A brief history of the Denis Theatre

Special thanks to Mr. Ed Blank for allowing me to repost this entry of his from cinematreasures.org:

The Denis opened as a Harris theater in 1937 in Mt. Lebanon Township, a suburb southwest of Pittsburgh. It played third run (second neighborhood run) commercial films after they had played Downtown and after, in a 50-50 ratio, one of nearby Dormont's two theaters, the Hollywood and the South Hills. (The latter appears in Cinema Treasures as Cinema 4 in Dormont.

The initial Denis capacity reportedly was, as Dave-Bronx notes, 1,152, part of which was in a balcony I never knew to be used. Occasionally, thanks to the vagaries of booking, the Denis played a major second-run film before the Dormont theaters. Examples included "Porgy and Bess," "Sons and Lovers" and "Experiment in Terror."

Associated Theatres, which had taken over the Denis and many other Pittsburgh area theaters, had been having great success as the district's leading purveyor of art films. In order to have a South Hills area outlet for art films that could "daydate" (play concurrently) with their popular 374-seat Forum Theatre in Squirrel Hill, Associated Theatres reconstructed part of the Denis property to put its new Encore (or Denis Encore) auditorium on what had been an upstairs lobby - long unused - that had led to the main theater's balcony.

The Denis charged regular neighborhood prices for the third-run commercial films in its larger main-floor theater and higher first-run prices for the art films shown upstairs in the 274-seat Encore. The Encore opened in the summer of 1965 and joined the Forum in presenting a spy spoof called "Agent 8 3/4," which had been known in England as "Hot Enough for June."

The film did not do well, but "Casanova '70" quickly became the first joint Forum/Encore hit, followed soon by "A Patch of Blue," which lasted 16 weeks, and "To Sir, With Love," which hung in for 19 rounds.

All records then were broken during the 25-week run of "The Graduate." When the two theaters played the same film, the Forum consistently did better than the Encore by taking in 60-70 percent of the earnings. But because the Denis had a second, larger auditorium on site, it could trump the Forum's numbers occasionally by moving "The Graduate" down to the main Denis at art house prices and letting the other audience, for a third-run movie such as "Wait Until Dark," pay the lower price to watch it in the tonier Encore auditorium.

Eventually the original Denis Theatre was subdivided two ways. The main-floor auditorium was divided down the middle into a pair of 280-seat spaces. The former balcony was piggybacked in a sense. The front of the balcony was sealed off and converted into a projection booth for the two main-floor auditoriums. The back half became an oddly wide, shallow space with few rows. No. 4 was difficult to access by a back stairwell that immediately made it an unpopular climb.

Denis 4, as the odd new 120-seater was called, drew complaints. Many folks, upon reaching the box office and learning their movie of choice was in No. 4, left the premises. Dissatisfaction with the space was so pronounced that when Cinema World took over, it shut down auditorium No. 4 and used only the main three.

Under different managements, the main three auditoriums were numbered differently. Sometimes the former Encore was called Denis 1, and sometimes it was Denis 3 because it was third in size (by then listed as having 240 seats).

CineMagic took over, reopened the fourth auditorium and concentrated more and more on art films (generally moveovers from the Squirrel Hill and Manor in Squirrel Hill). But the overall Denis continued to deteriorate, with some films shown out of frame and out of focus by employees who complained of poor equipment.

The upscale audience that supports art films became increasingly discontented with the condition of the Denis. A few movies did do well, including the first run of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and the locally made sleeper "The Bread, My Sweet." But attendance worsened steadily until the Denis closed Sept. 12, 2004, with "We Don't Live Here Any More," "The Door in the Floor," "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" and "Maria Full of Grace."