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- Theaters are magic.

You go into a theater and I
don't care if it's a small,

little local one in your
hometown or something

as grand as Radio City Music Hall.

When you're in the music
hall and the lights go down,

it becomes intimate

and fascinating and magical.

- So many people identify movies with some

of the best times of their lives.

They remember their first dates.

They remember their first
time out with their family,

their first time they went
to see a movie about being

a doctor, being a politician,
being an astronaut.

(inspirational orchestral music)

- There's something about
seeing those stories

on screen and you get
a chance to understand

other cultures, other
experiences, other places.

- We may never live those
fantasies or those lives

of the people we're watching,
but we do it vicariously.

- You are giving people a complete escape

from their ordinary lives.

From the moment you walk into
the lobby: plush carpeting,

gilded leaf-work on the
walls and on the ceilings,

magnificent chandeliers,
decor from different periods

of art and architecture around the globe.

This at a time when most people,

most Americans, didn't have
the opportunity to travel.

- They were places where
the rich and the poor

could rub elbows.

- They built these palaces
to be the Disney of the day,

so that you walk in off the
street and you forget all

of the troubles and all
of the things that you had

going on in your life
because you're surrounded

by this magnificent building.

(soft orchestral music)

- I remember coming here as a child

and just being completely
amazed and taken aback

by the ornate beauty of the building.

- When I first started my job

at Theater Historical Society, it was kind

of eyeopening for me to
learn that the places

that I went to to see
Broadway touring shows

with a symphony were
actually buildings that were

built as movies palaces.

- Toward the end of World War I up

through the Depression,
which is the early '30s,

there was just a boom.

That's the only way to
describe it: a boom that led

to the building of
enumerable movie palaces.

Not theaters but palaces,
and ones you can visit today

and still see and still enjoy a movie in.

It seems so incredibly lavish.

You wonder how anybody
could conceive of them

or why they would build
such structures just to go

to the movies.

(soft piano music)

As Marcus Loew, the famous
showman and businessman said,

"We don't sell tickets to movies.

We sell tickets to theaters."

- I first came

into the Rialto Theater
when I was probably

eight years old.

My mom was making an effort
to educate me in old movies,

so we'd go to Chaplin movies
and Buster Keaton movies

and the Rialto was a revival house.

(soft piano music)
(birds chirping)

- When I was growing up,

I always knew that my
great-grandfather had owned

a movie theater chain.

It was called the
Butterfield Theater Company.

And I wasn't super familiar with it,

but I knew that my mom
growing up never had to pay

to go see a movie.

And I just remember thinking oh my god,

like I wish that had been me.

- I have a great memory of going

to the Ziegfeld Theater in
New York when I was a kid.

We were actually living

in Charleston, South Carolina
and I was always going

to mall multiplexes and it was "Gandhi."

It's the kind of movie
that had intermission.

It was people dressed up.

It was fancy bathrooms.

It's the kinda thing that
sticks with you forever.

- I went to see "Gone With the Wind"

in the Redford Theater in
Detroit, Michigan when I was

in grad school.

- Sir, you are awfully kind.

- I'm not kind. I'm just tempting you.

- I've seen "Gone With the
Wind" probably hundreds

of times in my life.

But there's something completely different

about seeing that movie on a big screen,

the organ playing and you're
in a room with 1,200 people.

- I don't even remember
the movies that I saw,

but I was entranced by
the building itself,

by all the scary character
faces in the walls, darkness,

the color, the intensity,
the sorta musty smells.

- And you come out and it had gotten dark,

so the marquee was lighted
up and the sidewalk

is twinkling with the
little crystals of mica

they would put in it.

There was a magic going on there,

which I took for granted
of course as everybody did.

They were part of life.

(soft inspirational music)

- Movies are one of
the United States' most

important cultural contributions.

It's how we've broadcasted
our culture around

the world and how we've
made that association

between the United States and Hollywood

is through the movies.

So it's a very very important national

and cultural legacy, right?

But we don't actually
preserve the movie theaters.

So those are some of our most

important cultural landmarks.

And yet when it comes time
to economic development

or redevelopment of the city
or real estate development,

someone's come in and
take out a whole block

to do something.

People don't ask those kinds of questions.

And so you have all these
cities around the country

where there's just nothing left.

You can go to cities
where they've torn down

every movie theater they've had.

So we can assume it's just
an entertainment venue

or we can actually recognize
that it actually was

a vibrant center of city life.

- Some of the first films
to be shown and promoted

in a big way in the
1890s were prize fights.

But that was an event and
it was an event that was

very successful and they
went from city to city

and rented out big existing auditoriums.

This long before the nickelodeon

or the little storefront theaters.

So they were really the
beginning of what movies could be

and eventually did become.

When the movie business actually got going

in the early 20th century,

with Thomas Edison and
everyone else involved,

the early films were first not projected.

They were shown on you know,
little eyepiece viewers.

- [Man] Where you would drop a penny in,

you get a 30-second reel
of film on a kinetoscope.

- These little cards
that would flash in front

of you on a little viewer
and you'd crank this thing

and it made you put a
coin in or something.

They were in these little parlors,

like an arcade in a way.

They're all lined up against the wall.

(energetic piano music)

- This is like Automatic
Vaudeville run by a man

named Adolph Zukor and other people around

the country began to open up
these penny arcade parlors.

And it was the first kind
of chain store, if you will,

build-out of the moviegoing experience.

- People like Thomas Edison and others,

rivals and people who were ripping off

Thomas Edison's patent
made a short, short film.

And eventually, some of them had stories.

- There was Thomas Edison with
his kinetoscope I believe,

and then there were the
Lumiere brothers in France.

The two technologies kind
of evolved around the same

time and they were competing.

And so one nickelodeon
would show Lumiere products

and then somebody else would show using

the Edison projector.

- We all know about "The
Great Train Robbery" in 1903.

May not have been the very
first film to tell a story,

but it's one of the first
to use up a whole 10

to 15-minute reel documenting
a story and making

it seem pretty realistic.

And then someone had the
idea that projecting them

meant you could show
a lot of people a film

at the same time.

- What was beginning to
work was actually having

seats set up and a projector
in the back and making

it a public experience
of going to the movies.

- [Leonard] Folding chairs
were brought into storefronts.

I mean, it was as simple as that.

- I grew up in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, which many

say is the birthplace of the
commercial movie theater.

So in 1905, a gentleman named

John P Harris and his business partner,

Harry Davis, they said,

why don't we take the
projector down the street

to a storefront that we have,

put a screen on the wall and 96 chairs

and we'll show films continuously.

They charged a nickel.

They called it a nickelodeon.

- It came from the word nickel
meaning American currency.

You know, then it usually
cost a nickel to get

into one of these things
and then odeon which means

an indoor environment.

- A lot of scholars
consider that to be sort

of the flashpoint because
within a few years of that,

people were opening
nickelodeans like crazy.

(soft comical music)

it was kind of the Wild West.

It was something of a free-for-all.

Anybody who had access to a
camera and film could make

a film and anybody who could set up chairs

and a projector could show a film.

(soft comical music)

- Famously, Loew's began this way.

It was originally called
People's Vaudeville Company,

and Marcus Loew, when he went to visit one

of his penny arcades in
Cincinnati, he went across

the river to Covington and
he saw a man projecting

movies onto a screen.

So he went back to his
penny hippodrome and he took

the second floor and converted
it into a movie theater.

That was the changeover
that began to happen

where you would accompany
the films with music

and you could feed off of the crowd.

So falls worked better,
humor worked better,

comedy worked better.

- Sometimes there would
be someone standing behind

the screen giving voice to actors,

sometimes a singer in a little side stage.

Often, almost always as a
matter of fact, a piano player,

that was an art in itself.

The piano player had to be
really good at improvising.

- This was a national trend.

You know, it gets a lot
of celebrated coverage

in New York and Chicago
and cities like that.

But it was national.

It was regional.

It was even rural.

Cincinnati, Covington, Charleston, Dallas,

small towns in Iowa.

