Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 73

'During the Depression, the Grand and the Palace would set aside special nights on which people would bring food in lieu of then walked to the front of the theatre. As the police hauled him off, he asked the manager, "Where is the washroom?" Saturday morning Mickey Mouse Club matinees were the big babysitter in town, where for a dime kiddies enjoyed talent shows, singsongs and a cartoon or serial. According to Ivan Acke-ry's book, Fifty Years on Theatre Row, Edward, the Prince of Wales, was an occasional patron of the Capitol in its early days. A 1912 bylaw prohibited motor-driven machines in moving picture theatres. Projectors had to be operated by hand.

The bylaw, designed to cut down on noise, has long since been repealed. During the Depression, the Isis, the Grand and the Palace gave away dishes with admission. Also during the Depression, the Grand and the Palace would set aside special nights on which people would bring food in lieu of admission. The theatre donated the food and any box-office money to relief agencies. (Kupecek is a Calgary freelance writer.) theatres and a total of 2,144 seats.

REMEMBER WHEN The Grand Theatre, built in 1912, was "the show-place of the city," an opera house with a 13.7-metre stage and an orchestra pit which hosted the major vaudeville tours from the Pantages Circuit. A young Cary Grant would frequently visit Calgary because, we are told, his uncle, Ken Leach, owned the Strand Theatre on 8th Avenue. At the beginning of this century, the Allen Theatre, seating 840, was the first real picture palace in the city, with balcony and organ. (The Allen family, whose descendant Karyn Allen Keenan now lives in Calgary, also owned the Monarch, the Rex, the Strand and others.) The Capitol (where Scotia Centre stands now) was so glamorous it even sported mirrors below the drinking fountains. When the Capitol opened on 8th Avenue on May 7, 1921, it was the largest building in Calgary, with a $250,000 pricetag.

A Calgary Herald article of the day rhapsodized: "A feeling of richness and beauty as well as stripes, white collars, bow-ties and pillbox hats. The big New Year's Eve outing in the 1950s was joining the sellout crowd at the balloon-festooned Capitol Theatre, where chesterfields, mink coats and automobiles were given away as door prizes. The Kinema Theatre, south of 17th Avenue on 14th Street, showed German movies in a tiny six-seat theatre, in the late 1950s, while the Crescent on Centre Street operated with the same number of seats. The Marda (now the Odeon) had double seats dubbed "passion seats" by the high school crowd. A streaker once disrupted a showing at Palliser Square 2.

The gentleman had methodically peeled off his clothes, folded them neatly, home-like comfort and enjoyment takes possession of one as, standing there in that beautiful room (the foyer) one listens to the silvery music of six of the finest canary birds possible to obtain and gazes about upon the fixtures and furnishing costing fabulous sums the destinies of the mezzanine floor are presided over by several beautiful girl ushers in original Greenwich Village art costumes, from the artist's tarn to the correct footwear exclamation of awe and wonder involuntarily escapes us as we lift our eyes to the ceiling and side walls, gazing rapturously upon what is considered by experts to be the most beautiful piece of architectural decorating work in western Canada." In the 1920s, Famous Players ushers were dressed in dark blue uniforms with red casabella 8 A fa I t.ftj'wwAftw. i mi mwiiWW' i.mM"iii" f. 1 '-i 1 I nNR i 0 (RODIER PARIS) 4ll ALLFALL UVOFF FASHIONS MAIN FIR. TORONTO DOMINION SQUARE ACROSS FROM LADY SUZANNE FABRIC SALE real leather hard savings! Posh. Practical.

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Phone 253-7834 Horald Sunday Magazine. Nov. 1 1 987 1 3.