The Paramount, 1948–86 — A Peterborough Movie-Going History

The Paramount, June 1949. The U.S. war movie *Command Decision* (released February 1949) was screened from Wednesday, June 15, to Saturday, June 18. “Paramount” was the new brand name for the expansion of Famous Players Canadian theatres, replacing the previously oft-used “Capitol” — and, in the process, numbering the days of Peterborough’s previous home of big movies, the Capitol Theatre, just up the street. On the sidewalk a mother and daughter appear to be engaged in a common activity of the time: studying the posters and lobby cards and trying to figure out whether this is a movie they should pop in and see. The curtains to their right hide the interior lobby. The ticket booth is on the right of the glass doors, next to the J.J. Turner building. Library and Archives Canada (LAC), 1996-135, Folder Cinemas – CN (Ont), 4446.

“As builders of real estate in the downtowns and neighbourhoods of almost every Canadian city, and, later, key tenants in suburban malls and big-box developments, Odeon, Famous Players, and hundreds of smaller independent entrepreneurs helped to shape the modern culture of Canadian cities and the viewing practices of Canadian audiences.” – Paul S. Moore, “Nathan L. Nathanson Introduces Canadian Odeon: Producing National Competition in Film Exhibition,” Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 12,2 (Fall 2003), p.40.

“Imagine stores, factories, and houses stepping forth from their blueprints and moving together up the river to Nassau, and immediately you would see a town spring up with theatre, hotel, hospital, three or four factories, and a spread of houses.” – Harry Theobald, “Mighty Building Boom Looming Only Shortages Holding it Back,” Examiner, Dec. 21, 1945, p.9.

The Paramount Theatre, 286 George St., had its gala opening – invitation only – on Friday, December 3, 1948. It opened its doors to the public on the following day – joining the local ranks of the Capitol, Regent, Centre, and Odeon (with the summertime Peterborough Drive-in too).

See also A Paramount Scrapbook.

A lot awaiting a building: the former site of the Grand Opera House, looking west from Water St. to George St., June 1944. The Turner Building is to the left of the now empty space, which for a while was used as a parking lot and would in 1948 become the home of the Paramount Theatre. Across on the west side of George Street are the “Lundy Buildings,” designated heritage properties. LAC,1996-135, Folder Cinemas CN (Ont), 4435.

In years gone by the Grand Opera House had occupied the very same site. For close to 120 years now the deep-downtown space at 286 George Street has been home to an “amusement” enterprise of some sort – and most especially by a moving picture theatre.

The Grand Opera House had opened in November 1905, just next to the slightly older Turner Building on the northeast corner of George and King. Over its years the Grand screened many a motion picture, and often the most important ones to arrive in the city. Famous Players Canadian Corporation (FPCC) took over the property in 1925; although the opera house remained under the management of a local group, it was used sparingly for the following decade.

Soon after the opera house closed its doors for good in 1937, the building came remarkably close to being transformed into a “movie palace.” That dream came to naught and FPCC ordered its demolition, which took place in 1942. Famous Players had other ambitions: the construction, on the same site, of a modern movie theatre – the Paramount.

The Paramount rises from the ashes of the Grand Opera House

The rumours of plans being developed for the new theatre (as well as for its next-door neighbour, the Odeon) had begun to percolate as early as spring 1941. That spring Famous Players Canadian had taken over the Hanson Theatres Corp., which had purchased the Grand Opera House property in 1937. Hanson had already seized control of the Regent Theatre — which meant that, along with the Capitol, Famous Players now had two theatres operating in Peterborough.

In 1945, more explicitly, the Examiner reported that the “60-foot-wide lot directly north of the Turner building” was owned by Hanson and Gordon Miller, manager of the Regent Theatre. The building of the Paramount, like that of the Odeon, would have to wait until at least two issues were resolved: the lifting of wartime construction restrictions and shortages of postwar material and “manpower.”

Arch Jolley of the Motion Pictures Theatres Association came to Peterborough in April 1946 and offered a forecast of things to come. In a speech to the Rotary Club he assured the business-minded audience that “In the near future two super-deluxe theatres will be erected in Peterborough.”

