Key Cinemas

dallasmovietheaters on December 5, 2021 at 5:23 am

This was one of the first four of five area Jerry Lewis Twin Cinemas that was announced in June of 1970. The South Keystone Shopping Plaza was a new-build, nondescript location anchored by an IGA grocery store and a drug store as well as the Jerry Lewis Keystone Twin Cinema. The cinema launched November 16, 1971 with “The Omega Man” and “The $1,000,000 Duck.” The parent company of the Jerry Lewis Circuit would go into a financial free fall toward bankruptcy in a year and all five of the local former Lewis theatres rebranded with short-term independent names (this one became the South Keystone Twin Cinema) until they were picked up by United Cinema of Indiana Inc. on May 23, 1973 headed by veteran Loew’s Rochester Theatre manager Lester Pollock. United appears to have folded in May of 1976.

The theatre - along with the other former Lewis Circuit locations - was picked up by CTS Heaston Theatres. Heaston repositioned the venue as a second-run discount house. It then added VHS movie rentals in a club pricing policy in October of 1983. In 1992, CTS Theatres (Heaston removed from the picture) took on the location dropping it in 1995. It reopened under independent operation, on October 27, 1995 still as a sub-run discount house. Ron Keedy repositioned the venue as a first-run art house and used his surname to good effect renaming it as the Key Cinemas.

The Key hosted the International Film Festival and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Film Festival. It also brought to town films that other circuits wouldn’t bring to Indy. When Landmark opened its Keystone Art Cinema on December 9, 2005, Keedy changed the name of the venue to the Key Cinemas Beech Grove and returned to sub-run discount operations. Regular operation was discontinued following March 20, 2008 screenings. It’s double-gang attractor said “Farewell to the Key” and the “ghost sign” of the Key Cinema in the rear of the shopping plaza was still quite visible in the 2020s.

Mike Rogers on June 19, 2010 at 6:43 am

Cutting hours,doesn’t sound good,Four Seasons Cinemas in Herdersonville,N.C. started this and today it is closed and striped clean.

Joe Vogel on February 15, 2008 at 10:17 pm

This twin is apparently open again, but the name has been changed to Key Cinemas.

Here’s their website. Their phone numbers & email address are on the “Contact Us” page.

Here’s somebody’s Flickr photo of it from 2006.