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Posted by Edward Jurich (Member # 1787) on 08-07-2004, 10:17 AM:
 
Something happened the other day I thought was funny. At one of the shows, a teenager comes out of the auditorium and asked "is this a movie or live stage show". This kid had never seen a movie theater with a screen curtain before. So, I'm wondering how many theaters still maintain a curtain. This one is at the single screen Englewood in Independence, Missouri.
I've added this link to the theater group homepage so you can see a picture of the Englewood's classic front.
Fine Arts Group

[ 08-08-2004, 10:22 AM: Message edited by: Edward Jurich ]
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 08-07-2004, 10:55 AM:
 
I do. But my place is a screening room not a theatre.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-07-2004, 12:30 PM:
 
The Montana Theatre in Miles City (45 miles from us) is a 1936 single-screen house with a waterfall curtain.

We used to have a curtain here but took it down in 1980 because it was full of dust, and the traveler setup would not work with our new automation. If I had it to do over again, I would have upgraded and/or figured out some way to keep the curtain.
 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-07-2004, 12:31 PM:
 
Steves curtain is so retro cool
 

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Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 08-07-2004, 01:04 PM:
 
I have a shower curtain...but as for the theatre, well I dont even have side masking.
 

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Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 08-07-2004, 01:08 PM:
 
There's a curtain thread here with pics of my theater's curtain.

=TMP=
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 08-07-2004, 04:54 PM:
 
Thanks Gordon but I would rather have something less 80's and more timeless. If we wait long enough maybe someday even I will be retro-cool.
 

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Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 08-08-2004, 01:22 AM:
 
The Uptown in DC has a curtain and it is operating again...we've had a couple problems that seemed to have been worked out for now.

All three AFI screens at the AFI/Silver have curtains.

The Sentator in Baltimore has its curtain.

As I've said before...to be a 1st quality theatre, you need a curtain...without one your are, at best, second-rate.

Steve
 

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Posted by Richard C. Wolfe (Member # 431) on 08-08-2004, 04:18 PM:
 
I still have a curtain at my 1933 art deco single screen theatre. It is used for every show. It it also still closed at the end of the trailer and reopened for the feature.

No one has seen a bare screen in this theatre for over 30 years. Actually there are two curtains. A red proscenium curtain that is used only for stage shows, and the gold screen curtain that is used for all movie shows. We show films daily... only have stage shows on the average about once a month.

If you wish to view the curtain, you can go to roxytheaternorthampton.com and click on the photo page and scroll down.
 

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Posted by John T. Hendrickson, Jr (Member # 849) on 08-08-2004, 04:45 PM:
 
Bravo Richard!

My sister lives in Neffs, PA and I have told her that this winter when I visit, we are going to the Roxy!!

The single screen Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank NJ where I do occasional screenings has the original 1927 stage curtain, but we don't generally use it for our screenings. Side curtains are in the works for sometime in the future.
 

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Posted by Paul Cassidy (Member # 951) on 08-08-2004, 06:01 PM:
 
I got the same reaction awhile back when a group of Plex culture young ones came to their first single screen and asked what door went to which cinema ( we had x2 entrance and exit doors ) as most singles used to have , and then they came out complaining that there was no screen in the cinema .... as the curtains were closed
 

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Posted by Robert L. Fischer (Member # 2424) on 08-08-2004, 06:02 PM:
 
We have curtains UNDER two of our screens where we hide ladders.
 

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Posted by Richard C. Wolfe (Member # 431) on 08-08-2004, 10:44 PM:
 
Well John, you certainly are welcome at any time, and I'll be happy to give you the nickel tour.

