Last week, Cineplex wrapped its first Great Digital Film Festival. As I reported in the Toronto Star, a selection of twenty “classic” films played alongside Avatar and whatever else is currently in theatres. Anyone reading this blog knows I’m a big advocate for Toronto’s great rep cinemas and loathe the alienating, epilepsy-inducing feeling brought on by so many megaplexes, so I never thought I’d say this, but Cineplex did a great job.

First off, the films looked great. Only a quarter of the titles were presented in true 2K digital cinema (The Thing, The Godfather, and the Bond flicks), the rest on Blu-Ray, but those mammoth projectors showed off everything with great clarity. The ticket price — five bucks, nine for a double-bill — was beyond reasonable, reminding me of a time when that was standard admission. They also went the extra mile of showing the original trailers: seeing the trailers for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, as well as that great still-photo trailer for The Godfather was a real treat. And by partnering with a local movie poster company, original posters (read: with artwork, you know, back when Hollywood posters were illustrated rather than the poorly Photoshopped junk we see nowadays) appeared in the illuminated poster boxes at the foot of the giant monolith of a megaplex.

The two screenings I saw, Ghosbusters and The Godfather Part II, were well-attended, with an overall respectful audience (who even clapped when the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man showed up). The latter was a double-bill with The Godfather, and plenty of people hit up both films.  I saw the whole thing as a diversion, a pleasant variation, if you will, to all the big Hollywood stuff currently playing in those screens, and I hope Cineplex does it again soon. With so many screens across Canada, why not have one room playing selected rep programming?

Hopefully those who attended are aware that many of these films are staples of Toronto’s rep cinemas  like the Bloor, Fox and Revue (am assuming Cineplex based their programming by glancing at various schedules). And just so y’all know, I haven’t gone soft: I still prefer seeing seeing a little dust bouncing around in the gate and counting down the cigarette burns. But Cineplex’s festival highlights, indrectly, that those 35mm prints won’t be around forever, and that these digital presentations are bound to become more commonplace.

But on to simpler, pre-pixel times, when a cinema’s marquee offered but one, sometimes five choices. The above photo, taken some time in December of 1974, shows the entrance of Montreal’s Loew’s Theatre announcing the imminent arrival of The Godfather Part II, just before Mandel Sprachman revitalized the Ste-Catherine St. complex into a 5-screen multiplex. The theatre opened on November 17, 1917, and was Montreal’s grandest movie palace for decades, remaining a popular film-going spot until it closed for good in 1999. Its interior was subsequently demolished. In 2005, the auditorium was remodeled into a gym, and was still in operation when I lived there until 2007.

Whether old, new, palatial, grimy, spacious or downright claustrophobic, the closure of any Toronto cinema means one less place to see a film, and today’s closing of the Carlton Cinema is no exception. It’s not the first time a theatre has closed in that location, either. In 1974, the Odeon Carlton, a lavish post-war movie house, ended a 26-year run by screening Burt Reynolds in White Lighting.

While discussing the Carlton’s demise with Colin Geddes a few weeks back, he noted that it also widens the gap of available cinemas on or around Yonge St. Excluding the Cumberland and Varsity cinemas at Bloor, there are no cinemas between the AMC 24 at Dundas and the Canada Square & Silver City at Eglinton.

That gap is a stark contrast to July 1, 1981, on the Carlton’s opening day, where Garth Drabinsky and Nat Taylor’s Cineplex empire was still in its infancy and art-house, adults-only, repertory and single-screen cinemas existed everywhere. I’ve written about “the strip,” the stretch from Queen to Gerrard a handful of times (and also here), but looking north to Bloor,  you had the Festival (now the Panasonic Theatre), Towne, University, Hudson’s Bay Plaza; at St-Clair was the Hollywood and Hyland; at Eglinton, the International, York, Fine Arts (now The Capitol, an events venue); and from Sheppard to Finch was the Fairlawn, Park, Towne Countrye and the Willow.

They catered to every genre. The University played the latest action blockbuster in wide, huge 70mm (Raiders of the Lost Ark, if you must know) and the International and Fine Arts were well-reputed art-houses, showing the kind of stuff you’d have recently seen at the Carlton. Mere steps away from Maple Leaf Gardens, the Carlton opened on Canada Day with the bizarre Sextette starring Mae West, Judy Davis in My Brilliant Career, Hussy, Take This Job And Shove It, and wouldn’t you believe it — The Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3-D.

While some adored the theatre, others loathed it. Comments on  local blogs claim it had the best-tasting popcorn in the city, others hated the cupboard-sized screening rooms. A friend of mine recently quipped: “Their tiny screens and bleeding sound just made me angry. I saw Grindhouse there because it was the last place in the city still showing it and I needed to see it again. It was so impotent in that venue.”

Compared to the epilepsy-inducing feel of the Silver Cities that followed it, I have a soft spot for the 1980s multiplex.  I can’t remember what I last saw at the Carlton.  I wanted to say Trembling Before G-d, but just now remembered seeing Napoleon Dynamite back in, oh, whenever that was playing.

But for those who lament its passing, there are other options: The Cumberland still exists (at least for now), the AMC screens more independent films than one would expect, and don’t forget the reps, like the Mount Pleasant, Regent, and the recently renovated Royal Cinema.

Were you a regular at the Carlton? Did you work there? Drop a comment and share your experiences.

In yesterday’s Toronto Star, I wrote about the 90th anniversary of the disappearance of wealthy theatre owner Ambrose Small. “On Dec. 2, 1919 the circuit-owner deposited $1 million – an advance on the previous day’s sale of his seven properties – spoke to his wife Theresa on the steps of the Bond St. Orphanage, and returned to the Grand, at Adelaide and Yonge Sts. From there he vanished.”

For nearly a decade, Small’s name made sensational headlines, from his disappearance, the reading of his will in 1924 and the demolition of the Grand Opera House in 1928. The discovery of a secret, lavishly furnished room behind his office, perhaps used for the many improprieties for which he was later accused, was but one of the strange revelations during an investigation which unfolded in the early days of the 1920s, amidst a regional smallpox outbreak, a housing shortage and much social change.

The investigation brought no leads or clues into his whereabouts. One of the lead investigators, through the advice of a medium, maintained Small was buried in a 70-acre plot near Scarborough Heights; another medium insisted he’d been poisoned; years later, another psychic claimed his remains had been burned in Montreal. (Mediums were quite popular at the time, as bereaved relatives tried to contact loved ones who perished in World War I or succumbed to the Spanish Influenza. One of their champions,  novelist Arthur Conan Doyle, spoke on the subject from London on Jan. 2, the day before the press announced Small’s disappearance: “I believe another generation will not have passed before the age-long mystery of death will have been solved and communion of the spirit people universally acknowledged and approved.”)

A veritable Jimmy Hoffa of the 1920s, Small was supposedly sighted in Mexico, England and the Orient. There were several charges of impersonation: a deranged patient in a Wisconsin hospital claimed to be Small, and an inmate in an Indiana prison, claiming to be the missing impresario recovering from a bout of amnesia. It carried out like a stage show at one of Small’s theatres, which also included the Grand Theatre in London, Ont.

Toronto’s Grand Opera House, built in 1874, was destroyed by fire in 1879 but later rebuilt to its original design. Small purchased it in 1903 and quickly turned it into a popular vaudeville house. The shows were advertised on the back page of the Toronto Sunday World, a heavily-illustrated and photo-rich paper which catered to general bonhomie of the era. Like the Royal Alexandra on King St., the Grand would occasionally play motion pictures. On January 14, 1917, backed by a full orchestra and choir, one could see D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance.

Small also owned the Majestic Theatre, another Adelaide St. vaudeville house. According to the 1951 Film Weekly Yearbook, it was sold in 1916 to N.L. Nathanson, who was still a few years away from forming Famous Players Canadian Corporation.

But ninety years ago this week, the sale of Small’s properties to Trans-Canada  Theatres Ltd. and ensuing disappearance happened at a pivotal point in the history of Canada’s entertainment industry. Paul Moore,  author of Now Playing: Early Movie-going and the Regulation of Fun, notes that in 1919, things were about to change. “By then, Allen’s picture palaces already formed a national chain, and the creation of Famous Players movie theatres was just weeks away,” says Moore. “The very idea of a regional circuit of playhouses, which Small pioneered in Canada, was being replaced by the big business of national movie palace chains.”

Call it the Anti-Twilight double bill – Creepy Classics returns to The Revue Cinema on December 3 with Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931 – 7pm), followed by the recent telling of the Victorian tale with Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992 – 9:15).

Away from Toronto screens for far too long, Bela Lugosi’s performance as the Transylvanian Count helped usher Univeral’s horror films into the sound era. Several films followed: Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Bride of Frankenstein and Werewolf of London. But by 1937, partly due to a British ban on the genre, horror films were on their way out, and the type-cast Lugosi was desperate for work.

In 1938, a shot in the arm came from the struggling Regina Theatre in Los Angeles when they ran Dracula, Frankenstein and RKO’s Son of Kong. As noted by Greg Mank in his book Bela Lugosi & Boris Karloff, the triple-bill played round the clock and was an overnight success. Universal followed suit by nationally circulating newly-minted prints of their films and returned to horror productions with Son of Frankenstein, which not only featured Karloff as the Monster, but Lugosi as the hunchback Ygor – a role he later claimed as his favourite. In Toronto, Son ran as a Saturday matinee to a new generation of young horror lovers.

But these kids would be the last to see the thrills of Universal’s original canon of Monster movies on the big screen. The films would meet a new audience on television in the 1950s and Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland publication would keep kids thirsty for more. Soon, they could assemble plastic model kits of their favourite monsters while condensed ‘digests’ of Universal’s films could be screened on home projectors.

Nowadays, Universal’s Classic Horror films are rarely shown in theatres. We know about them thanks to home video; some – myself included – on late-night television (believe it or not, at midnight on the CBC, when they used to show such things). But to their original audience, they were released at a time when the word ‘horror’ wasn’t yet in the Hollywood lexicon. The local press referred to Browning’s film as a “sensational mystery thriller.” And although the film’s content might nowadays amuse rather than terrify, the management of the Tivoli Theatre in March, 1931, thought Dracula was no laughing matter when their ads claimed: “No children’s prices – Dracula is a picture for the adult mind only!” For the Creepy Classics audience, we offer a sparkling-free vampire guarantee.