People began to wanna
watch movies everywhere

and it began already by 1907

when "Harper's Weekly" referred
to it as nickel madness.

It was a national and
soon global phenomenon.

And then suddenly a saturation point.

There were so many
nickelodeons everywhere.

- The Warner brothers also started

in the Pittsburgh area
and they opened a little

theater called the Cascade
outside of Pittsburgh.

They ran that for a few
years but then they thought,

oh wait a minute, the money
is more in making movies.

And many people in those
early days felt they could

make money off the movies,

but they had to deal
with the patents folks

and Thomas Edison.

And that's why a lot
of the production moved

from the East Coast to New York and then

Chicago, they moved out to the West Coast.

(train bell chiming)

- Of course D. W. Griffith
entered the scene at the end

of the first decade of movies
and gave more rhythm, tempo,

purpose, pace and dramatic clarity

to the storytelling
and hired very talented

and very camera-friendly
actors like Mary Pickford.

(soft intriguing music)

There was no such thing as a movie actor.

They had to come from some place.

Most of them came from
the stage: people like

Lillian and Dorothy Gish.

Some of them had circus training.

Charlie Chaplin was part of
a famous music hall troop.

In England, they called
vaudeville music hall.

That's when Mack Sennett
heard about this young fellow,

Charlie Chaplin, and
signed him to a contract

and that was at the end of 1913.

- And there was an entire segment

of African-American
vaudeville entertainers

that would travel the country just going

in that circuit of African-American
vaudeville theaters.

- And there were quite a
few black filmmakers in like

the early 1900s such as
Oscar Micheaux and that part

of our heritage isn't celebrated
as much as it should be.

- [Man] Some of the movie
theaters that we think

of as palaces were actually

originally vaudeville theaters.

- Vaudeville houses that I've noticed have

a much higher ceiling.

The balcony is a lot
steeper and that's so people

on stage and the people
on the balcony could see

the people on the stage and people

on the vaudeville performers,

their voice could reach
up to the upper portions

of the balcony.

- Vaudeville theater, you
had a desire for intimacy

with the stage.

There was an attitude of see and be seen.

You'd tell a vaudeville house
from a strictly movie house

because the vaudeville house has box seats

on the side and sometimes
on the main floor as well.

The people sitting in the
box didn't have the finest

view of the stage,

but everybody in the
audience could see them,

which they cherished.

- This particular building
that we're in was built

before the movie theater era,

so this was built for live performance.

A movie theater house
is bigger in that way.

It's longer and narrow.

It's easier to see the screen.

(soft orchestral music)

- The vaudeville circuit built
a number of these houses.

They would travel from
city to city to city.

One of our local vaudeville
companies was Finch and Marco.

Finch and Marco was based downtown.

They had a studio in Hollywood area.

They sometimes worked with
Sid Grauman and sometimes

were competition, but they would do

what they called ideas,

what Sid Grauman would call prologues.

The individual vaudeville acts turned

into these really programmed
dramatic large shows.

- There were attempts
at feature length films

in the early 1910s.

Sarah Bernhardt made a
famous five reel film

about Queen Elizabeth,
one of her famous roles

from the stage.

The Italians made films
like "Cabiria," which were

imported here by a handful of theaters.

And then D. W. Griffith
famously started becoming

more ambitious in trying
slightly longer films,

then slightly longer and eventually making

"The Birth of a Nation."

So everybody realized that's
where things were heading.

- Movies were considered
third-rate entertainment.

Maybe the top entertainment
would of course be opera,

play, classical music.

Somewhere below there and
maybe the second rung might

be the vaudeville house.

(soft orchestral music)

The movies in the early
1900s were primarily

for the lower middle classes.

- Bit by bit,

as movies established
themselves and started

to shed their tawdry
reputation as being kind

of low-class entertainment, people thought

about the idea of building what today

we call purpose-built (chuckles) theaters.

And that became you know, a whole new era.

- As you move into the
1910s, the movie business

really began to boom in terms

of the movie exhibition business.

Let's start with an example.

If you look at Roxy in the 1910s,

you can see the progression

of movie palaces by his own career.

The showmen were people
who lived for their own

persona that they created.

They created a brand.

You could rely on the
fact that if you went

to a Grauman theater that
night or Roxy theater

or something put on by
Balaban and Katz or certainly

with Finch on Marco, even
if the film wasn't good,

the evening was gonna be great.

In 1913, in February in New
York, the Regent Theater opens

and it's the first purpose-built deluxe

motion picture theater.

It actually was not a success,

so Roxy was brought in
to essentially upgrade

its capabilities and
certainly its revenues.

By the time you get to The Strand in 1941,

they thought we'll open The
Strand for a few months.

We'll have people come for
movies and then we'll go

to musical comedy.

We'll do live theater like we had planned.

Well, The Strand was a
huge hit of 3,000 seats,

so they never returned it
to its original intent.

It stayed a movie theater.

The critics are writing
about the elaborate cars

and dress and people were coming,

that it's become fanciful for all classes.

Then you have the Rialto,
which was opened in 1916,

the Crossroads of the
World, 42nd and seventh,

its a huge success.

The Regent, the Strand, the
Rialto and the Rivoli from 1913

to 1917, even just in the small area

of New York, you can see that this area,

there had always been
dominated by legitimate theater

was suddenly being taken
over more and more by movies.

That's what lead to the confidence

of Messmore Kendall and
Edward Bowes had in opening

up the Capitol Theater in late 1919.

This is a 5,300 seat
theater that they opened

without any studio backing.

So to have gone from a
theater when you were hoping

the Regent would do well at
2,000 seats, to 5,300 seats

expressly for movies
shows you that meteoric

rise of movie theaters from
that period from 1913 to 1919.

The Capitol was the
really beginning in a way

of that sense of scale the 20s brings you.

It's not to say there weren't
many many other theaters,

the Grauman's Million Dollar here

in Los Angeles, Central Park and Chicago.

But there is something
about the Capitol opening

at the very end of the 1910s
that just is a signpost

of what's going to be coming in the 1920s.

(soft orchestral music)

- Balaban and Katz was
a chain that got started

on the southwest side.

The first theater was gonna
be the Central Park Theater.

This was 1917.

The second theater was
the Riviera and it became

so successful that Barney
said, oh, it's gotta be bigger,

bigger and bigger.

And it became the Tivoli Theater.

It was 3,600 seats.

He said, okay, let's do another theater.

Let's do it downtown and
make it our headquarters,

and that was the Chicago
Theater, which opened

the same year, 1921.

The money was just flowing in,

so they talked with Rapp and Rapp.

Just build us the biggest,
most extravagant theater,

and it became the Uptown.

(soft orchestral music)

- In 1920, Roxy was brought back

to New York to reopen
the the Capitol Theater.

He was the director of
presentations from 1920 to 1925.

And one of the things that he pioneered

at the Capitol Theater
was the transmission

of his stage shows and his own performers

over WEAF, which later became part of NBC.

But when Roxy left,

he did leave so he could
start his own theater,

the Roxy Theater.

And not only that it was
gonna be named for him

which of course was a
nice moment if you have

a famous nickname,

but it was because he
had that kind of draw.

They needed his name and
his track record to create

all the money he needed
for what would then be

the largest movie palace in the country.

That theater opened on March 11th, 1927,

with again almost 6,000
seats, and it was a sensation.

It was kind of the peak of
the movie palace moment.

There were three conductors.

There were three different
organs, massive Kimball organs.

There were stage shows, they were ballets,

they were operettas.

There was every manner of
entertainment on that stage,

even the integration of
live performance backed

by a motion picture projection in addition

to the feature film.

But Roxy himself was never
satisfied with anything.

And so as the years went
on from '27 and '28 to '29,

he began to look for a challenge.

He was plucked away by the Rockefellers

and by RCA and RKO for a new project,

which would be two theaters
opened at the same time

at the new Rockefeller Center.

He had always integrated
live performance and movies.

And now here in 1932,
Radio City Music Hall was

only going to be a place
for live performance,

a kind of elevated vaudeville.

