Tag: first nights

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The Metro Theatre’s red hot opening night

Eric Veillette

At Bloor and Manning, a giant poster advertising Emmanuelle adorns the facade of the Metro, Toronto’s only surviving legitimate adult movie theatre. But long before it began showing porn in the 1970s, it served as a neighbourhood theatre for over three decades. Despite the PG-rated nature of the cinema’s opening night (April 7, 1939) double-bill, Delinquent Parents and Looking for Trouble, things got a little heated during the second showing of the programme when a fire broke out in a storage room on the ground floor near the building’s entrance. Smoke billowed into the auditorium and a minor panic ensued … Continue reading The Metro Theatre’s red hot opening night

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The Imperial Drabinsky

Eric Veillette

This week, the final curtain fell on a decade-old debacle in Toronto when former theatre impresario Garth Drabinsky was found guilty of fraud and forgery in an Ontario court. A modern day mogul, Drabinsky produced several staples of Canadian cult cinema like The Changeling and The Silent Partner; with Cineplex Odeon and Nat Taylor he built the first megaplex cinema; and after being ousted from Cineplex, he created Livent, a live theatre production company which not only produced the shows, it held licenses to the productions and also owned the theatres in which the shows were performed. Not since the … Continue reading The Imperial Drabinsky

Toronto Cinemas5 Comments

The Eglinton Theatre

Eric Veillette

by Eric Veillette In 2007, I moved into an apartment in the Forest Hill area, kitty-corner to what was once the flagship cinema of the Famous Players theatre chain: The Eglinton. It closed down in early 2002, when Famous Players refused to comply with an Ontario Human Rights Commision directive to make the theatre wheelchair accessible. Although dedicated as a Heritage Site by the city, preserving the original facade, it has since become an upscale event hall. Coming home at night is always a joy, as the original, brilliant marquee, still in place, shines brightly to onlookers heading east and … Continue reading The Eglinton Theatre

Toronto Cinemas6 Comments

Canada’s Atmospheric Theatres – The Runnymede

Eric Veillette

By the mid 1920s, after the construction of great vaudeville and movie houses like the Toronto Pantages and Loew’s Yonge St. Theatre, North American theatre designers sought more cost-effective ways to attract theatre-goers. What resulted was the Atmospheric style. Iconoclastic and progressive, it took theatre-goers out of the tired palatial setting and brought them into another world altogether, one where the ceiling wasn’t a ceiling, but a night sky with flickering stars. In Toronto, one could consider the Winter Garden Theatre, covered in leafy greens and vines, to be a proto-Atmospheric, but the first true Atmospheric in Canada was Toronto’s … Continue reading Canada’s Atmospheric Theatres – The Runnymede