Ambler Theatre

When we think about what the Denis could be in the future, we may want to look at an example of another theatre in Pennsylvania--the Ambler Theatre in Ambler, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia.

The theatre closed in 1984 and had been abandoned for fifteen years when a group of local supporters bought it, formed a not-for-profit board and began the arduous process of planning, raising money and improving the theatre.

While maintaining the Spanish/Mediterranean character of the original theatre, the Ambler reopened in 2007 with state of the art projection and sound, two new screening rooms, a restored main theatre, a movable main screen to allow for live performances, and a new box office, concession stand and restrooms.

According to the Philadelphia Weekly: “The Ambler reveals the near-impossible: a discerningly programmed triplex housed in a classic old movie theatre.” A trip there “recalls the days when each neighborhood had a movie palace and the cinema was not only an escape but also the soul of the community.”

Better yet, according to Andrea Fuchs in her article, "Classical Revival" at www.filmjournal.com, "Glenn Felgoise, JKR Partners’ director of marketing, proudly observes that the revived Ambler Theater 'has become the economic magnet in the renewal of the town’s commercial district, and a model of success for the revitalization of Philadelphia’s older small-town suburbs… It has helped spark the revitalization of the Borough of Ambler with the opening of 35 new businesses. Community organizations and area businesses frequently use the theatre for formal meetings, social events and private parties.'"

The theatre shows art-house, first-run, classics and children's movies. General admission is $8.50, though with a $45 annual membership it falls to $4.50, and current attendance is estimated to be 70-80K annually.

While we don't know all the specifics of the Denis redevelopment, it's inspiring to think about what can be achieved when communities rally their support.

Gwyn

The Denis and First Dates

I've been asking people to send me their memories of the Denis. This one is from my friend, Todd DePastino. Todd is a historian and author of Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front (W.W. Norton, 2008) and Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America (University of Chicago Press, 2003). He is also a Mt. Lebanon resident. You can find out more about Todd and his work at billmauldinbiography.com.

"I don't have many memories of the Denis worthy of sharing. The theater had passed its golden age by the time I came around. But I do recall a first date that began at Bimbo's and ended at the Denis, where we had planned to see a comedy, Only When I Laugh. When we got there, the movie was sold out, so we ended up seeing Mommie Dearest, about Joan Crawford's abusive, alcohol-fueled parenting style . . . not really the best movie for a first date. But, on a happy note, I ended up marrying my date, Stephanie Ross, and we have since met each other's and our children's uses of wire hangers with tolerance and magnanimity."

Thanks, Todd. Anyone else out there who knows of a first date at the Denis that lead to such a happy outcome?

A Denis Day

I had a day full of delights relating to the Denis Theatre yesterday (see, not even open yet and already the Denis is bringing joy to Mt. Lebanonites.) As a volunteer for the Denis Theatre foundation, I am occasionally included in opportunities to help plan for the future. One of the such opportunities was yesterday at a local coffee shop. We met with the head of another Pittsburgh organization with which we may be able to synergize some efforts. The head of the organization, a man in his early forties, very smart and very funny, gave us some great advice on different things to consider. When one of our board members noted that there's such a magnetism to Mt. Lebanon, the South Hills and Pittsburgh, that folks grow up and leave but often come back, both the head of the organization and another of his team who was in attendance noted that they each had grown up in Mt. Lebanon (Crystal Drive and Austin Avenue, respectively), left and returned to Pittsburgh later once their careers were well-established.

At that point my spider sense started to prickle. Crystal Drive is in Sunset Hills, where I lived until age fifteen. I asked the man if he'd gone to Howe, as I did. He had. I didn't recognize his name so I asked him the year he graduated to see if we had been classmates. He said he didn't graduate from Mt. Lebanon, that his family moved to Edgewood before high school. "Moving to Edgewood" tickled the waaaaayyy back portion of my brain. I remembered there was a boy who moved to Edgewood, breaking my heart, when I was in fifth grade. He also happens to be the first boy I ever kissed. I dredged the memory banks and pulled it up. His name was Erik, we'll call him Erik Larsen, though I'm making up the last name. And suddenly I realized the man I'm talking to, the head of this organization, is named Larsen too!