And RKO Roxy Theater
which was 3,500 seats,

was going to be a place
for movies with of course

its famous Roxyettes, which he had had

since the original Roxy.

(upbeat music)

(shoes tapping)

- When Radio City Music Hall
opened December 27th, 1932,

SL Rothafel was his name
and everybody called

him Roxy and the music hall
was basically his idea.

It had the Rockettes.

It had a ballet company.

It had a singer, a chorus of singers.

It had a full symphony orchestra.

That's what was on stage.

It had costume designers, set designers.

It had a full costume shop
up on the eighth floor

where they made all the costumes.

In the basement was a full scenic studio.

Everything was made there.

He wanted Radio City Music Hall to be

the Showplace of the Nation
and that's the name it got.

And he didn't want films,

he wanted just stage presentations.

And so that's what they
did on opening night

and it was a bomb.

It was a serious, horrible bomb.

And so Roxy

exited the theater that night

in a stretcher and went into the hospital

at three o'clock in the morning.

And so the board of directors went,

the only way we're gonna
make this thing work

is to put movies in here.

And "The Bitter Tea of
General Yen" starring

Barbara Stanwyck was the first film.

It opened January 11th, 1933,

and that's all they wrote.

It became the most famous
movie palace in the world.

- The reason they were able
to build great theaters

like this was that they were
owned by the movie studios

who developed the product
that was shown in them.

- The people who ran the
movie studios and ran

the film companies,
many of them were known

in part because they named their companies

after themselves: Marcus
Loew of course, had Loew's.

- MGM was a division of a company

called Loew's Incorporated.

Well Loew's was a movie theater company,

so Loew's ran the theaters
and built and operated

the theaters that just
happened to show MGM movies.

- Marcus Loew built five

Wonder Theaters in New York,
all opened at the same time,

one in each borough.

One missed. The one in Staten
Island never got built.

It was in Jersey City.

- [Leonard] Fox, the same.

William Fox was a hard-driving
man who built a large

Fox theater chain.

- Fox didn't build that many theaters,

but they were glorious ones

in Detroit, in St. Louis and
Brooklyn and San Francisco.

Grandest of the grand and they would show

their own product.

- RKO Radio Pictures was
kind of a conglomerate

for its time because
it was built of several

components: The Keith/Albee
vaudeville theater

circuit and the Orpheum theater circuit

and the Radio Corporation
of America or RCA run

by David Sarnoff.

Warner Bros of course,

which also swallowed up the first national

picture company from the silent era,

had a buying spree of movie
theaters in the late '20s

and early '30s.

- [Ross] But in many cases,

there were companies like

Paramount, so Adolph Zukor's
name was a little less-known.

- Zukor presided over various combinations

of companies that became Paramount,

and Paramount owned its
own chain of theaters.

- They used the theaters, for instance,

to actually understand their audience.

Before there were Gallup
and research groups set up,

you know, Fox could phone
a movie theater operator

in Oakland and say, "How's
my movie gonna play up there?

What do you think?"

(soft orchestral music)

- Columbia didn't own its own theaters.

Universal didn't own its own theaters.

So they were dependent mostly
on independent theaters,

mom and pop theaters, smaller theaters,

and occasionally lucked
out and had a film that was

so appealing or created such demand,

they got into the bigger theaters.

- They were identifiable
brands and they brought

you a certain kind of film.

From the 1910s through the
1940s, many of the best

deluxe first-run movie
theaters in the country were

run by Warner Brothers,
Fox, RKO, Loew's, Paramount.

So they constrained a lot of trade.

- The other type of theater
you had that was built

you know, in the early
1900s, in the 19-teens was

the neighborhood-style theater.

- I call this a neighborhood movie palace.

To me, it's got the same
romance and the same

elegant details, but
it's on a smaller scale.

- Some of them were very modest affairs,

but they still offered
the experience of going

into a nice place and
sitting down comfortably

and watching a movie on a
screen bigger than life.

There was a tremendous appetite,
a hunger for movie-going.

And people in the '20s,
'30s and '40s, even drifting

into the '50s used to go
to the movies sometimes two

or three times a week.

People would've come to
see their favorite stars:

Douglas Fairbanks in films like

"The Mark of Zorro," "The Black Pirate,"

"The Thief of Bagdad."

Mary Pickford in films like

"Little Annie Rooney" and "Sparrows."

Charlie Chaplin in "The
Kid," "The Gold Rush"

and "The Circus."

The list goes on and on and on.

And studios got into
the business of building

and developing stars.

- The star system was
born in the late 1900s,

early 1910s as you begin to have

Florence Lawrence and Mary
Pickford and Charlie Chaplin,

these became national stars
and the national stardom meant

collecting, collecting fan
magazines and photographs.

- There was merchandising.

People think merchandising
is a modern phenomenon.

Oh to look back at what
you could buy or get

as a giveaway or a premium
in the teens and '20s

featuring all of these stars.

(soft orchestral music)

I collect stuff like that.

I keep finding more of it
and more and more and more.

Whatever you wanna call
it, cigarette cards,

collector cards, souvenir
stamps, souvenir spoons.

(chuckles softly)
Anything you can think of.

Movie stars were our heroes, our heroines,

our idols and that hasn't
changed all that much.

- Each of the studios
would have under contract

a stable of stars and
they were assigned parts.

They would pretend, ooh yes,

I was looking over a script
and I decided I might do this.

No no, the boss told
'em, you get on stage,

and this is your job.

- Mary Pickford was
very shrewd young woman

and she was possibly the first to realize,

and it came as a great shock

to her that the Famous Players Company run

by her friend and in some ways mentor

Adolph Zukor, was booking dozens of films

to theaters on the lure
of getting her films.

And if they didn't book her film,

they wouldn't get the
other stuff and vice versa.

But her films were the ones
that were really bringing

in the big bucks and the big crowds.

So she renegotiated her deal
with Mr. Zukor and said,

no no no, you can't sell a whole block.

They used to call it block booking.

You can't sell a block
of movies on the strength

of my movie.

My movie gets sold individually.

That was a milestone.

Charlie Chaplin renegotiated
as he moved from one

company to another to the
point where he was getting

an unheard of sum of money in
the teens before income tax,

by the way.

And eventually in 1919,
Mary, her future husband

Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie
Chaplin and the great

director PW Griffith
banded together and started

a company called United Artists.

It was not just a name,
it was a philosophy.

They were artists who
united together to sort

of control their own destiny,
control their own finances,

have complete power over
the movies they chose

to make and how they would
be released and distributed.

(soft orchestral music)

In 1926, it's said Mary Pickford traveled

to Europe and saw

some of the Moorish-style
cathedrals in Spain

and fell in love with them.

When she returned to Hollywood, she said,

I want a theater that looks like that.

So she was the driving force that created

the theater we're sitting in right now,

which was the flagship of that company

the United Artists Theater
on the corner of what was

then 10th Street, now
called Olympic and Broadway.

- Downtown in cities,

there always tended to
be a cluster of theaters.

There would be an MGM
theater and a Loew's theater

and an RKO theater because
they were competing

and they wanted to be near each other.

You see many photo, vintage
photo or even a photo

postcard showing a lineup
of theaters on a main street

of a major city.

(soft orchestral music)

- [Ross] Los Angeles is
special because it was

the entertainment capital of the world.

We do have two historic theater districts,

so all the movies were premiering not

in Hollywood but in downtown and there was

over 100 theaters just
downtown LA which is amazing.

And then later, Hollywood came into being.

Sid Grauman built the Egyptian and then

the Chinese and that sorta
put Hollywood on the map

as a place to go see films.

- The movie palace,

especially the neighborhood
movie palace became part

of the neighborhood.

Often it was named
after sometimes a street

that it was on,

sometimes the neighborhood
itself and they always had

a big sign in front and that was the name

of the neighborhood.

- One way to make it a
destination on a main street

of a medium-size town or a
big city was to have a big,

elaborate, brightly-lit marquee and then

what they used to call a blade.

