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Cobb eventually took the theatre over. One of the auditoriums was split into two, making them very narrow. The building was gutted and three different restaurants have been in the location since the theatre closed after February 28, 1993. For the longest, movies were a dollar there and the UAH students would walk the short distance there to see movies. I only went once.

Bob Maar may know more about the theatre and the history of it, since he emailed me not long ago saying he built and opened it and asked me if it was still there. Bob, were all of the "Trans-Lux" twin theatres built to approximately the same specifications? I did not live in Huntsville when it was still in its original form. Unfortunately, I did not see a newspaper article giving some of the technical information about the theatre when it opened. Many of the theatres that opened before the 1970s had newspaper articles describing the facilities.

Click here for a list of theatres that have operated in Huntvsille and Decatur since the 1920s. Many have description files with opening dates nad first movies shown, with dates of significant changes (auditorium additions).

Evans

The Twin Cinema that was built in Muskogee, Oklahoma was a partnership between Trans-Lux and Inflight Motion Pictures. The Theatre in Muskogee was Originally Trans-Lux Inflight and that is what was on the Marquee at the opening. Trans-Lux Inflight were originally built as 16mm theatres and each auditorium had 350 seats. Like Jerry Lewis Cinemas (Network Cinemas) these theatres were originally built to be franchaised tp local owners. The First theatre opened in 1966 in Bartow, Florida. This was a single auditorium house. This was followed by a single in Tampa, Florida in 1968. Muskogee was third and the first twin opened in July of 1969. Others of this genre opened ion Charlotte NC (Twin), Kannapolis,NC (Single), Kinston NC (Single), High Point NC (Single) Greensboro NC ( Single)& Saginaw, MI. Daytona Beach, FL these were all open in 1970 aand 71. The franchasing of theatres never worked out for us or for Network. All of the above mentioned theatres were equipt with Norelco FP16 1000 Watt lamphouses supplied by Carbons, Inc. The projection and sound systems were designed by the Ciief Engineer and vice President of Inflight, Boyce Nemec. Boyce was a former President of Reeves Sound and was a meticulis engineer. He kept detailed logs on everything thath took place in the projection booth with the equipment and projection operation. At that time I was in charge of construction, hiring, training, co-ordination of all phases of advertising, concession, purchasing and making sure we hit our deadlines. The one area with the inflight theatres I did not have to worry about was projection and Sound. How ever in late 1971 the decesion was made to convert all of the InflightDivision over to 35mm theatres. Hence over the tear 71 &72 they all converted over.

The wholly owned Trans-Lux Theatres were expanding at the same time. We had theatres in Boston (State), New York, TL East 57TH & 3RD., TL West 49TH & B'way, TL 85th & Madison, TL Lexington at 52nd. (This is where Marilyn Monroe was photograph with her dress blowing up from the subway grate. Philadelphia, Washington 3 Theatres, Richmond,Va, Huntsville,AL, Clearwater, Fl, Jackville,Fl. 4 theatres, New Orleans six theatres, St Louis one theatre, Detroit Krim and Clarksville, Indiana theatre. We had bought the Martin Cinerama Theatres in New Orleans, and St Louis, Harrisburg was built as a Cinerama Theatre.

This gives you a sketch of Trans-Lux. Send me your address and I will mail you some photo's from the Muskogee opening. Where we opened with Disney's Love Bug and gave two away opening night.

The architect of the Inflight was John McNamara who interned under Charles Lamb and took over his shop when he retired.

The Huntsville Twin was not an Inflight the Auditoriums were larger. And the Equipment used was Century JJ's. 35/70. We opened Christmas Day 1970. Century in those days was located in Long Island City, Queens, New York.

The Muskogee theatre closed in late 86 or early 87 and Carmike took it over. I do not think Carmike ever had any intention of keeping it open, they just wanted to buy it and destroy it so they would have a monopoly on the town. It was not long after Carmike took over that they made it into a dollar house and it went to hell fast. Carmike kept it open until late 1988 I think and then shut it down. The building sat empty for awhile and was vandalized. At the time of closing, Carmike went in and took out all of the seats and slashed the screens. the only thing that was left was the blue and gold curtains but they were barely hanging on.

In 1990, the building was set on fire and the city condemed it. In 1995 the building and that whole strip of the shopping center was completly demolished.

I worked for carmike at the time they took over Trans-Lux and I can remember the Cramike managers going in and throwing out TONS of old movie memorbillia (posters, ad slicks, lobby cards, etc) I guess Marie Weaver (the TL Manager) never threw anything away. I was only a kid at that time and I wish now I would have grabbed a bunch of that stuff they were tossing. I remember seeing stuff for "Annie Hall", "Close Encounters" and "Star Wars"---all of it trashed. What a shame.

