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Opening Dates/First Movies Shown At Theatres


Firebird65

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Kind of thinking this won't get many replies, but it's a neat topic, at least to me. Do you know of the opening date and first movies shown at a local movie theatre? I've found two.

 

Name: Greenspoint 5 (actually called the Cinema Center at Greenspoint Mall in its first advertisement)

Date: Thursday, Aug. 5, 1976

First Movie: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which started at 11:45 a.m. The other four features were Lifeguard, Bugs Bunny Superstar, Blazing Saddles and Ode to Billy Joe. Tickets were $1.50 until 1:30 p.m.

 

Odd how only Lifeguard (starring Sam Elliott and the always lovely Anne Archer, BTW) was the only new movie of the bunch, and it had premiered nationwide two weeks earlier (according to IMDB). Ode to Billy Joe had been out for two months. Bugs Bunny and Cuckoo's Nest had both been in circulation for 8 months or more, and Blazing Saddles came out in early 1974.  Clearly the movie business has sure changed.

 

Name: Deauville

Date: Friday, Jul. 11, 1975

First Movie: The Great Waldo Pepper, which started at 5 p.m.  The other feature at this two-screen theatre was something called Beyond the Door. Tickets were $1.25 until 6 p.m.

 

IMDB says Beyond the Door is essentially a poor man's Rosemary's Baby. It was made in 1974. 

 

I wasn't able to find the other Greenspoint area movie theatre - The I-45 Drive In. Ran out of time at the library. Might get that on another run, if anyone's interested. 

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How did you find out the opening dates? Did you already have the year and maybe the month, and just dug through microfilm until you found the exact dates and the movie listings, or was there a better method? 

 

It would be interesting to see not only the listings for the opening but also the closing dates, extended to all the theaters in the Houston area, but that could be a major undertaking given the number of theaters that have opened and closed over the years. 

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10 hours ago, mkultra25 said:

How did you find out the opening dates?

 

I already knew Greenspoint - same day as the opening of the mall. As for Deauville, I took an educated guess it would be in the early summer. My dad took me there to see Rollerball - my first R-rated movie - in the summer of 1975. So I started in the June microfilms and worked my way forward. Didn't take too long to find. You pick one week, then go forward each Friday until an ad for the theatre appears. Then you work back to Thursday just to be sure it didn't open a day early.

 

Only took a few minutes. Not as long as you might think. Obviously it helps to have a relatively narrow time frame to start with - in my case, summer 1975. If you don't know squat or at least can't even make an educated guess, then yeah, you're going to be spending a lot of time staring at microfilm. Although for movie theatres one saving grace is you're only looking at one or two pages of listings each Friday, so that's better than having to search each and every day as you would for a regular news story when you've no idea of the date. Now that's tiring and I have had to do that for other things. 

 

Next time I go back to look for the I-45 Drive-In, I'll probably start in late May/early June 1982. At one time, I did know the exact starting date for the Airline Drive-In, but I didn't save that information. Off the top of my head I think the year was 1949. Maybe October 1949, but I stand to be corrected. There's a website out there that gives the opening year for drive-ins, although having been a teenager and a customer at the time, I already knew 1982 for the I-45. 

 

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Earlydays said:

Here's a nice website on the history of Cinemas in Houston.

http://www.cinemahouston.info/

 

Yes, that's the site I was referring to. Looks like he's updated it some as far as info since the last time I went there a few years back. He does now have the actual date of the opening of the Airline Drive-In as June 10, 1950. I wasn't far off, although I did admit I stood to be corrected. There was another site, not his, that once gave the just the year. Good, now I can go get the exact first showings for Airline, no fuss, no muss. Although the Airline Drive-In was never in the Aldine ISD area, I'd like to include it in my history of the district as kids back then would have driven there and to the Shepherd, Irvington and Tidwell ones as they were the closest entertainment venues in the 1950s and early 1960s. 