- [Ross] Well the blade
marquee is the vertical

one that's attached to
the front of the building

and it's usually just
the name of the theater.

- Chicago had an interesting
situation happen.

The theater we're in now called

the Music Box, you see the letters there,

but there's no backplate
behind it just the stroke

of the letters.

Chicago initiated attacks on
the square foot area of signs.

So the theaters rebuilt
them just with the letters

so they'd have a minimum
of square footage.

- They usually had a box office.

Many times it was a standalone
little island booth.

Sometimes it was built into a sidewall.

If you're lucky, you had a forecourt,

an outside lobby area
that was off the sidewalk.

Then walk into an interior lobby.

And in the 1920s and '30s,
the interior lobby was

really just a congregation space.

There was no concession stands.

- When you walk

into Radio City Music Hall, the first room

that you see is the lobby and they call

it the Grand Foyer, and
it is very dramatic.

A secret about that: There
are mirrors three stories

tall and they are backed with gold leaf,

not silver like most mirrors.

And they wanted it that
way so it ensured a soft,

warm glow fell over the guests.

And it does, it has a very unusual,

interesting lighting when you go in there.

It's just beautiful.

It's kinda hushes everybody
as a matter of fact.

- The rug in the lobby.

That's my favorite part:
the bejeweled flying carpet

as I like to refer to it.

I believe it's plastic,

but it's textured to
appear as if it's fabric.

And of course it's got
glass jewels that shine

whenever the light hit them.

It's sort of similar to the columns.

It's a little bit more textured,

but these glass jewels are
throughout the property.

The lamps are actually
Tiffany lamps which I did

not realize, so that's pretty cool.

My mom told me that.

- The Michigan Theater
was built in the late '20s

and that was built as a movie palace.

And so it was modeled
off of the opera houses

of the 1800s and so you've
got this barrel ceiling.

Both of the staircases sweep
down in a bit of an arc.

- This lobby is breathtaking, spectacular.

You don't see lobbies like this.

I mean maybe I've seen
them in Europe at some

of the cathedrals.

It's unique to this country.

So this is the money shot.

This is the highlight of the building,

but there are others.

- [Man] There is a mezzanine
lobby up the stairs

that would feed the balcony,

Or if it was a bigger theater,

it might feed a mezzanine
level and a balcony.

You might even have three lobbies.

And then you have the main auditorium,

(soft orchestral music)

the balcony,

and your gallery or it could be

a mezzanine, another balcony.

They just had different
names for these parts.

- [Rosemary] It's a very wide open space.

Because of that fabulous
ceiling, it just feels big.

- The level of detail
throughout the property

is as I said earlier, it's excruciating.

Like you know, when you
come in here every time,

I've owned it for two 1/2
years and every time I come

in here, it's something new that I notice.

And that's just the level
of detail and you know,

they really took their time.

And when I first came in
here, I thought that you know,

maybe it was some like
method of 3D printing plaster

that they use because of
the intricacy and the detail

in all of the designs.

But when you look really
closely at some of the stuff,

you can see that it's
actually hand-painted.

So there were people in here
hand painting every facet

of the design, which is just incredible.

I mean I can't even imagine how much labor

that took, you know?

They don't build 'em like this any more.

- These films were all silent.

But pretty early on,

the smart owners of
theaters even storefront

theaters realized that
sitting in silence was not

very entertaining, and
they hired pianists.

Eventually, the pianists
became theater organists.

And organ companies like Wurlitzer started

manufacturing theater organs specifically

for movie theaters.

(cheerful organ music)

- [Rosemary] The organs played
before and after the film.

- [Man] Organ grills on either side

of the proscenium you'll see some sort

of big ornamental frame.

- There was a Wurlitzer
organ and apparently

that's in some rich guy's
house in California.

- Because these pipes are
in the walls of the theater,

you could feel the vibration of that organ

throughout the entire theater.

And if you were in the dressing room,

you could feel it vibrating on the wall.

That was very dramatic. It was very cool.

- And then in the great-great-theaters,

there were complete orchestras.

Sometimes symphonic symphony orchestras

(soft orchestral music)

all meant to accompany the silent film.

- The time that the movie
palaces were created was

a time when people needed an escape going

through the depression,
going through the World Wars.

This was a place that
everyone rich or poor could

come and escape those things
and go into another world.

(soft orchestral music)

- You didn't live in a mansion.

You didn't live in a palace,

but you could walk to that movie theater

and almost experience what
the rich people experience.

- [Man] When you went into the theater,

the whole atmosphere was yours.

You could live in a small
apartment with a hot

radiator by the window.

But you could enter into
a palace or you could sit

on a throne, it didn't cost very much.

- For less than a dollar,

they could come to a place like
this and feel pampered too.

Uniformed ushers, ticket takers,

people who are trained with
almost military precision

to be courteous and polite
to a guy who maybe was

a streetcar conductor.

Everyone was treated well.

That was part of the idea too,

that an ordinary person could
come to a place like this.

- We've done some oral history work

with Cherry Balaban Robins
and she is the daughter

of AJ Balaban, who was part

of the Balaban and Katz
chain here in Chicago.

And they built all of the
great movie palaces here.

And she said that her father always said

that everyone that came
in the door was a prince

and a princess and they
all paid the same amount

and they all deserve to
be treated like a prince

and a princess.

They wore crisp uniforms.

They had white gloves.

They had flashlights.

They had rules and
regulations and training.

They were the frontlines.

They represented the owners and operators.

- They were inspected every morning.

They had to get dressed
into their uniforms

and they'd appear in that
beautiful grand foyer.

And like the Army,

they would go down and make sure

that they were all properly.

And if they weren't, fix it.

- One of the appeals of
going to the movie house was

that you were treated this
way and that you could go

to an elaborate bathroom.

- A lot of these theaters
had what was known

as the women's powder room,

which was a room directly in front

of the women's bathroom
or the men's smoking room.

- It used to be a treat.

When I was young and my
parents used to take me there,

my brother and I would,

"Can we go downstairs to the lounge?"

(chuckles) 'Cause we wanted
to go into those rooms

'cause they were just like
something you never saw before.

(soft orchestral music)

And the women's lounge
looks like something

out of a Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers movie.

The men's lounge, there's
a painting in there called

"Men without Women."

It's very Art Deco.

It's got all symbols on
it of manhood: a razor

and a pipe and all that,

all the things that men do without us.

- [Man] And there were
dressing tables with mirrors.

They actually supplied
makeup for the ladies.

- Theaters had little
banners on the marquee said,

come on in, it's cool inside.

And it was.

Whether it was the early
process of air cooling

or later air conditioning,

that was your mecca during
a heatwave because not

many houses had air
conditioning in those days.

- What's wonderful about
this era of movie palaces

in the '20s and '30s is the
amazing creativity and design.

They were building fantasies.

I like to call

the sort of general architecture
style Hollywood fantasy.

- That's the beautiful thing
about an older art house

is you go in and it
usually has that theme.

- Then you had this
particular type that walked

in and it was like walking
into a Spanish courtyard

or a Persian courtyard.

John Eberson, his style
was like the theater

that we're sitting in
now: a dark-blue ceiling

with twinkling electric stars in it,

a projector that caused
clouds to move across.

- [Man] It looked like a night
sky and around the edges,

it would look like a
small village in Spain.

- John Everson, who's the
architect of this building,

designed it as a study in Moorish revival

architecture and you
can see it in the facade

behind me here.

You know, it's very like courtyardish,

very Moorish, Middle Eastern influenced

and if you look very closely,

there are different parts
around the auditorium

and the lobby.

They're written in English,

but they're stylized as Arabic.

There's one behind me and
it says, please be seated,

I beg you.

And then there's several others.

- Another architect

from New York, Thomas W.
Lamb, who probably did

more theaters than anybody
else, was more refined.

He chose the Adams style.

The Adam brothers being
decorators in the 18th century

in England who did a lot of what they call

the great houses over there.

- I don't know why they
would choose these themes.

I think it was just because
they were building so many

of these theaters.

