The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 33

3ffie IPftUabelpfna Inquirer Television I Local actor Vincent Young joins the cast of Fox's "Beverly Hills, 90210." D8. David Byrne at the Electric Factory. D6. Daytime TV Grids D9 Night-Owl TV Grid D9 Prime-Time TV Grid D8 Radio D9 Soap Synopsis D7 Lifestyle Entertainment D5 Monday, August 11, 1997 Philadelphia Online: http:www.phillynews.com KV me 1 10 Cinerama takes a final bow On Theater By Douglas J. Keating Barrymore ceremony leaves the Annenberg As economic reality lowers the curtain on old-time virtual reality, film buffs mourn the imminent closing of the country's only Cinerama theater.

The annual ceremony for the Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theater, held at the Annenberg Center for its first two years, is being moved this fall to the Walnut Street Theatre. Teresa Eyring board chair of the Theater Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, which administers the awards said the move from the Annenberg on the University of Pennsylvania campus in West Philadelphia to the Walnut at Ninth and Walnut Streets in Center City will provide more it (. von i il 1 3 uvo 't 41 ft I i 1 I 945 I CINEHAMA H3 10 I I I -i 1,1 I i I I f' This year, the event will have more room at the Walnut. seats for the affair; the Walnut can accommodate 1,075, the Annenberg's Zellerbach Theatre 970. "We sold our the first two A I years, and the extra seats the Walnut offers will help boost revenue from ticket sales," Eyring said.

She pointed out that ticket sales are an important element in financing the event, which costs about $100,000 annually. At the Annenberg, the dance and party following the ceremony were held in the theater lobby and in a tent pitched in the courtyard outside. The dance at this year's event will be held at the Ben Franklin House at Ninth and Chestnut Streets, which Eyring said is donating use of a ballroom. Bernard Havard, executive director of the Walnut, had suggested moving the awards to his theater. "Many members of the Barrymore family performed at the Walnut, so I think it's fitting that awards named after them are given away here." The third Barrymore Award ceremony will begin at 7:30 p.m.

Oct. 20 (a Monday, the traditional theater day off) and will share the Walnut stage with the set of the season-opening production of The Goodbye Girl. Ticket prices, which include the dance and gala, are the same as last year $35 for theater artists, $75 general admission. Information: 215413-7150. If you're asking yourself what the Theater Alliance of Greater Philadelphia is, and why it, rather than (as formerly) the Performing Arts League of Philadelphia (PALP), is handling the Barrymores, the answer is that the Theater Alliance is PALP, renamed to reflect a new emphasis on theater.

The impetus to relabel and redirect the organization began when PALP addressed and resolved financial difficulties following the departure last fall of former PALP execu-See THEATER on D6 Theater manager Larry Smith persuaded the owner to re-create Cinerama for the public. For The Inquirer JIM CALLAWAY The New Neon Movies theater in Dayton, Ohio, has played host to a revival of Cinerama films. Film Comment, which wrote that modern innovations like Imax and Omnimax only hint at the magic of Cinerama. But it's hard to continually lure new audiences to southwest Ohio while showing the same three pictures only seven were made in Cinerama. "Those who could afford to come have come," said John Harvey, credited with almost singlehandedly saving Cinerama from history's cutting-room floor.

"Our business is starting to dwindle." After Labor Day, the world's only Cinerama theater will be in the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, England. And Cinerama lovers on this side of the ocean will mourn. "It's an American invention, and it's part of our See CINERAMA on D7 By Jeff Gammage INQUIRER STAFF WRITER AYTON, Ohio Moviegoers here say the Edinburgh Castle bagpipers practically 111 march off the screen into the seats, that stampeding buffalo almost charge through i the theater and that the mist from Niagara Falls appears to cascade over their heads. That's the enchantment of Cinerama, the virtual reality of its day, a stunningly realistic viewing experience that was going to revolutionize how America went to the movies. The films were wildly popular in the 1950s, obsolete by the 1960s and currently show at only one theater in the country: here, in a small downtown movie house at the corner of Fifth and Patterson.

But not for much longer. This city's ambitious, 11-month-long Cinerama revival comes to a somber end next month, killed by some of the same economic forces that doomed the genre the first time around. The theater's landlord plans to remove the giant, audience-enveloping curved screen, replacing it with two smaller flat screens and turning what film buffs say is a one-of-a-kind jewel into just another shoe box. When the New Neon Movies theater began running the wide-screen films last August, it was the first time they had been publicly shown in America in more than three decades. Since then, the theater has attracted Cinerama devotees from across the United States, Europe and Asia, celebrities including director Martin Scorsese, and praise from journals such as r- 7v Powerful 'Nuremberg Diary' stuns teenage boy, who realizes evil is real small red swastika stood out against a black background.

A blurb read: "The shocking exposure of the Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials which offers a deep insight into the distorted minds of the men who led the Third Reich to victory and infamous defeat." The book cost me 75 cents gained their confidence. Because he also spoke German, he was in a special position to interview them, gauge their reactions, hear their complaints, and study their personalities and characters. Nuremberg Diary endures as one of the most valuable documents on the dark soul of German Fascism. ft Second of a 10-part series. By Roy Peter Clark As a youngs teenager on Long Island, one of my favorite places to hang out was a neighborhood candy store called The Sugar Bowl.

It still exists, and you can go there to buy the newspaper, a pack of smokes, or a lottery ticket. But in the early 1960s, it was a kid's paradise, where you could buy baseball cards, a soda fountain drink, comic books, or cheap toys, like rubber spiders or water pistols. As young adolescents, we graduated to the magazine shelves and a rotating rack that carried the day's popular paperback books. From this rack, I once picked out a pictorial biography of Marilyn Monroe, which was confiscated by my parents. A more serious book caught my attention in 1961.

It was titled Nuremberg piary. The cover showed a photograph of the Nazi war criminals on trial. A -x few the price of several Super- man comics but I found it too alluring to pass up. The hardback version, I would discover, was published in 1947, the year after the trials, the year before my birth. The author, G.M.

Gilbert, a U.S. Army captain, served as prison psychologist to the Nazi war criminals. Ue visited the prisoners in their cells, tried to prevent their suicides (one hanged himself early in the psychological tests, and If I wasn't playing baseball or basketball, I was reading. I can see myself now as a 13-year-old, sitting in the crowded seventh-grade classroom of St. Aidan's School, reading Nuremberg Diary.

Its contents so upset me that, on one occasion, I snapped the book shut and restrained myself from hurling it out the window. My outrage was enflamed by the details of Nazi atrocities. See RING on D9 The author of "Nuremberg Diane," G.M. to the Nazi war criminals sitting in the dock during their trial. He was their prison psychologist..