The way it looks now, it’s hard to imagine that Hennepin Avenue was once a Great White Way of cinematic wonder, each downtown block blessed with at least one tempting marquee adorned with blinding lights. In my own early years of moviegoing, I was able to take my pick of many single screen palaces on the strip, all showing the hottest new releases — at least, "hot" in the eyes of a preteen horror buff. This included the State (where I saw Blacula), the Mann (Blackenstein!), the Orpheum (Godzilla Vs. Megalon) and, most prominently, the Gopher (Jaws, no less). Within a few years of my visits to these shrines, the State became The Jesus People Church, the Mann and Orpheum abandoned tombs for the homeless to flop in, and the Gopher accomodated a porn house before being crushed by the Godzilla of City Center.
Such was the fate of all too many downtowns throughout the country, as multiplexes took over the suburbs and drew away patrons disturbed by the urban core’s crime, grime, crowding and, worst of all, lack of free parking. But, at one time, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, both in its downtowns and neighborhoods, were home to dozens of movie houses — many of them elegant art deco, atmospheric, or atomic age complexes that each offered one film, and one film only, projected on a screen larger than the average megamall wall. Dave Kenney’s new book Twin Cities Picture Show (Minnesota Historical Society Press, $29.95) offers an equally elegant look back at the history of Twin Cities theater exhibition, from its extravagant beginnings at the turn of the last century to its uneasy state in the first decade of this one.
Kenney, who researched and wrote this general history for the Minnesota Historical Society over a two year period, is not, himself, a historian, but a freelance journalist who specializes in Minnesota history. He began the project when he was alerted to a mountain of photographs and documents on local movie theaters and exhibitors, left behind by two MHS staffers who had amassed them for a book that never came to be. "There aren’t very many books that deal with the moviegoing experience," he explained to me, "You do find a number of books that deal with the architecture. But what really gets me excited is finding something that you can see and experience right now, and go back in time and see how we got there."
Many past and present comparisons can be made with classic theaters that still stand and bear most of their original design and light displays – even if most of them no longer show movies. Two dazzling examples are the Orpheum and the State, which each rose like Lazurus from desolation to become premier spaces for concerts and Broadway shows. Another is the Ritz in Northeast Minneapolis, whose structure was maintained and protected from the elements during the many years it was closed, so it could open as a solid home for various dance companies two years ago.
Most impressive of all is the Heights in Columbia Heights, which still operates as a profitable first-run movie house. As Kenney tells me, current owner and operator Tom Letness, who reopened and renovated the building with partner Dave Holmgren, has "figured out who his audience is. There are enough people out there and there are so few places to go see movies in Columbia Heights. He also owns the Dairy Queen next door – and he doesn’t have extra rent to pay, because he has a studio apartment he designed himself above the box office and lobby!"
The fate of most of the grand palaces of the teens, twenties and thirties, though, has not been so rosy. Saddest of all, not least because the water-damaged shell of the building still stands as a reminder of what it once was, is the Hollywood in Northeast. Kenney, himself, remembers going there in 1980, to see the Jamie Lee Curtis classic, Prom Night, and regarding the place at the time as an old dump. Twenty-five years later, he would discover during his research that the Hollywood was actually once a masterpiece of palatial design.
Another long lost gem was The Minnesota on 9th Street in downtown Minneapolis, which was the largest single screen movie house in the cities’ history. "I’ve talked to people who remember going into that thing," recalls Kenney, "The enormity and the space, and to think that it was built to show one movie at a time for up to 4,000 people." This, on top of a hydraulic orchestra lift and a back lit ceiling dome, plus a lobby that was larger than most theaters. Needless to say, even in the heyday of film exhibition, this monolith never made a dime, and, after twenty years of on-again, offagain service, met the wrecking ball in the mid-fifties.
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