 

I know I've contacted David before. Nice guy. I wanted to use that photo of the I-45 Drive-In in something and he got it for me. Might have been about 10 years ago. 

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Gosh, Firebird, I shudder to think what may have been "Beyond the Door" at the Deauville Twin. One side X-Rated, the other general audiences. You just can't find quality entertainment like that in the here and now.

 

You have neglected the Greens Crossing Cinema, which ended its run around 15 years ago. Its final incarnation was a $1 cinema, but it did run new releases, if memory serves. I can't for the life of me remember the opening, but certainly seems like it was in the early 80's.

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4 hours ago, Purpledevil said:

Gosh, Firebird, I shudder to think what may have been "Beyond the Door" at the Deauville Twin. One side X-Rated, the other general audiences. You just can't find quality entertainment like that in the here and now.

 

You have neglected the Greens Crossing Cinema, which ended its run around 15 years ago. Its final incarnation was a $1 cinema, but it did run new releases, if memory serves. I can't for the life of me remember the opening, but certainly seems like it was in the early 80's.

 

Beyond the Door was a poor man's Rosemary's Baby, but yes, there for a second when I saw the ad I was really wondering if Deauville hadn't gone x-rated far earlier than I had remembered. 

 

As for Greens Crossing, I hadn't forgotten it. Just haven't gotten to it... yet. The movie theatre stuff is only a by-product of other research. While I'm searching in microfilms of a particular era, I take a peek to see if I can find other things of interest, too. I've no idea when it would have opened. My guess would be between 1984 and 1986.

 

I only went to Greens Crossing twice - both in 1987. First, to see Eddie Murphy's Raw. Then to see Crocodile Dundee. All I truly remember about the theatre was it was full of people who enjoyed talking to the movie, and to be PC, I'll leave it at that.  

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I just drove past the old Deauville Twin site on I-45 this afternoon, and wondered what, if any, vestiges of the theaters are still visible within the Family Dollar that currently occupies the site. Perhaps a field trip is in order when I have more time - it's been years since I've even been in the parking lot there, let alone inside any of the stores. 

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3 hours ago, mkultra25 said:

I just drove past the old Deauville Twin site on I-45 this afternoon, and wondered what, if any, vestiges of the theaters are still visible within the Family Dollar that currently occupies the site. Perhaps a field trip is in order when I have more time - it's been years since I've even been in the parking lot there, let alone inside any of the stores. 

That would be interesting to hear what you find, mkultra. Along the same vein, here's a fun fact. Family Dollar on Parker Rd. @ North Freeway was originally 1/2 of the old Rice Supermarket. Behind the double doors in the rear of the Family Dollar is the back half of the former grocery store, stock room, bathrooms, etc. unchanged. Just a couple of quickly installed sheetrock walls here and there in the back. They use the area for regional wide meetings and such. If you venture down that way, be sure to say hello to Miss Carla, the store manager. From what she told me, the hair braiding studio next door (the other half of the old Rice) is also unchanged in the rear of the building.

 

Interestingly enough, someone was doing work inside the old Eckerd's next door to the left of the Family Dollar earlier this week. The space has been empty since Eckerd's moved that particular location from Parker to Tidwell in the 90s, now home to the CVS Pharmacy in Northtown's parking lot.

 

Edit to add: Next door to that is the Self Storage USA, former Builder's Square, former Woolco. That one is quite creepy, being inside that old Woolco with its deafeningly quiet interior, and very few lights illuminated within.

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  • 2 years later...

Love this thread.  I grew up and lived in Houston from 1971-1989.  Have had a hard time finding newspaper movie ads from the Post or Chronicle from that time - LA library has microfiche starting in the 1980s, Newspapers.com only has the Houston Post until the 1950s.  Do you know where I can find old movies ads for Houston from the 1960s-1980s?

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  • The title was changed to Opening Dates/First Movies Shown At Theatres

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