures on the website.
Barbara: Thank you for that very interesting post. I do not recognize your fathers name, but he must have been the other half of the…“two lawyers who owned the theatre”. I do remember Cone Maddox very well as he was a frequent visitor to the theatre, especially when we had family films when he would bring his children. I also remember a man named Jeff (or Geoff) Tyre who I believe was English.
Perhaps you could clear up something for me. I was under the impression that your father and Cone owned the franchise to the Sandy Springs location and not the Mini Cinema chain as a whole, and that this is why went independent during the days that Storey was contracted to book and manage the chain. Do you know the story behind this?
Also, was the Peachtree Battle the first theatre in the chain? I always thought so but know someone who insists that it was the Ansley Mall which was first. I know that the Sandy Springs opened third, followed by Doraville and Candler Road. Was your father still involved when the last two were built?
I would love to hear anything you know regarding these or other aspects of the Mini Cinema operation. Oddly enough, I did not do much actual theatre work at the Sandy Springs since it required such a small staff. Usually just fill in for sick or vacationing employees or extra help during busy times. For most of those early years I worked at the North Springs, Cherokee, and Atlanta. However, I did do a lot of behind the scenes work there such as film and concession supply deliveries, marquee changes, trips to National Screen, and even spent the night there twice helping to pump out the auditorium when the Laundromat next door would cause a flood.
If you are interested, I believe all of the other Mini Cinemas have pages on this site:
As for the movie going experience, Peachtree Battle, Sandy Springs, Doraville, and Macon were good places to see a movie. Ansley and Candler somewhat less so. Still they were better than most of the auditoriums that you will find in the megaplex of today. If your dad is still alive tell him “Thank You” for me as I have very fond memories of the theatres and the people that I met while working in them.
Biggest projection booth I ever worked in. Wide and at least 300 feet long for screens 2 through 7 with smaller stubs at each end for houses 1 and 8. All Cinemacannica V8’s, 35MM with screens 3 through 6 equipped with push button Dolby. After it became obvious that this location was built well past the prime years for this area, the Dolby units in 3 and 6 were removed and installed in the Sandy Springs / Parkside 8.
As with most GCC builds of the 80’s, this place was not built until the area was saturated with competition. I think that it opened in 1988 and closed in 1999. Just as with the Parkside, it was reopened as a dollar house by the EFW outfit but closed again after about 18 months. There has been at least one other effort but it failed as well.
Since GCC walked out on the lease during bankruptcy, the had to leave the site intact. This made it easy for a small company to come in a rent a turnkey operation without having to go to the expense of equipping a theatre. As far as I know this is still the situation although I would hate to be the one who had to clean it up to say nothing of what the booth might be like.
This is a better quality building than the recently demolished Stonemont, and the shopping center is newer and in much better shape. So, perhaps the Hairston might dodge the wrecking ball for the foreseeable future, but I doubt that it will ever be more than a marginal location for an independent operator trying to take advantage of the low overhead to squeeze out a few bucks.
I spoke to someone who works this area and he confirms that the theatre and the east wing of the shopping center has been torn down. It seems that these stores and especially the theatre had become a haven for the homeless who were constantly breaking in, which probably accounts for the appearance of the place that I noted in my last post. Not only was the theatre completely trashed on the inside, but it also had an overwhelming mold problem. I wonder if this is a problem common to old closed up locations as someone made a similar observation on the Town and Country page of this site. At any rate, the place was a public nuisance and had to go.
In total this theatre lasted 30 years, about 25 of those in use, about average for the more successful examples of theatres built during its era. This gives it about the same longevity as the Perimeter Mall, but a good bit longer than either of the Northlakes, the North DeKalb, South DeKalb, Akers Mill, Suburban Plaza, Village, and any of its later neighbors along Memorial Drive. It even lasted a little longer, counting its Bollywood days, than the great Phipps Plaza Theatre.
As I said in my post on the Town and Country, this was just an example, among the nicest in fact, of the stopgap between the movie palaces of old and the megaplex of today. For someone new to this business looking back on this era, it does not seem like a big deal. However, it was to those of us who grew up and worked during this time, and I am grateful that I got to experience this example of the movie theatre business before it turned into the fast food / amusement park atmosphere of today.
As for the time capsule, I do not know what happened to it but I hope whoever got it is an honest person. Among the many news items and theatre memorabilia items inside were hundreds of polaroids of the children who attended the opening showing of “Peter Pan” that I described in the original post that started this page. The idea was that years later, when the capsule was opened they would be sent the picture to remind them of what they were doing on June 27, 1976. And just how, you ask, were all of these children, many with different last names, going to be located? Easy. Their mothers supplied the children’s Social Security numbers which were written on the back of the picture. I wonder how many of these now grown ups have had their identities stolen because of this well intentioned effort made in a more innocent time.
Built as a free standing building in the Northlake Festival Shopping Center. I never worked at this place, or even went inside, but I believe that it was built in 1983 and opened with “Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom.” At this time the Northlake Mall area was served by the GCC Northlake 2 Triple, and the Georgia Theatre Company Village Twin ( /theaters/13468/ ) although the latter may have been closed by this time. The other nearby theatres were the Greens Corner to the north, the North 85 Drive In to the west, and the North Dekalb and Suburban Plaza to the south.
Until the Northlake and its AMC partner Galleria 8 were built I don’t remember any Atlanta theatres with more than 6 screens, so this was what passed for a megaplex in those days. Northlake was an instant hit and for the rest of the 80’s it competed with the Galleria for the title of #1 grossing theatre in Atlanta. The Northlake 2, which had been a very successful location for GCC was all but wiped off the map by the AMC 8, and staggered on until its close in 1990. Oddly enough, the AMC 8 did not last much longer, closing in the mid to late 90’s. Not having any connection to it, I have no knowledge of what brought about its end, but it could be that an 8 screen location was not worth the trouble to a big outfit like AMC by the time that 18-24 screens were the norm. By this time AMC had converted their recently rebuilt North DeKalb 8 into 16 screens and Regal had announced plans to demolish the North 85 Drive In and build what would become the Hollywood 24, so maybe that was what did it. Still, it is odd that the very busy and well to do area of Northlake Mall does not have a movie theatre in its immediate vicinity.
One odd thing about this place: A friend of mine who worked there said that there was a core of high school aged employees who started working there when the place opened that remained throughout their college years, and in some cases continued on after college on a part time basis. Just reliving the good old days I suppose. That’s a nice memory in these days when 24 screen theatres churn through employees like they were confetti and the employees seldom get a chance to experience what working in an actual movie theater was like. Maybe some of those old timers will see this site and write us some first hand accounts.
While it may have been rather plain on the inside, from outside it was the most impressive looking of all Atlanta Drive Ins. The screen backed up to Piedmont Road and could be seen from a good ways down LaVista Road. It was decorated with neon script “Piedmont Drive In” signage. To get to the box office you drove down the entrance drive through the towering pine trees that dominated the lot. As was the custom in those days the box office had a large warmer so that boxes of popcorn could be sold along with the tickets. The exit was located in the rear of the lot and opened onto Lindberg Drive.
I only had the pleasure of attending a show at the Piedmont one time, this being in 1966 when I was in Atlanta visiting family. The feature was the pleasant but unremarkable “Born Free.” As usual, the co-feature was an older offering from the same film company, in this case Columbia. Although the purpose of the trip was to see ‘'Born Free" it was the co-feature that made the night memorable. It was the first, and only time in a theatre, that I saw ’‘Bye Bye Birdie’‘ although I have watched and enjoyed it many times since. If I watch it enough I may discover why Ann-Margaret calls the title character by the proper name of Birdie in the movie itself, while in the opening and closing songs she sings his name BurHEE. The fact that I attended this showing with my cousins, one of whom is named Anne, and the other Margaret, only made the show more memorable.
Sadly, by the time I moved to Atlanta in 1967, the Piedmont had recently closed. It was torn down and in its place was a K-Mart style discount store by the name of Arlands, or maybe just Arlans. The arrival of this chain was a major blow to the historical past of Atlanta. In addition to the destruction of the Piedmont, another fine drive in, the Stewart Avenue, was also destroyed to make way for another Arlands location. Even worse, they also destroyed the old Ponce de Leon Park baseball stadium where the Atlanta Crackers had played minor league baseball for years until the arrival of the major league Braves in 1966.
As it turned out, these fine Atlanta landmarks had the last laugh as the Arlands chain went out of business within a couple of years. The Ponce de Leon store was taken over by the government as office space and later torn down to make way for yet another strip shopping center. The old Piedmont Drive In location became the site of a major weekend flea market which drew bigger crowds than the drive in or discount store ever saw. That store was torn down and the MARTA Lindberg station built on its site. The front part of the property along Piedmont where the box office and screen were sited became a parking lot and later a huge Bell South office complex.
Across the street at Broadview Plaza, later renamed Lindberg Plaza, two indoor theatres were built in the early 70’s and are listed on this site as the Screening Room. They are also gone as that shopping center was torn down in about 2004 to make way for yet another and still larger shopping center. The way some things change never changes.
You have to be quick to beat Raymond to the comment section when it comes to Atlanta movie theatre history. Below is a comment I wrote on the Memorial Drive 4, but a lot of it applies to this location as well, and echos Raymonds comments about the decline of the area. The Stonemot Twin, which beat everyone else to this area by six years was the only one to enjoy any grat amount of success.
Opened by the Septum Cinemas chain in late 1982 or early 1983. This was the first attempt by competing companies to challenge the ABC (later Plitt) Stonemont Twin which had enjoyed an exclusive situation along this very heavily traveled section of Memorial Drive from I-285 to the Gwinnett County line. Later, Septum opened another 5 screen location a couple of miles down the road. Plitt countered with a 6 next door to the 5. Cineplex acquired the Plitt chain and opened another 6 just across the county line. Last, as usual, to the scene was General Cinema with an 8 at Hairston Road.
The reason for this concentration of screens was that while the town of Stone Mountain itself is very small, the surrounding area was a very fast growing and well off section of DeKalb County. None of these locations were actually in the city limits of Stone Mountain, but were in unincorporated DeKalb. By the mid 90’s this the boom days of this area were over and the Memorial Drive strip went into decline. Many of the strip shopping centers which lined the road were vacant and every one of the theatres mentioned here closed down at some point. There was a time when all of them were closed at the same time.
The Stonemont Twin, Hairston 8, and Cineplex 6 have been reopened by various independent operators, in some cases more than once. At this moment, the Cineplex is the only one operating. I do not know what happened to the two Septum’s, but the old Plitt 6 is an indoor amusement park and party room.
For a more detailed account of the glory days of this area, movie theatre wise, see the posting and comments on the Stonemont Twin page of this website.
The East Point Theatre was probably closed about 1970. The last manager, Mr. R.M. Swanson went directly to open the new South DeKalb Twin. The assistant manager, Mrs V.M. King became the assistant at the Greenbriar. The equipment was removed and found a new home at the Cinema 285 (Hammond Square Cinema on this site) when it opened in June 1971. At this time the theatre was under the management of Gerogia Theatre Company.
The strip of buildings was demolished in late 1989 at about the time the Tri Cities High School was being completed.
I have three distinct memories of the Ritz while growing up in Birmingham.
1962: How The West Was Won. My parents told me before the show that I was going to see a movie so big that it took 3 screens to show the entire picture. I guess that is how they had to describe it so a 10 year old would understand. I do not remember much about the movie itself because I was constantly looking at the right and left screens to see what was going on away from the “action.” In 1998 I made the trek to Dayton, Ohio to see HTWWW at the Neon Cinerama. It was not until then that I was able to appreciate the incredible focus and 7 track sound.
1965: Doctor Zhivago. The Ritz hosted many roadshow movies while the other ABC operated theatre, The Alabama, played the more standard fare. My mother took me to see this one because she thought it would appeal to my interest in History. (My father, having seen it with her earlier said “…once is enough.”) She was right, as usual, and from the first viewing Doctor Zhivago has been one of my favorite movies of all time. I do not know how many times I have seen it over the years, but my viewings have been in every type of venue from mono shoebox theatre to 70MM presentations at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. I have also had the pleasure of working at several theatres where it has played, managed one, (South DeKalb) and run it as the projectionist twice, both times at the Fox. I now have the new 2 disc DVD, and never tire of seeing it.