I have had the same experiences as both Ed and Paul as we have had the same reactions here from those attending for the first time. Kids often ask their parents if they are going to see a play, and people will ask which door is for such and such movie. We have 4 entrances into the auditorium and that tends to confuse people who are regular multiplex attendees. Many people today are not prepared for the single screen movie experience. The funniest occurrence was when a fellow came out one of the doors and went past the refreshment stand and then past another open door to the auditorium on his way to the mens room. When he returned from the rest room, he stopped at the refreshment stand and said to the salesperson: "Do they know that they are playing the same movie on this side as well?" The sales girl thought quickly and said: "Oh, yes... they started in at the same time there as well."
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 08-08-2004, 11:12 PM:
 
Did the Egyptian in Hollywood, CA ever put a curtain in? It's been a few years since I've been in there. It amazed me that they built such a nice place and didn't put in a curtain!
 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 08-09-2004, 12:43 AM:
 
We've got a curtain. Our auditorium has four aisles. One night a man came out of the far right door and looked in th other 3 doors and asked the manager how the architect managed to get four large theatres into a building that size and that he was astounded how alike they were.
 

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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 08-09-2004, 09:12 AM:
 
I have a curtain in the screening room and the rooms at Paramount all had curtains.
 

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Posted by Thomas Jonsson (Member # 1902) on 08-09-2004, 10:31 AM:
 
To me, film done right includes a curtain. When my
theater was re-built 6 years ago, the new screen was
so big, there was no room left for a curtain. So, we
had to make room. At a cost of appr. $40.000 the whole
concrete ceiling was taken off and a new "box" built
above the screen to house the new curtain. The curtain
itself cost appr. $ 24.000.

The curtain has a golden colour (imported from France,
where else?) and moving up and down. It´s lit with white
light, and after coming down before the main feature
starts, the lights turn into red.

A lot of money for a curtain. Was it worth it? Definately!
And the new "box" has space enough for exciting additions
in the future.

Thomas
 

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Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 08-09-2004, 12:41 PM:
 
Richard -- Your theater is SPECTACULAR! We really need something like that in this area. Something to hold the big premieres and event pictures at. All we have is multiplexes. Anything under 18 screens is over 20 years old. The "Twin" in Celebration is a joke. It's just two typical AMC Auditoriums, nothing special.

It's always great to see pictures of theaters like that, and to know that there's still a bunch around.

=TMP=
 

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Posted by George Roher (Member # 91) on 08-09-2004, 08:48 PM:
 
The Avalon in Washington DC has a curtain in the main auditorium.
 

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Posted by Don Anderson (Member # 397) on 08-13-2004, 02:31 AM:
 
We have a curtain in our upper auditorium. Motor works fine. But, the cable that moves the curtain is in bad shape. I'd be afraid to use it, fearing I couldn't open/close it before the show. Plus, its not on the top of my list of things to repair.
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-13-2004, 10:54 AM:
 
We've got a beautiful cream satin curtain with 2.5x fullness, making it very full with tons of folds. The satin catches light like crazy. The thing almost shimmers. We have lights on the sides at sever angles to it and they make it look even richer. It just rocks.

Yah, I've posted before that there was a time when even the grind houses had curtains. It just was one of those things in the lexicon of class that the better theatres adhered to; it was unheard of that a first run theatre let audiences sit looking at a naked screen.

Once theatre morphed into these assembly-line factories with about as much class and character as a toilet seat, well, who needs curtains if you are running a factory? It's the difference between a good restaurant and a fast food joint. Do you NEED a curtain to see a movie? Not if the goal is a utilitarian, lowest common denominator operation. Do you NEED table cloths in a restaurant? Not if you are satisfied with White Castle level of class and sophistication. Not if you are a Philistine.
 

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Posted by Adam Fuller (Member # 2070) on 08-15-2004, 06:51 PM:
 
This was the curtain in the Odeon Edinburgh, Scotland:



Opened:



Odeon closed this theatre last year.
 

