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A Victory Bond rally at the Midtown Theatre

Eric Veillette

Cinemas were often a choice neighbourhood site for Victory Bond rallies during both World Wars. In the above photo, members of an unidentified regiment are lined up in front of the Midtown Theatre (now the Bloor Cinema), then owned by 20th Century Theatres. Although I haven’t been able to properly date the photo, it was taken some time after the all-star flick Stage Door Canteen ended its two-month run at the Loew’s Yonge St. Theatre in September, 1943. Big thanks goes to Christina Stewart of the CNE Archives for unearthing this photo, which is also one of the rare shots … Continue reading A Victory Bond rally at the Midtown Theatre

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Allen’s Bloor Theatre

Eric Veillette

For over twenty-five years, Toronto concert-goers and Annex residents have known the building at 529 Bloor St. West as Lee’s Palace. But nearly a century ago, the Allen’s Bloor Theatre was one of the most luxurious suburban movie houses Toronto had to offer. The immaculately detailed 782 seat theatre held its premiere screening on March 10, 1919 with Cecil B. De Mille’s Don’t Change Your Wife, featuring Gloria Swanson. It was the first theatre to be built on that stretch of Bloor Street since the current-day Bloor Cinema, then known as the Madison, opened in December, 1913. Months later, the … Continue reading Allen’s Bloor Theatre

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The Bloor Cinema: What’s in a name?

Eric Veillette

Of the numerous Toronto movie houses built before World War II which are still in operation, none have undergone as many name changes as the Bloor Cinema, the venerable Annex institution which opened as the Madison in 1913. Since then, Toronto’s biggest second-run cinema has also been known as the Midtown, Capri, Eden and since 1979, the Bloor. While photoplays, movies – whatever you want to call them – have flickered away at 506 Bloor St. for nearly a century, the current building is far different from what people visited when it premiered the Edison two-reeler Alexia’s Strategy on December … Continue reading The Bloor Cinema: What’s in a name?

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The Walking Dead at the Allenby Cinema

Eric Veillette

With Halloween but a day away, here’s a photo of the Allenby Theatre’s lobby in 1936, showing Boris Karloff in The Walking Dead, with Gorilla Man, Snooper Service and Night Watchman as b-pictures. The gimmick on the poster (“Blow on this spot — If it turns GREEN, you are too weak to…”) is typical of that era, and was probably tongue-in-cheekly enforced by a tuxedo-wearing cinema manager. By the time The Walking Dead reached the east-end cinema in July of 1936, it had already played several Toronto theatres, including the Aster, the Kenwood and the Madison (now the Bloor), where … Continue reading The Walking Dead at the Allenby Cinema

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The Evolution of Cool

Eric Veillette

Early cinemas were used to convince the populace that air conditioning was cool. by Alfred Holden I watched poetic justice unfold in a cool way last month, when the brief May heat wave hit. The clamour for air conditioning erupted that very day in my own home, and spread like a storm through the St. George Street building where I live. But by the time the engineers turned on the central air, the weather, too, had turned. We froze. The system leaked. “A wonderful thing,” the U.S. watchdog magazine Consumer Reports found fit to say about air conditioning in 1957, … Continue reading The Evolution of Cool