1965: Sound of Music. The Cobb operated Eastwood Mall Theatre was the main competition for the Ritz and Alabama although its 1960’s draped auditorium and living room style lobby were no match for these other two fine places in atmosphere. SOM played its reserved seat engagement at Eastwood, but the day after Zhivago left the Ritz, SOM was brought in as a filler until whatever Christmas show they had booked that year opened. Since I had already seen it at Eastwood, it was not the movie itself but the condition of the print that made this a notable experience. In those days, prints were not produced in anywhere near the numbers of today. More like 300 than 3000. By the time they got to an engagement such as this, there was no telling how many poorly maintained booths and film butchers they had encountered. The Ritz did not get the film in time, or did not bother, to inspect it. It was full of scratches, sound pops, and at least half a dozen breaks, one of which lasted for at least 15 minutes. This made the show end almost an hour late. The result was a massive traffic jam on Second Avenue on the Friday before Christmas as my mother and dozens of other parents there to pick up their children, had to wait in their cars for us to leave the theatre. (Remember, this was in the day when most of the department stores, and by extension Christmas shopping, were still downtown.)
I am sure that I visited the Ritz on other occasions but do not remember any in particular. I also remember going to the Alabama, Empire, Melba, Homewood, and even the Shades Mountain Drive In, but in those days I was more interested in the movie than the venue.
I think that the original post by Don might refer to the old Miracle or perhaps some theatre of that time that might have used the name Town and Country. This location was a 1970 era build. It was of the second generation of Eastern Federal Theatres built here, and like the Cobb Cinema and Ben Hill, was cheap to build and operate. The junction of the T&C shopping center had something of a small town square feel and the box office opened out onto it.
Inside it very much resembled the old Sandy Springs Mini Cinema. Small paneled lobby, shallow, wide shaped auditorium with a good sized screen, but NO concession stand. The far wall of the lobby had vending machines for drinks, candy and popcorn. During these years it was not unusual for theatres to have vending machines, but this was the first one I saw with machines only. On busy nights an employee would be stationed nearby to issue change and assist with mechanical problems. In the spring of 1972, the machines were removed and a very small concession stand built in their place.
The booth was manager operated and equipped with a Cinemeccanica V-18 projector and 12,000 foot reels which were mounted behind the projector. Since these reels had a capacity of about 2 hours and 20 minutes, anything longer had to have an intermission. Tora, Tora, Tora in May of 1972, Nicholas and Alexandra in September of 1972, and Sound of Music in its 1973 reissue were the ones that I remember being split. Sleuth, in the spring of 1973 was the longest movie I saw run on one reel.
In those pre VCR days, it was common for theatres to bring back old hits to fill in gaps in their booking schedules. Whenever one of my favorites would reappear in this manner I would try to go see it since you never could be sure when or if you would get the chance again. A July 1971 booking of the double feature Bullitt (or as it was listed on the marquee: Bullet) and Bonnie and Clyde first brought the T&C to my attention. Later that year I started working for EFC and saw many movies here. Being located in Cobb County, T&C (as well as the Miracle, Cobb Cinema, Cobb Center, and Belmont) could play the big first run movies day and date with the first run houses in Atlanta. Since I could now get in free, I made the trip to see Dirty Harry, Cowboys, Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc, Butterflies Are Free, Sleuth, and Jeremiah Johnson, among others. The screen here was a very nice size in relation to the size of the auditorium and I recall Cowboys and Jeremiah Johnson looking especially fine with their cinemascope aspect ratio.
In 1973 I fell from grace with Ira and the EFC crowd, so I do not know much about the history of this place following those years. This was a time of big business for this place and during my EFC days it was fortunate enough to be well managed by Cliff Bryson. I heard later that he moved to NC to manage theatres for EFC there. I understand that when tripled, the original auditorium was left intact, but I never saw it. I heard that during the construction for the twin addition, a storm blew down the concrete block wall and they had to start over. The only other thing I remember about this place took place in 1991. In the newspaper ad for T2, the theatre listings at the bottom had a big “Presented in 70MM” collar around the logo for the Marietta Star Cinema. I had never heard of this theatre, but when I looked up the address, I found it to be the old T&C, now run by George Lefont.
The T&C, like countless other places like it, was a product of the particular conditions of movie booking and exhibition that existed from 1965 until about 1980. Looking back from 30 years in the future I can see that they were just cheap, and it turns out, temporary stopgaps between the movie palaces of old and the megaplexes of today. But, to those of us who worked in them, they were a big deal then, and am glad that I had the chance to experience that era of the movie business.
For those of you interested in old pictures of Atlanta, this site has dozens, and links to dozens more, pictures of transit vehicles from the early 1900’s. As for its relevance to this page, this link,
shows a trolley at the intersection of Peachtree Road and Rumson Road. If that information is correct, then the shopping center in the background is the Garden Hills. Since the location of the theatre would be behind the trolley I can not be sure, but it looks right.
I first visited this theatre in 1999 while on a visit to Winterset to see the Madison County covered bridges and the John Wayne Museum and birthplace. It is located on the east side of the town square. At the time they were playing two separate shows, a family movie at 7PM and an adult (as in Adam Sandler type adult, not XXX) feature at 9PM. Winterset is only 35 miles from Des Moines so the turnover in features here is pretty quick in order to keep the local customers from traveling to Des Moines if what they want to see is not currently playing at the local theatre.
The manager / owner was working the box office, but he was nice enough to let me in to look the place over and talk about the difficulties in running a one screen small town theatre in close proximity to a large city. Print availability on national release date and preview availability were two issues he mentioned. These seem to be problems common to most theatres is this type of setting.
The theatre itself is old and occupies a narrow storefront on the square. Like most cold weather businesses it has a double lobby. Once you enter the street doors you come to the box office. From there you go through another set of doors into the main lobby, which in this case is taken up mostly by the snack bar. The interior of the auditorium is 1950’s art deco style with two off center aisles. The outside frontage had been covered with wood siding, but the owner said that removing it and restoring the exterior to its original state was his next priority. From the look of the two pictures posted on this site it seems that he has not gotten around to it yet.
In 2005 I noticed on another theatre website that this location was listed as closed. I called the Chamber of Commerce and the lady there said that it was open and had not closed at any time during the past 6 years.
Opened in the summer of 1985, six months after the Shannon. This was good timing for the operator since Georgia Theatre Company had emptied out the used projector warehouse when equipping the Shannon. The Southlake had all new booth equipment. 7 Century 35MM and one Century 35/70MM. The only time I am aware that the 70 was used was for “Black Cauldron.”
There was also a very odd piece of equipment known as the Christie Endless Loop Platter. This ridiculous gadget was proclaimed to all theatre owners as a way to finally get rid of that pesky projectionist. It looked like a regular platter only with one platter instead of the usual 3 or 5. When being loaded with a new movie the leader would be threaded through the projector and spliced onto the tail of the movie. The film would be pulled from the center as normal but instead of winding onto a different platter would wind onto the back of the print. To keep the film from backing back off of the edge of the platter, a spring loaded arm would gently and rhythmically bump the print in towards the center of the platter as it turned. Even now I have a hard time describing it. It really had to be seen to be believed.
Fortunately the Southlake, or any other theatre I ever heard of, did not use this abortion to run their actual movies. In keeping with the Rube Goldberg nature of the whole operation, the projector was aimed toward a mirror which reflected the image onto the back of a screen which faced the lobby. It was used to show a constant stream of previews to the people, and unfortunate employees, who were in the lobby. In those days previews were not distributed at anywhere near the current number so there was seldom more than 30 minutes or so worth before the loop started over. Mercifully, I only worked this location occasionally so I never had the pleasure of changing the previews or remounting the loop.
The only other notable thing I remember about this place was the freedom with which the staff would use the house PA system. I recall hearing announcements in the auditoriums about car headlights being left on, convertible tops being left down in the rain, paging the manager to the phone, and even calling employees back to work when their break was up.
As with all other GTC properties and employees, the end came with the sellout to United Artists Theatres in the late 80’s. I did not notice when this place was closed, but it certainly gave it up by the time the AMC Southlake Pavilion 24 opened.
As Jack stated above, the ultimate in bland, unpleasant theatre design. But, at least in the 80’s there was no reason to put extra money and effort into creating a nice movie going experience. The GCC Northlake 2 and Southlake 2 triples were truly the poster children for the dozens of theatres built around Atlanta during this period which offered little more than a seat, a screen, and sound for the patrons. Three identical, long, thin, shoeboxes with 400 of the trademark GCC two position seats in each house. This notorious example of contempt for the customer was also the bane of many theatre employees who spent countless hours pushing the seats back to their upright positions while cleaning the auditorium.
The Southlake was the fourth GCC venue to be built in Atlanta following the Perimeter Mall in 1973, Northlake 2 in 1976, and Akers Mill in 1977. I believe it opened in 1978. The booth was equipped with Century 35MM projectors and Christie Autowind 3 platters. One house had the first generation pushbutton style Dolby sound rack. In an improvement over its Northlake predecessor, the screens had up and down masking for the flat picture so that both the scope and flat pictures filled the entire screen.
The main reason that these theatres were built so bland is that the public demanded little else. All they wanted was to see the hit movies, and in this area that meant going to the GCC Southlake for the most part. The only first run competition was a 3 screen effort by Plitt a couple of blocks over. I worked at this theatre several times between 1984 and 1988. During a two week stint covering a vacation for the regular projectionist in 1984 I saw the place filled to near capacity many times while showing Ghostbusters, Gremlins, and Bachelor Party. The next year Back to the Future was a big hit. As usual, this kind of success attracted the attention of the competition and before long Georgia Theatre opened an 8plex across the street, and Cineplex followed with a 6. Eventually AMC put all of these efforts out of business with their 24 screen Southlake Pavilion.
One constant during all of the time I was connected with this place was the complete lack of an adequate number (qualified or un) of job applicants. GCC considered themselves a class operation, and to be fair, they were in many respects. Help Wanted was just too crass a way to attract the best workers they felt, so at GCC it was always Employment Opportunities Available. When a sign in the lobby did not attract enough applicants, they would sometimes put the appeal on the marquee itself. However, there was not nearly enough room for all of that copy, so the word Employment was left off. It never ceased to amuse the staff how many people came in and asked about the movie “Opportunities Available.” Granted, that is not much of a story, but it was not much of a theatre.
Just like the Northlake 2 it was torn down in the early 90’s and a Sports Authority now sits on the site.
Another venue from my past. I attended the Riverside many times while I was a student at Georgia College in Milledgeville during 1972, 73, and 74. There were two indoor screens and one drive in screen in Milledgeville, all operated by Martin, but if you wanted first run product you usually had to drive the 30 miles to Macon. At the time, Riverside was operated by its builder, the Weis Theatre Company and was still a twin. I would guess that the seating capacity was about 500 per side. The front doors opened into the lobby and the auditoriums were to either side. Concession stand straight ahead in the middle, with the box office opening to the outside between the sets of entrance doors.
A notable feature of the auditoriums was the lack of a false ceiling. All of the lighting fixtures, ductwork, conduits, etc… were exposed, but painted black so that you really did not notice them unless you happened to look up. During intermission a slide projector in the booth showed slides at an angle so that it hit half screen and half panels located on the wall. At first I thought that the projector was misaligned, but since it was always that way I guess you can say it was “art.” In those pre advertising days the slides were pictures of movie stars and some stills from classic movies.
The Riverside was the newest theatre in Macon at that time and competed with the Georgia Theatre Company operated triple in the Westgate Shopping Center for first run product. I can remember seeing “What’s Up Doc”, “Nicholas and Alexandra”, “The Exorcist”, and “Sound of Music” among many others at this location. In the mid to late 70’s the Weis Theatre Company hit hard times and started disposing of their properties. Georgia Theatre Company bought up the ones in Macon which also included the downtown Bibb, the Weis Drive In in Warner Robbins which was the only air conditioned drive in I ever saw, and the half of the Macon Mini Cinema that Weis and GTC had jointly owned and operated for several years.
When I left Georgia Theatre in the early 80’s they were still running it as a twin. I was not aware that it had ever been quaded, or when it closed. One other note: Just out Riverside Drive a little ways was the Georgia Theatre operated Riverside Drive In. It was located in the nicest setting I have ever seen for a drive in and was a great place to see a movie.
The only reason the Fox campaign worked is because it caught the city off guard. The city badly wanted to Fox to go so that the Southern Bell HQ could be built on the spot. Might have gotten their way if someone had not wondered just what was located at the 660 Peachtree Street address listed on the demolition permit application. Note that when the same situation came up regarding the Loews Grand, the Grand just happened to catch fire when plans for its demise were announced.
