The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 281

Movie House Gives In To TV 5 If V. BMWttlMitTiin -Win JfrrflTlBiil in i Vini- -rf ii I iHHfcMlllMi Sunpapers Photo Paul Hutchins Saturday matinees at the Avalon Theater on Park Heights avenue have been replaced by the broadcasts of WMET-TV and companion radio stations. By William Hyder ThE big black letters on the marquee used to proclaim pulse-quickening legends such HS! THE KING AND I YUL BRYNNER DEBORAH KERR Now they spell out WMET-TV CHANNEL 24. The glass doors across the entrance are boarded up and painted black. So is the ticket booth.

Inside, the tiny lobby is barren. The glass cases that used to hold the colorful posters advertising next week's attraction have been taken down. In the center of the floor, standing like a monolith, a soft-drink machine hums to itself. Through the other doors is the auditorium. At first sight it looks as it did in the old days.

But down at the far end, belond the proscenium arch, is a naked brick wall. The screen, which used to glow with the exploits of Audie Murphy, James Stewart, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, is gone. The first 15 or 20 rows of seats have been taken out, and the bare floor is cluttered with all the equipment of a television studio-cameras, lights, tangles of cable, a news desk backed up by cardboard flats 8 feet high. In the right-hand wall two windows have been cut through to the building next door. Through them the switches and dials of the control room are dimly seen.

The building is the old Avalon Theater on Park Heights avenue near Cold Spring lane. It was built in 1922, just in time for the golden age of silent films and the coming of sound. For almost 40 years it was the neighborhood movie house, invaded every Saturday afternoon by hordes of kids intent on soaking up the latest adventures of Buck Jones or Roy Rogers. Married people and dating couples went there on Friday and Saturday, evenings, dressed in their good clothes the happy hours he used to spend in the neighborhood movie house will be glad to know that the images of Pat O'Brien, Loretta Young, Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Joel McCrea, Will Rogers, Paul Kelly, Wayne Morris and others of their era are still flickering at the old Avalon Theater. Hollywood always used to love happy endings, and in a way this story has one.

WMET-TV telecasts two or three movies every day. They are run off in the control room on a machine called a film chain, and not projected on a screen. But anyone who has a sentimental feeling about Changes and program information received since this issue of TV Week went to press will be found on the radio page of today's Spectator section. Late Changes And Additions and considering it a big night out. The women cried over the tribulations of Joan Crawford and collected their free dish as they left the theater.

Then in the Fifties, television began killing movie houses by the hundreds. By the end of the decade the Avalon had closed. Once or twice hopeful managers tried to reopen it as an art-film house, but without success. In the early Sixties the old theater went dark for good. Not content with putting the Avalon out of business, television moved right into the building.

The United Broadcasting Company converted the theater into a TV studio, and WMET-TV telecast its first programs March 1, 1967. WSID and WSID-FM (now called WLPL-FM), the company's radio stations in Baltimore, transferred their operations to the building around the same time. Their studios are upstairs above the lobby, in the rooms that used to be the manager's office and the projection room. for the following: UHF WMET (Ind.) Baltimore WMPB (Educ-cult.) Baltimore WFAN (Ind.) Washington WBOC (CBS) Salisbury WDCA (Ind.) Washington WETA (Educ-cult.) Washington WSBA (CBS) York, Pa. TV WEEK contains listings VHF WMAR (CBS) Baltimore 03 fD WBAL (NBC) Baltimore WJZ (ABC) Baltimore WRC (NBC) Washington (D WTTG (Ind.) Washington WMAL (ABC) Washington WGAL (NBC) Lancaster, Pa.

WTOP (CBS) Washington.