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Posted by David J Hilsgen (Member # 2614) on 08-16-2004, 01:51 AM:
 
I Have 12 working curtains at the willow creek 12 in plymouth MN I also do curtain calls between trailers & feature and most of time run flat trailers with scope feature .I have my slide projectors wired to open curtains & set the masking Is there any body else doing this .I have a cpa 10 automation that i make the most use out of. Been doing this since the theatre opened 15 years ago.Takes a lot of work to keep them all going.But ads showmanship.Been in the biz for 30 years started at the Cloud DI in ST.CLOUD,MN
 

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 08-16-2004, 02:49 AM:
 

quote:

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This was the curtain in the Odeon Edinburgh, Scotland:

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quote:

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Did the Egyptian in Hollywood, CA ever put a curtain in? It's been a few years since I've been in there. It amazed me that they built such a nice place and didn't put in a curtain!

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Nope. And sometimes they run RP-40 when you're sitting in the audience.. haha.

I heard rumour that the "higher powers" in charge of "restoring" the theatre don't believe in curtains.

danny
 

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Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 08-16-2004, 08:17 AM:
 
The large auditorium in the Cedar Lane Cinemas in Teaneck NJ still has a working curtain. This is the front half of the original auditorium.



The Lafayette Theatre in Suffern NY is still a single screen theatre running first run movies. This picture is a little out of date, the owner has since restored the chandelier back into the auditorium as part of his ongoing restoration of the theatre.


 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-16-2004, 08:21 AM:
 

quote: Dan Lyons

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I heard rumour that the "higher powers" in charge of "restoring" the theatre don't believe in curtains.

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"Higher powers....don't believe in curtains" -- and that would be the Anti-Christ.
 

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Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 08-16-2004, 06:34 PM:
 
The Edinburgh (Clerk St) Odeon [opened as the New Victoria] closed (as a cinema) in September last year. After sitting empty it is currently being used as a temporary (4 weeks) art venue. As far as I know all screens/curtains were removed when Odeon closed the site.

At the time of closing all 5 screens (including the 1980s additions) had curtains that were closed after the adverts and trailers and opened for the main feature.
 

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Posted by Bernie Anderson Jr (Member # 410) on 08-19-2004, 10:27 AM:
 
Both my screening room and theatre has a curtain. Along with Richard Wolf, my curatin is used between the trailers/shorts (yes, I show shorts) and the feature. My audience hasn't seen a blank screen in 15 years. Check out our website Movie Palace Experience for details. I'll through this one out there too, other than me and Richard, who use their theatre pipe organ before a feature as intermission music?

Bernie
 

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Posted by Josh Jones (Member # 447) on 08-19-2004, 06:40 PM:
 
The Fargo has a nice gold traverse curtain, the 10 plex doesnt have any My home screening room has a red curtain, but the motor doesnt work.

Josh
 

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Posted by Pete Apruzzese (Member # 1446) on 08-19-2004, 08:43 PM:
 

quote: Bernie Anderson Jr

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I'll through this one out there too, other than me and Richard, who use their theatre pipe organ before a feature as intermission music?

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quote: Josh Jones

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My home screening room has a red curtain, but the motor doesnt work.

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Hmmm... Well while I have both a computer-controlled 5-stop curtain drive motor mech and likewise a masking motor mech, I have NO curtain... Ummm nor screening room.

(STILL collecting "parts")

>>> Phil
 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 08-20-2004, 07:29 AM:
 
Bernie: The organ at the Byrd in Richmond, Va. is still played every Saturday before both evening shows, sing-alongs which seem to be real crowd pleasers are sometimes included. This instrument (Wurlitzer #1948) has never been out of service, and has been played at least weekly for the entire 76 years the theatre has been open, and played 6 nites a week from '60 to '83 when Eddie Weaver gave up every night performances.
If anybody out there can play and would like to play this one some day before opening, e-mail me.
 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-20-2004, 09:43 AM:
 
phil said "Ummm nor screening room" Yes but when you do it will be a "reel"one as it can show mag
 

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Posted by JC Cowles (Member # 914) on 08-22-2004, 10:16 PM:
 

quote: Chris Hipp

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I have a shower curtain...but as for the theatre, well I dont even have side masking.