Jolley emphasized that the city already had a lot going for it. “Peterborough has three very fine theatres. Projection and sound reproduction apparatus is the best procurable. Accoustics are good, and you get first-run pictures here before they are seen in most of the larger cities.” But there would be more.

“As soon as materials and manpower become available, following the great demand for housing in this country, the motion picture owners of this province plan to spend millions of dollars on new theatres and renovating the present theatres. The public will be provided with roomier seats, making it unnecessary to stand in order to let people pass in front of you, wool on the floor replacing carpets, and new, improved air conditioning and innovations in lighting effects.”

The two “super-deluxe theatres” promised by Jolley would be the Odeon and Paramount – and from the very beginning the two chains were in a race to get their new houses opened. FPCC was the first to submit its plans for construction to city council, in June 1946; Odeon’s proposal went to council in November. But as the months passed Paramount’s construction lagged behind; in the end it was the Odeon that opened first, a year ahead of the Paramount.

*Boxoffice*, Aug. 28, 1948, p.99. The big plans of Famous Players Canadian include Peterborough, among other far-flung places.

In October 1946 the would-be Paramount site was still in use as a parking lot, while excavation on the Odeon lot had begun by November. Work on the Paramount began only in May 1947, with a local contractor, Eastwood Construction Co., getting the nod. An Ontario government inspector was worried that the local firm doing the work “by hand” was “inexperienced in theatre construction,” possibly necessitating further checks on the quality.

The Paramount was serious about trying to be the first to open – it made an agreement with Eastwood for some kind of bonus if the house opened before the Odeon. That was becoming less and less likely. By October 1947, with the foundations laid and walls half-completed, the inspector pointed out: “I don’t see how this contractor can open this theatre ahead of the Odeon as called for in his contract.” Part of the problem was a shortage of both labour and materials. Apparently the contractors were on a waiting list for structural steel for three months.

*Examiner*, Dec. 3, 1948, p.10. A section of a full-page ad — which uses an image of the 15 concrete blocks on the theatre’s front to promote parts of the program. The words to the right side, “Bing Crosby . . . ‘Emperor . . .’” would presumably be on the marquee.

By December the walls were in place (though the roof was not yet completed), and hopes remained for the early spring. As it turned out, interior work was still being done in May 1948, and fine-tuning continued through the summer and into the fall. The theatre was opened on Saturday, Dec. 6, 1948, but even then work was not completed. Among more minor items, the huge “Paramount” sign shooting up from the marquee and the adjoining wraparound section (with the words “A Famous Players Theatre”) were not finished until the spring.

In any case, as an Examiner reporter put it, it was “as fine a modern theatre as money and human ingenuity can produce . . .” — but then, that was more or less the same that was said about the Odeon a year earlier; and it approximated the glowing praise of the new Centre Theatre, the “paradise playhouse,” when it opened in 1939.

Peterborough’s Paramount was FPCC’s sixth newly built theatre since September of 1944; and the company would establish another fourteen by 1955. Famous Players planned to have theatres stretching from Newfoundland to Victoria. Peterborough, then, was far from being alone in this corporate venture.

Detail from “Exterior of the Paramount Theatre,” June 1949. Although the theatre opened on Dec. 6, 1948, the vertical “Paramount” sign and the sign to the left (“A Famous Player Theatre”) were not completed until the spring of 1949. Library and Archives Canada (LAC), 1996-135, Folder Cinemas – CN (Ont), 4446.

The building, still standing today, was constructed of brick, concrete, and steel. Like the Odeon its modern style included a healthy dose of glass – with a wide section of glass doors at the entrance and a huge picture window that again allowed not only sidewalk passersby to look in at the lobby area but also patrons inside to look out onto the street (although a drawn curtain often prevented that from happening). The front of the theatre was made of solid concrete, “designed for utility and decoration,” with the upper half sporting a panel of fifteen indented squares, one of them overlapped by the theatre marquee.

The marquee – a steel-fabricated extension – was built with the necessary strength to allow a display sign that rose about 40 feet above the street level.

A ticket booth was on the street just to the right side of the foyer entrance (the shape of that box office can still be seen there today). Moviegoers would line up outside and down George in front of the Turner Building, and if there was a huge crowd the cinemagoers wrapped around the corner and went east on King Street. (Sometimes a really long lineup would then extend north on Water St.) Behind the ticket kiosk was a meter room, and a small room to store marquee display letters.