Check out the Facebook Event Listing!

Our repeat screening on Saturday, Dec 5 (4pm) will have an extra attraction: Bela Lugosi in The Return of Chandu.

CREEPY CLASSICS is presented by The Revue Cinema, 32elvismovies.com and Rue Morgue Magazine!

Yesterday, Torontoist reported that the colourful amoeba and monster-laden mural which has adorned the facade of Lee’s Palace for over twenty years was taken down, to be replaced with a new creation by original artist Runt. Annex residents may feel it looks temporarily naked without it, but it gives us a better view of the building, which once housed a movie theatre.

Designed by architect C. Howard Crane in 1919, it opened as The Bloor Theatre, which was part of the Allen’s national chain of cinemas. This photo, taken in 1921, shows  the westward view of the Bloor’s signage along with that of its neighbours. When the Allen circuit collapsed in 1922, it was taken over by Famous Players, who ran it until 1957. Before Lee’s Palace opened in 1985, the building had served as various nightclubs and dining establishments. In 1973, it was known as the Blue Orchid Dining Room.

Like most main thoroughfares in the city, Bloor Street once featured several movie houses. Across the street from Lee’s is the former Madison, which still runs today as the Bloor Cinema. One of the city’s largest neighbourhood cinemas, it opened in 1913 and has operated under various names: in the ’40s and ’50s it was known as the Midtown; the Capri; it showed adults-only fare in the 70s as the Eden; and settled upon its most recent namesake in 1979. In 2005, Peter Kuplowsky and Robin Sharp made a great documentary called The Bloor , which can be seen here.

West of Bathurst you would find the Alhambra, Metro (still around today as Toronto’s only surviving porno theatre), Adelphi, Kenwood, Paradise, the Academy. Most of these buildings still exist; the Academy, at Bloor & Sorauren, is currently undergoing a facelift.

- Eric Veillette

Thanks to Paul Moore for sharing the above photo of The Bloor, which appeared in Construction magazine, 1919.

In its continuing efforts to offer specialty programming, Toronto’s Revue Cinema, NOW Magazine’s favourite rep cinema, presents Classic Hollywood Revue, a new series featuring little-seen classics from the 1930s and 1940s.

Screening Wednesday, Nov. 18 (7 p.m.) is director Lewis Milestone’s Rain (1932). Set in the South Pacific, it features rising star Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson, a tough-talking, hard-drinking prostitute who spells certain destruction for a missionary (Walter Huston) seeking to redeem her soul. This was the second film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s short story, the first being Sadie Thompson (1928), a silent starring Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore.

Rain is a great early talkie, with the pounding South Pacific rain imbedded in the soundtrack; it is also a fine example of Hollywood’s “pre-code” era. In 1929, a group of clergymen drafted a code of ethics for Hollywood productions. Weary of government censorship, the heads of the major studios accepted it as a means of self-censorship, but the code, considered puritanical, was largely ignored for the next five years. Many Hollywood films continued to reflect the permissive morality of the 1920s: Characters drank, danced and sinned, largely without consequence.

Films like The Divorcee (1930) saw Norma Shearer give her philandering husband a taste of his own medicine; Little Caesar (1930) and The Public Enemy (1931) glorified the American gangster; Al Jolson proclaimed that “boys will be boys” when two men slow-danced in Wonder Bar (1934); and in Night After Night (1932), Mae West brazenly asserted her sexuality: “Goodness has nothing to do with it.” She was seen as an affront to the decent film-going public, and by late 1934, with newly minted censor Joseph L. Breen in charge, the code was rigorously enforced. Scripts now required approval before production; various cuts were demanded once the films were completed; skirts were ankle-length; and the anti-heroes were punished.

Joan Crawford reportedly disliked her performance as the gum-chewing, jazz-listening temptress Sadie. This is perhaps due to the negative reaction of critics who preferred her in roles like that of the stenographer in Grand Hotel (which was still playing in Toronto when Rain premiered in November of 1932). Even the Toronto Star was critical of its subject matter, while proclaiming: “there is probably no actress in Hollywood – even on the stage, for that matter – who could approximate the artistry she displays.”

Today’s audiences now realize Rain would have been a much different, watered-down affair had it been made after the code’s enforcement, and it now stands as a testament to the strength of one of Hollywood’s greatest stars.

Every screening in the Classic Hollywood Revue series will be preceded by a shorts program echoing the pre-code era, featuring a scantily-clad Betty Boop and a great musical short featuring Louis Armstrong. They may well have accompanied the film when it premiered at the Loew’s Yonge St. Theatre in November of 1932!

Both feature and pre-show entertainment will be screened on 16mm. Check out our Facebook Event Listing!

Rain screens at the Revue Cinema on Wednesday, November 18 at 7pm. Tickets are $7 for Members (Memberships available at the door). A repeat screening will occur Saturday, November 20, 4pm.

SEVEN CHANCES (1925)
Directed by Buster Keaton
Written by David Belasco
Starring Buster Keaton, Ruth Dwyer, T. Roy Barnes
56min. / 16mm
Featuring live piano accompaniment by William O’Meara.

Back in June, a select group of cinephiles, families from the neighbourhood, purveyors from local emporiums and a handful of kids up to no good gathered at the Revue for the launch of Silent Sundays, a new series aimed at celebrating silent cinema. For nearly two hours, they laughed, cheered and howled at the various athletic feats Buster Keaton overcame in order to get the girl.

Due to the overwhelming response we received from “College,” both Buster Keaton and pianist William O’Meara, who recently accompanied a selection of silent comedies during TIFF, return to the Revue with Seven Chances (1925).

This time around, Buster’s got a busy day ahead of him: in order to claim a 7 million dollar inheritance, he must find a bride by 7pm! With a bevy of flappers and vamps in tow, it’s an inventive bit of slapstick, full of momentous gags, including one of the greatest chase scenes of the silent era. “Keaton proves he’s a master at building the comedy until it reaches its absolute breaking point,” says critic David Schwartz.

And to start the laughs early, Seven Chances will be preceded by a selection of short silent films!

The Revue Cinema is located at 400 Roncesvalles Ave. — a ten minute minute walk south of Dundas West station!

Tickets are $8 for members / $10 for non-members! Click here for the Facebook event listing.

Silent Sundays is co-presented by the Revue Film Society and 32elvismovies.com!

Since tomorrow is the first day of the Rue Morgue Festival of Fear, I thought it’d be fitting to share this ad featuring the premiere of Universal’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, starring Bela Lugosi. The film opened on Friday, March 18, 1932 at the Tivoli, which was then owned by Famous Players Canada. It was also host to many early Universal horror films, beginning with Dracula in April, 1931, followed by Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Invisible Man .

A real bevy of classic films were playing in Toronto that week. At the Oakwood, you could see Marlene Dietrich and Clive Brook in Shanghai Express; Greta Garbo in Mata Hari at the Palace (Danforth/Pape); Charlie Chan’s Last Chance at the Parkdale; Douglas Fairbanks in Around the World in Eighty Minutes at the Madison (now the Bloor); and Eddie Cantor pulled a minstrel routine at the Crescent (Dundas W./Gilmour), singing “There’s Nothing Too Good For My Baby” in Palmy Days. Yikes.

If you can make it to the Festival, which runs concurrently with FanExpo, and if you’re not too busy lining up for Guest of Honour Bruce Campbell, be sure to drop by a panel I’m hosting on Saturday afternoon called Movie House Macabro. I’ll be getting together with a bunch of off-beat film programmers, and for forty five minutes, they’ll regale you with tales of cinematic debauchery, splice-ridden prints, missing reels; true stories from the trenches, kids. The September issue of Rue Morgue will also be available. In it, I shed light on The Walking Dead, a 1936 Michael Curtiz film which features one of Boris Karloff’s most underrated performances. It’s out on DVD next month as part of a new set highlighting a few other Lugosi/Karloff performances.

Elvis Aaron Presley died thirty-two years ago today. Since this site bears his name-sake, it’s about time I pay a proper tribute to the King.

More often than not, I have to explain how this site has nothing to do with Elvis Presley. The title is a carry-over from an old ‘zine I used to print about a decade ago which catered to my obssessions with ’50s Rock’n'Roll and classic Universal and Hammer horror films.  I saw it as the bastard child of Mojo and Famous Monsters of Filmland. The title came to me after reading a biography on David Bowie, where he referred Just a Gigolo as his “thirty-two Elvis movies in one.” The title stuck. From 1999 to 2002, I published five issues. Some of the interviews, like those with Bob Keane of Del-Fi Records and Hammer goddess Ingrid Pitt, can be found in the archives.

But back to Elvis. I grew up on ’50s music: Elvis, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and just about any compilation tape from that era which could fit into a cassette deck. I also grew up on a steady diet of Elvis films. They often played on one of the french networks on summer afternoons. I’m sure I saw a good chunk of them, probably most of them. I never counted.

If Elvis is to be remembered for one film, it should be King Creole. It is part noir-thriller, part tale of teenage delinquency. Michael Curtiz’ black & white cinematography, with its elegant use of shadows, gave New Orleans a rich, stylized look. And Elvis, when given the right script and working alongside a great director, proved to be an amazing actor. The gentle subtleties in the father/son dynamic have aged much better than the film which tends to overshadow it, Rebel Without A Cause. If only the Colonel hadn’t been so focused on selling soundtrack albums, we could have seen more performances like this.

King Creole was released in July of 1958. When this ad ran in the Toronto Star on August 15, 1958, it was playing its second run at the Nortown Cinema at Bathurst and Eglinton. In the book Nabes, John Sebert says the Nortown was the last single screen theatre built by Famous Players. Long demolished, it’s now a strip mall, but on that day over fifty years ago, Forest Hill residents hit up the Nortown to see the King in his prime. Save for a brief moment in 1968, things would never be the same.

In today’s Saturday Star, I write about the Danforth Music Hall’s upcoming 90th anniversary. On Tuesday, August 18, Heritage Toronto and the Riverdale Historical Society will be celebrating this milestone by unveiling a plaque in its honour. By recreating the events from nearly a century ago, the evening will also feature a silent film, Dollars and Sense, with live accompaniment.