If you think about it for a moment, it is the history of this theatre and not its appearance or programing that makes it such a loss. The movies that would have played there will still make it onto a screen only it will be at the Midtown, Tara, or Phipps or perhaps the Lefont Sandy Springs. Even in perfect condition the place was not anything special once you were in your seat. As I said before, the Plaza, at least the downstairs part, offers a more accurate link to theatres of the past. I am sorry to see it go, but will not feel the loss as much as with other theatres where I worked such as the Lenox, now the Herzing Business College, the original Phipps, now Parisians, The Atlanta and Perimeter Mall, now parking lots, the Cherokee, now a grocery store, or even the Northeast Expressway Drive In, now a soccer complex.
All of this theatre closing talk does not affect the status of the rest of the strip, although it is hard to see how that property can resist the condo juggernaut that is sweping through the area now. However, a friend of mine who 20 years ago worked in a used book store located in the strip says that even then there was talk of the pending demise of the location. I would imagine that all that stands between the Garden Hills Theatre (and shopping strip) and the wrecking ball is the asking price.
I agree, it is a shame to see this one go. Although it does not have the “going back in time” feel of the Plaza, having been extensively remodeled by Weis in the late 60’s, it was one of those fast fading links to the past that Atlanta seems to intent on getting rid of.
When I moved to Atlanta in 1967, it was known as the Fine Art and was playing “A Man For All Seasons.” Although not exactly what we would call an “Art” house today, like Midtown, or Tara, it did play a mixture of “art” type movies as well as mainstream product. (In the 60’s the art house trade was the almost exclusive domain of the Peachtree Art at 1132 Peachtree Palace Theatreth as mentioned by Don above, and starting in 1971, the Film Forum of George Ellis.) The first movie I was planning to see there was “In Cold Blood” until, that is, my mother noticed the R rating on it. (We detoured to see “The Happiest Millionaire” at the Fox instead.) The “Uncle Toms Cabin” booking featured in the then and now picture linked to above played in early 1969. It was followed by “The Killing Of Sister George” definitely not mainstream, and then “Goodbye Columbus” which took up the entire summer of 1969. Some of the other slightly out of the mainstream type bookings here were “Sterile Cuckoo” (4 months), “Anne of the Thousand Days” (3 months), “Boys In The Band” (4 months), and “Five Easy Pieces” (3 months). However, the champion for longest run during this time was the strictly mainstream “Odd Couple” which played for the final 7 months of 1968.
For Christmas of 1970, Weis booked “Ryan’s Daughter” and that one ran one week shy of 8 months during the first half of 1971. That was a good time for the Weis company as the Capri (now Buckhead Roxy) just up the street was enjoying a 7 month run of its own with “Love Story.” With “Ryan’s Daughter” I finally made it to a show at the Fine Art. With its small entrance (box-office opening to the outside in those days), tiny lobby, dark auditorium, Weis inspired decorating, I did not think much of it as a venue when compared with Lenox and Phipps, etc… Also, I did not see the movie until July and by that time the print was certainly the worse for wear and a pale example of the 70MM presentation I would see at Phipps a year or so later. Following Ryan, more narrow appeal movies enjoyed good runs here, usually lasting a month to 6 weeks. Among these were “Walkabout,” “The Go-Between,” and “Harold and Maude.”
In the spring of 1972 I paid my second visit to the Fine Art, this time to see “The Last Picture Show.” This movie, which also had a four month run, was not at all what I was expecting to see and at the time I did not think much of it. (Later I became a fan of it and even made a trip to Archer City, Texas which is where the film, and its sequel Texasville, was set and filmed.) These were still the days of blind bidding, advance rentals, and exclusive runs, and bookings exceeding 3 months were not unusual. The Fine Art followed the usual pattern of those days by running a full day “grind” schedule with the first show starting about 2 PM with midnight shows on Friday and Saturday nights. As the run lengthened and attendance declined the Friday night midnight show would drop off, then the Saturday night one and finally the matinees. Other than the downtown theatres, the Lenox and Capri were the only theatres during this time that ran all day year round.
In the summer of 1970, Weis had taken over the old Peachtree Art Theatre and reopened it as the Weis Cinema. Shortly after that they built the Broadview (later twinned with the Broadview II becoming the Silver Screen and the Broadview I becoming the Great Southeast Music Hall) and in May of 1972 purchased the Peachtree Battle Mini Cinema (which was later sold to George Lefont and became the Silver Screen.) The point of all of this is that with more theatres to book, the product got thinned out and the number of blockbuster hits at the Fine Art declined. After “Picture Show” left, there was a year of steady but unremarkable bookings until August of 1973 when one of the biggest Fine Art hits of all, “American Graffiti” opened. Looking at the booking patterns of today, it is hard to believe that this huge hit did not open until mid August. I have heard the story that not much was expected of this small film with its unknown director, George Lucas, which is why it was dumped onto the release schedule when summer was almost over. Regardless, by the time it opened in Atlanta, Universal knew they had a hit and not only did the Fine Art run the usual full schedule, but they ran midnight shows every night until school started back.
“American Graffiti” finished out the year, and for the next couple of years it was back to the steady but unspectacular slate of films. Within a couple of years the entire Weis company was in trouble as a result of overexpansion with their acquisition of the mini cinemas, and their habit of gambling big advances to get the sure fire hits, some of which were not so sure fire. A very sad event, the death of the son of Albert Weis in an auto accident, also hurt as Mr. Weis seemed to lose interest in the day to day operations of the company after that happened.
My third and last visit to the Fine Art was in December of 1974 for an advance screening of Godfather Part II. As mentioned in other posts here and on the Film Forum page, George Ellis moved his operation here in the mid to late 70’s. After he returned to Ansley Mall, the Georgia Theatre Company took control of the Garden Hills, as it was then known (again). This was an odd turn of events and GTC never did much with the place and only held the lease a short time. In those days they had a habit of taking over theatres they really had no interest in, such as the Parkaire and Georgia Twin, aka Georgia Cinerama, just to keep the competition out. This may have been the case here, but I do not really know. At any rate, as every one here knows, George Lefont soon took over and the rest is well known.
Hold on there long island. That is being a little harsh. Lefont has been in this business for 30 years and kept this little theatre going for over 20 years as well as such other venues as the Silver Screen (formerly Peachtree Battle), the Ansley Mall (formerly Film Forum), and Screening Room (formerly Broadview II, as well as the Plaza. You don’t stay in business that long by running theatres into the ground. While Lefont may run a more laid back operation than the slick multi and megaplexes of today, the actual venues themselves, while old, were kept up. I know that the Garden Hills had new seats installed several years ago, and I also know that some of these places were not in exactly mint condition to begin with.
What really killed this and the others listed above is success. Lefont made a good living off of the art film market for many years when no one else would be bothered with such a small slice of the box-office pie. Once the theatre competition in Atlanta got so crowded, everyone was looking for any way possible to make an extra buck. It did not take the big boys long to catch on to the Lefont act and move in. The Tara, Landmark Midtown, and even the Phipps and old GCC Perimeter Mall started going after this relatively cheap and low risk market. As a result there was not enough of the foreign / art film supply and audience to go around. Money can be made in this field, but not if you have to risk big upfront advances to secure limited appeal movies. Madstone spent a ton of money refurbishing the Sandy Springs but that did not keep them from having to shut the doors.
I think that Lefont, a local businessman with a love for movies and the theatre business, did mighty well standing up to all of these big corporations for as long as he has. I have no first hand knowledge of why the run of the Plaza or Garden Hills has ended, but I would bet that the competition from the deep pocketed big guns has just made this part of the movie business too marginal to support an old single screen location. The Lefont 8plex in Sandy Springs is well maintained and still going with its mainstream offerings with whatever art product is available thrown in.
At some point during the late 70’s the Old Dixie went through the XXX phase. This seemes to be something that every Jerry Lewis Cinema in the entire country went through at one time. Their small size and minimal staffing requirements made them ideal for this purpose. The one on Buford Hwy still operates in this manner to this day. During this phase the Old Dixie was raided by the Clayton County Police and the manager / projectionist was carted off to jail. Funny how these things work. They never seem to arrest the owners or bookers, just the poor saps trying to make a living. The solicitors undoubtedly realized that it was an easy conviction since few managers had the money to hire a lawyer and the owners would just pay their fines and mark it up to the cost of doing business. The result: Business as usual for the theatre owner, good publicity during an election year for the solicitor, and a criminal record for the poor manager and projectionist who were just doing their jobs and had no say in what was being played.
This link will take you to two pages of pictures from the 40’s and 50’s. They show the marquee, exterior, box office, projection booth as well as the manager and some staff. Well worth the visit.
My family moved to Atlanta in the summer of 1967. The first movie I attended after that was at the Rialto, June 10, a Monday I think. The feature was the John Wayne western “The War Wagon.” Like most of the first run movies that played there during that time, it was a Universal Pictures release. By this time the exodus to the suburbs (movie theatre wise) was underway and only the big downtown theatres like the Grand, Fox, Roxy, and Atlanta were left to keep the Rialto company. The bookings for the Rialto were mostly lower tier first run offerings which seldom lasted more than a month. Although starting in 1970, I passed the Rialto every day on the bus on the way to class at GSU, I never saw anything worth attending even though I was in the neighborhood. Even the Universal releases such as “Coogan’s Bluff,” “Hellfighters,” and “Winning” had short runs before heading out to the second run suburban houses. The Rialto did enjoy a brief stint as a top grossing location in 1970 with an eighteen week booking of the blockbuster “Airport” followed by a six week booking of the Clint Eastwood western “Two Mules For Sister Sara.” In late 1971 two more Universal releases, “Play Misty For Me” and “Sometimes A Great Notion” marked the end of that era of Rialto history. After that it was a collection of sex, action, and / or horror movies usually lasting a week. The one, last, effort at traditional booking came in June 1972 with the “Airport” knockoff, “Skyjacked.”
Since early 1971, the Coronet Theatre, located near the Fox on Peachtree, had been drawing huge crowds of the previously untapped “black” audience with movies such as “Cotton Comes To Harlem,” “Sweet Sweetback,” and “Shaft.” The Martin (now Carmike) chain which operated the Rialto made the decision to “go black” as the practice was referred to in the business, and “Shafts Big Score” opened to huge attendance followed by a Jim Brown action movie, “Slaughter.” The Rialto booked whichever of these movies it could get and filled in the gaps with action, kung fu, and horror features of less than mediocre quality. Like all good things, this did not last as the Grand, Atlanta (where I worked at the time) and even the Fox jumped on the “Blaxploitation” bandwagon, and there was simply not enough product, good or otherwise, to go around.
After my GSU days I did not have reason to go downtown and lost track of the goings on at the Rialto. In 1985 I made my first visit in 13 years, the purpose of which was to check out the booth prior to working there for the regular projectionist while he was on vacation. By this time the Rialto had truly fallen on hard times, playing very low quality double features of horror and action themed movies and charging a one dollar admission at all times. In other words they were giving the admission away in the hopes of making their profit at the concession stand. The boxoffice had a large sign posted which stated “NO OUTSIDE FOOD OR DRINK, NO DRUGS, NO WEAPONS, ALL PACKAGES (INCLUDING HANDBAGS) SEARCHED AT THE DOOR.” Sure enough, there was a uniformed private security guard standing next to the ticket taker checking bags. When I made my way to the booth I noticed (just as Raymond did in his above post) that even though the feature had started, the house lights were still at the intermission level. When I hurried to point this out to the projectionist (one of the true old timers still left from the glory days of downtown theatres), he just smiled and proceeded to explain to this new youngster (who was 33 at the time) that only the cleaning lights were turned off during the show. The house lights were left on all day so the security guards could better see and be seen. Sure enough, there was another uniformed guard stationed in the auditorium.
Despite this beginning, I found the Rialto a great place to work. It was probably the last theatre in Atlanta where the projectionist used reels and made manual changeovers from reel to reel. In between features we would run previews which were often of Hong Kong made kung fu films complete with Chinese graphics and voiceover. I enjoyed working there so much that I continued on for about a year giving the regular operator a day off plus working his vacations. This all came to an end when Martin installed a platter system in the booth and did away with the projectionist, adding that duty to the manager. The last movie I ran there that did any great amount of business was Prince’s “Purple Rain” which brought back to me the days of “Airport” when I would look out of the booth and see a packed house. The last movie for me, prior to being let go was “CHUD” which stood for Cannibalistic Underground Humanoid Dwellers, and the intermission short subject, “Pipeline Critters” which was about the animals who made their home in the vicinity of the Alaska Oil Pipeline. What a great way to go out. Quite a change from John Wayne and my first visit to the Rialto.