The theatre had a capacity of 950 seats in the main auditorium and balcony. A short, angled foyer led patrons through some more glass doors into the large inside lobby, where a “group of theatre patrons may be idling away a few minutes as they wait for friends or for the beginning of the next film.” On the right side of the foyer, stairs went up to the balcony and projection rooms, the manager’s office, and men’s lounge and rest room. A staircase on the left side of the lobby led to the ladies’ lounge and restroom and a private telephone cubicle.

A jam-packed balcony for *Command Decision*, June 1949 — with the film projectors clearly shown above the heads of the audience. Library and Archives Canada (LAC), 1996-135, Folder Cinemas – CN (Ont), 4444.

The back row of the loges offered twenty-nine seats equipped with hearing aids: patrons in need could obtain headphones from ushers and plug them into slots on the seats. The theatre’s upstairs also had two extra and quite separated-off spaces to accommodate specific moviegoers. A “crying room,” above the balcony and next to the projection room, could seat eighteen mothers. The room had long observation windows and mothers could thus attend a movie with babies or young children who might otherwise cause a disturbance. Mike Lacey, who worked at the theatre for a few years from 1968, says that in his experience, “No one ever went up there with kids.” One Peterborough moviegoer, Rita Tunnicliffe, remembers that “one time the theater was full so they let the extras go in the crying room. It was kinda fun. Weird but fun.” There was also a small “private reviewing room” on the other side of the projection room.

Looking through the glass outer lobby doors out onto the street. The Library and Archives Canada photo dates this as February 1949, but the posters in the entrance way are for the Walt Disney Productions’ *Melody Time* (released May 27, 1948), which played at the Paramount from Jan. 14 to Jan. 18, 1949. LAC, 1996-135, Folder Cinemas – CN (Ont), 4439.

For a brief time there were five theatres — with Bing Crosby playing at two of them on this occasion. With a special hockey train to Toronto, and the Happy Gang on radio. The Odeon had stage entertainment led by Del Crary. At the Capitol, *Out of the Past* (1947), one of the greatest of the film noirs. *Examiner*, Dec. 6, 1948, p.7.

The stage had curtains (with valences at the top) “in a rust, silver and turquoise color scheme . . . in perfect harmony with the rest of the theatre.” A news items indicated the theatre had a plastic screen, and that all of the stage functions were controlled remotely from the projection booth. One-time employee Mike Lacey says the space on the stage was just wide enough to allow for the curtain and a bit of standing room for public speakers — while behind the screen there was a narrow space just wide enough for someone to walk across without being seen. The screen, even if plastic, was made of a kind of woven material; someone standing behind it could look out and see the audience, but they could not see you.

Cashiers and ushers wore standard Famous Players uniforms: of navy blue in military style with high cadet collars. “The uniforms,” the Examiner reported, “have red trim and gold braid and the whole ensemble is striking and very smart.”

On stage at the Paramount opening, Dec. 3, 1948, manager Gordon Miller hands a cheque to Clare Collins, of the Rotarians. PMA, VR 4800-1.

Opening night

About a thousand people came out for the gala opening on Friday evening – “leading Peterborough personalities” among them. As they entered the foyer they were serenaded by music from a local trio: Cecil Searles, Charles Allen, and Tom Smith. From the stage, Mayor William Ovens officially declared the theatre open. H.L. Garner of the Examiner was master of ceremonies. FPCC president John Joseph Fitzgibbon told how former mayor Roland Denne had often asked him to build a theatre in the city – and now here it was! (He did not acknowledge that the city already had a FPCC-constructed theatre, the Capitol.) The audience got to hear some more music on stage before witnessing the screening of the theatre’s first-ever movie, The Emperor Waltz (1948), preceded by a number of short films.

FPCC generously donated the entire proceeds of the evening’s entertainment to the Rotary Club, and theatre manager Gordon Miller handed a cheque of $1,000 over to Clare Collins, of the Rotarians’ finance committee.

