Cine Capri

Cine Capri
Cine Capri
General information
Status	Permanently closed and demolished
Location	Phoenix, Arizona
Address	24th Street and Camelback Road
Groundbreaking	1964
Opened	March 31, 1966
Renovated	1988
Demolished	1998
Owner	Paramount Studio (1964-1988), Harkins Theatres (1988-1998)
Technical details
Floor area	16,500-square feet
Design and construction
Architect	Ralph Haver, Henry George Greene, George M. Aurelius
Structural engineer	Magadini & Associates
Main contractor	Homes & Son Construction Company

Last updated August 07, 2021

The Cine Capri was a movie theater located in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, which operated from 1966 to 1998.

History

Construction

The original Cine Capri Theatre was located at the corner of 24th Street and Camelback Roads in Phoenix, Arizona. The theatre was owned by Paramount Studios, and its construction in 1964 required approval by the Federal District Court of New York to satisfy anti-trust laws. The building was designed by George M. Aurelius, vice-president and general manager of Arizona Paramount Corporation, Henry George Greene, consulting architect to ABC Theaters,^[1] W. E. (Bill) Homes, Jr., president of Homes & Son Construction Company, Ralph Haver, president of Haver, Nunn & Jensen, architects for Barrows Plaza, and Spero Kontos of the Los Angeles-based John Filbert Company.

The large, 16,500-square-foot (1,530 m²) facility featured dual colonnades flanking both sides of the theater; ten pre-cast white, columns weighing seven tons each. They were supported with overhangs with copper fascias cured to achieve an antique green patina. There was a large portico that served as the main entrance and a patio off the east lobby to provide shelter for waiting patrons and intermission breaks. The entire lower building façade was overlaid with imported hexagonal jade Italian tile. In the center was a multi-paneled, 24-foot-long (7.3 m), custom antique stained glass window which served as a focal point. Low profile desert landscaping surrounded the theatre, including palm, Russian Olive, and Italian cypress trees. Patrons could be see the Camelback Mountain and its Praying Monk rock formation from the two-level lobby.

The auditorium was enveloped in a 4,000 yards (3,700 m) of antique gold fabric covering the proscenium and walls. A gold curtain moved vertically to reveal the title curtain behind, which opened horizontally to expose the film on a giant curved screen which extended out to the fifth row of seats.

The Cine Capri was the first multipurpose theater in the southwest specifically designed to project all film aspect ratios of the time, including Cinemascope, Vista-Vision, and Cinerama from its 70/35 mm projectors and stereophonic sound system.

Opening

The Cine Capri opened with the Charlton Heston film The Agony and the Ecstasy.^[2] On March 31, 1966, Charlton Heston hosted a youth drama clinic in the theater auditorium for several dozen high school and college students. This was followed by an afternoon “show & tell” reception for distinguished guests to personally meet Mr. Heston. Attendees included community leaders, city and state officials, the press, radio and television personnel, studio and distribution executives, and neighborhood merchants. Also there were the architects, contractors, members of the trade and craft suppliers, the Phoenix Art Council and the Mid Town Rotary Club, the sponsors of the evening charity program. Later Heston officially launched the theater with a ribbon cutting ceremony.

The 1977 movie Star Wars played at the Cine Capri for over a year - the longest run in the United States. The Cine Capri held one of the highest grosses for the George Lucas film. Famed snowboard artist Joe Sorren painted an audience viewing a film, titled after the theater.

Demolition

After several years, the Arizona Paramount Corporation and ABC Paramount theaters disposed of their theater holdings and withdrew from the community. In 1988, the theater was renovated and re-opened by its new operator Harkins Theatres, a large privately owned movie theater chain.

In 1997, a year-long battle began between Harkins Theatres and the property owner over the decision to demolish the Cine Capri in favor of a high-rise office building. Despite over 260,000 petition signatures and efforts of the Save the Cine Capri Committee, as well as national publicity in Preservation magazine,^[3] the theater was demolished in 1998. The last film shown was Titanic .