- The architects could go wild.

There was a certain drive for novelty

and a tremendous drive for
grandeur and it depended

often who the architect was.

There was a great firm
in Chicago, two brothers,

Cornelius and George Rapp, Rapp and Rapp.

They got enamored of the
Palace of Versailles.

- Rapp and Rapp designed this theater,

the Loew's Jersey, as well

as the Kings and the Uptown in Chicago.

(soft orchestral music)

- And then you have these amazing murals,

many of them by
Heinzbergen and his company

and of all styles.

So he had things that were very baroque,

very classical, all the
way to the ones that he did

in the Wilton theater
which are streamlined,

deco, geometric shapes.

- The fresco you see
behind me depicts some

of the United Artists
stars of that period.

Not just the four founders but
some others like the young,

dashing Ronald Coleman is there.

Rudolph Valetino is there.

And when modern audiences
get to see a film

in a theater like this today,
it's a special experience.

Oh my gosh, look at that.

Well 100 years ago, it was
an everyday experience.

I can't imagine it either (chuckles)

but this is where you
would go on an ordinary

Friday or Saturday night
to see a new movie.

- The big transformation came
with sound movies in 1927.

Al Jolson was there on the screen.

He sang a song.

That hadn't been done before.

- Wait a minute, wait a minute.

You ain't heard nothin' yet.

Wait a minute, I tell ya,
you ain't heard nothin'.

You wanna hear "Toot Toot Tootsie"?

All right, hold on, hold on.

(upbeat music)

♪ Toot toot tootsie, goodbye. ♪

- And people hadn't.

They had not heard
anything yet from a movie.

It was a precious saying that is made

in that one sense.

(upbeat music)

Well after the First
World War, people thought

that the prosperity and
the joyous good times would

go on forever.

Eventually the Depression
was gonna come along.

Nobody knew that was gonna happen.

- Once you got into the
'30s, that's when it was

getting harder and harder
to be a real success.

- These were very very
expensive buildings,

and they had to pay for all
the upkeep in terms of heat,

electricity, fixing carpets and upholstery

and paying staff.

It's an incredibly expensive operation.

When the '30s hit and
the patrons died off,

they were trying to figure out how to keep

these buildings alive.

- [Man] Hollywood suffered
from a series of real

body blows in the late '40s
and into the early '50s.

The first was the US Consent Decree.

- [Man] Paramount was
sued by the government

under an antitrust lawsuit and it went

to the Supreme Court and they decided

that these movie studios could
not own theaters any more.

- No longer could MGM count
on its films being shown

in Loew's theaters and taking
money out of one pocket

and putting it in another,

which changed the entire
way movies were made

and financed in Hollywood.

Then there was television
and television caught

on pretty darn fast.

By the early 50s, not everybody,

but a lot of people bought television sets

and that became a magnet.

People would gather in
Uncle Joe's apartment

because he had a television set.

- When that happened, I think,

that's when theaters started to decline.

- And then tastes changed
and the streamlined look

of the '50s and '60s that
was reflected in automobiles

and other kinds of modern design,

caused some theaters to
change their marquees.

- Your little reader boards,

your little rectangular
marquees were replaced

with angles so that people could see 'em

as they were driving quickly by.

Many of the marquees
that have those angles,

those aren't the original marquees.

- In the early '20s and you know,

going into the '30s, you
didn't have concessions

in the movie theater.

In the case of the Michigan,
sometime in the '50s probably,

is when they added that in and you know,

they started selling popcorn and soda.

- [Man] The movie palaces were downtown.

After the Second World
War, people began to move

into the suburbs.

- The American dream is
to have your nice little

house and yard and your car.

People left the cities.

- And then the baby boom happened.

So the industry responded very smartly.

They developed drive-in theaters.

You could put the kid in
the backseat and you could

watch the movie.

- This was just one blow
after another to the way

they had done business
as usual for decades.

- People did go to the movies.

The attendance was pretty much
cut in half in those years.

Hollywood didn't quite know what to do.

Bunch of crazy guys in New York came up

with a system called Cinerama which came

out of World War II, a training device

that trained aerial gunners.

They converted it into three
panels on a curved screen,

a regular curved screen and
it became very immersive.

(soft orchestral music)

They tried selling this to Hollywood.

Everybody came out and
looked at it and was

pretty impressed with it.

But my god, you know?

Your three projection booths,

you got all this film and a
giant screen you gotta put

in and all this stuff.

It became impractical for them.

So they just kinda walked away from it.

And then when Cinerama hit
in 1952, it went gangbusters.

I mean literally a movie
playing in a movie theater

for three years straight you know

and you can't get tickets.

(chuckles) That reserved seat.

That's the shock that hit Hollywood.

It stayed pretty successful
for about 12 years or more.

The immersive part of
Cinerama sound is the fact

that sound would follow
something on the screen,

so it almost had an extra
dimension of realism.

As Lowell Thomas would say,
It was more real than real.

Cinerama hit so hard.

Hollywood knew they had to do something.

- That's when they developed

CinemaScope and stereophonic sound.

- [Announcer] Celebrities
and the man in the street

crowd Hollywood's famous
boulevard to attend

the CinemaScope premiere

of How to "Marry A
Millionaire," the first romantic

comedy to be filmed in
the new miracle medium.

- [David] They came up with CinemaScope.

They started shooting
"The Robe" and it became

a big success as well.

- These were all invented
with the specific purpose

of drawing people out
of their homes and back

into movie theaters.

If you wanted to show
wide-screen CinemaScope, you had

to somehow widen your
theater, your proscenium.

If you wanted to hear stereophonic sound,

you had to have a porous screen.

That's when the silver
screens started to disappear.

- Paramount came up with
something called VistaVision.

Then there was Technirama, Technoscope.

There's all these various
wide-screen scopes

and ramas all over the place.

But it was expensive
for theaters to do that.

This is in the '50s, so
people were starting to come

back to the movies again.

But theaters really evolved
and did lots of stuff

you know, in the '50s.

Maybe even in early '60s.

You could win plays.

There was a bingo night.

There was always something going

on at the local movie theater.

I can remember in the '50s,
they had cartoon shows

for kids where you'd have like you know,

30 cartoons or something, you know?

Big extravaganza on a Saturday.

And of course parents
loved that because all

the kids were down at the movie theater.

They can go off and do
what they wanted to do

because the babysitter movie
theater was gonna cover

'em with all the Tom and Jerry
cartoons they could handle.

(lion roaring)
(cheerful orchestral music)

(Tom meowing)

- I can remember goin'
to the Alger Theater.

I think the admission was 12
cents on Saturday afternoon.

Five cartoons, three serials
and a guy's dressed up

in tin foil martians or
whatever they might be

and the sound of,

"Yay," coming from the
audience every few seconds

as something significant happened.

- 3D in the '50s was an
interesting thing and king

of the gimmicks was
William Castle who came up

with all kinds of things:
Emergo, Illusion-O, all

these various things that
were kind of cheap tricks,

but they were fun cheap tricks.

One of 'em was with the movie

"The Tingler," a Vincent Price movie.

They would have these old aircraft parts

that had vibrators on 'em
and they would put 'em

under bunch of seats in the auditorium.

At a certain point in the movie,

these would kick in and
they'd vibrate and you'd get

a jolt, or skeletons flying
from the balcony down

towards the stage.

A guy named Hans Laube invented

something called Scentovision.

And so they decided to come
up with a scenario based

on an old detective novel.

And they added all these
smell elements to the film

so that they could pump
them into the theater.

And how they did that was
a bunch of little vials

that would hit and it'd
go through a tube and come

out on almost every other
seat in the theater.

That's all part of showmanship.

They were thinking outside
the box every minute.

Now roadshows were
usually extra-large movies

like "Lawrence of Arabia,"
"Mutiny on the Bounty."

Those were real event movies.

If you wanted to see that movie,

you had to drive to the
big city and there'd be

an overture to begin with
to get you in the mood

for the movie.