Some of the original staff members were Margaret Howe and Theresa Holland, cashiers; Leonard Gouin, assistant manager; Philip T. Gallagher and George E. (Ted) Blackshaw, projectionists; Frederick E. Fell, doorman; and Mary Laroux and Shirley Mowry, usherettes. Barbara Young and Gertrude Moore were also listed as working at the theatre. Percival V. Noble was doing maintenance in 1951. Over the following decades countless young people would get their first jobs, usually part-time, at the Paramount or one of the other theatres.

The Paramount celebrated its first anniversary in style. I wonder if many people knew of the connection of the Paramount cashier, Margaret Howe, with the Warne’s Jewellers family, which were contributing to this event. *Examiner*, Dec. 3, 1949, p.7.

*Examiner*, Dec. 30, 1950, p.7. The three theatres on George St., south of Charlotte, lined up with their offerings. Up the road, a fourth theatre, the Centre, was showing *Cheaper by the Dozen* and *Susanna Pass* (with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans).

In 1953 manager Gordon Miller was replaced by Art Cauley, who moved over from the Capitol. Cauley would hold the reins of the theatre until 1961. From 1952 to 1954 he had the help of another prominent Peterborough theatre man, Donald Corrin, as assistant manager. Cauley experienced declining attendance at the more “ordinary” movies and worried about the effect of the local television station, CHEX, which opened in March 1955. He commented, for instance, on the Kirk Douglas vehicle The Racers (U.S., released May 1955), which played in mid-April 1955: “Business was good – the customers and myself happy. Also bucking our new local TV station, with over 4,000 sets now in operation in the city and dealers selling out every day.” (In the decade after 1953, when the effects of television first began to be felt, movie theatre admissions dropped by about 40 per cent.)

To battle the turning tide, Cauley organized community events and otherwise did everything he could to lure in the customers – as apparent in a 1955 promotional gimmick that captured the attention of the New York–based trade magazine Motion Picture Herald — offering prizes to kids and doubling drink sales with a Pepsi-Cola promotion.

When the movie Three Ring Circus came to town, Paramount manager Art Cauley reported: “Martin & Lewis really pack them in here. Every picture starring this team brings line-ups at the box office. While this is not the best picture that they have made, the added clearness of VistaVision and the circus theme sure brought out a lot of patrons that we have not noticed in quite a while. Played second week in March.” — “What the Picture Did for Me,” Motion Picture Herald, May 14, 1955, p.40.

*Examiner*, Jan. 28, 1954, p.12. To address the issue of declining audiences due, at least in part, to the advent of television, theatres tried 3-D (for a short while) and then embraced new film technologies and larger screens, which did have an effect (along with the coming of “blockbusters”) and by the end of the decade and into the 1960s, audiences did return, to some extent. Manager Cauley pointed out that in *The Robe*, ”There were only five so-called close-ups used whereas in the ordinary movie of the past there were always at least a hundred.”

For a little more than a dozen years the Paramount and Odeon were competing in a way that had not been seen in the city for some time. Perhaps the Paramount just slightly outdid the Odeon, which had its mix of British and U.S. productions. The slightly younger theatre more often served up the best and biggest pictures: from The Greatest Show on Earth (April 1952) through to the huge Biblical epic Ben-Hur (January 1961) — and, in 1964, Tom Jones. At times it even competed with the Odeon in screening British pictures — as in early October 1949 with the catchline “Britain’s Best Joins Hollywood’s Greatest in Famous Players Theatres” — introducing “a new, select group of Britain’s best pictures.”

The more standard U.S. movie Davy Crockett (July—August 1955) saw youngsters lined up around the block — the earliest of them (myself included) hoping to get a free glass filled with peanut butter. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (January 1955) came in for a lavish promotional campaign connecting with local merchants. The theatre premiered Elvis Presley in Love Me Tender in early January 1957 to a Saturday afternoon crowd of screaming teenagers (again, myself included). The Paramount had a few double-features, but mostly it was big single features. It also had occasional Saturday programs for the “kiddies,” but not as often as those featured at the Odeon and Capitol. Cauley was expressly fond of “the younger set,” and for a period of time, about once a month, he treated them to a free show during the school term. He also invited school safety patrol members to come out for special showings.

For adults . . .

but also something for children.

*Examiner*, Dec. 20, 1961, p.22. And now there were only two. In the first few months after the consolidation of the theatres the films shown tended to be somewhat nondescript. The same page of the *Examiner* had a syndicated movie column in which the writer remarked that the producers of this period were “enamored with the downbeat and the depraved,” though that was soon to change.

