It was sold to the Mizrachi family in 2002 and finally closed for good in 2004 where it was used as storage for the family’s matress store next door. Before a concert featuring the Circle Jerks, the roof caved in. The auditorium was restored to a single space and all the seating was removed. In 1993, it had a new life as a concert hall and performing arts venue.

That didn’t last and it closed as a movie theater in 1989. The new owners just built a dividing wall down the center of the auditorium. It closed in 1977 and was divided into two theaters. In addition to the Disney films, my friend Allen and I saw 'Kelly's Heroes' and 'The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean' there. Complete with soundproof 'cry room' for unruly babies, the theater was home to Disney films and Saturday afternoons the theater was filled with kids. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it was known around town for being non-segregated. It was designed by famed Los Angeles architect, S. The Huntridge Theater at East Charleston and Maryland Parkway was the closest theater we had to an old- fashioned movie palace. Many people often confuse this theater with the Cine-Dome multiplex that was located on South Decatur Blvd. The Rotunda got torn down and replaced with the larger, low-rise Convention Center and the Cinerama was sold to a church and the ultimately demolished. Like all great things in Classic Las Vegas, it was not to last. For a time, between the Cinerama’s Dome, the Convention Center Rotunda and the Landmark Hotel that section of Paradise Road was mid-century modern nirvana. I dragged my friends there to see many a film, including 'Fantasia', 'The Hindenburg' and 'The Three Musketeers'.

In 1967, MGM studios re-released “Gone With the Wind” in 70mm and my mother took me to this theater for the first time. It opened on Januwith the John Wayne potboiler, “Circus World”. Located on Viking Road just off Paradise, this was a terrific theater. The Cinerama Theater -there weren't very many of them built-but, surprisingly in Las Vegas, we had one. Back then, movie theaters were one of the recreational places we had on a hot summer day.

It is time to fire up the Way Back Machine.Īs we celebrate the waning days of summer (somewhere that’s not the southwest where we have summer for another two months), I thought it might be fun to take a look at the movie theaters that were scattered around the Las Vegas Valley when I was growing up there back in the day.

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