The Music Hall, originally known as Allen’s Danforth, remains one of the best examples of this former theatre empire. Other Toronto Allen survivors are the Bloor and Parkdale. The former – a popular midtown cinema until the late 1950s – now operates as Lee’s Palace; the latter as an antique mall where Queen St. meets Triller Ave. The Tivoli, the first Toronto Allen theatre at the corner of Richmond and Victoria Sts., was demolished in 1965 due to the the ever-changing cinematic landscape and the expanding infrastructure of the downtown core.

The Music Hall was my first nabe. When I moved to Toronto nearly a decade ago, I settled into a great apartment across from Broadview station. Having better things to do than unpack boxes, I ventured east on Danforth and got a membership at the dearly departed Revue Video, then walked into the Music Hall for a matinee screening of Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom. I missed most of the opening nightclub scene, but I’d seen it enough times. I was just amazed that I lived kiddie-corner to such a grand movie palace.

Throughout the years, I’ve managed to live near a variety of cinemas: the Royal, the former Eglinton, and while living in Montreal, the former Snowdon, arguably one of the best art-nouveau cinemas in North America. But the Music Hall came first; although my love for cinema goes back to my childhood, munching on popcorn in the Victory Theatre in Timmins, I credit this grand building on the edge of Riverdale for later inspiring me to unearth the histories of our old movie-houses.

See! The Allen’s Danforth opening night ad. Source: Toronto Telegram, August 18, 1919. Courtesy of Paul Moore.

See! An ad for a Mid-Nite Horror Show from 1972. As the Titania, it featured Greek films, but on weekends, it was a haven for cult and horror fans. Source: Toronto Star, Jul.2, 1972.

Top photo: the Music Hall as the Century, late 1939. Source: the Archives of Ontario.

Above image from January 1929 shows Yonge St. facing north from Queen St. On the bill at the Loews Yonge St. is a Buster Keaton film, probably The Cameraman. Source: the Toronto Transit Commission.

Ten-cent admission, newsreels, adventure serials and slapstick. That’s what you would find if you could return to the early days of movie-going. As this site, dedicated to preserving the stories of our varied theatres, nears its first anniversary, I am partnering with Toronto’s Revue Cinema on a new lecture series chronicling the history of local movie theatres.

On August 22, the first lecture, “Toronto Movie Theatres: Palaces for the People,” will be presented by Ryerson professor Paul S. Moore. A sociologist and historian, Moore has written a definitive study of Toronto cinemas and their relation to mass audiences: Now Playing: Early Moviegoing and the Regulation of Fun. He’ll delve into the history of local theatre chains and the architects who designed the buildings. He will also discuss how neighbourhood moviehouses played a vital role in the city’s urban development.

Following the lecture will be a screening of the National Film Board’s seldom-seen documentary, Dreamland: A History of Early Canadian Movies 1895-1939.

Dreamland highlights the efforts of Canadian filmmakers prior to the creation of the National Film Board. It also features images of early Toronto cinemas, footage from the Great Toronto Fire of 1904, as well as interviews with theatre impresarios such as Nat Taylor, the founder of 20th Century Theatres and Cineplex Odeon.

Taylor played a major role in defining Toronto’s cinematic landscape, but he wasn’t the first to come along since John Griffin opened his first Yonge St. theatre in 1906. Writing in Canadian Picture Pioneers magazine in 1990, Taylor recalled an evening where he was asked to name all the theatres that once lined Queen St. West. Reflecting on 1918, the year he entered the movie business, he named them all with encyclopedic accuracy: “Starting at Yonge St.,” he said, “there was the Photodrome and the Colonial east of Bay, and west of Bay was the Globe, which subsequently became the Broadway.”

Taylor, who passed away in 2004, went on to name 20 cinemas from Yonge to Roncesvalles. The former Orpheum at Queen & Bathurst is now a furniture store; the former Parkdale, steps from Queen & Roncesvalles, an antique mall.

Regrettably, most of the city’s old cinemas have disappeared. This lecture – let’s just call it an afternoon at the movies – aims to pay them tribute, so what better place to marvel at the nostalgia at hand than at the Revue, the city’s oldest surviving cinema!

Lecture - Toronto Movie Theatres: Palaces For The People
Screening - Dreamland: A History of Early Canadian Movies
The Revue Cinema, 400 Roncesvalles Ave.
Saturday, Aug. 22, 2009 — 4:00pm
Admission is a suggested $5 donation

This event also values the support of Heritage Toronto, the City of Toronto Archives, Spacing and the Revue Film Society.

In today’s Toronto Star, your humble editor writes about the dearly departed, sleazy dens of cinematic iniquity which lined Yonge St in the 1970s. The strip from Gerrard to Queen marked the city’s Red Light District. Amidst the drugs, strip clubs like Starvin Marvin’s and over 75 body-rub parlours were the bright lights of the Biltmore, Downtown, Cinema 2000, Coronet, Rio, Imperial Six, Yonge/Elgin, among many others.

Compared to the seediness of the era, which culminated in the grisly death of 12-year old shoeshine boy Emmanuel Jaques, it’s all pretty sanitized now; and there’s certainly no trash cinema to be seen. But what you can do is head over to the Fox Theatre in the Beaches on Saturday for the all-night Shock & Awe. Hells Angels, ghost stories, sexy frauleins, mystery films and punk rock zombies await you! Pure sleaze, trash and exploitation.

Oh, and cut from the article was a little gem about the Paradise. No, not that Paradise, but a short-lived 50-seater atop the Swiss Chalet which showed porno loops for $2. Keep that in mind next time you’re chowing down on a Festive Special.

Above image: a postcard from the late ’50s shows Yonge St looking south from Gerrard. In the distance you can see the marquees of the Rio, Biltmore and the Downtown. The canopy of the Savoy/Coronet survives today, although not the same one shown in the picture.

I present a fang-tastic ad for a Hammer Dracula triple-bill. Back before you could see Cats or some other Broadway schmaltz at the Elgin, some lucky film-goers spent an afternoon in September of 1978 watching Taste the Blood of Dracula, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave and Dracula A.D. 1972.

If Hammer wasn’t your thing (really?), there were plenty of other sights and sounds to take in that weekend:  Nazi zombie flick Shock Waves opened at the Imperial Six: kids could see The Cat from Outer Space at the Bayview Village Cinema (”Children $1.50 Anytime,” says the ad): Omen II was flickering at the Parkway Drive-In: and although it opened earlier that summer, Jaws 2 was playing in just about every other cinema with a functioning projector.

Source: The Toronto Star, Friday, September 8, 1978.

“This picture will not amuse or interest children,” reads a March 10, 1933 ad for She Done Him Wrong. The Toronto Star’s disclaimer was rather tame compared to the cries of indecency coming from various Catholic groups around the U.S. It’s often been said this film led to the formation of the Catholic Legion of Decency and the subsquent enforcement of the Production Code, whereby Hollywood would endure three decades of censorship.

Tonight, the Cinematheque Ontario is showing She Done Him Wrong as part of “Under the Spell: Surrealism and the Cinema”. Rather than being eight screenings of Un Chien Andalou — which is what my cynical mind expected –  the Cinematheque’s programming also includes Spellbound (May 24, 7pm), the Marx Bros. in Monkey Business (Jun 2, 7pm), Battleshop Potemkin (May 28, 7pm) and Le Sang d’Un Poete (May 29, 8:45pm).

Seeing Monkey Business in this context is exciting, since it really is the Bros. in their most anarchic state. As opposed to all the other Paramount films and the MGM musicals that followed, Groucho is not leading a country, dean of a college or a (horse) doctor. All four Marx Bros. are on equal ground, causing havoc for the elite aboard an ocean liner. It also features one of my favorite moments in any Marx film: as they are being chased by the liner’s crew, they perform a strangely chaotic musical interlude in an empty hall.  It’s surely one of the most surrealist moments of their films.

Accompanying each screening will be short films by Rene Clair, Luis Bunuel, Jean Vigo, and tonight’s presentation, Warhol’s Dali Screen Tests.

In the late 1970s, you could venture down a five block strip of Toronto’s Yonge St. — from Gerrard to Queen — and find several cinemas offering the kind of trashy celluloid fare you could only dream of seeing in a theatre nowadays.

By Eric Veillette

Today, the city’s flagship street and main tourist destination is oddly devoid of street-front cinemas. On Dundas, across the street from the former Downtown Theatre is this massive crypt of a multiplex known as the AMC, but it barely holds a candle to the cinematic landscape one could find a few decades ago.

Starting at the northeast corner of Yonge at Gerrard was the Coronet, which opened as the Savoy in 1951. It played second-run fare for many years; by the late 70s, when many theatres were either shutting down or splitting into multiple screens, the Coronet kept plowing, sometimes showing five films on the same bill for $3.50. It was known as a working-class theatre, where the staff rarely objected to patrons bringing in outside food, drinks, spirits or illicit pleasantries. It finally closed down in 1983 and became a jewelry store which still exists. When you walk by the building today, the theatre’s brown canopy still hangs above the sidewalk. It’s one of the few remnants of a theatre that once hosted a double bill of Mark of the Devil and Satan’s Sabbath, where yes, barf bags were provided.

Heading south, you could catch a Sonny Chiba triple bill for $3 at the Rio, a 500-seat cinema located at 373 Yonge St. which now houses an adult video and toy store. One of the oldest flicker-houses in the city, it first opened as The Big Nickel in 1913, was known as The National for some time and by 1938 it had settled permanently as The Rio. In its twilight years, the building was in a permanently shoddy state: one could easily miss some of the kung-fu action because of an 18-inch gash ripped into the screen; and a section of the ceiling dripping god-only-knows down onto the seats seemed about ready to cave in. The latter was brought to the attention of the Director of the Theatres Branch, which by then must have been frustrating job due to the decline of many former palaces and neighbourhood theatres. When the area was sectioned off with velvet rope (fancy!), it did little to detract patrons from crossing over and sitting below a potential avalanche of water and asbestos. Some people take their movie-watching seriously and prefer an element of danger to go along with it.

The renovations imposed by the Theatres Branch were performed at the Rio in early 1980, but the theatres’ various states of disrepair hardly mattered to the patrons. Whether you were going to see a b-movie at the Biltmore, seeking titillation from the heavily-censored adult fare at the Cinema 2000 or if you were merely a lost soul seeking shelter for the afternoon, these places brought together people from various walks of life. It was one of the final hurrahs of this communal experience; it would soon be usurped by the living room, mechanically easing itself into clunky BetaMax and VHS players near a welcome mat that read “Be kind, rewind.”

The Rio outlasted plenty of cinemas on Yonge St. but it closed in 1990.

The Elgin — part of a Pantheon of Toronto theatres which includes the Royal Alexandra and Pantages — was in a similar state of disrepair in the 70s, and you couldn’t have it any other way. Prior to its restoration in the 1980s, the opera boxes near the stage were ripped out in order to accomodate the installation of wider screens and the upholstery of the seats was mis-matched throughout the auditorium, but the truth is you weren’t going there to be enamoured with the place. In September of 1978, during a Hammer Dracula triple-bill, you could spend over five hours watching Christopher Lee give the old two-fang special to a bevy of British babes like Caroline Munro and Barbara Ewing, match wits with his old nemesis Peter Cushing and always, always meet an unrelenting defeat. The Elgin eventually joined the ranks of the Cinema 2000, Biltmore and Coronet and showed soft-core fare as well.

But despite the trash film-goers saw on the screens, Yonge St. really had quite the bawdy reputation in the 1970s. The majority of the city’s 75 massage parlours were above store fronts on the very blocks where these cinemas resided. In many ways ‘the strip’ was often compared to the seediness of New York City’s Times Square.

By 1979 things had changed significantly. Toronto Star reporter Lynda Hurst wrote that after the grisly murder of a 12-year shoe-shine old boy named Emmanuel Jaques, law enforcement and city officials called for a “halt to the blatant sexual hawking” which had occurred after the introduction of more liberal laws regarding topless bars. On July 28, 1977, Jaques was raped and killed atop the Charlie’s Angel Massage Parlour at 245 Yonge St. It is now the site of a currency exchange.

“Few events in Toronto’s history so changed a city,” says a press release for the documentary The Shoeshine Boy. The public outcry was harsh and the cleanup efforts apparently worked, as Hurst confirmed with Toronto Police Sgt. Richard Dewhirst: “There’s not much happening right now,” he said. “That’s not to say there won’t be tomorrow. It’s cyclical.”

As for the adults-only fare shown in the Yonge St. theatres, the scissor-happy officials of the Ontario Censor Board always prevented you from seeing as little skin as possible. “I remember seeing a couple of German tourists in one of those places,” said Dewhirst.  “They were killing themselves laughing. They couldn’t believe that anyone would find this titillating.”

Titillating or not, those days are long gone. Although some peep-show style viewing booths still exist, there isn’t a marquee in sight to announce a Christina Lindberg or Uschi Digard flick or something from one of the many Bruce Lee clones that popped out of nowhere after 1973.

In 2009,  when you walk south from Gerrard, the large screens at Dundas Square advertise CTV’s latest shows; the AMC has multi-story length billboards for a summer blockbuster; Clairol is hawking some sort of cosmetic product. If Lynda Hurst thought Yonge St. had shed its trash and sleaze in 1979, it’s but a speckle of a memory in 2009.

Sources:
Kendall, David. “The Peeling Rio’s Reeling”, Toronto Sun. Feb. 28, 1980.
Hurst, Lynda. “Yonge St. shedding its sleaze”, Toronto Star. Oct. 5, 1979.
Druckman, Howard. “Coronet Theatre Victim of a Gem of a Location”, Toronto Star. Aug 6, 1983.

Many thanks to Jovanka V. for the barf-bag pic at the Rue Morgue House of Horror. Top graphic was created using various ads from the Toronto Star, 1972-1980. And if you’re going to ’save-as’ the images on this site and put them up on your own, please link back here. Plenty of time goes into cleaning them up so the least you can do is give me some traffic.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article commemorating the arrival of talking pictures for the Toronto Star. Here is a lengthier version of the piece which ran on January 3, 2009.

Eighty years ago, on Dec. 28, 1928, the talkies came to Toronto.

Despite the freezing weather that winter evening, over a thousand movie-goers ventured out to the Tivoli, located at the intersection of Richmond  and Victoria Sts. to see a midnight preview of The Terror, a haunted-house whodunit.

This was more than a year after a New York City audience watched and listened as Al Jolson got down on one knee and sang “My Mammy” during The Jazz Singer premiere on Oct. 6, 1927 at Warner Bros. Theatre.  Contrary to popular belief, that wildly successful “photo-dramatic production” didn’t make it to Toronto until mid-January 1929.

The Terror, Warner Bros.’ second talkie, exploited a popular 1920s genre and featured May McAvoy, who co-starred with Jolson in The Jazz Singer. The Evening Telegram and The Daily Star were quick to praise the film, with the Star claiming: “The Terror will hold you spellbound from beginning to end. It’s spooky, creepy, mystifying, terrifying beyond belief.” Another reviewer claimed it would not have had the same effect as a silent film.

While The Terror is no longer commercially available, contemporary critics have been less than ecstatic about the film. A film collector from Wales,  who tracked down the Vitaphone disc some years ago, calls the film a static mess, where the flow of the camera is limited by the boundaries of the recording equipment – a typical comment about early sound films. The Terror would be remade in 1938.

No doubt, though, the audience sitting in the plush stadium-style seats of the Tivoli was completely enthralled. For the first time in a feature film, they could hear the creaking of the stairs, the ghostly wind and the voices of all the characters. “Even the credits were spoken,” said the Star.

The Terror was the highlight of the evening, but patrons were also treated to much more than a feature film: Luigi Romanelli’s Orchestra, a Tivoli staple for many years, performed several hits of the day. Some of those hits included “It Goes Like This” and “There’s a Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder,” two popular fox trots featured by Victor Records that week. On the screen, viewers were informed of world events by a Movietone newsreel, which included a speech by the King of Spain. That was followed by a number of short films, and a  performance by The Ingenues from the Ziegfeld Follies.

The Terror was a big draw, and it played for several weeks at an admission of 75 cents – a huge premium over the 25 cents you would pay at the Loews Yonge St. just a few blocks north. It was finally replaced by The Jazz Singer on Jan. 18, by which time the Tivoli had adopted the tagline “Talkies the Talk of Toronto.”

The Road to Sound

Blending sound and film was a long and tortuous process, which saw numerous failures.  It was recently examined in the documentary The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk, which was included in the three-disc DVD release marking the 80th anniversary of The Jazz Singer in 2007.

Thomas Edison and his contemporaries had attempted to synchronize the two technologies ever since they had co-existed, but the public was generally indifferent to their efforts.

Introducing sound systems was an expensive investment for theatres, and only the big ones were able to afford it.  The Uptown was the next theatre to introduce talkies, opening on Jan. 5, 1929, with Paramount’s first talkie, Interference, starring William Powell and Evelyn Brent.

Some theatres remained loyal to the silents; ticket sales were still abundant despite the new technology. Those silent films screening at the time included Colleen Moore in Synthetic Sin at The Pantages, Greta Garbo in A Woman of Affairs at the Loews Yonge St., and Buster Keaton in The Cameraman over at the Royce, a neighbourhood theatre off Edwin St.

Dark Days Ahead

Toronto was enjoying a period of unparalleled prosperity in 1928, as a result of increased agricultural production, rapid natural resource development and easy access to credit. Housing prices had increased significantly, and the early development of prime real estate like the Royal York Hotel and the Canadian Imperial Bank building on King St. added to the city’s attractiveness and sense of well-being.

As 1928 came to a close, the local newspapers remained optimistic for the year ahead. Others were blessed with a little more foresight; Charles MacDonald, president of Confederation Life Assurance, warned: “We must not be too optimistic, and keep our feet on the ground. Prosperity moves in cycles.”

One of the premiere showplaces in Toronto, The Tivoli was host to the Toronto premieres of such films as Dracula (1931) and Modern Times (1936), offering escapism from the dismal days of the Great Depression. It opened in 1917 as part of the nation-wide Allen chain, but their interests were bought by Famous Players  in 1923.  On November 4, 1964, the projectors flickered for the last time and the building was demolished the following May.

Today, when you stand at the intersection of Richmond and Victoria, there’s no way to tell that 80 years ago, a great long line of people stood in front of the 1,553-seat theatre to be among the first to witness the latest technological achievement in cinema.

[Sources and images: The Toronto Daily Star, December 27, 28, 29, 30, 1928; The Toronto Telegram, January 18, 1929. Top image of the Tivoli (dated January 1932) from the Archives of Ontario: RG 56-11-0-101-3 ]

After a longer-than-expected hiatus, we return with a new story about the cinemas that once lined the West Toronto Junction.

By Eric Veillette

Imagine an 800-seat theatre in the Junction, with an elegant marbleized lobby and a state-of-the-art theatre organ that could simulate a full orchestra.

Consider, too, management’s efforts to lure children to the cinema with the prize of a Shetland pony for best attendance.

The Beaver Theatre opened Nov. 24, 1913 on Dundas St. W., east of Pacific Ave.  That was just four years after the community, a then prosperous manufacturing centre crossed by four rail lines, was annexed by the City of Toronto. This month, residents began centennial celebrations to mark that 1909 event.

The luxurious venue for vaudeville and cinema was unquestionably the crown jewel along Dundas near Keele St. But it wasn’t the only theatre serving the 12,000 citizens of the Village of West Toronto Junction. Just to the east, the owner, William Joy, had already launched the Wonderland, on Dec. 7, 1907. Another nickelodeon had opened even before that in the community, which had voted to go dry in 1904. (The prohibition lasted 93 years.)

Not far away on Roncesvalles, the 550-seat Revue Cinema had also begun showing films in 1912.

Ryerson University professor Paul S. Moore, in his 2008 book Now Playing: Early Moviegoing and the Regulation of Fun, has examined the phenomenon of this new mass entertainment, tracking its evolution in Toronto from the 1906 opening of the city’s first theatorium. By 1914, he writes, there were 100 such establishments, serving a city of more than 200,000.

Obviously, competition among theatres was fierce. Newspaper advertisements frothed with hyperbole, proclaiming the grandest, most luxurious and most palatial establishments in town.

The owners were certainly not above some serious marketing. The Beaver, within weeks of opening, gave a coupon to admission-paying patrons under the age of 16.  At the contest’s end, the child with the most coupons would win a real live Shetland pony.

“Nothing pleases the young folks more than a tiny pony, so it is expected that the children of the city will set about collecting the coupons with particular energy,” said the Toronto Sunday World. (No word on where a child might keep the prize, or how parents would feed the beast.)

The Beaver’s promotion was bold. A recent article in the Revue Cinema’s bi-weekly R Magazine described the hue and cry raised by local trustees the year before over granting the Revue’s theatre licence because of movies’ corrupting  influence on children.

Some theatres, though, may have tried to placate critics with an educational component. As mentioned in a previous article on this site, a 1916 newspaper advertisement for Charles Chaplin’s short film Shanghaied at the Gem Theatre in New Brunswick asked: “Boys and girls! Have you sent your Chaplin essays in yet? If not – get busy!”

The Beaver truly was impressive, attracting patrons from other Toronto neighbourhoods and beyond. Construction Magazine remarked that it was “somewhat more pretentious than the average moving picture building.”

It was also one of the first in town to feature the Mighty Wurlitzer, a theatre organ called a unit orchestra, which could faithfully reproduce all the sounds of a pipe-organ, as well as a full orchestra.

On opening night, which included both vaudeville and short films, Robert Hope-Jones, the inventor of the unit orchestra, was present. Meticulous and eccentric, he often clashed with the Wurlitzer company after his firm merged with it. In 1914, depressed by loss of control over his invention, he committed suicide in Rochester, N.Y.

Torontonians can still appreciate his innovations. The Wurlitzer from Shea’s Hippodrome – now the site of Nathan Phillips Square – resides at Casa Loma.  This article explains how the instrument was saved from the same wrecking ball that demolished the Hippodrome in 1956. Because of those efforts and its subsequent restoration, the Mighty Wurlitzer’s boastful sounds recently filled a hall in Toronto’s grand castle as organist Clark Williams played along to the 1925 version of Ben Hur.

The Beaver was demolished in 1962 and a postal outlet and dry cleaner now reside on its former site. Other Junction theatres, including the Mavety, the Crescent and the Prince James, suffered the same fate.  The building for another silent-era theatre, the Crystal, later renamed the Apollo, at 2901 Dundas St. W., still stands,  its narrow, diagonal corridor now a hair salon.

Junction residents, however, still have a theatorium not too far away! Despite many ups-and-downs, the Revue’s projector still flickers, the popcorn’s aplenty and the seats are comfy. Now about that pony…

With acknowledgement to Ellen Moorhouse and Paul S. Moore. This article also appears in the May 13-28 edition of R Magazine. Top photo: Dundas St. looking west from Mavety, Dec 3, 1923 (TTC Archives #2853). Sources include : Toronto Star Weekly, Nov. 24, 1913; Toronto Sunday World, Dec. 7, 1913. Many thanks to Colin G. for finding the handbill in a flea market.

This week, the final curtain fell on a decade-old debacle in Toronto when former theatre impresario Garth Drabinsky was found guilty of fraud and forgery in an Ontario court. A modern day mogul, Drabinsky produced several staples of Canadian cult cinema like The Changeling and The Silent Partner; with Cineplex Odeon and Nat Taylor he built the first megaplex cinema; and after being ousted from Cineplex, he created Livent, a live theatre production company which not only produced the shows, it held licenses to the productions and also owned the theatres in which the shows were performed. Not since the days of Marcus Loew had someone held such reign over the theatre world.

Not to mention the massive greed and the mis-appropriation of funds which led to his downfall, Drabinsky was well-known for his brash ego: he was a micro-manager who had his hands involved in all levels of production; an ill-tempered tyrant who would, as the Toronto Star reported today, “pick up bits of popcorn littering the lobby, and then [shout] at the counter staff.”

Despite his reputation and the guilty verdict, in the early ’90s Drabinsky grabbed Broadway by the balls and helped make Toronto the third largest theatre centre in the world. One of his lasting Toronto legacies will likely be the late ’80s restoration of the Pantages Theatre, which would become home to The Phantom of the Opera for over a decade.

The Pantages, which first opened in 1920, was — and still is — one of Canada’s grandest theatres. When Vaudeville died down in the early 1920s it became the cinema showplace, hosting the premieres for classic films like the Marx Bros. Horsefeathers (1932). The theatre was re-named the Imperial in 1930 after theatre magnate Alexander Pantages was found guilty of raping a chorus girl. His conviction was later overturned, but his reputation with the public was ruined and his name was soon removed from the marquees of the theatres in his hold.

By 1972, filling the Imperial’s 3000+ seats was more than problematic: television, the economy as well as new methods in distribution saw a change in film-going. Architect Mandel Sprachman, son of famed theatre architect Abe Sprachman, redesigned the Imperial into six different screens and gave the building a new facade. Gone was the glitz of the marquee’s bright bulbs which had lit up Yonge St. throughout the years; replacing it was a toned-down affair reflecting the era in which it was built. Above the entryway was a greyish, granite wall with a circle in the middle, and a true-type 70s font reading “Imperial Six”. The “new” theatre opened on Jun 21, 1973.

In many ways, the newly-designed facade looked more like a memorial. As Mandel Sprachman said himself: “If I didn’t step in, those grand old opulent cinema temples would be torn down and replaced with parking lots and high-rises. What I do is give old cinemas a new lease on life. Architecturally speaking I do my damnedest to help the old and the new live together.”  The City of Toronto Archives has a wealth of information on Sprachman’s career.

So who knows. Sprachman saved the Imperial from a certain fate in 1973, but it was Drabinsky’s vision of a restored theatre which averted another swing of the wrecking ball in the late ’80s. It may have missed the theatre, but on the way back it hit Garth where it hurts most.

This evening, the Bat Signal will illuminate the Annex area of uptown Toronto, but don’t expect to see the Caped Crusader skyjacking out of First Canadian Place with some white-collar criminal. Instead, you’ll find him on the screen at the Bloor Cinema for a 35mm presentation of Tim Burton’s Batman.

I haven’t seen it on a big screen since the Harbourfront Centre did an outdoor series of Burton’s films during the summer of 2003. Tonight’s free screening will be following a free advanced screening of Watchmen.

The buildup during the month of June of 1989 was exhilarating for a 10 year old. The teaser poster was visible everytime you drove by the Victory Theatre on Cedar St. in my hometown of Timmins. Every magazine, newspaper, t-shirt –  you name it — had Batman or The Joker on it. My birthday was a week after the film premiered and seeing the film the day after it opened was an early birthday gift from my uncle. For my birthday itself, everything I got had the Dark Knight on it, from movie programmes, die-cast cars, the novelization and a t-shirt –  one of my favorites — that disappeared a few years later.

I saw the film 7 times over the course of that summer. Six times at a hardtop cinema and once at the drive-in. But it was more than just Batman, as the summer of 1989 was arguably the biggest blockbuster summer of my childhood: Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II, Star Trek V, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Parenthood and Uncle Buck made some people in Hollywood a few bucks. Some films like UHF didn’t make as much money, but still figure among my favorite films.

So as I sit back in a seat at the Bloor tonight, my head will be boppin’ up and down to the sound of Prince’s phoned-in soundtrack, the muzak for the Smilex ads and Vicki Vale’s constant wailing.

On another note, things have been rather lax at 32 Elvis Movies, but even thoughwe’re in the middle of planning our next screening event, there is some great nostalgia coming your way very soon!

Above photo of the Famous Players Oakville Town Centre, July 1989. The theatre was designed by renown architect Mandel Sprachman, who also re-deisgned famous Toronto theatres such as the Imperial, the Elgin and the Uptown.

by Jesse Hawken

They knocked down the above-ground parking lot at the Eaton Centre a few years ago and with it, the late, not particularly lamented Cineplex theatre that was situated at the base of the parkade. The Eaton Centre Cineplex was the first mega-multiplex theatre in the world. There were 18 screens when it opened in 1979, expanding to 21 a few years later. When the place first opened it was more of an art-house theatre, for the most part, with subtitled movies, a cafe, art hanging on the walls and everything. When I was a kid, I saw the strangest films there - Storm Boy, The Public Enemy with James Cagney, weekly 2-for-1 double-bills of James Bond movies, shown in chronological order (it was here where I renounced my childhood delusion that Roger Moore was James Bond when I caught up with all the Connery ones). Around 1982, the programming became more mainstream, more in keeping with what films the mall culture would want to see. This was around the time Drabinsky made his big play for expansion of the Cineplex corporation into the States - it all started when they programmed Blame It On Rio there… eventually all the art-house programming went up to the Carlton and all the little screens of the Eaton Centre filled up with all the hot, obvious titles that played and played until they got cold, which could sometime take months. The further back you went into the bowels of the complex, the older the movies got.

Jesse Hawken blogs over at the Telekino Times-Picayune.

[The Cineplex Eaton Centre opened on Tuesday, April 17, 1979. The first films to play there were: The Tree of Wooden Clogs, The Shout, Purple Taxi, Rain and Shine, Queen of the Gypsies, Newsfront, The Rubber Gun, and Tommy. Also accompanying the films were various shorts, some of which were produced by the NFB. -Ed.]

Get Your Man, a Paramount Picture starring Clara Bow and Charles “Buddy” Rogers, premiered at Toronto’s Uptown Theatre on December 24, 1927. The duo had already appeared together in Wings earlier that same year. The film was your typical mixed-up 20s farce, with Bow trying to win Rogers’ heart. The only problem is that Rogers has been bethrothed to a family friend since childhood, and they’re now set to be married.

The film originally ran for 60 minutes; Unfortunately, the print held by the Library of Congress is missing the second and third of six reels, so until the remnants are unearthed somewhere, we’ll have to wait to see the film in its entirety.

Clara Bow wasn’t the only silent star illuminating the silver screen throughout the holiday season of 1927.  Over at the Pantages, Bebe Daniels could be seen in She’s a Sheik, Lon Chaney in the now-lost London After Midnight at the Loews Yonge St., and at the Regent, Douglas Fairbanks and Lupe Velez in The Gaucho. A silent film lover’s dream, for sure!

For more information on the Uptown, check out a post I wrote over at the Midnight Madness Blog!

Image: Toronto Telegram, Saturday, December 24, 1927.

Odeon Theatres had much to be thankful for in 1948, as their flagship theatre, the Odeon Toronto, was built at the corner of Yonge and Carlton. The mighty British cinema chain opened its new theatre - dubbed “The Showplace of the Dominion” - on September 5 with a premiere of Oliver Twist, starring Alec Guinness as Fagin.

The 2300 seat Odeon Toronto was an unconventional beast built at a time when most of the new theatres were modest in both size and extravagance. Its development signaled a near-renaissance of the Movie Palace, not seen since the construction of the Loews and Pantages in the 10s and 20s. Armed with post-war optimism, Famous Players would build The University theatre at Yonge and Bloor in early 1949. A grand and marvelous structure, it was profiled here earlier this year.

According to John Lindsay in Palaces of the Night: Canada’s Grand Theatres, the theatre, now known as the Odeon Carlton, closed for the final time on one “sad, cold night” in 1974, at a time when many of the large theatres were facing the wrecking ball . Others, like the Uptown and the Imperial on Yonge St., were saved from that indecency and were converted into multiplex theatres. The Odeon Toronto, with its curved, streamlined street-corner facade,  was not lucky enough to be saved. It had been offered to the City of Toronto, but petty disputes rejected the offer altogether. The building was destroyed soon after, and the signage on the pylon, jutting out into the sky like a wartime munitions factory, would never again light up the corner of Yonge & Carlton . No trace of the former theatre exists today, but next door to its former location is The Carlton, a small multiplex theatre well known for showing art house films.

At the time of Odeon Toronto’s opening, Odeon Theatres, a subsidiary of the Rank Organization, had made an aggressive expansion into Canadian territory, which would grow to 168 theatres by 1978. By then, Odeon Canada had become a wholly Canadian-owned corporation. A few years later, in 1984, Garth Drabinsky and Nat Taylor’s Cineplex Corporation swallowed up Odeon Theatres Canada to form Cineplex Odeon.

The Year Ahead

As 2008 comes to a close, I’d like to thank every single person who visited this site since it was launched in August. For all the research assistance, I’d like to thank the staff at the Archives of Toronto and Ontario, as well as Josee Gagnon of the Timmins Public Library and Karen Bachmann of the Timmins Museum. Many thanks go out to my editors and proofreaders, among them Melissa Fuhr, Roger Rousseau, and Ellen Moorhouse.

Bringing to light the stories of Canada’s many movie palaces and neighbourhood theatres is a serious passion of mine, and I’m very happy with the feedback I’ve received so far. For the next year, expect more profiles about the theatres you remember from days gone by, but we will also be featuring modern profiles of those individuals who are making a difference in keeping the art of movie-going alive in cities like Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and elsewhere.

Have a fantastic 2009.

Eric Veillette

by Eric Veillette

A little over a year ago, my girlfriend and I moved into an apartment in the Forest Hill area, kitty-corner to what was once the flagship cinema of the Famous Players theatre chain: The Eglinton. It closed down in early 2002, when Famous Players refused to comply with an Ontario Human Rights Commision directive to make the theatre wheelchair accessible. Although dedicated as a Heritage Site by the city, preserving the original facade, it has since become an upscale event hall. Coming home at night is always a joy, as the original, brilliant marquee, still in place, shines brightly to onlookers heading east and west. It is among my favorites, second only to Montreal’s Snowdon Theatre. Unfortunately, the marquee no longer greets you with the possibility of seeing “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 7:30″ or “Myrna Loy & William Powell in The Thin Man Goes Home 2:00″ - you’re stuck with “David’s Bar Mitzvah!” or “When Larry met Rebecca!”

The Eglinton Theatre was designed by architects Kaplan & Sprachman. Located on the north side of the first block west of Avenue Rd. on Eglinton Ave., it is one of the city’s greatest examples of 1930’s Art-Deco style. Prior to designing the Eglinton, Kaplan & Sprachman had designed other neighborhood theatres such as The Circle (1932) at Yonge & Sherwood, and The Cameo (1934) at Pape and Cosburn. At a cost of $200 000, you never would have thought the country was in the grip of the Great Depression when this majestic theatre was built. At the time, Forest Hill was a young suburban neighborhood whose residents were mainly Anglo-Protestants, and this new building provided a new attraction for the growing area. There was no need to start up the Packard and head to the Uptown Theatre when you lived around the corner from such a great theatre!

The 800-seat theatre, funded by Famous Players, was operated by the Capitol Entertainment Theatres group, which also operated The Parkdale, The St-Clair, The Runnymede, and The Bloor — which is now Lee’s Palace — among many others. Of those operating at the time of the Eglinton’s premiere, The Belsize is the only building still operating as a cinema. It is now The Regent, on Mount Pleasant Ave, and has retained much of its old charm.

While many theatres were built in Toronto after the arrival of talking pictures, very few of them went to such length to be acoustically designed with talkies in mind. The Eglinton was unique in that the sound system, ceiling and walls were acoustically treated to carry well throughout the hall. Another highlight was air conditioning, still quite a novelty in neighborhood theatres of its time. Many of the chain-operated theatres who could afford to do so had converted to climate-control in order to attract more customers from the independents.

Opening night

On April 2, 1936, (The Eglinton Grand’s official site erroneously reports the opening night as April 15), patrons lined the block westward on Eglinton Ave. to be among the first to step foot in the new theatre. The prices back then varied a little from today’s: 35 cents got you into the orchestra seating, and 45 cents got you into the loge circle, where you could also smoke. In Toronto Sketches 8, Mike Filey describes how every seat in the loge was equipped with its own ashtray. The opening night’s prices were slightly inflated due to the occasion, as two weeks later, when you could see James Cagney and Pat O’Brien in Howard Hawks’ Ceiling Zero, orchestra seating would cost you 25 cents. That’s what people were paying over at The Imperial, one of Toronto’s grandest movie palace of the day.

Lining up the street that night, I wonder what was on people’s minds? Perhaps some patrons discussed that one of the biggest media sensations of the 1930s was about to come to an end the next day, as Bruno Hauptmann, the convicted kidnapper and murderer of the Lindbergh Baby, was sentenced to die in the electric chair. Maybe someone was telling an acquaintance of his about the new Northern Electric radio he just bought at Eddie Black’s store over on Yonge St. The kids must’ve loved it, since The Green Hornet had premiered on various radio networks in the United States in January of 1936. Maybe people discussed the threat of war, as the Nazis had just violated the Treaty of Versailles, or maybe they didn’t discuss these things at all - they were stepping into this place in order to escape all of this and forget about what was going on in the outside world.

The King of Burlesque seemed like an odd choice for a “Gala Premiere” of this kind, as the film had been out for a few months, and was already playing at The Palace and The Beach that week. The reason for this was that even though it was a movie-house of pure elegance, The Eglinton was a second-run theatre, which would play films after some of the larger movie houses like the Loews would run them. That didn’t really matter, because on an occasion like this, the movie was practically secondary. People were lined up to see this new theatre, with state of the art sound while sound films were still in its infancy, a much larger screen than those found in other neighborhood cinemas, and the plush comfort of the seats as you sink in and enjoy the show.

So what was The King of Burlesque all about? Warner Baxter plays Kerry Bolton, a burlesque producer who moves into legitimate theatre, scoring hit after hit and is dubbed the “Czar of Broadway”. After meeting the girl of his dreams, he casts her in the lead of a new show, which turns out to be a flop, and after a series of money-losers, Bolton is penniless and down and out, no thanks to his arrogance and lack of respect for others. Jack Oakie, who later lampooned Mussolini in The Great Dictator, plays Bolton’s General Manager, and Alice Faye is the leading lady. Like many films of the era, the film showcased a character’s rise through greed, and although this particular film ends on a happier note, unlike The Roaring Twenties a few years later, it serves as a moral lesson. The Depression-era audience needed a little bit of that. It was still a perfect spectacle film for the audience that night, as it featured some great musical numbers, and even had Fats Waller in the cast! The audience that night was treated to much more than a movie, as the ad suggested ‘Other Eglinton Features’. There was probably some live entertainment, perhaps a line of chorus girls and someone singing a Maurice Chevalier tune. Once the programme was under way, the audience probably got a sneak peak at some coming attractions to play at The Eglinton in the coming weeks, as well as a cartoon, a musical short, and perhaps a Robert Benchley film. The talkies may have been responsible for the downfall of Vaudeville, but they took from it and kept alive the spirit of an entire evening’s worth of entertainment. How times have changed!

As the years go by

Within a year, plenty of new shops had opened up along Eglinton Ave. A couple out on a date might have popped by the Esquire Shop at 402 Eglinton for a quick bite to eat before seeing the latest James Cagney film, and I’m sure the kids dropped by the Jenny Lind Candy Shop next door to the Esquire for some gum drops to eat during the Saturday matinee. Some shops in the area are still there today: Sid’s Cleaners at 526 Eglinton, and Young’s Market Fruits, although the latter has moved a few doors down.

With one cinema not sufficing for such a prosperous area, The Eglinton encountered some competition in the late 1930s when Waterloo Theatres opened up the 680 seat Avenue, at the corner of Eglinton and Braemar. According to John Sebert in his book The Nabes: Toronto’s Wonderful Neighborhood Movie Houses, The Avenue never reached its full potential in the area, and during the war years, it was purchased by Famous Players, eliminating the competition.

In the early 1960s, The Eglinton moved to a reserved-seating format which had proven quite popular at other theatres like the Imperial. In 1960, Famous Players introduced three-strip Cinerama at the Eglinton, with Windjammer, followed by the world premiere of Holiday in Spain in 1961. In has been said that the Cinerama at the Eglinton was in name only, as while the screen was quite large, it curved only slightly, negating many of the effects of the technology. By December of 1961, a new flat screen was installed. The reserved-seating format stuck around for a few more years, with films such as Doctor Dolittle, Hello Dolly, and The Sound of Music. The latter ran in this format for an astounding 146 weeks!

By the 1980s, The Eglinton had gone the way of many of the older neighborhood theatres and had definitely seen better days. “The Eglinton, particularly in her latter days, attracted a tawdry crew,” said former candy-girl Elizabeth Renzetti. In a April 2002 issue of Toronto Life, she recounts the time a metal-head threw a shoe through the screen during a screening of AC/DC: Let There Be Rock. Despite the grime from years of fingers and hands touching along the walls and the wear on the art deco pylon, the lights still shined brightly every night as the marquee announced the evening’s programme.

Its opulence did return for a brief moment, when in April of 1996, Famous Players celebrated the Eglinton’s 60th anniversary. On the bill throughout the month were some of the greatest classics ever shown at the theatre: The Wizard of Oz, An American in Paris, Sunset Boulevard, Witness for the Prosecution, and countless others. Newer classics weren’t neglected, either: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gremlins and Blade Runner were also featured. Making it an even sweeter deal, admission to each film was only $2.50 – still closer to its original $0.35 admission than we pay today, and if you happened to turn 60 in 1996, you got in for free!

The Avenue Theatre is now long gone, as is the building that once housed it. In its place is now a building of retail outlets, one of them, a typical Eglinton West boutique selling overpriced shoes; the other, a restaurant, currently vacant, with everlasting “Opening Soon” signage. Near Bathurst, at 875 Eglinton West, once stood The Nortown Cinema, but like the plight of many neighborhood cinemas during the rise of the multiplexes, it is gone as well. The Eglinton has outlived them all.

Sources: Toronto Star, March 30, April 2, 1936; Palaces of the Night: Canada’s Grand Theatres, John Lindsay; Toronto Life, April 2002. Box Office, April 1961.

Interested in a little more information about the Eglinton? Check out the Eglinton’s entry at Parks Canada’s National Historic Sites of Toronto Urban Walks page.

32 Elvis Movies is hoping to inject a little classic horror into Toronto’s October film calendar, so we present our first-annual Halloween Film Event!

WHAT IS IT? A special 16mm screening of the Halperin Bros. classic White Zombie.

WHEN IS IT? Monday, October 27. Doors open at 7:30, and please arrive early – seating is limited! Admission is only $8.00! Show will start at 8:30!

WHERE IS IT? Cine-Cycle! Located down the lane behind 129 Spadina (near Richmond), Cine-Cycle is a bicycle repair shop by day and micro-cinema by night! A snack bar will be available, and owner Martin Heath will be on hand to serve his famous lattes from a 1950 La San Marco espresso machine.

THE EVENT!

Fans of Bela Lugosi, zombies and classic horror — join us on October 27 as we celebrate White Zombie — not only one of the greatest horror films ever made, but the first to feature zombies! Check out the trailer!

Plagued by cheap video and DVD copies derived from 2nd and 3rd generation sources, White Zombie is a real gem that has rarely been seen on Toronto’s screens since it premiered at the Loew’s theatre in August of 1932.

By celebrating the spirit of showmanship, admission grants you access to much more than a movie; throughout the evening you will be subject to a chilling programme of cartoons, shorts, and fantastic trailers — all on 16mm! As an added bonus, excerpts from your favorite Universal Monsters films will be projected on the screen as you arrive, so get there early, as seating will be limited!

And don’t forget to grab your raffle ticket at the door, because we’ve got some ghoulish prizes to give away!!

THE FILM!!

One of the first independent horror films of the sound era, White Zombie was released in 1932 to a public demanding more chills, thrills and more importantly — more Lugosi. Shot on the Universal lot in eleven days for a mere $62 000, the film showcases many props and sets used in Dracula. Joining Bela Lugosi are Madge Bellamy, John Harron, and Clarence Muse, the first actor to utter the word “zombie” in a sound film!

In one of his greatest screen performances, Lugosi plays Murder Legendre, a plantation owner and voodoo practitioner. When a young man enacts a Faustian bargain with Legendre to lure the woman he loves away from her fiance, Legendre instead turns her into a zombie slave.

SEE! Bela Lugosi in one of his most sinister roles!
HEAR! Xavier Cugat’s haunting score!

Want more info? Check out our Facebook Event Listing!

Presented by 32elvismovies.com, Ultra 8 Pictures and Vagrancy Films!

The Downtown Theatre

by Hal Kelly

“Going to the movies is my hobby. I go to other theatres, but the Downtown is my favorite. I like westerns, especially ones with Audie Murphy, but ANY good action or adventure picture usually gives me my money’s worth.”

- Irvine Exley, 55, war pensioner

The Downtown Theatre was located one short block south of Dundas at the north east corner of the largely vacant Yonge and Dundas Square right across from the Hard Rock Café. The closest thing to movie theatre in those parts now is that craptacular celluloid-free, all digital AMC 24 mausoleum.

According to a 1968 article in the old Toronto Telegram, the Downtown Theatre was built in 1948 for a then astronomical price tag of $750,000 and featured a marquee that blazed 4,000 electric lights. In it’s heyday, The Downtown had one of the busiest theatrical concession stands in the country. On an average week, the Downtown moved 7500 soft drinks, 1000 hot dogs, 5000 chocolate bars, 600 cups of coffee and 2000 bags of popcorn with none of that flavor power bull@#$% to stain fingers. Incredibly, one Christmas week the total number of sugary soda sold amounted to a staggering 10,650 units. Of course all that was long before I started going to the Downtown ‘cause even though I have grey hair and I know who Mamie Van Doren is I’m NOT THAT OLD. I swear.

I went there as a young teenager in the early seventies when the Downtown was burning its waning projector bulbs on primo double bills comprised of one new feature and a vintage second run crowd pleaser. What made me a repeat customer at the Downtown was its direct pipeline to the latest, greatest entertainment from A.I.P. and New World studios. I saw The Losers ( a psychotic biker gang – was there any other kind? – are sent to Vietnam), The Born Losers (introducing Tom Laughlin and his violent peacenik character Billy Jack), The Incredible Two Headed Transplant (ultra bigot Ray Milland’s head is spliced on to Rosie Grier’s shoulder by a doctor with one hell of a wicked sense of humour), Count Yorga (Dracula tricked out as a Charlie Manson like cult leader), Blacula (proving there was no place blaxploitation wouldn’t go although it wasn’t quite the far out fun of the classic 1975 flick Black Gestapo), Death Race 2000 and others too depraved or too lame to recall but are buried deep in my subconscious and still direct my taste in culture today.

One vivid memory I have, and certainly an early indicator of preoccupations to come was going to the Downtown with my public school best friend Bobby Widder to see The Christine Jorgensen Story, a pretty tame “ripped from the headlines” film from 1970 about the first well known sex change operation directed by Irving Rapper, the once great man behind Now, Voyager and The Glass Menagerie. I’m pretty sure neither Bob nor I had any idea who Christine Jorgensen was before we saw it but my Mom sure did when I innocently told her what movie we had seen. She was not happy and gave me her best patented “if-I-knew-you-were-going-to-see-that-garbage…” speech and probably knew the days when I could be guaranteed to spend a harmless Saturday afternoon at The Humber watching Planet of the Apes or the latest James Bond installment over and over again were probably over period.

As puberty reared my ugly little head, my cinematic interests shifted uptown. No I don’t mean Goddard and Rommer although I did see some of their films too, by accident I think. What I mean by that is that my nether regions slowly began to point me ( in a nice way ) towards what was playing a block north at Cinema 2000. Cinema 2000 specialized in adults only fare. I hesitate to say pornographic because while the films may have been pretty raunchy at some previous point, by the time they made it through the scissor happy do-gooders at the seventies era Ontario Censor Board they featured very little skin and were about a half an hour long. Still, I was young and they were enough to serve as gentle introductions to the advanced work of sexy thespians Uschi Digard ( A Touch Of Sweden indeed! ), Sharon Kelly, Rene Bond, Sandy Dempsey and Candy Samples.

Soon after the Downtown and I parted company, it closed and become just another headstone in the graveyard of dead Yonge Street movie houses. Off the top of my head there was The Elgin, the Imperial Six, the Biltmore, the Rio, the Coronet, the New Yorker, the Uptown, the Hyland, the Fairlawn and at least a couple of more I can’t recall the names of right now but I can picture in my head.

P.S — The last time I saw Bobby was about 10 years ago in the alley behind my Mother-in-Laws house. The autumn sun was fading and my kids and I were getting one last game of twilight ball hockey in before it was time to go in for dinner. As we were picking things up Bobby appeared moving up the alley. He was behaving, let’s say “peculiar” and leave it at that. Back in the day we had parted ways near the end of grade 8 in a bitter dispute over either a girl or a comic book or quite possibly ownership of an issue of Creem magazine with Spiderman on the cover. At the time they all still equaled approximately the same thing. I guess whenever you reconnect with someone who was your best friend in grade 6 in a down town alley it’s not a particularly good sign.

- Hal Kelly was the editor of the excellent ‘zine Trash Compactor.

With the construction of the city of Toronto’s latest and tallest skyscraper set to begin at the south-east side of Yonge and Bloor, it’s safe to say that intersection will never be the same. Not that it’s anything to write home about at the moment, either; when walking west on Bloor, you’re hit with vulgar imagery from Yorkville shops selling ridiculous designer wear and other overpriced junk.

I’d trade anything to return to the late 1940s, when the only thing people were lining up to see on that street was the city’s latest and possibly most luxurious movie house – The University. Dubbed “Famous Players Finest Post-War Theatre,” it was designed by Eric W. Hounsom, who in 1932 had designed the Circle Theatre at Yonge & Sherwood while working with architects Kaplan & Sprachman. The University took two years to build and finally opened its doors on March 25, 1949, with the premiere of the long-awaited Technicolor spectacle, Joan of Arc, starring Ingrid Bergman. Amused by the film, Toronto Daily Star columnist Jack Karr referred to the University as “one of the warmest and most luxurious we’ve examined yet.”

