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Author
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Topic: Theater Closure; Tucson, AZ
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Will Kutler
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1506
From: Tucson, AZ, USA
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 12-19-2002 07:19 PM
AZ Saily Star Sunday December 15, 2002 Section B page 1
It's Curtains For El Dorado Theater; Broadway Cinema Had A 35 Year Run, By Tim Steller
Workers hauled out the popcorn machines and packed up the theater seats Saturday at the El Dorado movie theater, which closed Thursday after 35 years on East Broadway.
The six-theater complex lost business after the recent opening of two 20-screen theater complexes on the same street, one of them directly across the street from the El Dorado Cinemas-Cineplex Odeon, as it is formally known. The Century El Con 20 opened in 1999, and the Century Park Place 20 opened last year.
The El Dorado opened at its current site, 5925 E. Broadway, in 1967, with a single screen, then added a second one in 1975, said Managing Director Rejeanne Satour. In 1987 the old building was torn down, and the six-screen theater opened in its current form the next year.
Satour said she started working at the theater in 1980 and saw staff number as high as 40, but at closing there were only 9 employees and two managers. The non-managerial employees have been offered jobs at the two other local theaters in the same chain, the Catalina and the Foothills, she said.
Jeff Wer, the owner of the nearby Sish Kabob House of Tucson, called the theater's closing "heartbreaking".
"When they're busy, we're always busy," he said.
Satour said the building is being sold and will become a retail store.
In the meantime, theater employees were busy stripping the theater and shipping its equipment to the Catalina, the Foothills and the chain's regional headquarters in Seattle.
Kent Edwards, the owner of Grand Cinemas, worked with others to remove the El Dorado's theater seats, which he purchased.
"There's no sense in throwing away perfectly good equipment," Edwards said.
NOTES FROM WILL KUTLER:
Prior to their conversion to multiplexes, both the El Dorado and Catalina were wonderful cinemas! Both were Plitt, the Catalina being a single screen, and the El Dorado being a two. The auditoriums were HUGE, with massive screens and comfortable seating. The El Dorado was 70MM, and always had the latest sound technology. I have forgotten if the Catalina was 70mm, but they did show classic 3-D films for special ocassions...including "The House Of Wax" which was part of a lecture that Vincent Price gave at the University of AZ. The booths were I.A.T.S.E. and the screens had waterfall curtains...so the projectionists were really showmen! Among the films that I saw at the El-Dorado were "Star Wars" in 70MM Dolby, "Grease", some of the "Bond", "Star Trek" and "Superman" films, "E.T.", etc... The floor people also actually acted as USHERS...in the old sense of the word.
When Cineplex came to town, they promised gand improvements. These improvements including the destruction of these two wonder cinemas into their current multi-plex configurations...which is a far, far cry from the quality of what they once were! Also among the Cineplex "corporate improvements" was the ouster of I.A.T.S.E., the Cineplex corporate people and lawyers claiming that skilled projectionists were obsolete because of automation and platters. Needless to say that presentation quality did in fact suffer!
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