Cinema Ridgefield

The Ridgefield Cinema — if it’s the one I’m thinking of (and it must be because it was the only one open in Ridgefield in the 80s) — was not a classic theater. It was built as part of the Copps Hill Plaza shopping center in the early 1970s. The center was anchored by a W.T. Grant, which soon went out of business and was replaced by Caldor and, in turn, Kohl’s, and a Stop & Shop supermarket. The theater closed in the 1980s and its space was used — ironically — by a Blockbuster Video. Two years ago, in a major reconstruction of the shopping center, the entire leg of stores that included the old theater was demolished to permit Stop & Shop to increase parking and expand to a Super Stop & Shop. Smaller stores that remained were moved to a new satellite building. All traces of the theater are gone, but I recall it being a totally nondescript, charmless, beige box. But I did see Mel Brooks' “Blazing Saddles” and Woody Allen’s “Love & Death” there.

The map that was added showing this theater’s former location is way off. It should be in the grey area just to the south of Copps Hill Rd and just to the west of Danbury Rd – Rt 35, which is the Copps Hill Shopping Center.

The current map is correct.

This is never a Jerry Lewis Cinema. The Cinema Ridgefield (sometimes known as Ridgefield Cinema) launched on January 25, 1973 by Dan Scott Cinemas, led by its vice-president Gene Turriziani, and launching with “A Separate Peace”. Rocky Barry was its last operator of the 350-seat single-screener, who closed the Cinema Ridgefield on September 9, 1990.