I can't remember the last time I saw a movie theater that had balcony seats. During the run of "The Brady Bunch" I think most movie theaters were still single cinemas. I think the explosion of multiplexes came a few years later. A lot of the early multiplexes were lame. They crammed two cinemas where there had previously been only one.
There are still a *few* movie theaters around with balconies. They're all in the realm of "local historical landmarks", though. The Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor still has a balcony. Of course, it also still has its original built-in pipe organ in working order, too (Yes, it was originally built before silents had gone away.).
Relative to the particular expanse of suburbia where I grew up, you're a little bit off in the timing of the proliferation of multi-screen theaters. That timing probably varied a bit from place to place, though. In my region, during the run of
The Brady Bunch is was already mostly 2 - 4 screen theaters, though a few still remained single screen. Right about the time that
The Brady Bunch was going off the air was when we saw the first one or two "big multiplex" type places; of course, what counted as a "big multiplex" back then was about 6 or 7 screens.
When I was in college, there was a theater just off campus that had originally been a single screen with a balcony. By then it had been sub-divided into 4 separate auditoriums. The screen was divided into 4 quarters (in half in each direction). A wall had been added down the middle in both the main floor and the balcony, and a new main-floor-ceiling / balcony-floor had been added. Eventually, the downstairs half got converted into shops. The two upstairs ex-balcony screens still were in business as a small art house movie theater, the last that I checked (they just have a doorway to a stairwell at sidewalk level).
reply
share