The Muskogee Trans-Lux was a NICE theatre. It had the biggest auditoriums compared to the Muskogee Twin (which at one time was a Jerry Lewis Theatre called "The Movies!". It was a sad end to a good theatre.

Bob, I am curious as to why TL picked Muskogee, OK to build a twin? Was that the farthest West TL had made it to? Also how did the Weavers get involved in the movie business?

The Trans-Lux was later twined and finally taken over by Carmike and then closed... I guess about five years ago. Trans-Lux did reopen it as a discount house for several months after that as they still own the building. It didn't do well, and is too far removed from there present area of operations so they closed it again. It stands empty now.

I also remember that Trans-Lux opened a new twin outside of Louisville while I was stationed at Ft. Knox during the summer of 1969. The strange thing about that was it opened as a 2nd run, while all the major product was still playing the big palaces in downtown Louisville.

If I remember correctly, didn't Trans-Lux start out as newsreel theatres at their New York, Phila., and Washington locations?

I never understood why they gave up on the east coast. They had built a lot of nice theatres and then suddenly just packed up and moved west where they operated only a few locations until recent years when they started building again.

Clarksville, Indiana was a Trans-Lux Theatre and open in 1969 as a single screen screen 1200 seat auditorium. It open as a roadshow house (hard ticket) two show a day with a 70mm print of "Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang." The theatre was twined around 1973 and became a Quad in 1976. This theatre was designed by Drew Eberson, Architect. He was
the son of John Eberson who had designed the atmospheric theatres of the 20's and 30's.

Leanon Pa. Was Trans-Lux Theatre and when we opened in 1968 we opened with "The Graduate"
Anne Wentz was the Manager at the opening and two years latter when we opened York,Pa was transferred there. Lebanon was a single screen 900 seat auditorium. We signed a land lease of 99 years on this property.

The Corporate office moved to Norwalk Ct in 1976. I worked for them from September 1960 until the Summer of 1986. When I left I was Vice President of the Entertainment Division.
The Trans-Lux Theatres were sold to Paramount late summer of 1986. They had a no compete clause and were not allowed to open theatres in the East for a period of time, which I believe was 10 years. That is why they are opening in the West.

Paramount sold the circuit to Crown Theatres in 1993.

Up to then, all I knew of this company was that their logo was on the old "Felix the Cat" TV cartoons, and the older prints of "Speed Racer." (Newer prints of "Speed Racer came with the T-L logo clipped from the negative.)

Do you have information on the Huntsville Twin as far as how many seats each auditorium had and the screen sizes? Did they have stereo sound?

If you have that information, I'd like to add it to the description file on my WWW site for the Huntsville Trans-Lux location.

Would you have any photographs of the facility to show how it looked when it first opened?

Here is the grand opening ad for it. Click it to get a much bigger version if you wish to read the fine print.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Gus Roberts was hired as the First manager and during the day he worked for the Huntsville Times. Gus tody would be approching 70. He may still live in Huntsville. He is one of the "Good Guy's" &
if you can reach him he would be a wealth of information.

We used Crown Amplifiers and we had stage left, right and center channels as well as subwoofers. I believe we had Kollmorgan lenses. The masking was set foe 1.85 , 2.35 and 1.66. Sionce we distributed many european films through Trans-Lux we always set up for the three ratio's. If we were to do a retrospective or a festival of films shot in 1.33 then we would send a crew in to make the changes that need to be made.

The Blue and Gord auditoriums were part of the desigh of John McMamara and Associates.

Ben Nation started at the theatre after it had been opened for a year or so.

God, I do ramble sometimes, I will try to get into the storge after Easter and will let you know , what I have.

The Ad brings back a lot of memories and note that the Producer of Love Story Howard G Minsky who for a time was Excutive Vice President of Cinerama. Howard hired Trans-Lux to manager his exhibit "To the Moon and Beyond" which was projected on a dome at the New York World's Fair in 1964 and 1965. In 1964 I was the manager of the Cinerama Dome Theatre and Howard and I became close friends for many years. His assistant a VP Arthur Finston also worked closely with us. He was Tony Randall's cousin. Trivia...

Here is a picture of the Alabama Theatre shortly before it was demolished and its grand opening ad.

Also be sure to look at my description file for this location!

Theatre shortly before being demolished:

Grand opening ad (click for a much bigger version to allow reading of fine print):

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

However, here we are 31 years later. Look at all the new friend's we have.

I was Brad's age when The Trans-Lux Huntsville Theatre opened. (31)

I was Joe's (Fig's) age (27) when The Trans-Lux New York Expererience opened. This was a show that used 60 Kodak slide projectors, 16mmfilm, 35mm film, strech screen and flat screens special effects,It was a one hour tour through the history of New York City, the auditorium was a reverse curve seating section. Fog Machines, bubble machine. under seat speakers..very exciting.