With Ansley Mall, the first two editions of the Mini Cinema chain, and the only one in free standing building. It had about 350 rocking chair seats, Century projectors, 6000' reels, and a good sized screen with a small stage in front. The lobby occupied a tiny part of the southeast corner of the building and was just large enough for a concession stand and cashier desk combo. One odd thing was the ticket machine which looked like an old grocery store cash register which did not issue tickets as such but a paper receipt, just like you would get at the grocery store.
After entering the auditorium you found yourself in a wide walkway between the back row and the projection booth. Past the booth was a door leading to the booth door and the very tiny restrooms. Another door led to the utility room and ice machine. There was no office. Since, as with all of the early Mini Cinemas, the projectionist was also the manager, the booth served this purpose.
Although twice the size of the Ansley Mall Mini, Peachtree Battle was still tiny compared to the other theatres of the day, especially the first run editions. It played a lot of independent and foreign films and usually changed every two to three weeks. Unlike today, there was no national release date for many films, especially low profile ones. Theatres like this could book these films in advance without a hard date and bring them in when business for their current feature died off. This pattern changed in October 1968 when the theatres first big hit, Barbarella, opened. Three months later, on New Years Day of 1969, the Zefferelli version of Romeo and Juliet opened for a four month run followed by Charlie for four more months.
After this period it was back to the old pattern with a few sub run engagements of mainstream movies mixed in. The first movie I remember seeing there was the Mel Brooks comedy 12 Chairs during Christmas of 1970. In 1971, the Mini Cinema Chain subbed out the “office” duties of the chain to the Storey Theatre Company, and the mini cinemas started appearing in the Storey ads. During this time the Peachtree Battle would often play the same attractions as the other Storey intermediate break houses like North DeKalb and Lakewood. (Sandy Springs, the only franchise of the Mini Cinema chain did not take part in this and operated as an independent theatre although Storey still handled the mechanics of film booking.) Mini Cinema still had a say as to which movies played, especially when up front money was required. Occasionally, Peachtree Battle would play an exclusive of the type of film it once made its living with, such as Trojan Women and Roman Polanski’s version of MacBeth.
In May of 1972, the theatre was sold to the Weis Company and became the Weis Peachtree Battle. The first feature under this arrangement was foreign film Oscar winner Garden of the Finzi Continis which was actually booked in by Mini Cinema prior to the sale. After this the more aggressive Weis booking habit resulted in more mainstream first run features with longer runs. That summer, The Candidate followed by Sounder played for the remainder of the year followed by a Christmas booking of The Great Waltz. That one was not a very good movie but sounded great with the theatres seldom used 4 track magnetic sound system.
In the spring of 1974, Weis remodeled the place and gave it a very contemporary “mod” look. A new wall was built behind the last row, and the old passageway between the seating area and the booth wall was incorporated into the lobby. This was a great improvement as it allowed access to the restrooms, ice machine, booth and utility room without having to pass through the auditorium. Since the projection beam could not shoot through the lobby, and enclosed tunnel was built from the booth, over the lobby, and into the top of the new back wall of the auditorium. The decorator Weis used on all of his theatres obviously hated straight lines, so all of the public areas were covered in curved sheetrock and corrugated metal sheeting. By this time Weis had done away with the manager / operator arrangement with the union, and there was now a separate manager, but since the office had been nothing more that a desk inside the booth, the manager had to make do with a corner of the newly enclosed boxoffice which was hardly big enough for two people at once.
All of this made crowd control much easier which was a good thing since 1974 saw heavily attended engagements of Sugarland Express and The Groove Tube, each of which ran for months. In 1975, The Other Side of the Mountain also had a 5 month run. By 1976, Weis was in big trouble due mainly to the poor bookings which they had put up big advance money for in those blind bidding days. As mentioned above, George Lefont purchased this site in 1976 and it became a big success as Atlanta’s first revival theatre showing double features which changed two and sometimes three times per week. My favorite of all of the movies that played during this time was Libeled Lady, on a twin bill with Philadelphia Story, a great combo. In addition to these older movies George also booked more recent releases such as Last Detail / Last Picture Show, and The Hospital / Network. In a humorous clash of cultures, he also played The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight on weekends for many years.
In 1982, the Peachtree Battle Shopping Center expanded and took over the space of the theatre. It was torn down and a three story retail strip, the top two of which fronted Peachtree Road, was built in its place. The Silver Screen had done so well that the Rhodes had opened under new ownership showing the same type of programs and changing double features everyday. The VCR soon killed off this market so it is doubtful the Silver Screen would have survived much longer anyway. The only bit of it left now is in the #3 auditorium which George added to the Tara when he ran it. Unless they have been removed since, this theatre has the old rocking chair seats from the Peachtree Battle.
The Walt Disney movie “Herbie Rides Again” opens with a series of implosions of old buildings during the titles. One of those is the Henry Grady / Roxy.
The Roxy auditorium shared a wall with the old Capitol which, as mentioned above was later taken over by the Davison’s department store. Since that was the extent of the demolition, about a third of the auditorium was not part of the implosion, but was removed by machine over the course of the next couple of months. inside this shell, some drapes, seats, and part of the balcony were visible, especially to those of us who rode the bus by the site.
I remember seeing “Viva Max”, “The Parent Trap” (reissue), and a Richard Brooks double feature of “The Professionals” and “In Cold Blood” here. In addition to “Willard”, I seem to recall that the first run engagement of “Bullitt” was here, and in the spring of 1970, the first run of “Z”. During its final weeks it played such epics as “The Thing With Two Heads”, with Rosey Grier and Ray Milland (as in Academy Award Winner: Ray Milland), “Big Bird Cage”, and “Caged Heat”. On opening day of “Caged Heat” they had some models in very skimpy prison outfits handing out flyers on the sidewalk in front of the box-office. Showmanship at its best, right up til the end.
For some reason, I have never noticed this page before, and only happened upon it while writing a comment for the 10th Street trying to sort out the identities of the four different theatres that were located along this four block section of Peachtree. I have little to add to the Peachtree Art part of this theatre’s history as I never attended a movie here during that time. One show that I did want to see was “Oh What A Lovely War”, but in those days I was not about to come down to this part of town, especially at night.
Starting in 1967, the section of Peachtree Street between 8th and 14th became the center of what would become known as the hippie, peacenik, Woodstock, (fill in your own favorite adjective here) scene. This lasted for about three or four years, and at night the area was gridlocked as thousands of people converged on the area surrounded by Peachtree, Piedmont, 8th and 14th to either participate or sightsee. By 1970, the fad was starting to fade away and the strip turned into a crime and drug infested dump, for lack of a better word. I observed this first hand as during those days I was riding the old Atlanta Transit Company busses through here twice a day while going to Georgia State.
It was during this time that the Peachtree Art closed, leaving the 10th Street Art and the Metro Art, both soft core porno houses as the only theatres in the area. The closest mainstream theatre was the Fox, about eight blocks south. In 1970, efforts were started to revitalize the area around Peachtree and 14th with the construction of the Colony Square office block. As part of this effort, Weis theatres reopened the Peachtree Art on July 30th under the name Weis Cinema with the Southeastern Premiere of “Catch 22”. In an effort to make suburbanites more comfortable coming to this area, free parking was offered in the Colony Square decks for the night time shows.
“Catch 22” must have done well because it played 19 weeks, leaving on Christmas Eve to make way for “Little Fauss and Big Halsey”, starring that well known comedy team of Robert Redford and Michael J. Pollard. With its 10 week run, “Halsey” was the last hit to play here for quite a while. These were the days of exclusive runs which required considerable up front money paid, in advance, to the film companies. Since blind bidding was legal in those days, it was even more of a gamble to put up a big guarantee for anything other than a sure fire hit, and there were not enough of those to go around. Weis also had the Fine Art, Broadview Plaza, and its flagship, the Capri (Garden Hills, Screening Room, and Buckhead Roxy on this site) to book, and since those locations were located further to the north in seemingly safer Buckhead with a better parking situation, it was less of a gamble to book the more expensive efforts there.
Following “Halsey” was a series of low profile first runs, reruns, fillers and reissues. Here is a list with the number of weeks in the run in ( ):
Little Murders (5)
Mephisto Waltz (3)
Percy (1)
Making It (1)
Left Handed Gun (2)
Joy In The Morning (2)
Grissom Gang (3)
Fortune In Mens Eyes (3)
Velvet Vampire (2)
Panic In Needle Park (4)
Beast of the Yellow Night (1)
Death In Venice (2)
The Touch (4)
Bless the Beasts and Children (6)
Cisco Pike (3) (Christmas attraction)
Goodbye Columbus (3)
“Goodbye Columbus” a filler after “Cisco Pike” bombed, was the first movie I saw here. As described above by Mike, I found the place to be dark, cavernous, and a little creepy since I was the only one in attendance for the weekday 5 PM show. The sound was pretty hollow and the auditorium did not seem big enough to hold the 800 seats I see listed for it here. Maybe there was a balcony that I did not notice. The lobby had been somewhat done over in the Weis style which has been described on other pages of this site as “mod”, “hip”, and groovy". Since everyone is entitled to their own opinion I will just say that I found it downright ugly, distracting, and unfortunate in that it ruined the old time appeal of older sites such as the Fine Art and Capri. The most obnoxious example here was the round frame built around the marquee overhanging the sidewalk which was covered with copper colored metal sheeting with a conflicting rectangular box cut in it to expose the sign itself. This type of stuff was fine for the newer Peachtree Battle (Silver Screen on this site) and the Broadview, but it certainly clashed with the traditional architecture of older sites like this one.
Following “Columbus”, were one week bookings of “Casino Royale” (the Woody Allen version) and “Ryan’s Daughter”. Next, on 2/16/72 came “Cabaret”, probably the most successful of the Weis efforts here. It probably played here by default since on the very same day the Broadview opened an 8 month reserved seat run of “Nicholas and Alexandra”, and the Fine Art opened its own four month run of “The Last Picture Show”, while the Capri had to be kept available for its upcoming run of “The Godfather”, opening in mid March. These three movies opening in the same week followed by “The Godfather” three weeks later certainly marked the high point of the Weis days in Atlanta during the 70’s.
“Cabaret” ran for five months but it probably did not perform up to expectations as Weis went to extremes to draw crowds. During this time the Weis Cinema consistently had the largest space in the Weis newspaper ad block. Nearing summer, the ad included a letter to Atlanta that was printed as part of the “Cabaret” ad. In it Albert Weis stated that he thought “Cabaret” was the outstanding picture of the year and encouraged Atlantans to come see it as he was confident that it would win more Oscars than any other film. He also stated that its was “no goody goody Julie Andrews type musical” which enraged a Julie Andrews fan from Brunswick to the point that he wrote a letter to the Weis company complaining about this disparagement and suggesting that Albert go see the striptease scene in “Star”. (To bad that “SOB” had not been made at that time.) Weis wrote the man a letter of apology and from that day on, there was a blank space in the middle of the ad where the offending sentence had been blacked out. The letter also offered a money back guarantee, later increased to “double your money back” if the patron did not think that “Cabaret” was indeed the movie of the year. I do not know how many, if any refunds were given, double or otherwise, but Albert was proved correct when “Cabaret” did indeed win more Oscars than any other film, although it was long gone from here by the time the Academy Awards rolled around the next spring.
After “Cabaret” it was back to the grind with:
Easy Rider (1)
Salzburg Connection (6)
Little Mother (2)
Play It Again Sam (1)
Twilight People (1)
Hello Dolly (1)
Bad Company (1)
Devil’s Widow (2)
Come Back Charleston Blue (2) (m/o from Coronet)
Hammersmith Is Out (4)
Black Girl (6) (Christmas attraction)
Heartbreak Kid (11)
Caesar and Rosalie (2)
Woodstock (3)
As you can see, the only one of these to have any success at all was “Heartbreak Kid”. The attraction for summer 1973 was “Day of the Jackal”, another big budget / big guarantee movie. I saw the movie here with a pretty good crowd, but I do not know how it did overall. Albert Weis tried to repeat his “Cabaret” act by using the newspaper ad to remind Atlanta how he had been right about “picking a winner”, and reviving his Academy Award prediction, this time with “Jackal” as the winner presumptive. Although I considered it a good movie, and still do, I thought that this was a bit of a reach. Later, I came across a Macon paper and noticed the same letter in the Weis ad, this time slightly adjusted to promote the current feature of the Riverside Twin, “Paper Moon” as the next big winner. I do not know what his prediction for Savannah was but it was probably whatever he had the most money up for.
