Hello, please read the attached article about the then-brand new Civic Theater. This was published in July 1941 in a magazine called Box Office. It gives information about the planning and circumstances surrounding the construction of this Art Moderne theater, and gives very detailed information about the design features of the theater.
Box Office is the industry magazine for the motion picture operator. Lots of great history recorded in those pages. It is a very good record of who worked in the business in each city during a specific period. They also had bowling leagues and published the scores from each league championship.
Thank you for posting this article! It brings back memories! The Grillmaster and I had our first date there back in the day!!
Ah, many is the Saturday matinee my brother and I attended in that theater. Westerns, cartoon carnivals, serials.... The matinees had it all.
My father was living just a few blocks away and going to Denby when the theater was being built. He and his friends had played football in the vacant ;ot before the hole for the foundation was dug. He remembers the excitement in the neighborhood that they were finally going to be getting their own major movie theater. He attended the first night show there with his mother and sister.
Alas, I went to one of the later shows there, when the theater was definitely in decline. It was being run by a very nice, but obviously very underfunded, older gentleman, who seemed to be doing everything from selling tickets to running the projector. I remember seeing King Kong [[unfortunate Jessica Lange version) in a cold theater where the seat rows were only bolted to the floor at the ends - meaning you could push them back and forth with some foot pressure. 2/3 through the picture the giant curtain on the north wall fell with a big crash, taking some of the wall itself with it. The last reel of the movie had burn marks and parts missing.