Tag: opening night

Toronto Cinemas1 Comment

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 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

Toronto Cinemas4 Comments

The Carlton

Eric Veillette

Whether old, new, palatial, grimy, spacious or downright claustrophobic, the closure of any Toronto cinema means one less place to see a film, and today’s closing of the Carlton Cinema is no exception. It’s not the first time a theatre has closed in that location, either. In 1974, the Odeon Carlton, a lavish post-war movie house, ended a 26-year run after screening Burt Reynolds in White Lighting. While discussing the Carlton’s demise with Colin Geddes a few weeks back, he noted that it also widens the gap of available cinemas on or around Yonge St. Excluding the Cumberland and Varsity … Continue reading The Carlton