And then the lights would
dim slowly as the music

is building towards its crescendo and then

the curtains would open
with perfect timing

and the MGM lion would growl.

(lion roaring)

You almost got goosebumps
because they took the time

to do that right.

- Go into the mid to late
1960s, you have a period

of racial division, social division.

(somber piano music)

(crowd shouting)

- Some of the cities continued
to thrive, others did not.

And in many cities,

the downtown areas
became somewhat deserted.

In some cases, rundown.

(somber orchestral music)

People were known for
patronizing the stores

that have been there
because there was equivalent

out in the suburbs.

- Retail, as well as
entertainment, killed the theaters.

- The movie theater that
was popular in 1938 is now

you know, hardly gets anybody
in it but bums and stuff

to get warm.

There was a point where someone told me

in Los Angeles in one of
the theaters where a lot

of bums would come in 'cause
you could get in for like

a dollar or something, you know.

They'd be urinating on the floor.

And at the end,

the cleaning crew literally took hoses

and just watered down the whole floor

for the next day's show.

I mean that's how bad
it got in some cases.

(siren wailing)

- You've also got the elevation of crime.

And even if it isn't
an elevation of crime,

it's a notion that crime is elevating.

That sort of sets the stage for the 1970s.

- The city was a mess during that time.

It was hard to get tourists to come in

because the city became
dangerous to some people.

I lived there, so I
was sort of used to it.

But there were certain
sections in that area

that you didn't go to.

- People ask me you
know, "How was the block?

Were people gettin' robbed all the time?"

And it's like well there's not really much

goin' on out there.

I mean the jerk chicken
store across the street

is closed and you know,

there are a couple other
buildings across the street

that you know, were once
functioning when the theater

was open but are now closed.

There are communities like the south side

of Chicago across the nation.

But of course, this is
one of the larger examples

of what happens when there
is strategic disinvestment

in a community.

And unfortunately, the Regal sort of was

on the backend of all of that.

- The theaters had to change.

That's the way it goes:
everything changes.

And so moving away from some
of the first-run product,

they had to go to other programming.

- Some of them became what
they called grind houses

as they did on 42nd
Street in New York City.

(funky jazz music)

Some of them stayed open
all night attracting

a somewhat seedy audience.

Some of them showed blaxploitation films

because they weren't gonna be shown

in the suburban theaters.

- Which are kinda huge success
between say 1971 and 1975.

You've got martial arts films,

which are increasingly coming

over from Asia and also
being homegrown and then

you have even hybrids,
mixing of all those,

so soon there's a difference in terms

of even the content the
movie theaters are showing.

- People could live
vicariously through that too

because you know, there's
the villain again.

There's the bad guy.

There's Bruce Lee.

(intense music)
(Bruce Lee vocalizing)

So it did work for a while.

- The art house is growing,
independent film is growing.

You have people who are
going to film schools

and they're interested in seeing art films

and European films, avant-garde cinema,

experimental cinema,
independent films, global films.

You have the adult films
which are drawing off

the same kind of importation
of European art films

which have higher sexual content.

All of a sudden,

those are becoming more
mainstream and soon

the adult film industry figures

out that they can actually have mainstream

theatrical films in movie
theaters capped of course

by the incredible
success of "Deep Throat."

- [Rosemary] 42nd Street between Broadway

and Eighth Avenue, all
those fabulous theaters

that were there turned

into porno houses and they let some

of the theaters just go.

- And then you got into
the revival house era

and that's when I really
became involved at a lot

of the historic theaters.

Best film education I ever got was

in the Rialto Theater, the Vista Theater,

the New Art Theater where they were

just showing classic
movies every single day.

- Here on Broadway in
Los Angeles, good example

of what happened to a
lot of these theaters.

Some of them became
Spanish language theaters.

- If you've got people that
speak Spanish, then you're there

to serve the neighborhood.

But what's really happening overall

is that the giant movie
palace makes very little sense

in almost all of these
instances because you can't

pack most of the movie palaces downtown

with these kinds of movies.

- In some cases, the
theaters changed hands.

They were no longer
owned by big corporations

and a lot of them were
allowed to deteriorate,

some rather sharply
and some rather grimly.

(elegant orchestral music)

A lot of those theaters just closed down.

They shut down.

They'd lost their constituency.

They'd lost their vantage
of a good location.

- [Man] These are large spaces.

And if you're not filling
every seat, heating them

or cooling them, running the electricity

is very expensive.

- Just the cost of cleaning this thing.

All of the ornamentation
collects dirt and dust

and the marquee with moving parts

and the electronic circuits
exposed to the weather.

It's not surprising that
those things started

to fall apart.

- When the roof was leaking,

you could put up with
that for another year.

But they turned on the air conditioning

and it kinda worked,

then they went to fire up the
boiler in October and bang,

it leaked all over the
place and an awful lot

of these theaters closed.

- We had done one show at
the Grenada Theater in 1973

on Valentine's Day and
they wouldn't let us do

another show there, so I started looking

for another theater to bring our concerts

to and I came across this one.

It was owned by the same
company that owned the Grenada.

We started on Halloween of 1975.

They were still showing
movies here and they would

take out a movie whenever
we had a concert.

Grateful Dead used to
play here all the time.

Bob Marley played here regularly.

Frank Zappa, Genesis,
Electric Light Orchestra,

Prince, Rick James, The Kinks.

When I walked in here that day,

the bathrooms were barely
functioning and there were

some other issues.

So I said to the owner that
you had to close this place.

It's not habitable.

It's gonna keep continuing to deteriorate.

- [Man] When a theater has
been vacant for so long,

you have a lot of deferred
maintenance is a really

polite way of saying it.

Then if you have vandalism,
it gets even worse.

- A lot of the theaters
that I photographed are

in pretty rough shape.

I have put my foot
through a balcony floor.

I've had to climb over seats to get

to the production room because the stairs

are gone completely.

I've seen balconies that
have completely caved in.

I've seen ceilings that
have completely caved in.

I've also seen ones that look
like someone shut them down

and walked out like two days
before and they're fine.

I know the Loew's Valencia,
3,000 seat theater

and they just gave it to a church for $10.

But I think a church coming into a theater

and restoring it was the
best option for a lot

of these spaces.

- And United Artists, that
was also used as a church

by Dr. Jean Scott, the televangelist.

He was a pretty good tenant.

He ended up putting a lot
of money into restoration

of the theater.

Another one that is a successful church

is the Academy in Inglewood.

That's an S. Charles Lee
streamlined modern theater.

Gorgeous theater.

It's been in continuous use as a church

and they have really been good stewards.

They've taken great care of it.

They've restored elements
of it and it's a beauty.

The church tenant.

I wouldn't have thought of it,

but it was a really interesting use

for the historic theaters.

And in some cases very good.

- But eventually the
single-screen theaters had

to compete with what was
going on in the suburbs.

- The new theaters that
came along were multiplexes

built from the ground
up and they were nice.

They offered all sorts
of comfort and amenities

that some of these
older theaters couldn't.

And what's more, they were
in the right locations.

But the worst part was
that instead of having

eight movies playing or 12 movies playing,

a single-screen theater
would live or die from week

to week and a lot of them died.

- Because they weren't
filling these theaters

with 3,500 seats any more.

They started to divide these theaters up.

- [Leonard] Cut the balconies in half,

made them two screens.

They cut the main theater
sometimes into three

or four screens.

- It ended up making pretty
horrible movie theaters

because the walls that would divide them

were four inches thick with
not a lot of sound absorption.

So you ended up hearing the
explosions in one versus

the explosions in the other.

Sight lines were terrible.

Seats weren't really moved.

It was a bad experience.

When the big movies started happening

in "Jaws" and "Star Wars"
and all of those other

films started coming out, most
people were already saying,

I'm gonna go off to the new
multiplexes in the suburbs.

That's where the parking is.

That's where the air conditioning is.

That's where it's safe.

That's where I can go
every hour on the hour.

And that's where the
investment was falling

and that's where the banks were lending.

And it's where the people
who were living who were

gonna buy the toys fueled the
whole blockbuster industry.