In 1961, after the closing of the Capitol Theatre, Famous Players and Odeon pooled their resources. Cauley retired on Aug. 19, 1961 — the day the city’s “movie set-up” was transformed into dual ownership of the two remaining theatres — by agreement, both of them now operated by Odeon Theatres of Canada. Cauley was succeeded by others through the following years, including perhaps the longest-running manager, Howard Binns.

Large audiences turned out for the likes of the Academy Award—winning *Tom Jones*, which played in May 1964. Trent Valley Archives, Examiner Collection, 40584-2.

Binns was at the reins when Sunday movies came into effect in 1965. The response in the city to Sunday movies, he told the Examiner, was “amazing.” The theatre managers noticed that they were drawing in not just city people but large numbers from surrounding districts.

Sherry Migliaccio [Thompson] remembers that when *The Godfather* (“Adult Entertainment”) was showing at the Paramount, her sister worked on the concession stand — and saw the film so many times that she would “come home cursing in Italian . . . ‘Va fangulo’” [vaffanculo]. Sherry also worked at the Paramount, but so too, “at some point in our lives,” did two older brothers, one younger brother, and three sisters. All of the family had a great love of movies: “It became ingrained in our family culture.” Photo from Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Paramount May 1972 LAC 4445.

Carol King and I worked at the Paramount when we were thirteen or fourteen. I remember the collars and cuffs on the uniforms snapped on and off so they could be washed. I'm not sure that ever happened. I saw Bridge on the River Kwai at least a dozen times. The music still dances in my head. The family passes were great, my Mom and Dad came to see Farewell to Arms and that was the only time I remember them going to a show. — Carolyn Corp [Hicks]

*****

In 1972 the Paramount was divided into two screens by separating off the balcony from the downstairs auditorium (it had closed only one day to make the changes). The upstairs would have 200 seats. The switch took place while The Godfather was busy drawing crowds to the theatre.

For a movie theatre, the Paramount had a long life, at 37 years — right up there with the other big two, the Odeon (39 years) and the Capitol (40 years). By the mid-1980s both the Odeon and Paramount were competing with the easy parking shopping-mall Lansdowne Cinemas and its six small theatres. On Friday, November 21, 1986, the theatre’s ad announced: “LAST TWO DAYS UNTIL CLOSING!” The movies Crocodile Dundee and The Colour of Money (in its “3rd Terrific Week”) were showing. On Thursday it had its “Final Night,” featuring the same two movies. The next day Crocodile Dundee moved to the Lansdowne Cinemas.

The Examiner pronounced it “the end of an era” (which it certainly was). “Gone with the winds of change is the Paramount Theatre.”

“Last night as the last audiences left the grand dame of Peterborough cinemas, they trickled out of a lobby crowded with Lilly cup boxes on the floor and candy bars stacked against the large plate glass window. …The staff had quickly removed the [movie] advertising to replace it with these parting words: Thank you, Peterborough.”

It was, the article said, “the classiest theatre in Peterborough” — always kept spotlessly clean, and it “seemed to have a better movie selection” than the others.

The closing represented the latest in a long list: from the Regent (1949), Centre (1956), and Capitol (1961) to the Peterborough Drive-in on the Lakefield Road about one year earlier.

Ironically, theatre manager Doug Whitham said, attendance “had not been so good since the theatre opened in the mid-1940s.” But, he explained, Famous Players was moving away from independent properties to mall settings, which were less expensive to maintain.

Ontario Cinemas Inc., which owned the Lansdowne Cinemas (formerly Cineplex) and Trent Cinemas (formerly the Odeon) – had announced earlier that month that it had purchased the Paramount (seemingly just to do away with it, then). It stated that the theatre would not re-opened as a cinema.

At the time the projectionist, John O’Leary, was running four projectors – two at the Paramount and two at the Odeon.

“Last night the lights went down for the last time on about 800 plush green reclining seats, blackening the red and gold interior that reflected the Famous Players colors on the curved walls and swirled frond patterns of the original carpet.”

The building itself remains, cycling through the following decades with a series of amusement enterprises including The Time Zone, Club Vibe, and, most recently, The Venue.