Boxoffice Pro - August 2020

else. Their Dolby Cinema auditorium
provides one of the flat-out best theatrical
experiences in this part of the country.
Kevin Lally, Executive Editor
Clairidge Theatre
[Today: Bow Tie Clairidge Cinemas]
and the Wellmont Theatre
Montclair, New Jersey
Fox Theatre and Oritani Theatre
Hackensack, New Jersey
Growing up in Bergen County, New
Jersey, one of the most densely populated
counties in the nation, I never realized
how good I had it as a young moviegoer.
It was a short bus ride to New York City’s
Radio City Music Hall, the fabled art deco
entertainment showplace, where your ticket
often got you both a movie and a stage
show. (My first movie there: That Darn Cat!
starring Hayley Mills and Dean Jones.)
But Bergen County also had its own
wonderful movie palaces. In those days
of exclusive road show engagements that
could last for months, even a year, the
movie mecca was Montclair, New Jersey,
with its two huge movie palaces, the
Clairidge and the Wellmont, both opened
in 1922. It was in Montclair—a half-hour
drive from my hometown of Dumont—
that I saw the Oscar-winning musicals My
Fair Lady and The Sound of Music before
they finally branched out to more towns.
Today, the Wellmont is a live-performance
venue, and the Clairidge is a six-plex
operated by Bow Tie Cinemas.
The next tier down in my area of Bergen
County was Hackensack. That town with
the odd name boasted not one but two
bona fide movie palaces, the Fox and the
Oritani, right across from each other on
Main Street. Named for a local Indian
chief, the Oritani opened on May 6, 1926,
with a double bill of Lady Windermere’s
Fan and Nobody’s Business, according to
the invaluable website Cinema Treasures.
Five years later, the art deco Fox debuted
with Jackie Coogan in Huckleberry Finn.
The Fox held more than 2,200 seats, the
Oritani 1,800, and both were beautiful,
ornate temples from a bygone age. I saw
many movies there—the most indelible is
watching Stanley Kramer’s all-star comedy
extravaganza It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad
World on the Oritani’s huge screen at age 11
and laughing so hysterically at the brutal
fire escape climax my parents almost took
me out of the theater.
“I never realized how good I
had it as a young moviegoer.
It was a short bus ride to New
York City’s Radio City Music
Hall, the fabled art deco
entertainment showplace,
where your ticket often got
you both a movie and a
stage show.”
Sadly, these two New Jersey gems are no
more. According to Cinema Treasures, the
Fox’s last first-run film was Jaws 2 in 1980,
and it was torn down in 1998. The Oritani’s
auditorium was demolished in 1985.
My hometown, Dumont, did not
have its own movie theater. The closest
was in neighboring Bergenfield: the
Palace, which seemed an inapt name
after enjoying the wonders of the Fox and
the Oritani. There I saw many a Disney
cartoon and live-action comedy. In
retrospect, the onetime Spanish Baroque
vaudeville house probably was a palace
by current standards; today it’s a fivescreen
theater, formerly owned by Bow Tie
Cinemas and now independently operated.
Jesse Rifkin, Analyst
AMC Georgetown 14
Washington, D.C.
I perform every Friday and Saturday night
at a piano bar in the Georgetown area
of Washington, D.C. Only a few hundred
feet away is the AMC Georgetown, where
I attend a movie almost every Friday or
Saturday night, two or three hours before
my gig. Since it’s located in one of the
nicer areas of the nation’s capital, there’s
always the possibility of running into a
major political figure. There was always
a small but possible chance I might run
into Dick Cheney when I saw Vice there, or
Ruth Bader Ginsburg when I saw On the
Basis of Sex. I mean, I didn’t. But there was
still the chance.
Chris Eggertsen, Analyst
Century 8
[Today: Cinemark Century Cinema 16]
Mountain View, California
I grew up in Ventura, California, about
an hour north of L.A. Many of my most
formative moviegoing experiences were
at the Century 8 (it would eventually
expand and be known as Century Cinema
16 under Cinemark), a pink palace of a
multiplex that has since shut down and
been taken over by a church (!). I worked
there over the summer between my junior
and senior years of high school and spent
many long nights scooping popcorn
into bags, pulling questionable items
out of cup holders, and being accosted
by customers who were livid over the
concession prices. Oh, what I wouldn’t do
to have those days back!
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