During this time, the industry phrase “Go Black” was the motto for most of the downtown theatres as the white audience had mostly fled to the burbs. The Coronet was the first and most successful with these bookings followed by Loew’s Grand, The Atlanta, Martin’s Rialto, and occasionally even the Fox. The Weis Cinema was in something of a no mans land, customer wise, being too close to downtown to attract the white audience, especially at night, and too far north to be considered downtown. As indicated above, the Christmas 1972 feature was “Black Girl” starring Leslie Uggams which was not a bad movie but a dud at the box office. For Christmas of 1973, Weis Cinema presented Billy Dee Williams, and in a small role, Richard Pryor, in “Hit”. This one did better, but again, not a success. In 1975 the Christmas feature was “Uptown Saturday Night” but by then had Weis put most of its effort in this area into The Atlanta after they took over the lease from Walter Reade in the fall of 1973.
For Christmas of 1974, the Weis Cinema was booked with the X rated “Story of O”, not much of a Christmas movie for sure, but one that was sure to do big business if they could get away with it. By this time I was managing theatres and was not paying much attention to anything but my own problems, but I remember that this movie was either raided or threatened with a raid, and as a result the Christmas booking fell through. The Weis ended up playing the same feature as the Capri, “The Man Who Would Be King”. Another odd story was the booking of “The Savage Is Loose”. This movie is notable only for the way its star and owner, George C. Scott marketed it. Instead of renting it for a cut of the box as was the norm, he offered to sell the prints to theatre companies who would then keep all of the box office receipts. Weis bought several prints and two of them played at the Capri and Weis Cinema. Later those prints made the rounds of most of the Weis theatres in town whenever there was a gap in the schedule, and for years seemed to be the permanent co-feature at many of the Weis drive-ins.
Given the right movie, any theatre will do big business regardless of where it is located. This was proven true here in May 1975. The feature of the moment was “The Great Waldo Pepper” not exactly a hit, but more importantly a Universal release. This meant that when Universal ran their sneak preview of “Jaws”, a common practice in those days, they placed it at the Weis so that it would play with their own current release. The name of the movie was not advertised, but the jaws artwork was included in the ad so everyone knew what the feature was. As a result, for one night at least, the Weis Cinema had the hottest ticket in town. By 1975, the Weis chain was in big trouble from poor bookings and overexpansion. In 1972 they had bought out the Peachtree Battle Mini Cinema, in 1973 the Atlanta, followed by the rest of the mini cinema chain in 1974. The last big effort to return to the glory days was during Christmas 1976 when they put up big money for “7% Solution” at the Capri, and “King Kong” at almost every other theatre. The next year they tried again with “Ode To Billy Joe”, and you don’t need me to tell you how that worked out.
Since I was busy with my own theatre I do not recall when this location closed, but by 1978 or 79, Weis was gone from Atlanta, only six years or so removed from their years of being home to most of the big, high profile movies that came out. There may have been some efforts to reopen this location but I am not aware of any. In the late 80’s or perhaps early 90’s the entire block was demolished and the Peachtree Art went to the landfill to join so many other once proud Atlanta theatres.
This location operated under many different names and formats during the 60’s and early 70’s. Prior to its Gay Paree days it was known as the Walton Street Art and was operated, I recall, by George Ellis. George left the location in 1971 to take over the Ansley Mall Mini Cinema which he renamed the Film Forum.
/theaters/16291/
With its slightly more suburban, shopping center location, the Film Forum became the best known and most successful of all art and indie film venues of its time.
The Walton, located downtown, became the Gay Paree. It must have been successful to some extent because for years it had the largest ad in the XXX section of the Atlanta paper.
Those of you who were alive in those days may recall the nature of the XXX movie theatre business in those pre video years. In Atlanta, there were several hard and soft-core locations located in the central downtown area which I walked through every day on my way to class at Georgia State. The soft-core locations, such as the 10th Street Art, Metro Art, and Buckhead Art, seemed to run 35MM and the booths were Union operated. The hardcore locations, such as the Ashby Street Art, were 16MM and non Union. This was before my days working in theatres, but I have been told that one of these, the Houston Street Art, was a twin where one side was soft-core 35MM and the other was hardcore 16MM. Also notice how all of these locations used the word “Art” in their name, a matter of no small discomfort to the Peachtree Art Theatre located at 13th Street, which was Atlanta’s one true “Art” theatre at that time. It was during this time that the Peachtree Art closed down and was reopened by the Weis chain as the Weis Cinema, showing standard first run product.
I did not intend for this to become a history of the XXX theatres of Atlanta, but only mention it to set the stage for the most well known incident involving the Gay Paree Theatre which occurred in the summer of 1973 when it made a short lived departure from its “gay” theme. The most notorious example of the XXX type of product was “Deep Throat”. By this time I had been working in theatres for a couple of years and had heard stories of private, borrowed, or bootleg versions of this film being shown privately in mainstream theatres around town after hours. However, it had never had a public engagement in Atlanta because it was almost sure to be raided. The Fulton County Solicitor of the day, Hinson McAuliffe, rarely bothered the low profile hardcore locations downtown, but never missed a chance for the free publicity to be garnered by a raid on a suburban location playing a movie like “Oh Calcutta”. (If you are interested, I have described an example of this in my post on the North Springs Theatre: /theaters/11778/)) Hard to believe now, but the United Artists release of “Last Tango In Paris” did not open in Atlanta for months after its national release date due to McAuliffe’s vow, in advance, to raid any theatre that dared play it.
This was the situation in Atlanta in July 1973 when the morning paper had a large ad for the “ALL NEW” Gay Paree announcing that it was proud to present “Deep Throat” with showings from 9:30 AM until 1:30 AM. It looked like the late hours would not be necessary since the theatre was raided at noon and the owner / manager, the projectionist, and the cashier were hauled off to jail. The owners were obviously ready for this as the owners wife brought out another print and was back onscreen by mid afternoon. For the next couple of days, the Gay Paree did the volume of business that the mainstream theatres in town only saw in their dreams, with lines around the block. The theatre was raided again and without a third print on hand, it was back to the regular fare for the Gay Paree.
At a court hearing later in the week, a large crowd of mostly county courthouse employees showed up for the hearing since it had been rumored that the movie would be screened for the judge. The sheriff tried to close the courtroom to the public, but since that was apparently illegal, the public was admitted and the judge cancelled the plans to show the film, if such plans ever existed. I never heard what happened to the case and since the main point, being the publicity, had been achieved, the whole issue disappeared from view. Until this theatre was posted, I was not aware that it was still in operation in 1977. The next time I am downtown I will look to see if the building is still there, but I doubt it.
Opened in 1927 and closed in 1984.
For anyone interested in Birmingham history in general, there is an outstanding website named Birmingham Rewound and it is mentioned in several of the postings of Birmingham theatres on this site. This link:
View link
will take you to the downtown theatre page. About half way down the page are several paragraphs on the Empire including several pictures.
I remember attending this theatre many times while growing up in Birmingham. Among the pictures I recall seeing there are: Nicky: Wild Dog Of The North, 633 Squadron, Is Paris Burning?, and Goldfinger, which is the subject of one of the pictures on the website.
Barbara: Thank you for that very interesting post. I do not recognize your fathers name, but he must have been the other half of the…“two lawyers who owned the theatre”. I do remember Cone Maddox very well as he was a frequent visitor to the theatre, especially when we had family films when he would bring his children. I also remember a man named Jeff (or Geoff) Tyre who I believe was English.
Perhaps you could clear up something for me. I was under the impression that your father and Cone owned the franchise to the Sandy Springs location and not the Mini Cinema chain as a whole, and that this is why went independent during the days that Storey was contracted to book and manage the chain. Do you know the story behind this?
Also, was the Peachtree Battle the first theatre in the chain? I always thought so but know someone who insists that it was the Ansley Mall which was first. I know that the Sandy Springs opened third, followed by Doraville and Candler Road. Was your father still involved when the last two were built?
I would love to hear anything you know regarding these or other aspects of the Mini Cinema operation. Oddly enough, I did not do much actual theatre work at the Sandy Springs since it required such a small staff. Usually just fill in for sick or vacationing employees or extra help during busy times. For most of those early years I worked at the North Springs, Cherokee, and Atlanta. However, I did do a lot of behind the scenes work there such as film and concession supply deliveries, marquee changes, trips to National Screen, and even spent the night there twice helping to pump out the auditorium when the Laundromat next door would cause a flood.
If you are interested, I believe all of the other Mini Cinemas have pages on this site:
Doraville: /theaters/11795/
Ansley Mall: /theaters/16291/
Peachtree Battle: /theaters/12131/
Candler Road: /theaters/16454/
Chattanooga: /theaters/17006/
Macon: /theaters/17559/
As for the movie going experience, Peachtree Battle, Sandy Springs, Doraville, and Macon were good places to see a movie. Ansley and Candler somewhat less so. Still they were better than most of the auditoriums that you will find in the megaplex of today. If your dad is still alive tell him “Thank You” for me as I have very fond memories of the theatres and the people that I met while working in them.
Biggest projection booth I ever worked in. Wide and at least 300 feet long for screens 2 through 7 with smaller stubs at each end for houses 1 and 8. All Cinemacannica V8’s, 35MM with screens 3 through 6 equipped with push button Dolby. After it became obvious that this location was built well past the prime years for this area, the Dolby units in 3 and 6 were removed and installed in the Sandy Springs / Parkside 8.
As with most GCC builds of the 80’s, this place was not built until the area was saturated with competition. I think that it opened in 1988 and closed in 1999. Just as with the Parkside, it was reopened as a dollar house by the EFW outfit but closed again after about 18 months. There has been at least one other effort but it failed as well.
Since GCC walked out on the lease during bankruptcy, the had to leave the site intact. This made it easy for a small company to come in a rent a turnkey operation without having to go to the expense of equipping a theatre. As far as I know this is still the situation although I would hate to be the one who had to clean it up to say nothing of what the booth might be like.
This is a better quality building than the recently demolished Stonemont, and the shopping center is newer and in much better shape. So, perhaps the Hairston might dodge the wrecking ball for the foreseeable future, but I doubt that it will ever be more than a marginal location for an independent operator trying to take advantage of the low overhead to squeeze out a few bucks.
I spoke to someone who works this area and he confirms that the theatre and the east wing of the shopping center has been torn down. It seems that these stores and especially the theatre had become a haven for the homeless who were constantly breaking in, which probably accounts for the appearance of the place that I noted in my last post. Not only was the theatre completely trashed on the inside, but it also had an overwhelming mold problem. I wonder if this is a problem common to old closed up locations as someone made a similar observation on the Town and Country page of this site. At any rate, the place was a public nuisance and had to go.
In total this theatre lasted 30 years, about 25 of those in use, about average for the more successful examples of theatres built during its era. This gives it about the same longevity as the Perimeter Mall, but a good bit longer than either of the Northlakes, the North DeKalb, South DeKalb, Akers Mill, Suburban Plaza, Village, and any of its later neighbors along Memorial Drive. It even lasted a little longer, counting its Bollywood days, than the great Phipps Plaza Theatre.
As I said in my post on the Town and Country, this was just an example, among the nicest in fact, of the stopgap between the movie palaces of old and the megaplex of today. For someone new to this business looking back on this era, it does not seem like a big deal. However, it was to those of us who grew up and worked during this time, and I am grateful that I got to experience this example of the movie theatre business before it turned into the fast food / amusement park atmosphere of today.
As for the time capsule, I do not know what happened to it but I hope whoever got it is an honest person. Among the many news items and theatre memorabilia items inside were hundreds of polaroids of the children who attended the opening showing of “Peter Pan” that I described in the original post that started this page. The idea was that years later, when the capsule was opened they would be sent the picture to remind them of what they were doing on June 27, 1976. And just how, you ask, were all of these children, many with different last names, going to be located? Easy. Their mothers supplied the children’s Social Security numbers which were written on the back of the picture. I wonder how many of these now grown ups have had their identities stolen because of this well intentioned effort made in a more innocent time.
Built as a free standing building in the Northlake Festival Shopping Center. I never worked at this place, or even went inside, but I believe that it was built in 1983 and opened with “Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom.” At this time the Northlake Mall area was served by the GCC Northlake 2 Triple, and the Georgia Theatre Company Village Twin ( /theaters/13468/ ) although the latter may have been closed by this time. The other nearby theatres were the Greens Corner to the north, the North 85 Drive In to the west, and the North Dekalb and Suburban Plaza to the south.
