ROADSHOW!
My diary entry for February 20, 1958, half a century ago today, tells me I went to see, with a friend named Mario from my high school junior class, the film Around the World in 80 Days, at the Elmwood Theatre on Elmwood Avenue in Providence. The theatre had been built as a "nabe" or neighborhood theatre in 1950. In 1957 it was outfitted at great expense with Todd-AO 70mm projection equipment, a new screen and state-of-the-art magnetic sound.
A new policy of showing roadshow films was instituted. Roadshow presentations have not been an exhibition policy for decades. When a movie was roadshown, the schedule resembled that of Broadway shows. That meant there were usually ten screenings per week: one nightly show, and three matinées, on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. One theatre in bigger cities would have exclusive exhibition rights. The seats were reserved, and you could buy them weeks or more in advance. Around the World, based on the Jules Verne classic adventure, opened a year late in our area, probably because the Todd people wanted to supervise a re-outfitting of a suitable theatre in Providence for their presentation, regardless of the time it took. The Elmwood was that theatre. In the 1960s a new Warwick, RI theatre called the Warwick Cinema roadshowed The Sound of Music for over a year, and people came in carloads and busloads.
For Around the World, I had ordered tickets for me and Mario by mail a week before we went. It was already four months into the run, and the cheapest seats were only 90¢ at this point! The highest price in the run was $2.50 on weekend nights. I must have sent a money order for $1.80 plus a stamped self-addressed envelope.
Roadshow presentations were very popular throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s, though there were some earlier examples. In the 1940s Henry V and The Red Shoes were roadshown. In 1915 D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation was roadshown across the country at extravagant prices for the time. The 1939 Gone With the Wind was roadshown in some big cities. Other obvious roadshow engagements that come to mind are movies like South Pacific, Porgy and Bess, The Ten Commandments, My Fair Lady, Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, Lawrence of Arabia, 2001-A Space Odyssey. Even a foreign-language hit like Fellini's La dolce vita could be roadshown in some cities. The Cinerama movies of the 1950s and later were essentially roadshows in theatres specially equipped with an interlocked 3-projector system.
Roadshow films were generally very long and had an intermission. Often nicely illustrated souvenir booklets were sold. Plus there was overture, intermission and exit music. Roadshow presentations faded out in the early 1970s with the advent of saturation bookings of big movies (like The Godfather) which were shown continuously and without reserved seats.
Oh. In later decades the Elmwood ran art-house first-run films, then reverted to popular second-run films after the place was twinned. Spanish-language films were shown for a time, even porno. Now it is a Latino church called Cristo Sana. But for a decade it was the exciting roadshow Mecca of Rhode Island.
(Cross-posted to movie_greats)