From 1975 to 1995, they
had this very underwhelming

kind of basic multiplex
experience which was spare,

spartan and designed for
efficiency and profit.

- So these independent
theaters are starting

to lose traction and they
started to divest themselves

of a lot of theaters
and they sold them off

part and parcel.
(somber music)

- I think the bigger cultural loss

is the common experience,
the shared experience.

(soft piano music)

- [Matt] There'll be less and less movies

that actually go into
theaters and more and more

will come out on whatever
streaming platform

you wanna use.

- I mean I can sit in my living room.

15,000 different things I could stream

in addition to cable.

But at the core of all of that,

there's human interaction
that you don't get.

- There's always things
that you did when you were

a kid that you remember
for your whole life

and you carry that good memory with you.

And I think with theaters, if
the theater is still around,

you want people to
experience that as well.

Whether it's a movie or
going to a concert at one

of these places you know,
fighting to keep them alive.

I think that's a great thing.

- Radio City Music Hall
became the most famous

movie palace in the world
and was successful all

the way through until all that happened.

In the mid-1970s, things
started to change completely.

People that ran it said,
we're losing money.

We can't get good movies,

so we're just gonna tear this
down and build a glass box.

- And after all these years,

there was a sad announcement
about that music hall today.

- I'm announcing the closing

of Radio City Music Hall
at the end of the 1978

Easter show on April 12th.

- What else are you gonna do?

They said, we're gonna close
it after the Easter show,

so you're all outta work.

My feeling was they can't
tear this building down.

So I love this building,
let's try to save it.

When I called the meeting,
all the employees came.

I said, "We have nothing to lose.

We're all gonna be outta
work on April 12th,

so let's do something."

And I started the crusade
and serious battle

to save the theater.

For us, the passion was
to move forward and do

something good and save the building.

You don't know where you're going

when you start something like
that, and you just keep going.

We had fabulous people
help us and it was made

a city landmark and then it was

on the National Historic Landmark list.

And it's saved forever, they
can't do anything to it.

Though it doesn't run
films any more which breaks

my heart, maybe one of
these days it'll come back.

I think people would get
a kick out of going back

in there and seeing it so big.

- I think it would be somewhat
shocking for many of us

to go to a 5,000 seat
theater to see a movie.

Very different experience.

- I worked at the Chicago for a long time,

testified before the city council.

The theater organ that's in
there and got it landmark.

And when the theater was saved,

we knew that the organ was saved.

It was just wonderful to
go back in there and see

all those people that walked in

and their eyes would open up.

- And it's also good to see things like

the Cinerama Dome surviving
because it was goin'

to be torn down.

They were gonna keep the
Dome, but they were gonna put

a Koo Koo Roo chicken or something

in there and the whole
town fought against it.

Now the whole town may
not have gone to a movie

there that often, but when
they saw it was threatened,

they all got together, put you know,

practically protest marches and convinced

the theater company not to do anything

with the Cinerama Dome.

And boy, they're glad they didn't.

- Fortunately, a number
of them survived intact

and number of them survived intact enough

that they can be brought
back to their original glory

and some of them have been.

- The building was
built in 1927 originally

as the Avalon Theater and it turned

into the New Regal Theater
about 60 years later, 1987.

It was about a 12 million
dollar restoration

that they had to do, which
is why it's so beautiful.

The City of Chicago saved this
property by landmarking it.

Chicago's of course the city
known for its architecture,

so that designation I
think has really protected

this building from demolition.

(soft piano music)

The FDIC had taken over a
bank which had foreclosed

on the property and it was newly-listed.

At the time, my mother
forwarded me an email saying

that the building was
being offered and I jumped

right into it.

I mean I knew that the building
being closed was really

a blow to the community.

I'm a private equity investor,

so I like to figure out how things work

and how I can make them better.

In particular with a focus on
doing that for social good,

and I saw this as an opportunity to really

revive the neighborhood.

I think the Regal is the
foundation of the south side

of Chicago and by
extension, the city itself.

We had an opportunity to
revitalize the building

and I think we can turn
around what's happening

this side of town.

There are no cultural
entertainment outlets you know,

basically in this community.

And since the building has been closed,

this was a huge economic
engine for the area

and it really devastated the
surrounding neighborhood.

We've got about six or
seven million dollars

and upwards of 10 that
we're going to need to put

into the building which
fortunately is not as much

as it could be.

But that being said, it is
quite a substantial amount.

Our hope is to reopen the
building to the community

not just for entertainment purposes,

but also to culturally
enrich the youth and to give

them a creative outlet outside of whatever

it is they might be doing
now which isn't too positive.

- Restoration can mean many things.

For instance, the Loew's
Kings in Brooklyn,

incredible restoration job in most senses.

But they did add elevators,
they did add cup holders.

There are certain concessions
that we just have to make.

- These places that you look
around like we're in today,

they have a certain kind
of architectural splendor

that's not easily created with drywall.

- I salute anybody and
everybody who has a hand

in saving these great
theaters and finding a way

to keep them alive.

It's not enough to save them,

you have to keep them going somehow.

We have to find a way to
breathe life into them,

but it's worth the effort.

It's really worth the effort.

Because once you tear it
down, you can't rebuild it.

Once it's gone, it's gone.

- Los Angeles Historic
Theater Foundation, it was

founded in 1987 by a group
of people who were upset

that within a span of just
a few weeks or months,

there were three theaters on
Broadway that were closed.

The theater business
downtown was dwindling,

but these things were closed
and turned into swap meets

and turned into retail.

And it happened so quickly
that there was this sort

of desperate reaction.

We need to do something.

It is the largest movie
palace district in the world.

(soft orchestral music)

With 18 standing theaters,

not all used as theaters but
within a eight-block range.

It's really an amazing
resource that most people

don't know about.

On the top of our watch list right now,

Hollywood Warner Theater
which was more recently known

as the Hollywood Pacific
1-2-3 that the owners

originally came to the community and said,

we're gonna demolish it
and keep the facade only.

A number of us said that
wasn't acceptable and we are

now in negotiations with the owner to do

a feasibility study.

Fox Inglewood really really
are interested in making

that a successful theater again.

It's been closed for quite a while.

There's a number of issues
that need to be resolved

as far as the safety of the
theater and how it could

be brought back and restored.

So we're really watching
that one carefully.

The younger generation
actually sees the value

and is seeking it out.

(soft waltz music)

We are screening more and
more classics than anyone

could get on Netflix for free.

They can go and see it in a movie theater

with 1,000 total strangers.

And every time they open their theaters,

they're getting hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds

of young people that wanna come out.

And people are coming back.

My kids' generation are
frequenting these kinds

of shows because they
want that experience.

When I started this 30 years ago,

preservation was a dirty word.

And if you called yourself
a preservationist,

you were some radical crazy person.

- There's something about people who love

saving buildings, especially theaters.

- The Theater Historical Society goes back

to Ben Hall who was a
cultural historian and wrote

the wonderful book about
"The Best Remaining Seats."

Book came about in response
to when he looked outta

the window in his office.

Straight down, he was looking at the roof

of the Roxy Theater while
they were demolishing it.

(elegant orchestral music)

We've grown to have a significant archive,

a publication and an annual gathering.

Our goals are to document and
to celebrate these theaters.

- I personally believe
that landmark status

is a really great thing to have.

Not only does it offer
up certain you know,

benefits and if you can
get tax credits to help

offset the costs of restoration.

Those are wonderful things.

But it acknowledges you know,

if you have a plaque on
the front of your building

that says, this is a landmark structure.

This place is important.

Even to the casual passerby,
it adds a little more cachet,

a little more credibility.

- A lot of them in New York
City have landmark status

for the exterior.

So that means that a group would come in,

do whatever they want
to the inside as long

as the facade is preserved.

- Saving a facade and
destroying the theater,

it breaks my heart.

Is it better to keep just the facade?

I suppose it is,

but it just makes me
redouble my efforts to try

to save the theaters that we have.