Until the Northlake and its AMC partner Galleria 8 were built I don’t remember any Atlanta theatres with more than 6 screens, so this was what passed for a megaplex in those days. Northlake was an instant hit and for the rest of the 80’s it competed with the Galleria for the title of #1 grossing theatre in Atlanta. The Northlake 2, which had been a very successful location for GCC was all but wiped off the map by the AMC 8, and staggered on until its close in 1990. Oddly enough, the AMC 8 did not last much longer, closing in the mid to late 90’s. Not having any connection to it, I have no knowledge of what brought about its end, but it could be that an 8 screen location was not worth the trouble to a big outfit like AMC by the time that 18-24 screens were the norm. By this time AMC had converted their recently rebuilt North DeKalb 8 into 16 screens and Regal had announced plans to demolish the North 85 Drive In and build what would become the Hollywood 24, so maybe that was what did it. Still, it is odd that the very busy and well to do area of Northlake Mall does not have a movie theatre in its immediate vicinity.
One odd thing about this place: A friend of mine who worked there said that there was a core of high school aged employees who started working there when the place opened that remained throughout their college years, and in some cases continued on after college on a part time basis. Just reliving the good old days I suppose. That’s a nice memory in these days when 24 screen theatres churn through employees like they were confetti and the employees seldom get a chance to experience what working in an actual movie theater was like. Maybe some of those old timers will see this site and write us some first hand accounts.
While it may have been rather plain on the inside, from outside it was the most impressive looking of all Atlanta Drive Ins. The screen backed up to Piedmont Road and could be seen from a good ways down LaVista Road. It was decorated with neon script “Piedmont Drive In” signage. To get to the box office you drove down the entrance drive through the towering pine trees that dominated the lot. As was the custom in those days the box office had a large warmer so that boxes of popcorn could be sold along with the tickets. The exit was located in the rear of the lot and opened onto Lindberg Drive.
I only had the pleasure of attending a show at the Piedmont one time, this being in 1966 when I was in Atlanta visiting family. The feature was the pleasant but unremarkable “Born Free.” As usual, the co-feature was an older offering from the same film company, in this case Columbia. Although the purpose of the trip was to see ‘'Born Free" it was the co-feature that made the night memorable. It was the first, and only time in a theatre, that I saw ’‘Bye Bye Birdie’‘ although I have watched and enjoyed it many times since. If I watch it enough I may discover why Ann-Margaret calls the title character by the proper name of Birdie in the movie itself, while in the opening and closing songs she sings his name BurHEE. The fact that I attended this showing with my cousins, one of whom is named Anne, and the other Margaret, only made the show more memorable.
Sadly, by the time I moved to Atlanta in 1967, the Piedmont had recently closed. It was torn down and in its place was a K-Mart style discount store by the name of Arlands, or maybe just Arlans. The arrival of this chain was a major blow to the historical past of Atlanta. In addition to the destruction of the Piedmont, another fine drive in, the Stewart Avenue, was also destroyed to make way for another Arlands location. Even worse, they also destroyed the old Ponce de Leon Park baseball stadium where the Atlanta Crackers had played minor league baseball for years until the arrival of the major league Braves in 1966.
As it turned out, these fine Atlanta landmarks had the last laugh as the Arlands chain went out of business within a couple of years. The Ponce de Leon store was taken over by the government as office space and later torn down to make way for yet another strip shopping center. The old Piedmont Drive In location became the site of a major weekend flea market which drew bigger crowds than the drive in or discount store ever saw. That store was torn down and the MARTA Lindberg station built on its site. The front part of the property along Piedmont where the box office and screen were sited became a parking lot and later a huge Bell South office complex.
Across the street at Broadview Plaza, later renamed Lindberg Plaza, two indoor theatres were built in the early 70’s and are listed on this site as the Screening Room. They are also gone as that shopping center was torn down in about 2004 to make way for yet another and still larger shopping center. The way some things change never changes.
You have to be quick to beat Raymond to the comment section when it comes to Atlanta movie theatre history. Below is a comment I wrote on the Memorial Drive 4, but a lot of it applies to this location as well, and echos Raymonds comments about the decline of the area. The Stonemot Twin, which beat everyone else to this area by six years was the only one to enjoy any grat amount of success.
Opened by the Septum Cinemas chain in late 1982 or early 1983. This was the first attempt by competing companies to challenge the ABC (later Plitt) Stonemont Twin which had enjoyed an exclusive situation along this very heavily traveled section of Memorial Drive from I-285 to the Gwinnett County line. Later, Septum opened another 5 screen location a couple of miles down the road. Plitt countered with a 6 next door to the 5. Cineplex acquired the Plitt chain and opened another 6 just across the county line. Last, as usual, to the scene was General Cinema with an 8 at Hairston Road.
The reason for this concentration of screens was that while the town of Stone Mountain itself is very small, the surrounding area was a very fast growing and well off section of DeKalb County. None of these locations were actually in the city limits of Stone Mountain, but were in unincorporated DeKalb. By the mid 90’s this the boom days of this area were over and the Memorial Drive strip went into decline. Many of the strip shopping centers which lined the road were vacant and every one of the theatres mentioned here closed down at some point. There was a time when all of them were closed at the same time.
The Stonemont Twin, Hairston 8, and Cineplex 6 have been reopened by various independent operators, in some cases more than once. At this moment, the Cineplex is the only one operating. I do not know what happened to the two Septum’s, but the old Plitt 6 is an indoor amusement park and party room.
For a more detailed account of the glory days of this area, movie theatre wise, see the posting and comments on the Stonemont Twin page of this website.
The East Point Theatre was probably closed about 1970. The last manager, Mr. R.M. Swanson went directly to open the new South DeKalb Twin. The assistant manager, Mrs V.M. King became the assistant at the Greenbriar. The equipment was removed and found a new home at the Cinema 285 (Hammond Square Cinema on this site) when it opened in June 1971. At this time the theatre was under the management of Gerogia Theatre Company.
The strip of buildings was demolished in late 1989 at about the time the Tri Cities High School was being completed.
I have three distinct memories of the Ritz while growing up in Birmingham.
1962: How The West Was Won. My parents told me before the show that I was going to see a movie so big that it took 3 screens to show the entire picture. I guess that is how they had to describe it so a 10 year old would understand. I do not remember much about the movie itself because I was constantly looking at the right and left screens to see what was going on away from the “action.” In 1998 I made the trek to Dayton, Ohio to see HTWWW at the Neon Cinerama. It was not until then that I was able to appreciate the incredible focus and 7 track sound.
1965: Doctor Zhivago. The Ritz hosted many roadshow movies while the other ABC operated theatre, The Alabama, played the more standard fare. My mother took me to see this one because she thought it would appeal to my interest in History. (My father, having seen it with her earlier said “…once is enough.”) She was right, as usual, and from the first viewing Doctor Zhivago has been one of my favorite movies of all time. I do not know how many times I have seen it over the years, but my viewings have been in every type of venue from mono shoebox theatre to 70MM presentations at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. I have also had the pleasure of working at several theatres where it has played, managed one, (South DeKalb) and run it as the projectionist twice, both times at the Fox. I now have the new 2 disc DVD, and never tire of seeing it.
1965: Sound of Music. The Cobb operated Eastwood Mall Theatre was the main competition for the Ritz and Alabama although its 1960’s draped auditorium and living room style lobby were no match for these other two fine places in atmosphere. SOM played its reserved seat engagement at Eastwood, but the day after Zhivago left the Ritz, SOM was brought in as a filler until whatever Christmas show they had booked that year opened. Since I had already seen it at Eastwood, it was not the movie itself but the condition of the print that made this a notable experience. In those days, prints were not produced in anywhere near the numbers of today. More like 300 than 3000. By the time they got to an engagement such as this, there was no telling how many poorly maintained booths and film butchers they had encountered. The Ritz did not get the film in time, or did not bother, to inspect it. It was full of scratches, sound pops, and at least half a dozen breaks, one of which lasted for at least 15 minutes. This made the show end almost an hour late. The result was a massive traffic jam on Second Avenue on the Friday before Christmas as my mother and dozens of other parents there to pick up their children, had to wait in their cars for us to leave the theatre. (Remember, this was in the day when most of the department stores, and by extension Christmas shopping, were still downtown.)
I am sure that I visited the Ritz on other occasions but do not remember any in particular. I also remember going to the Alabama, Empire, Melba, Homewood, and even the Shades Mountain Drive In, but in those days I was more interested in the movie than the venue.
I think that the original post by Don might refer to the old Miracle or perhaps some theatre of that time that might have used the name Town and Country. This location was a 1970 era build. It was of the second generation of Eastern Federal Theatres built here, and like the Cobb Cinema and Ben Hill, was cheap to build and operate. The junction of the T&C shopping center had something of a small town square feel and the box office opened out onto it.
Inside it very much resembled the old Sandy Springs Mini Cinema. Small paneled lobby, shallow, wide shaped auditorium with a good sized screen, but NO concession stand. The far wall of the lobby had vending machines for drinks, candy and popcorn. During these years it was not unusual for theatres to have vending machines, but this was the first one I saw with machines only. On busy nights an employee would be stationed nearby to issue change and assist with mechanical problems. In the spring of 1972, the machines were removed and a very small concession stand built in their place.
The booth was manager operated and equipped with a Cinemeccanica V-18 projector and 12,000 foot reels which were mounted behind the projector. Since these reels had a capacity of about 2 hours and 20 minutes, anything longer had to have an intermission. Tora, Tora, Tora in May of 1972, Nicholas and Alexandra in September of 1972, and Sound of Music in its 1973 reissue were the ones that I remember being split. Sleuth, in the spring of 1973 was the longest movie I saw run on one reel.
In those pre VCR days, it was common for theatres to bring back old hits to fill in gaps in their booking schedules. Whenever one of my favorites would reappear in this manner I would try to go see it since you never could be sure when or if you would get the chance again. A July 1971 booking of the double feature Bullitt (or as it was listed on the marquee: Bullet) and Bonnie and Clyde first brought the T&C to my attention. Later that year I started working for EFC and saw many movies here. Being located in Cobb County, T&C (as well as the Miracle, Cobb Cinema, Cobb Center, and Belmont) could play the big first run movies day and date with the first run houses in Atlanta. Since I could now get in free, I made the trip to see Dirty Harry, Cowboys, Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc, Butterflies Are Free, Sleuth, and Jeremiah Johnson, among others. The screen here was a very nice size in relation to the size of the auditorium and I recall Cowboys and Jeremiah Johnson looking especially fine with their cinemascope aspect ratio.
In 1973 I fell from grace with Ira and the EFC crowd, so I do not know much about the history of this place following those years. This was a time of big business for this place and during my EFC days it was fortunate enough to be well managed by Cliff Bryson. I heard later that he moved to NC to manage theatres for EFC there. I understand that when tripled, the original auditorium was left intact, but I never saw it. I heard that during the construction for the twin addition, a storm blew down the concrete block wall and they had to start over. The only other thing I remember about this place took place in 1991. In the newspaper ad for T2, the theatre listings at the bottom had a big “Presented in 70MM” collar around the logo for the Marietta Star Cinema. I had never heard of this theatre, but when I looked up the address, I found it to be the old T&C, now run by George Lefont.
The T&C, like countless other places like it, was a product of the particular conditions of movie booking and exhibition that existed from 1965 until about 1980. Looking back from 30 years in the future I can see that they were just cheap, and it turns out, temporary stopgaps between the movie palaces of old and the megaplexes of today. But, to those of us who worked in them, they were a big deal then, and am glad that I had the chance to experience that era of the movie business.
http://www.trolleybuses.net/atl/atl.htm
For those of you interested in old pictures of Atlanta, this site has dozens, and links to dozens more, pictures of transit vehicles from the early 1900’s. As for its relevance to this page, this link,
View link
shows a trolley at the intersection of Peachtree Road and Rumson Road. If that information is correct, then the shopping center in the background is the Garden Hills. Since the location of the theatre would be behind the trolley I can not be sure, but it looks right.
I first visited this theatre in 1999 while on a visit to Winterset to see the Madison County covered bridges and the John Wayne Museum and birthplace. It is located on the east side of the town square. At the time they were playing two separate shows, a family movie at 7PM and an adult (as in Adam Sandler type adult, not XXX) feature at 9PM. Winterset is only 35 miles from Des Moines so the turnover in features here is pretty quick in order to keep the local customers from traveling to Des Moines if what they want to see is not currently playing at the local theatre.
