RKO Twin Wayne
Route 46 and Route 23,
Wayne,
NJ
07470
Route 46 and Route 23,
Wayne,
NJ
07470
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nearly 40 years ago.
This opened on November 20th, 1968. Grand opening ads in the photo section.
I saw “The Outsiders” at the RKO Twin. It became a second run theater a few years later. If my friends didn’t feel like waiting in line to pay full price at Loews we would go over to RKO.
The aformentioned shopping mall is the Wayne Town Center, where the defunct department store of the same name is now the Fortunoff, where one of my stepsister’s classmates from high school, Misty, worked.
Here’s a November 1968 Bergen Record ad announcing the revolutionary new concept of the twin theater, before the concept really caught on (perhaps too well):
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Pretty undistinguished in terms of decor and ambience—probably similar to some of the contemporary RKO Twins on Long Island—and at the time (25-30 years ago) the screens seemed undersized to me. Of course, that was before so many of the single-screen theatres I frequented got cut up into even smaller twins, triplexes, etc., so by comparison to those, the screens at the RKO Twin would look spacious and the auditoriums would feel roomy. Projection and sound were never less than adequate, although AFAIK only theatre #1 was ever equipped for stereo surround. Not certain when this twin closed, probably in the late ‘80s or early '90s. I seem to recall it succumbed to competition from the nearby Loews Wayne sixplex (which later became an eightplex, and is now a 14-plex) earlier than the Totowa Cinema and Cinema 46, which were also nearby. I’m pretty sure that the space it once occupied was given over to expanded parking for the adjacent shopping mall.