A couple of examples of that,
painful to me every time,

is the Westchester near LAX.

Big, beautiful towering deco structure.

They still have the box
office and everything else

is a medical office inside.

There's nothing in there.

Another example is the Golden
Gate in Whittier and it's now

just the theater building
and it's a CVS Pharmacy.

Painful to go into when
we see the rows of drugs

and fluorescent lights.

But if you look above
the fluorescent lights,

you can still see the
theater and the organ

and stuff like that.

I was in there once
tryin' to take pictures

and I noticed this little
six year old girl looking up

at the ceiling with me you
know, while mom was shopping.

And you know, just
sorta watched as she was

exploring this theater.

She was getting it.

She was seeing what was above.

And at one point she came over to me

and she said, "It's creepy."

And I said, "Yeah, it is."

She got it.

She got a feeling for what was

above the fluorescent theater.

So in that case,

maybe it is good to save 'em
in whatever condition we can.

And maybe someday they can
be brought back as theaters.

- The Art House Convergence is a resource

for community-based
mission-driven cinemas.

I think people have really
begun to value these theaters.

We've seen an increase in
the number of independent

movie theaters over the last 10 years.

A lot of them lay dormant
for a couple years usually

in the '70s, maybe the '80s.

And then there would be a
group in town that would

rally around the theater.

There's a couple different
types of movie theaters.

You have the Repertory
House and that's like here.

We're in the New Bev in Los Angeles.

So that means that they're
screening titles that are

not currently first-run.

But a lot of our theaters
are showing foreign films,

documentaries, American indies.

Without a doubt, you have
to have passion to run

an independent movie house.

Movies are an important
cornerstone for a community

and that having a movie
theater space which acts

as more than just a movie theater.

It's not just that you're
seeing things on screen,

it's that you're doing Q&As after.

It's that you're having conversations

about the movies out in the lobby after.

It becomes a community gathering space.

- The best thing that happened to some

of these movie palaces is that they became

performing arts centers.

They added wings and
dressing rooms backstage.

And sometimes they tried
to deepen the apron

of the stage so that
they could accommodate

touring Broadway shows,

let's say or concert orchestra or ballet.

- The key to keeping
these large theaters alive

and thriving is a multiuse model.

If you can offer a wide variety,

whether it's concerts and revival movies

and special event movies.

If you can keep that variety going,

that's how you fill these seats.

(elegant orchestral music)

- The remainder of these movie palaces,

a lot of them have already been saved

or already been demolished.

There are very few huge buildings.

The Uptown Chicago being
one of them where people

are still desperately
hoping to save what are

absolutely irreplaceable
architectural structures.

- You'll never see
something like this again.

The detail that they put in here.

The things they thought of.

This was the nicest
movie palace ever built

in the country and the architects
even said that you know,

it's not for today, but for all time.

It was four million
dollars to build in 1924.

It's the largest freestanding
theater in the country.

It has more square feet

than Radio City, but
Radio City has more seats.

In 2008 when we purchased the theater,

if you remember, the
economy started to collapse.

So we bought it at the
worst possible time.

I didn't know what we were
gonna do to save the theater.

I just knew it needed to be saved.

(soft orchestral music)

This theater is in
relatively good condition.

We need to put in all new
mechanicals, all new plumbing,

all new electrical.

We need to add elevators.

We need to clean and restore
the areas that need it.

Those are the things that we're working on

and we think it's a 60 to 65
million dollar restoration.

We're bringing it back
to the way it was built

and that's what it should be.

There'll be some minor changes
that need to take place.

For the most part,

I'd say it's all gonna be the way it was

because it was designed so well.

We can't beat it.

It's good that we have the original

architectural drawings
because all we gotta do

is follow what Rapp and Rapp did.

One of the most important
things about getting

the doors open here is this
theater is the catalyst

for bringing Uptown back.

So once that's done,
once the theater is open,

it will spur all kinds of
investment in the neighborhood.

But we think that it's
perfect for concerts

and private events.

This is going to be

Chicago's music/entertainment district

because of the other
theaters that are here.

Right down the street, you
got the Aragon Ballroom.

'Cross the street, you've
got the Riviera Theater.

Couple doors down is the
Green Mill and there are

other theaters and other
properties in the area

that will go back and
become theaters again.

- Movie palaces are completely
connected to the community.

You have generations of the same family

who will have stories.

In the Rialto, this happens all the time.

I have people tell me,

"Oh, my grandmother went
on her first date here."

Or, "My parents proposed
after going to the Rialto."

So you have all of these
memories that are tied

very closely to a Rialto experience

or to a theater experience.

The community needs the
theater just as much

as a theater needs the community.

- Culturally, if we lose these places,

it takes away a sense of identity.

When you see a building like
a classic movie theater,

it immediately puts you
and gives you a sense

of time and place.

It positions you as part of history.

It lets you feel the
connectivity between all

of the people that were there before you.

- If you think about it,

things that are coming and
going: trends, passing fads,

that kinda thing.

The movies are always going to be

a destination for people.

People will always wanna see
movies in the movie theater.

There may be other
trendy things that pop up

that are keeping people from
going for a period of time,

but they always come back to it.

Just like you always go back to a museum,

you always wanna go see
the art in the place

where that art is best viewed.

- It's more than just caring

about it because there's
been great personal

sacrifice that's come
along with tryin' to keep

this theater up.

It's something that future
generations should always

get to see fulfilling the
statement of the architects.

Not for today, but for all time.

(gentle orchestral music)

- So one year when our
daughter Jessie was about nine,

there was a Laurel and Hardy evening

at the Los Angeles Theater.

Now she had seen Laurel and Hardy before,

so she already liked them.

But she sat in the theater
and heard over 2,000 people

rocking with laughter at
these films that night.

I don't think she's ever forgotten it.

I know I've never forgotten.

I mean you can go to
see a funny movie today.

You can go to see you know,

a new Melissa McCarthy
movie or The Hangover or any

kinda modern movie and you can laugh.

But to be in a theater
with over 2,000 people

laughing like that is a
pretty amazing experience.

- I think the future of movie-going

is in independent cinemas.

That's where people are
gonna be in 10 years

because those are the
people that are you know,

rooted in their community.

They know the people's names
who come through the door.

So if you're a theater,
regardless if you're part

of a large chain or not,

make sure that you reflect your community.

- I got involved in the restoration

of Cinerama films besides
the fact that nobody

else wanted to touch it was
the fact that I had done

a documentary about the
history of Cinerama and we had

to find out some clever
ways to show examples.

And so when the documentary was over,

I'm ready to go on with
the rest of my life, right?

And then the need came up for these films,

were rotting away in vaults

and nothing was happening with them.

So the company that
owns the assets then put

a certain amount of money
into a couple of tests

and experiments, took that
on as sort of a you know,

crusade I guess.

And now to the point where we've literally

restored almost all the Cinerama movies.

- There's where you get
into an interesting thing

about historic preservation.

Because a lot of people don't
think well say it's built

in the '50s and '60s,
it's not old, you know?

Or it's not a movie palace,
so it's not really important.

Or you get a fight like

the Indian Hill Cinerama
which got a landmark status

from the city, but the
landmark status had no teeth

and so they tore it down
anyway for a parking lot.

So you have the National and Westwood.

You got all these theaters
that were built in the 1960s.

The Beekman in New York.

All of whom have been
torn down with nothing

of the fanfare that the movie palaces get.

And so you need to understand
all those theaters.

But if all the theaters are destroyed,

then how can you go back and look and see

what it looked like in the
1950s and 60s when people

left the cities and went
into small towns and rural

areas and suburban areas and began to go

to the movie theaters and new places.

You can't because they're torn down.

So the preservation
movement is one that needs

to be focused on movie
palaces but also needs

to think about do we need
to save a 1970s theater?

It's a question.

- I get contacts from people
who are traveling here

from Europe and they wanna
see our movie palaces

because it's just an alien,

it's a foreign thing to them to see wait,

this was a palace built
just to watch a movie?

You know, I get such great reactions.