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Ha ha, at the Har Mar theatre's I worked at we had a shower curtain and a curtain in our biggest auditorium. Yes, in the booth, the toilet was hidden by an office partition and a hawaiian theme'd shower curtain. Hopefully Brad will get the pictures I sent in up and you'll be able to see.

The curtain at Har Mar was never used, but at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN we used one for premiers and the such.
 

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Posted by Brent Neal Jones (Member # 1048) on 09-10-2004, 11:18 PM:
 
We have a light curtain at the drive-in that dims. same great effect, different way of getting it.

Josh, what's wrong w/ ur curtain? Maybe we can help.
I've set up a few myself.
 

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Posted by Jamie Glossop (Member # 2180) on 09-22-2004, 04:14 AM:
 
I think cinemas with screen curtains are great !. I miss the good old days when we had theodeon and abc cinemas in nottingham. They both had curtains and it was nice to look at but now the warner village which has now been taken over by the ugc cinemas team comes up with 18 screens and no curtains. The no curtains can be good for advertising while the customers walk into a screen but the curtains was a nicer way to show the screen and the cinema logo screening on the curtains while they was opening priceless . I am planning on opening a cinema but i need to find some investors somewhere lol. Cinemas realy need to shape up over here. I have worked as a projectionist / usher but when the cinema comes to job advertising they aint intresed lol.

Anyways sorry that i dont post much. Im a busy guy these days working on my web hosting company soon to be offering cinema website hosting
 

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Posted by Dan Bouvier (Member # 2655) on 09-22-2004, 04:40 PM:
 
Our theatre (which opened last summer) is a renovated Famous Players, and in our big house we have a curtain but all the stuff is disconnected. I was behind the screen the other day and saw the motor and ropes and everything. It would be cool to get it working someday.
 

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Posted by Kevin Markwick (Member # 2698) on 09-25-2004, 11:39 AM:
 
First post so a bit nervous....

I have curtains in all three of my screens. Couldn't imagine building a cinema without them. BTW I notice in America you call them a Curtain, don't they come in pairs? Here in the UK we call them tabs. Absolutely no idea why though, perhaps someone could tell me.
 

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Posted by Daniel Alt (Member # 2303) on 09-26-2004, 10:03 PM:
 
We project in a college auditorium. The front wall of the room looks like a solid hunk of wood, but press a button, and the wall lifts to reveal our screen. It's sort of impressive.. I always feel we ought to be playing "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (that's 2001 for you non-classical people) as it goes up.

(some pictures here)

Well, at least until this summer, when the electricians tilted the screen a bit and then tried to shut the door on it. Now the frame is bent, and we can't close the door at ALL until they fix it.

Which ruins one of our pre show traditions - hit the director with a paper airplane during announcements, and get a free popcorn. Unfortunately, we can't allow airplanes with the door up, for the obvious reason that we don't want them hitting the screen.

Sigh.
 

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Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 09-26-2004, 10:10 PM:
 

quote: Kevin Markwick

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I notice in America you call them a Curtain, don't they come in pairs?

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quote: Daniel Alt

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We project in a college auditorium. The front wall of the room looks like a solid hunk of wood, but press a button, and the wall lifts to reveal our screen. It's sort of impressive.. I always feel we ought to be playing "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (that's 2001 for you non-classical people) as it goes up.

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Funny, the Brooklyn Museum has about the same thing. The cinema was designed by a big mucky-muck Japanese architect (whose name you're supposed to oooh and ahhh over when you hear it, but alas, I can't ever remember it....so much for the prestige value of a name). Given how the curators always gush over this "wood panel design," I've just always assumed that the big wooden panels which cover the screen at the proscenium were a unique design of his. Evidently not, eh? Heh Heh.

The "wood curtain" wall looks pretty nice (although not nearly as interesting as a nicely lit curtain) -- one big expanse of blond wood for the audience to stare at. The thing is, the wood panels worked for about six months and then stopped.....well, kind of stopped. You never knew if they would open fully or not when you pushed the button. Sometimes they would make this jerking motion, give out a grunt and blow the breaker. After the first couple of times of having to call other staff and go down with them to physically push these ten ton monsters open by hand in front of an audience, I just refused to activate the silly things.