The manager / owner was working the box office, but he was nice enough to let me in to look the place over and talk about the difficulties in running a one screen small town theatre in close proximity to a large city. Print availability on national release date and preview availability were two issues he mentioned. These seem to be problems common to most theatres is this type of setting.
The theatre itself is old and occupies a narrow storefront on the square. Like most cold weather businesses it has a double lobby. Once you enter the street doors you come to the box office. From there you go through another set of doors into the main lobby, which in this case is taken up mostly by the snack bar. The interior of the auditorium is 1950’s art deco style with two off center aisles. The outside frontage had been covered with wood siding, but the owner said that removing it and restoring the exterior to its original state was his next priority. From the look of the two pictures posted on this site it seems that he has not gotten around to it yet.
In 2005 I noticed on another theatre website that this location was listed as closed. I called the Chamber of Commerce and the lady there said that it was open and had not closed at any time during the past 6 years.
Opened in the summer of 1985, six months after the Shannon. This was good timing for the operator since Georgia Theatre Company had emptied out the used projector warehouse when equipping the Shannon. The Southlake had all new booth equipment. 7 Century 35MM and one Century 35/70MM. The only time I am aware that the 70 was used was for “Black Cauldron.”
There was also a very odd piece of equipment known as the Christie Endless Loop Platter. This ridiculous gadget was proclaimed to all theatre owners as a way to finally get rid of that pesky projectionist. It looked like a regular platter only with one platter instead of the usual 3 or 5. When being loaded with a new movie the leader would be threaded through the projector and spliced onto the tail of the movie. The film would be pulled from the center as normal but instead of winding onto a different platter would wind onto the back of the print. To keep the film from backing back off of the edge of the platter, a spring loaded arm would gently and rhythmically bump the print in towards the center of the platter as it turned. Even now I have a hard time describing it. It really had to be seen to be believed.
Fortunately the Southlake, or any other theatre I ever heard of, did not use this abortion to run their actual movies. In keeping with the Rube Goldberg nature of the whole operation, the projector was aimed toward a mirror which reflected the image onto the back of a screen which faced the lobby. It was used to show a constant stream of previews to the people, and unfortunate employees, who were in the lobby. In those days previews were not distributed at anywhere near the current number so there was seldom more than 30 minutes or so worth before the loop started over. Mercifully, I only worked this location occasionally so I never had the pleasure of changing the previews or remounting the loop.
The only other notable thing I remember about this place was the freedom with which the staff would use the house PA system. I recall hearing announcements in the auditoriums about car headlights being left on, convertible tops being left down in the rain, paging the manager to the phone, and even calling employees back to work when their break was up.
As with all other GTC properties and employees, the end came with the sellout to United Artists Theatres in the late 80’s. I did not notice when this place was closed, but it certainly gave it up by the time the AMC Southlake Pavilion 24 opened.
As Jack stated above, the ultimate in bland, unpleasant theatre design. But, at least in the 80’s there was no reason to put extra money and effort into creating a nice movie going experience. The GCC Northlake 2 and Southlake 2 triples were truly the poster children for the dozens of theatres built around Atlanta during this period which offered little more than a seat, a screen, and sound for the patrons. Three identical, long, thin, shoeboxes with 400 of the trademark GCC two position seats in each house. This notorious example of contempt for the customer was also the bane of many theatre employees who spent countless hours pushing the seats back to their upright positions while cleaning the auditorium.
The Southlake was the fourth GCC venue to be built in Atlanta following the Perimeter Mall in 1973, Northlake 2 in 1976, and Akers Mill in 1977. I believe it opened in 1978. The booth was equipped with Century 35MM projectors and Christie Autowind 3 platters. One house had the first generation pushbutton style Dolby sound rack. In an improvement over its Northlake predecessor, the screens had up and down masking for the flat picture so that both the scope and flat pictures filled the entire screen.
The main reason that these theatres were built so bland is that the public demanded little else. All they wanted was to see the hit movies, and in this area that meant going to the GCC Southlake for the most part. The only first run competition was a 3 screen effort by Plitt a couple of blocks over. I worked at this theatre several times between 1984 and 1988. During a two week stint covering a vacation for the regular projectionist in 1984 I saw the place filled to near capacity many times while showing Ghostbusters, Gremlins, and Bachelor Party. The next year Back to the Future was a big hit. As usual, this kind of success attracted the attention of the competition and before long Georgia Theatre opened an 8plex across the street, and Cineplex followed with a 6. Eventually AMC put all of these efforts out of business with their 24 screen Southlake Pavilion.
One constant during all of the time I was connected with this place was the complete lack of an adequate number (qualified or un) of job applicants. GCC considered themselves a class operation, and to be fair, they were in many respects. Help Wanted was just too crass a way to attract the best workers they felt, so at GCC it was always Employment Opportunities Available. When a sign in the lobby did not attract enough applicants, they would sometimes put the appeal on the marquee itself. However, there was not nearly enough room for all of that copy, so the word Employment was left off. It never ceased to amuse the staff how many people came in and asked about the movie “Opportunities Available.” Granted, that is not much of a story, but it was not much of a theatre.
Just like the Northlake 2 it was torn down in the early 90’s and a Sports Authority now sits on the site.
Another venue from my past. I attended the Riverside many times while I was a student at Georgia College in Milledgeville during 1972, 73, and 74. There were two indoor screens and one drive in screen in Milledgeville, all operated by Martin, but if you wanted first run product you usually had to drive the 30 miles to Macon. At the time, Riverside was operated by its builder, the Weis Theatre Company and was still a twin. I would guess that the seating capacity was about 500 per side. The front doors opened into the lobby and the auditoriums were to either side. Concession stand straight ahead in the middle, with the box office opening to the outside between the sets of entrance doors.
A notable feature of the auditoriums was the lack of a false ceiling. All of the lighting fixtures, ductwork, conduits, etc… were exposed, but painted black so that you really did not notice them unless you happened to look up. During intermission a slide projector in the booth showed slides at an angle so that it hit half screen and half panels located on the wall. At first I thought that the projector was misaligned, but since it was always that way I guess you can say it was “art.” In those pre advertising days the slides were pictures of movie stars and some stills from classic movies.
The Riverside was the newest theatre in Macon at that time and competed with the Georgia Theatre Company operated triple in the Westgate Shopping Center for first run product. I can remember seeing “What’s Up Doc”, “Nicholas and Alexandra”, “The Exorcist”, and “Sound of Music” among many others at this location. In the mid to late 70’s the Weis Theatre Company hit hard times and started disposing of their properties. Georgia Theatre Company bought up the ones in Macon which also included the downtown Bibb, the Weis Drive In in Warner Robbins which was the only air conditioned drive in I ever saw, and the half of the Macon Mini Cinema that Weis and GTC had jointly owned and operated for several years.
When I left Georgia Theatre in the early 80’s they were still running it as a twin. I was not aware that it had ever been quaded, or when it closed. One other note: Just out Riverside Drive a little ways was the Georgia Theatre operated Riverside Drive In. It was located in the nicest setting I have ever seen for a drive in and was a great place to see a movie.
The only reason the Fox campaign worked is because it caught the city off guard. The city badly wanted to Fox to go so that the Southern Bell HQ could be built on the spot. Might have gotten their way if someone had not wondered just what was located at the 660 Peachtree Street address listed on the demolition permit application. Note that when the same situation came up regarding the Loews Grand, the Grand just happened to catch fire when plans for its demise were announced.
If you think about it for a moment, it is the history of this theatre and not its appearance or programing that makes it such a loss. The movies that would have played there will still make it onto a screen only it will be at the Midtown, Tara, or Phipps or perhaps the Lefont Sandy Springs. Even in perfect condition the place was not anything special once you were in your seat. As I said before, the Plaza, at least the downstairs part, offers a more accurate link to theatres of the past. I am sorry to see it go, but will not feel the loss as much as with other theatres where I worked such as the Lenox, now the Herzing Business College, the original Phipps, now Parisians, The Atlanta and Perimeter Mall, now parking lots, the Cherokee, now a grocery store, or even the Northeast Expressway Drive In, now a soccer complex.
All of this theatre closing talk does not affect the status of the rest of the strip, although it is hard to see how that property can resist the condo juggernaut that is sweping through the area now. However, a friend of mine who 20 years ago worked in a used book store located in the strip says that even then there was talk of the pending demise of the location. I would imagine that all that stands between the Garden Hills Theatre (and shopping strip) and the wrecking ball is the asking price.
I agree, it is a shame to see this one go. Although it does not have the “going back in time” feel of the Plaza, having been extensively remodeled by Weis in the late 60’s, it was one of those fast fading links to the past that Atlanta seems to intent on getting rid of.
When I moved to Atlanta in 1967, it was known as the Fine Art and was playing “A Man For All Seasons.” Although not exactly what we would call an “Art” house today, like Midtown, or Tara, it did play a mixture of “art” type movies as well as mainstream product. (In the 60’s the art house trade was the almost exclusive domain of the Peachtree Art at 1132 Peachtree Palace Theatreth as mentioned by Don above, and starting in 1971, the Film Forum of George Ellis.) The first movie I was planning to see there was “In Cold Blood” until, that is, my mother noticed the R rating on it. (We detoured to see “The Happiest Millionaire” at the Fox instead.) The “Uncle Toms Cabin” booking featured in the then and now picture linked to above played in early 1969. It was followed by “The Killing Of Sister George” definitely not mainstream, and then “Goodbye Columbus” which took up the entire summer of 1969. Some of the other slightly out of the mainstream type bookings here were “Sterile Cuckoo” (4 months), “Anne of the Thousand Days” (3 months), “Boys In The Band” (4 months), and “Five Easy Pieces” (3 months). However, the champion for longest run during this time was the strictly mainstream “Odd Couple” which played for the final 7 months of 1968.
For Christmas of 1970, Weis booked “Ryan’s Daughter” and that one ran one week shy of 8 months during the first half of 1971. That was a good time for the Weis company as the Capri (now Buckhead Roxy) just up the street was enjoying a 7 month run of its own with “Love Story.” With “Ryan’s Daughter” I finally made it to a show at the Fine Art. With its small entrance (box-office opening to the outside in those days), tiny lobby, dark auditorium, Weis inspired decorating, I did not think much of it as a venue when compared with Lenox and Phipps, etc… Also, I did not see the movie until July and by that time the print was certainly the worse for wear and a pale example of the 70MM presentation I would see at Phipps a year or so later. Following Ryan, more narrow appeal movies enjoyed good runs here, usually lasting a month to 6 weeks. Among these were “Walkabout,” “The Go-Between,” and “Harold and Maude.”
In the spring of 1972 I paid my second visit to the Fine Art, this time to see “The Last Picture Show.” This movie, which also had a four month run, was not at all what I was expecting to see and at the time I did not think much of it. (Later I became a fan of it and even made a trip to Archer City, Texas which is where the film, and its sequel Texasville, was set and filmed.) These were still the days of blind bidding, advance rentals, and exclusive runs, and bookings exceeding 3 months were not unusual. The Fine Art followed the usual pattern of those days by running a full day “grind” schedule with the first show starting about 2 PM with midnight shows on Friday and Saturday nights. As the run lengthened and attendance declined the Friday night midnight show would drop off, then the Saturday night one and finally the matinees. Other than the downtown theatres, the Lenox and Capri were the only theatres during this time that ran all day year round.
In the summer of 1970, Weis had taken over the old Peachtree Art Theatre and reopened it as the Weis Cinema. Shortly after that they built the Broadview (later twinned with the Broadview II becoming the Silver Screen and the Broadview I becoming the Great Southeast Music Hall) and in May of 1972 purchased the Peachtree Battle Mini Cinema (which was later sold to George Lefont and became the Silver Screen.) The point of all of this is that with more theatres to book, the product got thinned out and the number of blockbuster hits at the Fine Art declined. After “Picture Show” left, there was a year of steady but unremarkable bookings until August of 1973 when one of the biggest Fine Art hits of all, “American Graffiti” opened. Looking at the booking patterns of today, it is hard to believe that this huge hit did not open until mid August. I have heard the story that not much was expected of this small film with its unknown director, George Lucas, which is why it was dumped onto the release schedule when summer was almost over. Regardless, by the time it opened in Atlanta, Universal knew they had a hit and not only did the Fine Art run the usual full schedule, but they ran midnight shows every night until school started back.
