About ten years ago my wife and I became involved with a project to try and save a single screen 1940's movie house that had recently closed. It was the town's only theatre and the owner of the property had decided that it wasn't making enough money to suit him so he wanted to redevelope it into retail and office space. To my knowledge the owner never personally ran the theatre, he had managers do that for him as he had other non-film related businesses to run. The theatre was merely a real estate investment.

When the plan to redevelope became known, some of the locals got together and approached the property owner about keeping the theatre alive as a performing arts center. Town folk provided testimonials to the local newspaper about how much the theatre meant to them. Many had gone there all their lives and some had met their spouses there or even became engaged there. It was an emotional issue.

A local architect joined the committee and volunteered his professional labors, committees were formed, grants were sought, and volunteers went to work trying to come up with a workable business plan. We thought we had a shot but in the end we lost. We found out that not only had the property owner been toying with us, when demolition began he instructed the contractor to take absolutely EVERYTHING to a landfill. He didn't want any of us to get anything. Not one theatre seat, wall sconce or scrap of cloth from a curtain or wall covering, not even to purchase. He wanted it all discarded and his orders were followed to the letter. The place is now a large chain owned pharmacy.

It's too bad that so many developers subscribe to this mindset. If they didn't, maybe our world wouldn't be so bland and people wouldn't have such low expectations.
Now days every town seems to have the same "big box" retail outlets so all towns sort of look the same. There isn't much room for things that dare to be exciting and different and really stand out.

We discuss the issue of the corporate mentality in the exhibition industry on this forum all the time. Millions of dollars spent to build a multi-plex but presentation is lacking and a lot of people still stay home because they're more wowed by the picture and sound they get at home with their home theatre set-ups. Either that or they begin to believe that ALL movie theatres present product in a mediocre fashion.

There is indeed room for places like the Northpark 1 & 2. I just wish those of us on this forum, people who have a love for the biz and the dedication to meet the challenge, had the financial means to make it happen.

The Monroe, a sister theatre of the Riviera, is now an adult book store, with the owner threatening to tear it down for what else, but a drug store!

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Evans A Criswell
http://home.hiwaay.net/~criswell/theatre/

(that was the theater I was referring to when I called the automation as junk because the projectionist had nothing but troubles with it.)

However, I thought it was a beautiful theater sporting a well-maintained booth and auditorium.

I was TAD with the navy attending the NASA minature component repair school to obtain a NASA certification on repair of miniature components. SPACO, Inc. - Are they still there?

I'll have to ask Ralph about the Norelco and Cinemation automation. He managed it at least from 1982 until it closed in 1986, so it might not have had the same equipment during that time as it did in the 1960s.

Was the theatre you remember on Memorial Parkway in the Parkway City shopping center, with a Murphy's store? If so, that was the Madison. Or was it on Airport Road on Queensbury? If so, it was the Westbury Cinerama. If it was downtown, it was either the Lyric or Martin. If it was on the Parkway just north of where Univeristy Drive intersected it, at a mall called "The Mall", then it was the Alabama Theatre. Those were the only theatres we had, other than the drive-ins, at the time, in Huntsville.

CLICK HERE

As of the morning of March 8th, the magnificent auditorium #1 which everyone remembers the Northpark for is now being demolished.

Of the many theatres that I actively projected or managed, 90% are shuttered or torn down. I don't like it, but such is life.

A word of advice: Take lots of pictures on Kodak film, and sneak in a video camera with Kodak video tape before you favorite locations are history. While you're at it, take pictures of the staff at your place of employment and write down their names. Trust me, twenty-five years later, you'll be happy you did.

I just emailed a scanned copy of a photo to an old friend co-worker showing him with hair and in his disco outfit. Life changes. Everything has a lifespan and then dies. IIRC, the death of disco was celebrated. Now if rap "music" would just shuffle off the stage of life...

From what I have been told, the Northpark's sound system was one of the first two THX installations, and was personally designed by Tomlinson Hollman. (I've heard that the letters THX refer not only to Lucas's "THX-1138", but also to "Tomlinson Hollman's eXperiment" -- perhaps Ted Costas can confirm that?) Never in my life heard a sound system so powerful yet accurate. It was truly one-of-kind. I seriously doubt another theater will ever be built that has such a good installation.

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Thanks John. I had heard that. With the Avco having been twinned and
the Florida site never having worked out, the first three THX
installations are all gone, and these are the only ones I did myself.

There were problems in North Park. The GCC picture frame box combined
with high-frequency screen spreading to cause lots of early reflections
that changed timbre, so it would not be considered to be great by today's
standards, but I'm sure it was way ahead of its time. BTW, it had a
peculiar problem at first: there was a lot of hiss coming from the
screen. So I asked the projectionist to turn off parts of the sound
system, one at a time, starting from the input, to see what was wrong.
When he got done turning it all off, the hiss was still there! It turned
out to be reflected sound from the air conditioning diffuser slots in the
ceiling, causing a discrete reflection off the high-frequency reflecting
screen. Cleaning the ducts cured the hiss. Also, the North Park had an
unboxed in sump pump behind the screen that would come on audibly during
the movie. I asked for it to be boxed in, but was never back myself to
confirm that.

We also learned a great deal in that theater. I had anticipated hgih
frequency reflections off the screen returning to the wall nearby the
loudspeakers, so had put absorbing material around the horns for several
feet. What I didn't anticipate was a fore-to-aft reflection in that
auditorium between the back wall of the theater and the "THX" wall, so
Jim Kessler and I had to go out to a Home Depot like store and buy lots
of thick fibreglass and go in in the middle of the night and drop it over
from the top of the wall, since the space between the screen and the wall
was small. We "unfurled" the absorber from the top of the wall, and
voile, the problem was fixed.

Another story is that we learned the hard way that speakers behind the
screen can't have shiny parts in the North Park, because you'll see
twinkle of light that are brighter than white shining through the screen.
So a THX requirement became flat black loudspeakers!

Feel free to post this.

Best regards.

Tom