Thing is, to cover the full width of the proscenium, the things had to be made of four panels, two each side. All four had to move to opposite ends of a proscenium where there wasn't enough space to hold a panel half the width of the stage. So they were constructed as quarter panels, two per side in order that they could fit off-stage. But that's the tricky part -- getting them to be flush when opened, making one seamless front wood wall, yet split and wind up on in front of the other in the off-stage wing. It required an elaborate, custom designed series of snake tracks that made twists and turns so that one panel would eventually wind up folded behind the other, parallel to it's partner in the wing; conversely, when closing, the first one must move faster than it partner so it can get in front of it and angle in, so that by the time both are in place, they are butted together with no overlap. Same on the other side.

It was a lumbering mechanical waltz, one that at its best was tentative, slow and made great moaning sounds as belts and pulleys strained in the track trying to move these huge things into place, all in what seemed like slow motion to the projectionist.

The panels themselves were made up of what looked like wood floor paneling, not a thin, light veneer. Adding to the weight of the thick wood were the unnecessarily massive metal frames that weighed plenty (three guys to move a single panel) on which the wood was anchored. The whole conglomerate did its dance....or floundering and not doing it, depending on the heat and humidity, with great hesitation.

After a chair that had been left on stage in the behemoth's path was crushed like a tin can, there was a rush to install safety mechanisms (we have children on stage all the time), which compromised the reliability factor even more. Somehow pulley tension sensors were installed so that a resistance would stop the motors. They installed a deadman's switch in the booth (you had to hold it down until the panels completed their open or close cycle). And get this -- if your fingers accidentally slipped while holding down the switch and the thing stopped mid-cycle, you couldn't just turn the switch again and keep going. You had to make the panels go all the way back in the other direction and start over again!

Even when they were working, they simply couldn't replace the functionality of a curtain, i.e., preventing the audience from seeing a naked screen. This is because you had to open these panels long before you could throw an image on the screen, they opened THAT slowly. If you tried to open them as the first frame hit the screen, you'd be halfway through the first reel before they finally came to their resting place. OK, that's an exaggeration, but they did take a good 60 seconds to fully open; useless for a curtain effect.

Now that the museum has installed an Eiki "Theatre" projector, I can hook it up to a laptop and play any of the wild visualization programs that are readily available with everyday media players like Spectrum Pro's Psychedelic or Winamp or even Windows Media Player (although I refuse to use Media Player simply because I so loath Microsoft products). The visualizations can all be activated in sync with the non-sync music (life is full of irony), and they really look way tasty on the big screen. The dancing visualizations are wonderful to use as a "light curtain" effect. It certainly is better than a naked screen.

At least the video projector is good for something.
 

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 10-05-2004, 06:52 AM:
 
The National Film Theatre in London used to have strange shutters in front of the screen in their main auditorium, they were painted gold, and were often seen in the background of photographs of people being interviewed on stage there. They were very distinctive, but rather noisy when they moved. I'm not sure what they were made of. For sereral years these were out of use, with the screen left open, but when the place was refurbished a couple of years ago they were removed, and replaced by a conventional curtain.
 

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 10-06-2004, 12:51 AM:
 
There's a 20s or 30s -era movie theater in one of the New England States that, on the outside, looks like a meeting house or church, but on the inside is stuffed with wild art nouveau murals, etc. I can't remember the name or where it is (it's still in existence), but it seems like originally as part of its High Art interior, it had a sort of painted shutter arrangement instead of curtains.

Edit: It's the Cape Cinema in Dennis, MA. Modern online photos show that the center section of the shutters has been replaced with a curtain.
 

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Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 10-06-2004, 01:22 PM:
 

 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-06-2004, 06:44 PM:
 
Yikes, this is one scary looking theatre. You look out the booth window and say, welcome to my nightmare. And I am not exactly sure I want to know what those naked guys are doing on the ceiling.
 

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