Tag: yonge street cinemas

Toronto Cinemas13 Comments

The Yonge Street Strip

Eric Veillette

In the late 1970s, you could venture down a five block strip of Toronto’s Yonge St. — from Gerrard to Queen — and find several cinemas offering the kind of trashy celluloid fare you could only dream of seeing in a theatre nowadays. By Eric Veillette Today, the city’s flagship street and main tourist destination is oddly devoid of street-front cinemas. On Dundas, across the street from the former Downtown Theatre is this massive crypt of a multiplex known as the AMC, but it barely holds a candle to the cinematic landscape one could find a few decades ago. Starting … Continue reading The Yonge Street Strip

Toronto Cinemas5 Comments

The Eaton Centre Cineplex

Eric Veillette

This week, we take a break from our usual musings over Art Deco and Atmospheric palaces and instead concentrate on a more recent phenomena — the multiplex cinema! by Jesse Hawken They knocked down the above-ground parking lot at the Eaton Centre a few years ago and with it, the late, not particularly lamented Cineplex theatre that was situated at the base of the parkade. The Eaton Centre Cineplex was the first mega-multiplex theatre in the world. There were 18 screens when it opened in 1979, expanding to 21 a few years later. When the place first opened it was … Continue reading The Eaton Centre Cineplex

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Clara Bow at the Uptown Cinema

Eric Veillette

Get Your Man, a Paramount Picture starring Clara Bow and Charles “Buddy” Rogers, premiered at Toronto’s Uptown Theatre on December 24, 1927. The duo had already appeared together in Wings earlier that same year. The film was your typical mixed-up 20s farce, with Bow trying to win Rogers’ heart. The only problem is that Rogers has been bethrothed to a family friend since childhood, and they’re now set to be married. The film originally ran for 60 minutes; Unfortunately, the print held by the Library of Congress is missing the second and third of six reels, so until the remnants … Continue reading Clara Bow at the Uptown Cinema