Ultravision Theatres 1 & 2

This venue’s 70mm presentations history is included in the recently-published article “70mm Presentations in Charleston: A Chronology of 70mm Large Format Exhibition, 1968-Present”.

As stated in the caption the theatre was at least open until December of. 1994 because I saw the Santa Claus there with Tim Allen. In fourth grade, March of 1997 I saw Return of the Jedi the special edition for my birthday. I remember the Boba Fett static clings on the box office windows.

Joe Vogel, I know it has been many years since you made the below comment, but my Grandfather was William Bringhurst McGehee of Six Associates in Asheville, NC. People have misspelled our name forever! I stumbled upon this site while doing a search of my family on the Internet. He was a wonderful man, a brilliant architect and I miss him dearly. How delightful to know the history behind another of his designs. Your post has brought both a smile and a tear to me tonight.

Ronny, contact me at .

Bev Hall

Bevo, I enjoyed working with you at the Richland Mall and Ultravision. The Wil-Kin folks were some of the best I have known. Perhaps someone wil get a reunion together someday.

Besides Charleston, I remember specifically that there was one in Mt. Pleasant that originally was a single screen theatre. I watched movies there before it was split into two screens. That was up until 1979 & 80 and at that point it had not yet been split into two screens. Therefore, it was split sometime after that before it was later closed but I do know that in 81 it was still single screen that year.

I remember seeing an ad for a “Carmike Ultravision” four-screen theatre in the Charleston newspaper in the early 1990s. Could this be the same theatre?

The Ultravision in Charleston lasted quite a long time. I believe it was the early 2000’s when it was demolished. I remember it quite well, sitting on top of a hill at the front of the Westwood Plaza shopping center parking lot at Sam Rittenberg Boulevard & Ashley River Road (SC Hwys 7 & 61). When it originally opened, this shopping center was known as “Grant City West” as it was anchored by a large W.T. Grant Department Store (a.k.a “Grant’s”).

Even with the Ashley Plaza Cinema just a few miles down Hwy. 7 in one direction and the Citadel Mall Cinema 6 opening in 1981 just a few miles down Hwy. 7 in the other direction, the Ultravision remained popular right up until the day it closed.

I believe that the only thing that doomed the Ultravision were financial troubles at its parent. This location never seemed to be without business. When it closed, it was demolished and the hill that it sat on was leveled, making room for an additional wing to be added to the adjacent shopping center.

This prototype of the UltraVision theaters (that is the way it was spelled in an ad for the projection system’s developers, Wil-Kin Inc., in the September 29, 1969, issue of Boxoffice) opened in September, 1969. A small photo appeared in Boxoffice’s issue of September 15.

Various issues of the magazine say that the house was designed by Wil-Kin, a division of the Paramount-ABC affiliate Wilby-Kincey chain of theaters. In fact, the company did hire an architect who worked very closely with the developers of the innovative projection system to make sure the UltraVision Theatre would have the optimum form to show the system to full advantage.

Two Boxoffice items give the name of the architect, but with different spellings, both of which turn out to be wrong. The November 2, 1970, issue, in an item about the opening of two more UltraVision houses, says that the Charleston theater, on which their designs were based, was designed by Bill McGhee, but a September 8, 1969 item gave his name as William McGee.

Correcting the errors in Boxoffice, the AIA’s Historical Directory of American Architects lists a William Bringhurst McGehee as a member of the Asheville, N.C., firm Six Associates. A 1972 Boxoffice item notes a William B. McGee of Six Associates as having done preliminary work on the twinning of the Carolina Theatre at Hendersonville, North Carolina.

I think we can safely identify the lead architect of the UltraVision Theatre as William B. McGehee, of the firm Six Associates. His listing in the 1970 AIA Directory also lists the Phipps Plaza Theatre in Atlanta, another Wilby-Kincey house with UltraVision equipment, among his works.

The architect(s) who adapted McGehee’s original design for the later UltraVision theaters might also have worked at Six Associates, but I haven’t yet been able to confirm that.

On the subject of the UltraVision projection system itself, projectionists in particular will probably be interested in this October, 1991, Boxoffice article commemorating the 25th anniversary of this innovative development. The article mentions that UltraVision equipment was eventually installed in 60 theaters.

These were nice theatres. There were Ultravision theatres in Va Beach, Norfolk, and Newport News, Virginia and opened in the early ‘70s. I don’t think any of these had 70mm capacity, but they were impressive. Unfortunately the kind of spectacular films that would showcase the big screen were fairly rare in that era and as the theatres got older and changed hands less care was taken with lamphouses, so the image tended to be somewhat dim. The final blow was the attempt to split the theatres. Since the auditoriums were round the split was handled awkwardly and instead of re-arranging the seating, they just left it was it was, meaning the seats did not directly face the screen… I am sure plenty of patrons got sore necks.

The Ultravision Theatres were developed for the Wilby-Kincey (sp?) circuit. Glen Berggren who later was to work for the Schneider Optical company among others was deeply involved in the engineering of the projection system which was unique at the time. In the days when these theatres were developed 35 and 70mm film projection was still largely done with 2,000' reels, since originally carbon arc lamps were stil predominant. This meant a “keystone” in the projected image since two projectors were used and both couldn’t be on the screen center line. Ultravision used an image “multiplexer” with both projectors pointed directly at each other parallel with the screen. They projected the image into mirrors so that both projectors put out just one image that was centered on the screen. In addition, all of the projection elements were carefully matched, from the mirrors in the lamphouses to the lenses, and the gate and traps in the projectors were carefully adjusted. This along with a curved screen that preserved the focus across its surface gave a picture significantly sharper than most of the theatres in those days. The use of xenon lamps further improved the image. (These days of course, the use of platters and just one projector in the booth per screen has eliminated the need for the multiplexer.)

The theatres were equipped for either 4 or 6 track magnetic sound from 35 or 70mm. prints. One of the interesting stories Glen told was that when one of the theatres opened (possibly this one), the first three or four pictures happened to have stereophonic tracks which had become a relative rarity for 35mm by that time. No one in the audiences commented on the superior sound, which must have been a disappointment. However, when the first optical/mono picture played a number of audience members complained to the manager, “What happened to your sound? It used to be so good!”

One of the two ABC/Plitt theatres in Century City in Los Angeles was also equipped for Ultravision as well as the W-K theatres in the South.

The Charleston Ultravision opened somewhere between 1966 or 1967.
It operated as a single screen theatre that had the round auditorium that incredibly huge with the largest widescreen anywhere which was a first for Charleston,and the public loved it. It remained a single screen cinema until the mid-1970’s or early 1980’s when this beautifully designed round auditorium was split in two making it a twin cinema.