Unable to focus on anything but my need to determine if this amazing coincidence is so much more, I interrupt the higher level strategic discussion to say, "Are you by any chance related to Erik Larsen?" The man stops, smiles and says, "Erik would be my brother, yes."

There I am, talking to Erik Larsen's younger brother! What are the odds?

Then, last night my husband and I strolled Washington Road during the always-fun First Friday event. Not only did we see a busy stream of stoppers-by at the Denis Theatre Foundation table we took an opportunity to let the Mt. Lebanon commissioner staffing the Main Street Economic Development Task Force table know that not only do I want a bookstore on Washington Road for my post-movie stroll on a Friday or Saturday, I want a cupcake shop. He had me repeat "cupcake shop" twice, partly because it was hard to hear over the din of music but partly because he wasn't used to someone expressing such detailed needs, but, hey, I always say, if you really want something, it doesn't hurt to be clear about it.

What are you looking for in your pre-Denis or post-Denis stroll?

Gwyn

We look forward to more letters like this one....

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
- Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi, 1970

When I first heard that song, the one thing that immediately came to mind was the movie theater in my old home town. Like most western Pennsylvania towns back then, it has its own movie house. The last movie I remember seeing there was Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” That was in 1963. Then the bank next door bought the building, tore it down and put up a parking lot.

I moved with my very young family to Mt. Lebanon in 1982 and was pleased to see a business district and the Denis. Like most long time residents of Mt. Lebanon, my kids and I have fond memories of the Denis and we are thrilled to see that it is going to have a new life.

The Denis seemed a permanent fixture and in many ways we all took it for granted. Then, of course, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone!” Most of us have great memories; some more than others. But what seems to be lacking is a lot of the hard evidence, the more concrete documentation that adds to, and sometimes even corrects our own memories. Most, if not all of the artifacts or memorabilia from the actual building are long gone. Local historical societies have anecdotal evidence and a few photos and articles; we have been not able to find much. Some facts are known, some are good educated guesses and some things are based just on memories. Eventually, we will weave all of this together into a comprehensive story—with the help of everyone in our community. There is a treasure trove out there somewhere and with our collective effort we will unearth it.

But the task at hand right now is to let you know what we know for sure. This will be just a part of the story. This is the part of the story at the very beginning, the very first day the Denis opened its doors.

On June 1, 1938, the Harris-Denis, as it was then known, opened its doors for the first time. Mt. Lebanon movie goers that day were treated to a one day run of the movie “Mad About Music,” starring Deanna Durbin. The image of the theater marquee on the Denis Foundation website is from this day. June 2 and 3 saw the screening of “Tom Sawyer”. “In Old Chicago” played on June 4 and 6. “Girl of the Golden West,” starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy was next up on June 7 and 8. The second week of June, 1938 featured W.C. Fields in “Big Broadcast” on June 9 and 10. The rest of the summer of 1938 was filled with great movies like Shirley Temple in “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”; “Merrily We Live” starring Constance Bennet and Brian Aherne; “Test Pilot” with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Myrna Lot; “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife” with Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert; “Doctor Rhythm” starring Bing Crosby, and “Marco Polo” starring Gary Cooper.

The summer 1938 theater patrons not only had first class movies to watch, but they were also treated to what was then the very latest in air conditioning. It was billed as the most modern system in the entire Pittsburgh area. The system was manufactured by Carrier and installed by the Dravo Corporation. It was designed to move 20,000 cubic feet of air per minute and would keep the auditorium, balcony, foyer and lobby at a cool 68 to 72 degrees even if the outside temperature reached as high as 95 degrees.

But there were even more modern marvels to be experienced. The new movie projectors, made by Simplex, were designed to reduce flicker and film motion. This reduced eye strain and made for a more comfortable viewing experience. The sound system, made by RCA Victor, was the same one used in Radio City Music Hall. This sophisticated sound system was located behind the movie screen and sound waves penetrated through tiny perforations in the screen and would flow out uniformly to all areas of the theater. It was noted that previous sound systems were not adequate for the newer movie technologies. Competing local theaters with older systems could produce sound as low as 1000 cycles and as high as 6000 cycles. The new Denis-Harris sound system could produce sounds as low as 60 cycles and as high as 10,000 cycles.

