A Look Inside My Childhood Theater

I've posted images of the exterior of the Plaza Theater (my childhood refuge) in the past, but now I can show you what was just inside the front door. This dates from 18 June 1969, when the Plaza was reopening with some redecorations after a closed spell. I'm seeing this for the first time since probably 1971. This is structurally the same concession stand area where I ran for shelter when the giant spider of THE INCREDIBLE SHIRNKING MAN scared me out of the dark as a wee tot. You can see where the popcorn was popped, where the candy bars were arrayed, where the Pepsi products were dispensed. To the right, outside of shot, there was room on the walls for two "Next Week" posters to be displayed. This is the lobby where a young me was stunned by the Coming Soon poster for THE ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER. This is where I saw HORROR OF DRACULA, THE TRIP, SPIRITS OF THE DEAD, and so many others. I always went in through the right door and sat somewhere close to the front, on the aisle at center section left. Not visible here, just to the left of the left-side entrance was a Fanta soft drink vending machine which offered Orange, Grape, Cola and Root Beer in carbonated and non-carbonated options.   

A closer look.

Another short newspaper piece I found tonight informed me that the Plaza seated 600 and that, at the time I started going there (circa 1962) its personable young manager was none other than Bob Rehme - subsequently the first movie guy to cut me a check (for a synopsis I'd written for the PINK FLOYD LIVE AT POMPEII pressbook) and later an executive at New World Pictures, Avco Embassy (where he green-lit SCANNERS and THE HOWLING) and Universal, and for awhile serving as the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! - proving that it was a fateful place for more than just me. I wish he and I had discussed it. 

At the time of its grand reopening, YELLOW SUBMARINE was the big attraction... but it didn't draw the huge crowds that A HARD DAY'S NIGHT had. It was followed in subsequent weeks by a double bill of DOCTOR NO and GOLDFINGER (which, for some reason, my mother did not want me to see), then by THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S, THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR/THE SCALPHUNTERS, THE ODD COUPLE/THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER, and ROMEO AND JULIET. If you examine this photo from the time of the YELLOW SUBMARINE booking, you will see—behind the Gabled and Monroed column—a portion of the one-sheet for PLANET OF THE APES, then "Coming Soon." It didn't actually arrive at the Plaza till July 31, at which time it's co-feature was none other than Hammer's THE LOST CONTINENT. It was at that time that the theater began selling me the occasional one-sheet poster for 75 cents (the price of a Plaza ticket); the manager wanted to keep PLANET OF THE APES for himself, but I still have the LOST CONTINENT one-sheet originally displayed at the Plaza framed here in my office.

 

This is a much earlier piece (Cincinnati POST, 14 December 1963) about the theater's first imminent "reopening" as an upmarket "fine arts" theater. As best I can determine, this reinvention of the Plaza lasted less than a year, until Wednesday, 12 August 1964, when the theater booked A HARD DAY'S NIGHT. The huge influx of teens and children, especially at the weekend matinees, apparently convinced them to bring back their weekend matinee programs of old—but they didn't often advertise them in the papers, leaving it to the local kids to check out the weekend marquee and posters.

On 29 August, I see they booked William Castle's STRAIT-JACKET as their main weekly feature but foolishly chose PT-109 as that weekend's matinee feature! Of the few later matinees they mentioned in print, most tended to be Elvis, beach, or action pictures. I noticed that, on Saturday 31 October, when the main features were THE KILLERS and CHARADE, they booked an unspecified "BIG MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW TONIGHT - 10:45" - for Halloween, but that would have been well past my curfew. The matinee listed for 7 November was THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and NIGHT CREATURES, which I'm certain I attended. Then Elvis and surf matinees prevailed till 20 December's showings of THE COMEDY OF TERRORS. Looking back, this must have been a sad time of slim pickings for me at the Plaza, but it helped me to save my allowance toward the all-important primo comics that Marvel were streeting each and every week, and I imagine I saw as many horror films as were being broadcast on weekly television. By March 1965, their weekend matinee bills were back to classic scare fare for the most part, including this memorable booking:

In retrospect, I'm sure the Plaza's short-lived detour into art fare had a bigger effect on me than I realized at the time, giving me an insatiable curiosity about the films being shown there which I was too young to see. You would have had to grow up in a place like Norwood to understand how far out of left field this plan really was at the time; a good idea in itself, I suppose, but imposed in an insanely wrong place. Even so, because of this, the fusion in my memory of the Plaza as both horror movie heaven and art film palace is as much my DNA as whatever I got from my mother and father.

(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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