Tag: tivoli theatre

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Valentine’s Day in the silent era

Eric Veillette

Chaplin’s The Circus, released at the tail end of the silent era, is arguably one of his funniest films, and was probably your best bet for a Valentine’s Day pick on Tuesday, February 14, 1928. If you and your date were feeling frisky, you could have opted for Gloria Swanson in Sadie Thompson at the nearby Regent — but either way, you’d want to catch an early screening, because the Valentine’s dance at Terrace Gardens (21 Richmond St. W) started at 9 o’clock sharp. Image source: Toronto Daily Star, February 14, 1928. Continue reading Valentine’s Day in the silent era

Toronto Cinemas2 Comments

You’re fired: Silent film musicians & the talkie revolution

Eric Veillette

To coincide with our upcoming Silent Sundays screening of Eisenstein’s pro-labour Strike on May 1, we examine how the arrival of sound pictures affected the livelihood of silent film musicians. The successful commercialization of synchronized sound films in the late 1920s was arguably the medium’s most important technological achievement since its invention. But often neglected is how the costly conversion to sound systematically put thousands of silent film musicians out of work. In Toronto, sound films first arrived at the Tivoli, at Richmond and Victoria Sts., when the Fox Movietone film Street Angel premiered on October 5, 1928. As Luigi … Continue reading You’re fired: Silent film musicians & the talkie revolution

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Aftershocks of Montreal’s Laurier Palace Theatre fire

Eric Veillette

The Laurier Palace Theatre fire which claimed the lives of 78 Montreal children in January of 1927 made headlines all over North America. The above front page from the Arizona Daily Star was recently added to our collection. Like many newspapers who reported the tragic event, it also pointed out other infamous theatre disasters. Among them: the Gillis Theatre, Kansas City (1925); Knickerbocker Theatre Washington, D.C. (1922); Rialto Theatre, New Haven, CT (1921); Catherine St. movie house, New York City, (1920). As mentioned in an earlier post about the Laurier Palace, at the time, nobody under 15 was allowed into … Continue reading Aftershocks of Montreal’s Laurier Palace Theatre fire

Toronto Cinemas1 Comment

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis at the Tivoli

Eric Veillette

“Imagine Toronto in 2927,” announced press agents when Fritz Lang’s Metropolis premiered at the Tivoli Theatre on September 12, 1927. “Erotic, exotic, erratic” are other words used to describe the futuristic and prophetic tale, but had Fritz Lang directed his masterpiece ten years earlier, Ontario movie-goers may have waited longer to see it. According to Eric Minton in the Canadian Film Society’s 1969 “Silent Screen Review,” a war-time ban on German films kept many classics of European cinema from hitting Ontario screens until the late 1920s, when the Ontario Censor Board finally showed some leniency. Good thing they did, because … Continue reading Fritz Lang’s Metropolis at the Tivoli

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King of Kings at Smash

Eric Veillette

Smash, an architectural salvage and curiosities shop in the Junction on Dundas St. W, recently unearthed the containers which once housed several prints of Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (which I haven’t seen since I was a kid, but holy mackerel — Rip Torn played Judas?). Who knows what happened to the film, but they also have some flashy but heavy 70mm reels — not exactly the easiest thing to find nowadays —  which could make a cool wall decoration if you’re into that kinda thing. The card leaning on one of the containers is a visa declaration for an … Continue reading King of Kings at Smash

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The Great Candy Bar Uprising of 1947

Eric Veillette

The thought of modern-day kids protesting the price of candy bars — let alone anything — seems inconceivable. No matter how pricey multiplex food courts get, people just keep gobbling and sipping away. But years before concessions became common-place, independently owned cigar stores and candy stores such as Laura Secord or Jenny Lind often flanked downtown or neighbourhood theatres and they continued to do so long after snack bars came to vogue in Toronto in the mid-1940s. The Tivoli Cigar store was located on the left-hand side of the grand Tivoli, at Victoria and Richmond Sts.  The Tivoli was the … Continue reading The Great Candy Bar Uprising of 1947

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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

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Creepy Classics Presents Bela Lugosi in Dracula!

Eric Veillette

Dracula (1931) Directed by Tod Browning Written by Hamilton Dean (based on Bram Stoker’s novel) Starring Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye, David Manners, Edward van Sloan PG | 75 min | 35mm Call it the Anti-Twilight double bill – Creepy Classics returns to The Revue Cinema on December 3 with Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931 – 7pm), followed by the recent telling of the Victorian tale with Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992 – 9:15). Away from Toronto screens for far too long, Bela Lugosi’s performance as the Transylvanian Count helped usher Univeral’s horror films into the sound era. Several films … Continue reading Creepy Classics Presents Bela Lugosi in Dracula!

Toronto Cinemas3 Comments

Talkies the Talk of Toronto!

Eric Veillette

by Eric Veillette Eighty years ago, on Dec. 28, 1928, the talkies came to Toronto. Despite the freezing weather that winter evening, over a thousand movie-goers ventured out to the Tivoli, located at the intersection of Richmond  and Victoria Sts. to see a midnight preview of The Terror, a haunted-house whodunit. This was more than a year after a New York City audience watched and listened as Al Jolson got down on one knee and sang “My Mammy” during The Jazz Singer premiere on Oct. 6, 1927 at the Warner Bros. Theatre.  Contrary to popular belief, that wildly successful “photo-dramatic … Continue reading Talkies the Talk of Toronto!