Address | 2230 North Farwell Avenue Milwaukee United States |
---|---|
Public transit | MCTS |
Owner | Newland Enterprises LLP |
Operator | Milwaukee Film |
Capacity | 1530 |
Construction | |
Opened | July 2, 1927 [1] |
Architect | Gustave A. Dick Alex Bauer |
Website | |
https://cinema.mkefilm.org/oriental-theatre |
Oriental Theatre is a theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin operated by Milwaukee Film. The theater was built and opened in 1927 as a movie palace with East Indian decor. It is said to be the only movie palace to incorporate East Indian artwork. [2] Designed by Gustave A. Dick and Alex Bauer, the theater has two minaret towers, three stained glass chandeliers, several hand-drawn murals, six bigger-than-life Buddhas, dozens of original draperies, eight porcelain lions, and hundreds of elephants.
The Oriental Theatre has been showing independent and art films, as well as a few blockbuster Hollywood films.
The theater is the world record holder for continual showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show . [3] It has hosted the film as a Saturday midnight movie since January 1978.
In 2005, the theater was dubbed one of the "10 Theaters Doing It Right" by Entertainment Weekly . [4]
In 2016, local artists oversaw the installation of a new street art destination in the alley behind the Oriental Theater, and named it the Black Cat Alley. ' [5] As a part of the Black Cat Alley installation, French artist MTO painted a large mural of a green frog entitled "MTO's Bug" on the south wall of the theater, facing Kenilworth Avenue.' [6] The theater building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2023. [7]
A movie palace is any of the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opening every year between 1925 and 1930. With the advent of television, movie attendance dropped, while the rising popularity of large multiplex chains in the 1980s and 1990s signaled the obsolescence of single-screen theaters. Many movie palaces were razed or converted into multiple-screen venues or performing arts centers, though some have undergone restoration and reopened to the public as historic buildings.
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The Crest Theatre, formerly known as Majestic Crest and Bigfoot Crest Theatre, was a movie theatre located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. It was founded as the UCLAN in 1941, and was built for live performances but switched to a newsreel cinema during World War II. Through ownership changes, it has been known at various times as UCLAN Theatre, Crest Theatre, and Metro Theatre. The original 500-seat art deco style theater was designed by Arthur W. Hawes.
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