Reconstructions

In 2003, a Cine Capri-style auditorium was built as part of the Scottsdale 101 theater complex in Phoenix. The 568-seat auditorium had the largest regular movie theater screen in Arizona at over 70 feet (21 m) wide by 30 feet (9.1 m) high, and a 40,000 watt / 150 speaker Digital sound system. The Scottsdale 101 includes a Cine Capri museum which showcases memorabilia and photos from the original Cine Capri.

A second Cine Capri was built in Tempe, Arizona at the new Tempe Marketplace shopping center, along with 15 other movie screens. It is located on the Southwest corner of Loop 101 and Loop 202 Red Mountain. The new stadium-style theater has the same size screen and has 604 seats instead of 568. It pre-opened on June 28, 2007, with a one-night-only showing of the original 1977 Star Wars . The Grand Opening was on June 29, 2007; the opening film was Live Free or Die Hard .

Harkins also operates Cine Capri-style auditoriums at the Bricktown 16 theatre complex in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Northfield 18 theaters in Denver, Colorado, and at the Southlake Town Square in Southlake, Texas.

Related Research Articles

Scottsdale is a city in the eastern part of Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and is part of the Greater Phoenix Area. Named Scottsdale in 1894 after its founder Winfield Scott, a retired U.S. Army chaplain, the city was incorporated in 1951 with a population of 2,000. The 2019 population was estimated at 258,069. Its slogan is "The West's Most Western Town."

Scottsdale Fashion Square is an upscale, super-regional luxury shopping mall located in the downtown area of Scottsdale, Arizona. It is the largest shopping mall in Arizona with approximately 2 million square feet (190,000 m²) of retail space, and is among the top 30 largest malls in the country. It has consistently been one of the most profitable malls in the United States, being ranked in 2016 as the second highest sales per square foot mall in the country, and as of 2016, it was ranked in the top 25 most visited malls in the country by Travel + Leisure magazine. The mall is located on the northwest corner of Scottsdale Road and Camelback Road in Scottsdale, Arizona, and has been owned by Westcor, a subsidiary of Macerich, since 2002.

Will Bruder is an American architect.

Harkins Theatres is an American movie theater chain with locations throughout the Southwestern United States. Harkins Theatres is privately owned and operated by its parent company, Harkins Enterprises, LLC. The company currently operates 33 theaters with 501 screens throughout Arizona, California, Colorado and Oklahoma.

<i>Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie</i> 2003 American film

Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie is a 2003 American stand-up comedy concert film from Warner Bros. Pictures. It stars comedians Jeff Foxworthy and Bill Engvall and fellow Blue Collar comics Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy. The movie is similar in nature to that of The Original Kings of Comedy. It was followed by two direct-to-video sequels, Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again (2004) and Blue Collar Comedy Tour: One for the Road (2006). The film received critical acclaim.

A multiplex is a movie theater complex with multiple screens within a single complex. They are usually housed in a specially designed building. Sometimes, an existing venue undergoes a renovation where the existing auditoriums are split into smaller ones, or more auditoriums are added in an extension or expansion of the building. The largest of these complexes can sit thousands of people and are sometimes referred to as a megaplex.

Coronado High School is a public high school located in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. The school enrolled 1,044 students in the 2016–2017 school year, who primarily come from feeder schools in the Scottsdale Unified School District.

Ralph Haver (1915-1987) was an architect working in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona, USA, from 1945 until the early 1980s. Haver designed the Mid-Century Modern Haver Homes, affordable tract housing executed in a contemporary modern style.

An atmospheric theatre is a type of movie palace design which was popular in the late 1920s. Atmospheric theatres were designed and decorated to evoke the feeling of a particular time and place for patrons, through the use of projectors, architectural elements and ornamentation that evoked a sense of being outdoors. This was intended to make the patron a more active participant in the setting.

Tempe Center for the Arts (TCA) is a publicly owned performing and visual arts center in Tempe, Arizona. It opened in September 2007 and houses a 600-seat proscenium theater, a 200-seat studio theater and a 3,500-square-foot gallery. Its Lakeside Room seats 200 and overlooks Tempe Town Lake, with views of the Papago and Camelback mountains.

