Leesensei
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 118
- Location
- Birmingham, Alabama
Here are some pics of the Alabama Theater in Birmingham Alabama. She was built in 1927, and is known as the showplace of the south!
Wow, that's a really nice console.Sleepy LaGoon said:With the original Wurlitzer organ that accompanied silent movies:
JennyLou said:I've been dying to see a movie at the El Capitan in LA, especially the Wurlitzer Organ that was originally in the Fox Theater in San Francisco and relocated to the Capitan.
chanteuseCarey said:
Wow, I never knew that David Packard had owned the Stanford. Kind of ironic, one of Silicon Valley's most famous technological innovators owned a 1925 movie theater, I guess high-tech and the past can coexist!chanteuseCarey said:David Packard decided to buy and restore The Stanford Theater in 1987, based on the success of his Fred Astaire Film Festival. Now over 20 years later, it is still going strong exclusively showing movies from the 1920s through the early 1960s. The Mighty Wurlitzer plays between shows, and when they have silent films. The most recent silent we all saw there was "The Wind" with Lillian Gish.
I've been going there since that first festival in '87. They ran Fred and Ginger movies all day long on the weekend. Mr. Packard was standing in the lobby during the breaks between features looking at all the people that were there. When saw him in the lobby between features, I told him how wonderful it was that he was showing these films, he looked around the packed lobby and said "and they said no one would come..."
Next door they have added a gallery annex, with long cases with original film paper ephemera, and original large film posters on the walls. Here's myself and my husband in the gallery annex among original Fred and Ginger posters.
LizzieMaine said:How I'd love to get into the projection booth at the Orpheum. *Sigh*.
Has anyone here ever been to the Fox Arlington in Santa Barbara? When I lived there in the early '80s it had just been restored, and I got to see a four-hour presentation of Abel Gance's "Napoleon" there, with live orchestral accompaniment -- it remains the most memorable movie experience of my life. A truly gorgeous theatre, with a Spanish mission garden theme...