“American Graffiti” finished out the year, and for the next couple of years it was back to the steady but unspectacular slate of films. Within a couple of years the entire Weis company was in trouble as a result of overexpansion with their acquisition of the mini cinemas, and their habit of gambling big advances to get the sure fire hits, some of which were not so sure fire. A very sad event, the death of the son of Albert Weis in an auto accident, also hurt as Mr. Weis seemed to lose interest in the day to day operations of the company after that happened.
My third and last visit to the Fine Art was in December of 1974 for an advance screening of Godfather Part II. As mentioned in other posts here and on the Film Forum page, George Ellis moved his operation here in the mid to late 70’s. After he returned to Ansley Mall, the Georgia Theatre Company took control of the Garden Hills, as it was then known (again). This was an odd turn of events and GTC never did much with the place and only held the lease a short time. In those days they had a habit of taking over theatres they really had no interest in, such as the Parkaire and Georgia Twin, aka Georgia Cinerama, just to keep the competition out. This may have been the case here, but I do not really know. At any rate, as every one here knows, George Lefont soon took over and the rest is well known.
Hold on there long island. That is being a little harsh. Lefont has been in this business for 30 years and kept this little theatre going for over 20 years as well as such other venues as the Silver Screen (formerly Peachtree Battle), the Ansley Mall (formerly Film Forum), and Screening Room (formerly Broadview II, as well as the Plaza. You don’t stay in business that long by running theatres into the ground. While Lefont may run a more laid back operation than the slick multi and megaplexes of today, the actual venues themselves, while old, were kept up. I know that the Garden Hills had new seats installed several years ago, and I also know that some of these places were not in exactly mint condition to begin with.
What really killed this and the others listed above is success. Lefont made a good living off of the art film market for many years when no one else would be bothered with such a small slice of the box-office pie. Once the theatre competition in Atlanta got so crowded, everyone was looking for any way possible to make an extra buck. It did not take the big boys long to catch on to the Lefont act and move in. The Tara, Landmark Midtown, and even the Phipps and old GCC Perimeter Mall started going after this relatively cheap and low risk market. As a result there was not enough of the foreign / art film supply and audience to go around. Money can be made in this field, but not if you have to risk big upfront advances to secure limited appeal movies. Madstone spent a ton of money refurbishing the Sandy Springs but that did not keep them from having to shut the doors.
I think that Lefont, a local businessman with a love for movies and the theatre business, did mighty well standing up to all of these big corporations for as long as he has. I have no first hand knowledge of why the run of the Plaza or Garden Hills has ended, but I would bet that the competition from the deep pocketed big guns has just made this part of the movie business too marginal to support an old single screen location. The Lefont 8plex in Sandy Springs is well maintained and still going with its mainstream offerings with whatever art product is available thrown in.
At some point during the late 70’s the Old Dixie went through the XXX phase. This seemes to be something that every Jerry Lewis Cinema in the entire country went through at one time. Their small size and minimal staffing requirements made them ideal for this purpose. The one on Buford Hwy still operates in this manner to this day. During this phase the Old Dixie was raided by the Clayton County Police and the manager / projectionist was carted off to jail. Funny how these things work. They never seem to arrest the owners or bookers, just the poor saps trying to make a living. The solicitors undoubtedly realized that it was an easy conviction since few managers had the money to hire a lawyer and the owners would just pay their fines and mark it up to the cost of doing business. The result: Business as usual for the theatre owner, good publicity during an election year for the solicitor, and a criminal record for the poor manager and projectionist who were just doing their jobs and had no say in what was being played.
This link will take you to two pages of pictures from the 40’s and 50’s. They show the marquee, exterior, box office, projection booth as well as the manager and some staff. Well worth the visit.
View link
For the GSU history project:
My family moved to Atlanta in the summer of 1967. The first movie I attended after that was at the Rialto, June 10, a Monday I think. The feature was the John Wayne western “The War Wagon.” Like most of the first run movies that played there during that time, it was a Universal Pictures release. By this time the exodus to the suburbs (movie theatre wise) was underway and only the big downtown theatres like the Grand, Fox, Roxy, and Atlanta were left to keep the Rialto company. The bookings for the Rialto were mostly lower tier first run offerings which seldom lasted more than a month. Although starting in 1970, I passed the Rialto every day on the bus on the way to class at GSU, I never saw anything worth attending even though I was in the neighborhood. Even the Universal releases such as “Coogan’s Bluff,” “Hellfighters,” and “Winning” had short runs before heading out to the second run suburban houses. The Rialto did enjoy a brief stint as a top grossing location in 1970 with an eighteen week booking of the blockbuster “Airport” followed by a six week booking of the Clint Eastwood western “Two Mules For Sister Sara.” In late 1971 two more Universal releases, “Play Misty For Me” and “Sometimes A Great Notion” marked the end of that era of Rialto history. After that it was a collection of sex, action, and / or horror movies usually lasting a week. The one, last, effort at traditional booking came in June 1972 with the “Airport” knockoff, “Skyjacked.”
Since early 1971, the Coronet Theatre, located near the Fox on Peachtree, had been drawing huge crowds of the previously untapped “black” audience with movies such as “Cotton Comes To Harlem,” “Sweet Sweetback,” and “Shaft.” The Martin (now Carmike) chain which operated the Rialto made the decision to “go black” as the practice was referred to in the business, and “Shafts Big Score” opened to huge attendance followed by a Jim Brown action movie, “Slaughter.” The Rialto booked whichever of these movies it could get and filled in the gaps with action, kung fu, and horror features of less than mediocre quality. Like all good things, this did not last as the Grand, Atlanta (where I worked at the time) and even the Fox jumped on the “Blaxploitation” bandwagon, and there was simply not enough product, good or otherwise, to go around.
After my GSU days I did not have reason to go downtown and lost track of the goings on at the Rialto. In 1985 I made my first visit in 13 years, the purpose of which was to check out the booth prior to working there for the regular projectionist while he was on vacation. By this time the Rialto had truly fallen on hard times, playing very low quality double features of horror and action themed movies and charging a one dollar admission at all times. In other words they were giving the admission away in the hopes of making their profit at the concession stand. The boxoffice had a large sign posted which stated “NO OUTSIDE FOOD OR DRINK, NO DRUGS, NO WEAPONS, ALL PACKAGES (INCLUDING HANDBAGS) SEARCHED AT THE DOOR.” Sure enough, there was a uniformed private security guard standing next to the ticket taker checking bags. When I made my way to the booth I noticed (just as Raymond did in his above post) that even though the feature had started, the house lights were still at the intermission level. When I hurried to point this out to the projectionist (one of the true old timers still left from the glory days of downtown theatres), he just smiled and proceeded to explain to this new youngster (who was 33 at the time) that only the cleaning lights were turned off during the show. The house lights were left on all day so the security guards could better see and be seen. Sure enough, there was another uniformed guard stationed in the auditorium.
Despite this beginning, I found the Rialto a great place to work. It was probably the last theatre in Atlanta where the projectionist used reels and made manual changeovers from reel to reel. In between features we would run previews which were often of Hong Kong made kung fu films complete with Chinese graphics and voiceover. I enjoyed working there so much that I continued on for about a year giving the regular operator a day off plus working his vacations. This all came to an end when Martin installed a platter system in the booth and did away with the projectionist, adding that duty to the manager. The last movie I ran there that did any great amount of business was Prince’s “Purple Rain” which brought back to me the days of “Airport” when I would look out of the booth and see a packed house. The last movie for me, prior to being let go was “CHUD” which stood for Cannibalistic Underground Humanoid Dwellers, and the intermission short subject, “Pipeline Critters” which was about the animals who made their home in the vicinity of the Alaska Oil Pipeline. What a great way to go out. Quite a change from John Wayne and my first visit to the Rialto.
Opened: 4/10/68.
Premiere feature: Elvira Madigan
With Ansley Mall, the first two editions of the Mini Cinema chain, and the only one in free standing building. It had about 350 rocking chair seats, Century projectors, 6000' reels, and a good sized screen with a small stage in front. The lobby occupied a tiny part of the southeast corner of the building and was just large enough for a concession stand and cashier desk combo. One odd thing was the ticket machine which looked like an old grocery store cash register which did not issue tickets as such but a paper receipt, just like you would get at the grocery store.
After entering the auditorium you found yourself in a wide walkway between the back row and the projection booth. Past the booth was a door leading to the booth door and the very tiny restrooms. Another door led to the utility room and ice machine. There was no office. Since, as with all of the early Mini Cinemas, the projectionist was also the manager, the booth served this purpose.
Although twice the size of the Ansley Mall Mini, Peachtree Battle was still tiny compared to the other theatres of the day, especially the first run editions. It played a lot of independent and foreign films and usually changed every two to three weeks. Unlike today, there was no national release date for many films, especially low profile ones. Theatres like this could book these films in advance without a hard date and bring them in when business for their current feature died off. This pattern changed in October 1968 when the theatres first big hit, Barbarella, opened. Three months later, on New Years Day of 1969, the Zefferelli version of Romeo and Juliet opened for a four month run followed by Charlie for four more months.
After this period it was back to the old pattern with a few sub run engagements of mainstream movies mixed in. The first movie I remember seeing there was the Mel Brooks comedy 12 Chairs during Christmas of 1970. In 1971, the Mini Cinema Chain subbed out the “office” duties of the chain to the Storey Theatre Company, and the mini cinemas started appearing in the Storey ads. During this time the Peachtree Battle would often play the same attractions as the other Storey intermediate break houses like North DeKalb and Lakewood. (Sandy Springs, the only franchise of the Mini Cinema chain did not take part in this and operated as an independent theatre although Storey still handled the mechanics of film booking.) Mini Cinema still had a say as to which movies played, especially when up front money was required. Occasionally, Peachtree Battle would play an exclusive of the type of film it once made its living with, such as Trojan Women and Roman Polanski’s version of MacBeth.
In May of 1972, the theatre was sold to the Weis Company and became the Weis Peachtree Battle. The first feature under this arrangement was foreign film Oscar winner Garden of the Finzi Continis which was actually booked in by Mini Cinema prior to the sale. After this the more aggressive Weis booking habit resulted in more mainstream first run features with longer runs. That summer, The Candidate followed by Sounder played for the remainder of the year followed by a Christmas booking of The Great Waltz. That one was not a very good movie but sounded great with the theatres seldom used 4 track magnetic sound system.
In the spring of 1974, Weis remodeled the place and gave it a very contemporary “mod” look. A new wall was built behind the last row, and the old passageway between the seating area and the booth wall was incorporated into the lobby. This was a great improvement as it allowed access to the restrooms, ice machine, booth and utility room without having to pass through the auditorium. Since the projection beam could not shoot through the lobby, and enclosed tunnel was built from the booth, over the lobby, and into the top of the new back wall of the auditorium. The decorator Weis used on all of his theatres obviously hated straight lines, so all of the public areas were covered in curved sheetrock and corrugated metal sheeting. By this time Weis had done away with the manager / operator arrangement with the union, and there was now a separate manager, but since the office had been nothing more that a desk inside the booth, the manager had to make do with a corner of the newly enclosed boxoffice which was hardly big enough for two people at once.
All of this made crowd control much easier which was a good thing since 1974 saw heavily attended engagements of Sugarland Express and The Groove Tube, each of which ran for months. In 1975, The Other Side of the Mountain also had a 5 month run. By 1976, Weis was in big trouble due mainly to the poor bookings which they had put up big advance money for in those blind bidding days. As mentioned above, George Lefont purchased this site in 1976 and it became a big success as Atlanta’s first revival theatre showing double features which changed two and sometimes three times per week. My favorite of all of the movies that played during this time was Libeled Lady, on a twin bill with Philadelphia Story, a great combo. In addition to these older movies George also booked more recent releases such as Last Detail / Last Picture Show, and The Hospital / Network. In a humorous clash of cultures, he also played The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight on weekends for many years.
In 1982, the Peachtree Battle Shopping Center expanded and took over the space of the theatre. It was torn down and a three story retail strip, the top two of which fronted Peachtree Road, was built in its place. The Silver Screen had done so well that the Rhodes had opened under new ownership showing the same type of programs and changing double features everyday. The VCR soon killed off this market so it is doubtful the Silver Screen would have survived much longer anyway. The only bit of it left now is in the #3 auditorium which George added to the Tara when he ran it. Unless they have been removed since, this theatre has the old rocking chair seats from the Peachtree Battle.