Tempe Marketplace is an open-air shopping center located in Tempe, Arizona. It is located along the Salt River near the interchange of Loop 101 and Loop 202 near the Tempe borders with Mesa and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community.

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) in the state of Arizona is a museum in the Old Town district of downtown Scottsdale, Arizona. The museum is dedicated to exhibiting modern works of art, design and architecture. The Museum has four galleries that house various exhibitions, curated from their growing permanent collection and rotating shows. Knight Rise skyspace, by Arizona artist James Turrell, is permanently on view.

Bennie M. Gonzales FAIA was an American architect known for a distinctive style of Southwestern architecture which has since been widely copied. Gonzales designed most of Scottsdale, Arizona's, major municipal buildings including Scottsdale City Hall, the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts and the Civic Center Library. His resume also included hundreds of private homes and residences throughout Arizona.

Many arterial roads in the Phoenix metropolitan area have the same name in multiple cities or towns. Some roads change names or route numbers across town borders, resulting in occasional confusion. For example, the road known as Apache Boulevard in Tempe continues east as Main Street in neighboring Mesa and then as Apache Trail in Apache Junction. Although Broadway Road maintains the same name through Goodyear, Avondale, Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, and Apache Junction, each town uses a different reference point for address numbers.

Lescher & Mahoney was an American architectural firm from Phoenix, Arizona.

Edward Leighton Varney Jr. (1914–1998) was an American Modernist architect working in Phoenix, Arizona from 1937 until his retirement in 1985. He designed the Hotel Valley Ho in Scottsdale, and Sun Devil Stadium at Arizona State University. He studied under Frank Lloyd Wright and in 1941 began his firm.

Fred Melville Guirey (1908-1984) was an architect working in Phoenix Arizona from the 1930s to the 1980s

John Sing Tang was a modernist architect from Arizona. He worked in the Phoenix metropolitan area, and designed many homes in the Arcadia area in the 1950s and 1960s. He was the first Chinese-American architect licensed in Arizona. He received his degree in architecture from Rice University in 1944. Though many of his commercial works have been demolished he is still highly regarded architect in Arizona. His Helsing's Coffee Shop and Melrose Bowling Alley designs of the late 1950s are considered exceptional examples of Googie Architecture. Tang died in 1987 at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix at the age of 74.

DWL Architects American architectural firm

DWL Architects + Planners Inc., is an architecture and planning firm headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. The firm was founded in 1949 by Frederick Penn Weaver and Richard E. Drover as the firm Weaver & Drover. It later became Drover, Welch & Lindlan Architects and was then shortened to DWL. The firm has designed many noteworthy buildings throughout the state of Arizona.

References

↑ Rourke, Mary (March 29, 2005). "Henry G. Greene, 93; Designed Center That Included Shubert Theatre". Los Angeles Times. p. B9. Retrieved November 22, 2020.
↑ "New Film House Opens March 31". The Arizona Republic. February 25, 1966. p. 40. Retrieved November 22, 2020.
↑ Fiscus, Chris; Moeser, Chris (August 6, 1997). "Raze Cine Capri, its neighbors say". The Arizona Republic. pp. A1, A6 . Retrieved November 22, 2020.

Interviews and personal correspondence with George M. Aurelius, retired vice-president and general manager of The Arizona Paramount Company, by Gayle Homes Martin, July, 1998.^{[ better source needed ]}
Fuchs, Andreas and Melnick, Ross. "Cinema Treasures A New Look at Classic Movie Theaters." MBI Publishing Company, St. Paul, MN. 2004.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Rourke, Mary (March 29, 2005). "Henry G. Greene, 93; Designed Center That Included Shubert Theatre". Los Angeles Times. p. B9. Retrieved November 22, 2020.

[2] "New Film House Opens March 31". The Arizona Republic. February 25, 1966. p. 40. Retrieved November 22, 2020.

[3] Fiscus, Chris; Moeser, Chris (August 6, 1997). "Raze Cine Capri, its neighbors say". The Arizona Republic. pp. A1, A6 . Retrieved November 22, 2020.

[1]

[2]

[3]