On May 17, 2008, the Denis Theatre Foundation held a cleanup of the current building. In the midst of all of the turmoil, one gentleman walked in the front door and chatted with some of the volunteers. He mentioned that he was in the theater on that very first night. We did not hear the story or connect the dots until later on. He mentioned that he was headed down to Florida and would return at a later date. But he was there in the Denis on that very first night—June 1, 1938. He was one of the first to see the grand sweep of the main auditorium and stage, the large balcony and the luxurious foyer and lobby. He got to sit in that cool air conditioning and was treated to a state-of- the-art visual and audio experience. The other old photos on the Denis Foundation website show us what he would have seen that night. We would love to hear from him to help complete the picture of the very first days of the Denis. Help us weave together the story of the first days. The work on the rest will follow and by the time we are all back in our comfy theater seats in the new air conditioning with the new state-of-the-art digital video and audio systems, we will have a clearer picture of the rich history of our beloved Denis Theatre. We will all have written the history and just maybe we will all have made some too.


David Rutherford
July 9, 2008

Facts in this article are from the Pittsburgh Press, May 29, 1938

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."

Community Glue

Apart from schools, there are few things that bind a town together like a local movie theatre. Restaurants come and go. A library comes close but the number of readers, small to begin with, is ever dwindling. Places of worship are certainly a central gathering place, but you go to yours and I go to mine. Where else can one sit in a room that has held one's parents, one's children, one's neighbors and one's younger self, not to mention one's best friend, one's teachers and one's ex-boyfriend with the girl who works at the drug store who isn't half as pretty as she thinks she is?

Beyond the oddly-satisfying mental archeology it inspires, however, a movie theatre spins a never-ending cloth of shared cultural history. You saw The Sound of Music. You know sixteen going on seventeen can be a tumultuous time for a teenager. You saw Flashdance. You know Chef Brockett was the gravely-voiced mill supervisor who didn't think for one minute that string of numbers was Jennifer Beales's phone number. You saw A Wedding for Bella (and if you didn't, you should: it includes scenes of Mt. Lebanon.) You know that kneading biscotti can be a transcendent experience.

All of them played at the Denis Theatre.

A town needs a movie theater, and the Denis Theater has been both the temple and the word for Mt. Lebanon natives since 1938. I know it has been for me. I grew up in Mt. Lebanon, left for Chicago to attend to college and grad school and to fall in love and get married, but like many of you I came back, and one of the things I cherished about the town to which I had recommitted myself was its theatre.

One of my favorite stories about the Denis is from 1997. My husband and I, at that point married fourteen years, approached the ticket counter where a wide-eyed teen was holding down the fort. Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love were ending their runs in theatres. The former had entranced my husband and, the latter, me. I am a diehard Tom Stoppard fan. He has a rapturous wit, an awe-inspiring ability to play with words and an intellect that would be intimidating were it not so open and generous, and Shakespeare in Love touched me on many levels. I also liked and admired Saving Private Ryan, but, let's face it, it's a boy movie, and, as I had to watch much of it through slitted fingers, one viewing satisfied my requirements.





We had seen our beloved movies together and separately several times. We were lucky enough that night to have both playing at the Denis and decided we would each see our favorite one more time.

Hand-in-hand, we approached the counter, and my husband said, "One for Saving Private Ryan and one for Shakespeare in Love." The teenager was aghast. "You've got to be joking." The idea of a couple splitting up for movie night was beyond his imagination.

We still laugh about that.

Chris Schultz, the other owner of this blog, and I want to create a forum where people can find out news about the Denis Theatre restoration, discover ways to help and share recollections about the theatre's past and hopes for its future.

Not every post is going to be about the Denis. I'd love for us to talk about green options for construction, films we love and uptown Mt. Lebanon in general (like when are we going to get a bookstore, huh? And a cupcake shop? I wanna be able to walk out of a movie at 9:30 at night on a Friday or Saturday, stroll to a bookstore and end the evening with a cupcake, just like I can in Squirrel Hill.) And since this only works well if you join us in this effort, I'm going to throw out the first salvo. Shakespeare in Love knocked Saving Private Ryan out for the Oscar for Best Picture of 1997. The win astonished some critics, who felt Saving Private Ryan was a shoo-in. With eleven years' hindsight to inform us, was the Oscar for Shakespeare in Love a mistake? I think you can guess where I stand on the issue. Chris?