Is The Theatre Where You Saw Star Wars Still Open?
 

Earlier this eve I was out running some errands and happened past one of the local shopping centers which has been around for quite some number of years now.

Towards one end of the center, right next to what used to be for many years a post office, were the double glass doors to what used to be one of the local movie theaters.

As I recall, the theatre opened in that shopping center in the summer of '72... the first movie I recall seeing there was The Sting with Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

The theater has been closed for probably 8-10 years now I guess, but I also happened to remember that it was also the theater where I first saw Star Wars. I think it was around November of '77, which would have been some number of months after it had been first released that spring. We didn't go to a lot of movies as a family, and as I recall, it was our older sister and my future brother-in-law who took pity on myself and our younger sister and took us to see it one Friday night while mom and dad were out on a rare night out for them.

I actually am not a huge Star Wars fan, but this quick walk down memory lane got me to thinking and wondering how many theaters where we first saw Star Wars some nearly 37 years ago are still open and operating?


Earl

Village Square shopping center in Hazelwood, Missouri. Suburb of St. Louis. I don't rember the name of the theatre, but it's not there now. The building is gone. The shopping center is now mostly government offices.

Nope. Huge, empty site now off of I-75. There was a rumor that someone was looking at the property for a Drive-In site, but that's been a couple of years, and it still sits vacant. I had a lot of dates there over the years.

http://www.cinematour.com/tour/us/5238.html

Now that I think of it, none of the theaters from my high school/college years still exist. :(

Yes! Burley Idaho Movie theatre is now a Historical Building! Old design from a time long ago, art deco style and totally awesome when compared to the last place I went to watch a movie; Cinplex 32 or something...

Mike

I saw Star Wars at the "____ Twin" theater in Hicksville, NY. The ____ might have been "Hicksville" or "Broadway," I forget.

It was a rear early multi-auditorium theater, but it wasn't like today's multiplexes. There were two complete lobbies that only shared a central snack bar. You walked into one door or the other and that was it. It was housed in a wing of a very old shopping mall; I remember it being there in the late 60s. The entrance was on the outside.

The theater was around until maybe the mid eighties; the mall was heavily modified and the Twin was turned into shops. I MIGHT have seen "Aliens" at the Twin.

There is a new multiplex in another wing of the theater.

* * *
The town next to the one where I grew up had THREE movie theaters. The Glen, the Glen Cove, and the Bijou (or some old fashioned name like that). They disappeared one by one, starting in the very early 80s. I saw Star Wars for the second time at the Glen Cove, which was a second-run "grindhouse" type of place. You could see double features there; on weekend afternoons they had bad horror films. Eventually it turned into a $.79 bargain theater and then shut down.

The "Cove" was a little classier and showed some first run films. I remember seeing Soylent Green and Fantastic Planet there.

The "Bijou" or whatever it was was a big fine old movie palace with a balcony and grand facade. It was closed for much of the time when I was a kid; then for a few years it reopened and showed second run movies. The only movie I remember seeing there at night was "American Grafitti." Mostly we saw really cheap crap family films there, like Grizzly Adams and the Adventures of the Wilderness Family.

For a while they had a $.50 science fiction Saturday matinee. Really BAD science fiction, from Italy, or Mexican superhero wrestler movies.

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/9159

Actually this one:

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/8082

I'd forgotten that they were named the Twin North and Twin South. The write-up says they were open by 1965, which sounds right.

You linked to a dinky, out-of-the-way sticky-floor place. I remember it being kind of cheap and plain even as a kid. The only film I remember for sure seeing there was The Phantom Tollbooth, which was a real let-down. It must have been turned into a "Twin" later in its life.

First I linked to the right one, but then I found that the other one had Hicksville in its name, so I figured that had to be it. :rolleyes:

Aah! So, it still shows movies? Or, is it just a 'historical' preserved landmark kind of place?


Earl

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/1417
Still runnin' 'em! :cool: