Memorable movie hall experiences .....
Mar 26, 2017 23:27:55 GMT
spiderwort and BATouttaheck like this
Post by Doghouse6 on Mar 26, 2017 23:27:55 GMT
Most of my childhood filmgoing in the '50s - '60s took place in neighborhood theaters around Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley where I grew up, some of which still had "Crying Rooms:" small, closed-off mini-auditoriums at the back of the house with maybe a dozen or so seats, their own speakers and a big picture window through which the screen could be seen, designed for parents with vocal infants so other patrons wouldn't be disturbed. They were rarely in use for that purpose, and by the late '60s - early '70s, my friends and I found them ideal for enjoying films while smoking substances other than tobacco. At those times, their soundproofing also came in handy for when we got giggly and rowdy as the show progressed.
Occasionally, the folks would take us over the hill to Hollywood for "events" like The Wonderful World Of the Brothers Grimm or How the West Was Won in Cinerama at the Warner Theater (which had been built in 1928 but converted for Cinerama) or, later, to the newly built Cinerama Dome for something like It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World...which wasn't actually shot in Cinerama; HTWWW had been the last film produced in the process, and so no true Cinerama film ever premiered at the one theater in Los Angeles that had been designed specifically for it.
Audience applause was something entirely unheard of - after all, the people on the screen couldn't hear it and those who made the films weren't there - and the first such experience I ever had was with Woodstock in 1970: you just couldn't help yourself. By the '80s - '90s, L.A. audiences were applauding everything.
In the '70s, L.A. was full of revival theaters, film festivals and special programs presented by museums, universities and the like and, at a time when most of those involved in the pictures' making were still living, many would enlist their participation for discussions with audiences: I remember attending such screenings with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, Stanley Donen, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Gene Kelly, Eleanor Powell, Ernest Lehman, Julius Epstein and too many others to possibly recall.
The city's great film festival was the annual FILMEX (Los Angeles International Film Exposition), a two-week affair that always opened and closed with the premieres of major new films. At the '74 premiere of The Three Musketeers, the lobby of Hollywood's Paramount (now Disney's El Capitan) was so crowded that movement was possible only in a body, as with the "group hug" at the end of the final MTM episode: if the crowd didn't move, neither did you, and when it did, you did. I found myself being squeezed through the doors to the auditorium, um, chest-to-chest with Raquel Welch. Presently, as Rosalind Russell and Mayor Tom Bradley were onstage making some civic-minded remarks, they got streaked.
FILMEX' big central feature each year was a 50-hour marathon: Epics one year; musicals another; Sci-fi; Oscar winners; westerns; horror and so on. When the festival moved to Century City's Plitt Theaters in '75, the venue was ideal: extra-wide, extra-cushy, high-backed seats that reclined; if a film came up in which you weren't interested and you didn't feel like going to get coffee or a nosh, you could just lie back and have a two-hour nap before the next one. Some people even came equipped with pillows. And yeah, some instead went down to their cars in the labyrinthine, multi-level underground parking structure and...well, we'll let that go.
I'm glad I was still in my 20s then; I could never survive it now. Even so, most viewers were pretty punchy by the time the concluding films rolled around. No matter what they were, they began resembling midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
It was a great time to be young and in love...with classic films.
Occasionally, the folks would take us over the hill to Hollywood for "events" like The Wonderful World Of the Brothers Grimm or How the West Was Won in Cinerama at the Warner Theater (which had been built in 1928 but converted for Cinerama) or, later, to the newly built Cinerama Dome for something like It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World...which wasn't actually shot in Cinerama; HTWWW had been the last film produced in the process, and so no true Cinerama film ever premiered at the one theater in Los Angeles that had been designed specifically for it.
Audience applause was something entirely unheard of - after all, the people on the screen couldn't hear it and those who made the films weren't there - and the first such experience I ever had was with Woodstock in 1970: you just couldn't help yourself. By the '80s - '90s, L.A. audiences were applauding everything.
In the '70s, L.A. was full of revival theaters, film festivals and special programs presented by museums, universities and the like and, at a time when most of those involved in the pictures' making were still living, many would enlist their participation for discussions with audiences: I remember attending such screenings with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, Stanley Donen, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Gene Kelly, Eleanor Powell, Ernest Lehman, Julius Epstein and too many others to possibly recall.
The city's great film festival was the annual FILMEX (Los Angeles International Film Exposition), a two-week affair that always opened and closed with the premieres of major new films. At the '74 premiere of The Three Musketeers, the lobby of Hollywood's Paramount (now Disney's El Capitan) was so crowded that movement was possible only in a body, as with the "group hug" at the end of the final MTM episode: if the crowd didn't move, neither did you, and when it did, you did. I found myself being squeezed through the doors to the auditorium, um, chest-to-chest with Raquel Welch. Presently, as Rosalind Russell and Mayor Tom Bradley were onstage making some civic-minded remarks, they got streaked.
FILMEX' big central feature each year was a 50-hour marathon: Epics one year; musicals another; Sci-fi; Oscar winners; westerns; horror and so on. When the festival moved to Century City's Plitt Theaters in '75, the venue was ideal: extra-wide, extra-cushy, high-backed seats that reclined; if a film came up in which you weren't interested and you didn't feel like going to get coffee or a nosh, you could just lie back and have a two-hour nap before the next one. Some people even came equipped with pillows. And yeah, some instead went down to their cars in the labyrinthine, multi-level underground parking structure and...well, we'll let that go.
I'm glad I was still in my 20s then; I could never survive it now. Even so, most viewers were pretty punchy by the time the concluding films rolled around. No matter what they were, they began resembling midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
It was a great time to be young and in love...with classic films.