On opening night, those who still thought “the flickers” appealed to low-brow culture spent the evening listening to Arthur Rubinstein at Massey Hall. But those low-class heathens — who knew a good time when they saw one — lined Bloor St. to get a glimpse of this new movie house. Not a movie palace in the strictest sense -– that distinction applied to theatres like the Pantages and the Loews — it offered something different to the people of Toronto, who were riding a wave of post-war optimism and economic prosperity. The wavy facade, slithering along the street-front the way a film spools through a projector, featured a three-story window where patrons on the inside could look down onto the passing show on Bloor St with its parked Packards and De Sotos. Wanting to attract patrons away from that boxed menace creeping its way into most households at the time, Famous Players spent extra attention on the lounge of the theatre. Wanting people to feel more comfortable there than they would at home, the lounge featured a television screen built right into the wall to view before the movie began. An ad for the next film to play at the University exclaimed: “On our Television: Boxing, Wrestling, and Perry Como!”

The auditorium of the University had contoured, backlit side walls, designed in waves of plaster, and taking a cue from the Atmospheric theatres of decades before, it allowed the house to periodically change colours to suit different moods. At 1350 seats, it wasn’t the largest house in the city, but one of the most spacious, which also allowed the inclusion of one of the city’s largest screens.

As the years passed, with the collapse of the studio system, and television making a successful intrusion into most homes, The University was the first theatre outfitted with a 70mm projector and a large Cinemascope screen to attract patrons. It was also the flagship location for the three-strip Cinerama process, which had been attempted earlier down the street at the Loews Yonge St. and ultimately abandoned in favour of the larger spaces at the University. Like the Eglinton, the University was also well-known for “reserved-seating”-style roadshows – The Ten Commandments ran in this format for several months.

The University was also applauded for celebrating the spirit of showmanship; patrons seeing the premiere of Apocalypse Now in 1979 were also handed an exclusive programme. Hal Kelly, the editor of the long-running magazine Trash Compactor, was there that night, and has kept the programme throughout the years. It turns out the opening credits to the film had not been completed on time, so the programme was printed in order to give movie-goers an idea of its cast and crew.

As the 1980s approached, movies were costing more and making more money than ever before. With multiplex theatres dominating the industry, the days of the single screen theatres were numbered. By 1985, the future of the University was in doubt. The scummy floors of the Elgin had recently closed down with the promise of seeing a re-birth. No such thing was promised for the University, as Toronto alderman Ron Kanter began appealing to city council to step in and prevent the closure of the theatre, but by September 30, it was lights out -– the land had become too valuable to run as a single movie theatre. Famous Players had planned a 9-screen theatre to be built on the current site of an upscale condominium building at Bloor and Bellair, but it never happened.

This is where the whole tale becomes sordid. Within a year of its closure, the building that less than a year before had housed The University was demolished. This was despite many attempts by citizens and Mayor Art Eggleton to fight for the preservation of the building, which the Ontario Historical Preservation Board denied, claiming the building was “not of significant historical interest.” Despite being demolished, the facade, strangely enough, remained intact, and served as a mirage of sorts for the next decade or so. Walking along Bloor St., you’d expect a grand theatre beyond its facade, but behind the wall was nothing more than a parking lot, the wall fastened to a steel scaffold on the opposite side. As the years went on, the wall faced serious neglect, and became quite an eyesore, with its once magnificent concrete wall corroding and the marquee barely hanging on, ready to snap at any minute. As Richard Rhodes wrote somewhat harshly in the Globe and Mail in 1995: “The result of this taxidermy is a moth-gnawed moose head on a once very notable wall of buildings. Regrettably, I find it hard to see the point in keeping a stuffed trophy of that dead culture looming over the sidewalk.” Ouch.

Some years later, the wall was finally restored, along with that entire block of Bloor St. The former University theatre, where Raiders of the Lost Ark had played endlessly less than twenty years before, had a new tenant: The Pottery Barn. The sad thing is that the flair and luxury of the University would actually blend within Yorkville, and could be a great venue for the Toronto International Film Festival, but no – today, all you’ve got is a facade, marquee intact, while people shopping inside spend their money on expensive kitchenware. And you know what? I bet you ten bucks they don’t even sell popcorn.

by Eric Veillette

In our inaugural article, we take a look back at one of the grandest movie palaces of them all — the Loew’s Yonge St. theatre in Toronto.

by Eric Veillette

In the early days of the movie palace, it didn’t take much to get people into the theatres. The seats were always filled with beaming eyes staring at the latest antics of Mary Pickford or Buster Keaton. Despite jam-packed attendance, theatre managers liked to spruce things up a bit, and give patrons a little more than just a film and a newsreel. How about offering up a prize for grabs?

A Saint-John, New Brunswick newspaper clipping I have from November of 1916, promoting Chaplin’s film Shanghaied, asks: “Boys and girls! Have You Sent Your Chaplin Essays in Yet? If not – Get busy!”

Closer to home, the fabled Loews & Winter Garden theatres at Yonge & Queen often advertised the same thing. Some smart kid won a brand-new train set for writing the best essay on Charles Dickens prior to a performance of “Our Mutual Friend”. Sometimes these contests would even get the whole community involved; Nearly 3000 votes were balloted over three weeks when they set out to find “the most popular shop girl in Toronto.” The winner: 70 year old Mrs. McMillan of New Method Laundry!

In July of 1928, the classrooms must have been buzzing because the Toronto Telegram was advertising that Hal Roach was on the search for the best Our Gang look-a-likes in North America. The lucky winners would be paid $25 and would get to appear in a new Our Gang film directed by Hal’s brother, Jack. Roach, who’d recently signed a distribution deal with the the Loew’s-owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, collaborated with the Telegram and held auditions at the Loews Theatre for the next Jean Darling, Farina, Joe Cobb, Mary-Ann Jackson, Harry Spear and Wheezer. It was one of 25 contests held across North America. Once the contest and movies would be complete, Hal Roach would award one of the kids from one of the films with a three month Hollywood contract worth $100 a week. In the pre-Coogan Bill days, I’m sure greedy parents were eager to get their mitts on that cash and got their kids in that lineup.Over the next week, an average of 800 kids per night, dressed as their favourite Our Gang character, would line up the stages of the Loew’s theatre with hopes of Hollywood stardom. On stage, the kids did all their best “look what I can do” routines, while the judges made their selections.

When eight year old Sybil White was announced as Toronto’s “Jean Darling”, she said: “I’m so glad. I’m a singer and a dancer and a reciter and I don’t know what else – and now I’m Jean Darling for Toronto!” The Telegram reported that all the runners-up took their defeat with integrity, although some of those disappointed faces on the first page of the entertainment section tell a different story. It wasn’t the end of the line for them, since the movie, Pie Eetin’ Champeens, would require plenty of extras.

Over the next week, all six winners would grace the stage in full costume prior to a silent Our Gang short entitled Dog Heaven, where a suicidal Pete The Pup wants to hang himself because Joe doesn’t seem to have much time for him anymore because he’s crazy for some gal.

Pie Eetin’ Champeens was filmed in Toronto in late August of 1928. I’m sure the kids all had a fun time, but in the end, nobody from the Toronto production was chosen for a shot at Hollywood stardom. Might be for the best, ’cause as we’ve learned from Kenneth Anger, Hollywood can be a dirty place.

There is something spectacular about these two theatres. Sitting on top of one another, the lower theatre opened on December 13, 1913. In attendance was producer Joseph Schenk, architect Thomas Lamb, and composer Irving Berlin, who introduced a new song. Rising seven stories up, the Winter Garden opened later that winter, on February 16, 1914. Showing “Quality Vaudeville and Select Photo-Plays,” it was indeed the most popular show and movie place in town until the Pantages and the Loews Uptown opened up to the north.

The Winter Garden, which was never outfitted for talking pictures, was closed in late 1928 due to the declining popularity of Vaudeville and for being in such close proximity to the Loew’s Uptown. It’s also been said that the towering seven-storey climb was becoming quite unpopular, and that one could easily see a show with less of a climb at the Pantages Theatre a block north. Once closed, its existence was practically wiped from the streets of Toronto, as the Winter Garden’s main entrance was replaced by small shops, the elevators hidden behind a tapestry, and the grand staircase hidden by a false wall.

Throughout the decades, it would remain untouched. Allan M. House, writing in the magazine Marquee in 1971, visited the interior of the Winter Garden in the late 1960s. What he saw was time having stood still for nearly fifty years. The seats were gone, but the stage had been covered in props and scenery from long-gone productions. One of the silent, hand-cranked projectors was found in the lobby –- the neglected victim of the talkie revolution.

The downstairs theatre remained open after the close of the Winter Garden and moved to an all-movie policy on October 3, 1930, showcasing Joan Crawford — whom Loew’s manager Jules Bernstein found “particularly loathsome”– in Our Blushing Brides, and a “Dogsville Barkie,” Who Killed Rover?. The Loew’s Yonge St. Theatre would reign as one Toronto’s best movie-houses throughout the thirties and forites, showing the premieres of Mutiny On The Bounty and City Lights, the latter proving so popular that the management had to authorize a morning screening on its opening day. However, critics received the film with mixed feelings. One young man would tell the Daily Star that “silent films are for the duds”; his sentiment wasn’t shared by everyone — It would be held over for two weeks.

After serving as a grimy theatre, showing trash-worthy material throughout most of the 60s and 70s, the Yonge St. theatre closed in 1981, when the Ontario Heritage Trust bought the building from Famous Players. Over the next few years, the twin theatres were restored by Mandel Sprachman, the son of noted theatre architect Abe Sprachman, whose firm Kaplan & Sprachman had once commissioned restoration drawings for the Winter Garden back in the mid-1940s. Sprachman’s designs also added 65 000 square feet of new space so that the live theatre that it would now house could open with modernized production facilities in mind. The restoration, without compromising Thomas Lamb’s Heritage-protected designs, also included two large rehearsal halls that also double as performance spaces. As for the Winter Garden, it had served as Toronto’s deserted theatre for long enough. The missing seats, which researchers think were sold to a Canadian Military base somewhere in Ontario, where replaced by restored seats from Chicago’s Biograph Theatre, the very theatre visited by John Dillinger before he was shot by the FBI. Who knows — if you ever see a show at the Winter Garden, you may be sharing the same seat Dillinger used when he saw Manhattan Melodrama back in 1934.

Hey kids. The new home of 32 Elvis Movies should be up and running in no time. Stay tuned!