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 Known today as The Canon, this Toronto movie house once was The Imperial and before that The Pantages. Originally containing 3.346 seats, it was touted as the largest movie theater in the British Empire. |
Missing those palaces
where films once ruled
of TheColumnists.com
So here I am on a sweltering
July evening, power-walking along Toronto’s Danforth Avenue.
It’s doctor’s orders –get more active –but
it also enables me to revisit my boulevard of kids’ broken
dreams.
That because Danforth was my street as far as movie-going was
concerned in the Fifties when I was in public school. In the
first 15 blocks I could count nine cinemas, all catering to the
family trade. Nothing first-run here but second-run movies double-billed
in those days when everybody went to the movies at least once
a week.
And on this specific evening I could only count two cinemas still
recognizable. At Danforth and Broadview there’s the 1919
vaudeville theater The Music Hall, formerly The Century. After
more than 80 years as a picture palace it now is the venue for
rock concerts and one man turns by comedians.
I went there often because it was nearest
to my parents’ house. But only on Saturdays in those days.
We called them “Kids’ Matinees” and for all of
35 cents I and my mates got two features, a serial, a Three Stooges
or Laurel and Hardy short plus previews of upcoming attractions.
TV was still in its infancy but we couldn’t stay indoors
all the time. The matinee was a chance to congregate, race up
and down the aisles and even sit down and watch if the movie
was any good.
I really liked "The Little Kidnappers" (1954) and saw
it twice, once at the Century and weeks later at the Odeon Danforth
down the street. I also remember trying to watch "Patterns"
(1956) at a Palace matinee. Couldn’t understand it at all
and now that I think about it what a weird choice for kids to
savor.
At some point the cinema manager would stride forth and hold
a raffle using the ticket serial numbers. Gifts might include
a kids’ bicycle, new comic books, dolls, even kids’-sized
china mugs, stuff like that. In the decaying Crown movie emporium
the manager would also entreat the youngsters to refrain from
stomping on the creaking wooden floor. It usually had the opposite
effect and the floor would fairly groan with the stomping of
hundreds of small feet.
I thought of all this when walking past the Alhambra movie house
with its kitschy Moorish architecture. It’s pretty much
extant, but instead of showing movies the hall now gets rented
out for weddings and parties. With the area now inhabited by
Muslim immigrants the Alhambra suddenly seems to fit in with
the falafel meat stores, the mosque currently being reconstructed
and the veiled women who stride up and down the avenue.
Other cinemas of my youth still stand but have been converted
to other uses. The Palace is now an office building. The Odeon
Danforth is a high ceilinged gymnasium.
The only cinemas left showing movies are a few revival houses
out in Toronto’s neighbourhoods. The huge downtown cinemas
have either been demolished or converted into legitimate houses.
Loew’s with its mighty 2,088 seats is now The Elgin with
the touring company of "Dirty Dancing" currently in
residence. I frequented Loew’s a lot in the early Sixties--it
usually showed MGM and UA first run pictures. It was big news
when Universal’s "Pillow Talk" opened here in
1959.
Down the street there’s the Canon theatre, which started
out as the Pantages and later became the Imperial--at 3,346 seats
it was long advertised as the largest cinema in the British Empire.
That was so long ago England still boasted an Empire. At the
Imperial, the playing of "God Save The Queen" always
started the fare, which was not so unusual in those days. If
you attended NHL hockey games at Maple Leaf Gardens (soon to
be converted into a Home Depot store) the lights would dim as
a spotlight shone on the gigantic mural of Elizabeth II.
I was only in Shea's, the cavernous downtown cinema, once. That
was in 1955 on the last day it was open. At 2,663 seats it was
a great place to lose oneself in watching a movie. I had my mom
take me and my brother because it was such an auspicious occasion.
The picture was "How To Be Very, Very Popular" with
Betty Grable.
I saw "But Not For Me" with Clark Gable at the Imperial
in 1959, just about the first time I was allowed to venture downtown
on my own. The matinee only attracted a handful of patrons, an
indication the Imperial’s grandeur was beginning to fade.
When I was recently in Hamilton, the next city over from Toronto,
I noticed all four of the gigantic downtown movie palaces were
gone. The Century which started out as the Lyric (Cary Grant
and Mae West were vaudeville stars there) is being turned into
trendy lofts. The twin cinemas Palace and Capital were demolished
in the 1980s and the Tivoli, which was supposed to remain, had
its roof cave in after a brutal snowstorm a few years back.
Talking to Sam Hebscher who ran both the Cap and the Palace in
their heydays, is always a delight. Now a gloriously preserved
93-year-old, Hebscher remembers the Forties as the busiest time
for movie-going. Hamilton had the nation’s two biggest steel
mills and with wartime need for steel the mills ran on three
shifts a day. Hebscher noticed night workers got off at 9 a.m.
so he invented a 9:45 a.m. showing just for them.
“Many mornings we filled both theaters,” he says. “The
SRO signs were out. People couldn’t go home after nine hours
in the mills. They needed to relax so they came to our shows
and then went home. Remember it was wartime, emotions were high
and one morning I even caught one couple making out at 10 a.m.
The movie was 'Mrs. Miniver,' if you can believe that!”
When TV came in Hebscher jumped to Hamilton’s sole TV outlet
CHCH. He was in charge of buying the movies and it was the years
running the Cap and Palace that made him so expert. CHCH boasted
more World Premieres than all the U.S. networks combined. ABC
wanted to advertise "The Ten Commandments" as a premiere,
but had to withdraw its ads after Hebscher protested CHCH had
already shown the epic weeks earlier.
About his movie theatre tenure Hebscher remains nostalgic: ”It
had been a habit, weekly attendance. Then the numbers started
to decline. It hurt to see such grand palaces wither away.”
I remembered the last week the Palace was
open (some time in 1979)–the cinema was reduced to showing
old Jeanette MacDonald musicals. So I watched "Bittersweet"
and when I looked around I could see only three other patrons
had turned up. The remaining 2,233 seats were empty.
That’s why wherever I’ve traveled I try to take in
the local bijou. You never knew when another cinema would shutter.
On Hollywood Boulevard I was part of a crowd of just five people
for a matinee of "The Omen." It was in cavernous Pantages
theatre, which later became a legit house. (I saw Rex Harrison
in a "My Fair Lady" revival there).
Watching a movie in a theatre is part of a collective experience.
The crowd around you roars with laughter and you start laughing,
too. Watching in today’s movie complex with 20 identical
theatres just isn’t the same, I tell you.
And I don’t get that same experience
from my TV set. I don’t care if DVD gives me a perfect picture
and the ability to stop and go back to study scenes. It’s
the smell of popcorn I miss. Coming out of a matinee and blinking
in the late afternoon light is another experience that’s
gone.
A neighbor invited me in to see his huge wall-sized TV screen,
but all I got from that was a stiff neck. Well, if that’s
the future I want to go back to the past to those air conditioned
afternoons when watching a movie in an old movie palace was one
of life’s purest pleasures.
©2008 by Jim Bawden. This column first posted July 21, 2008.
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