 | It has been suggested that this article should be split into articles titled Walter Reade Sr. and Walter Reade Jr. . (discuss) (May 2022) |
Walter Reade was the name of a father and son who had an extensive career in the United States motion picture industry.
Walter Reade, Sr. (1884–1952) was the man behind a chain of theatres which grew from a single theatre in Asbury Park, New Jersey to a chain of forty theatres and drive-ins in New Jersey, New York and neighboring states that lasted into the mid seventies. Known as the “Showman of The Shore,” his name was associated with big, beautifully kept single movie theatres of Hollywood’s golden age. He lived in Deal, New Jersey, and considered Asbury Park the home base of his organization. He had six theatres there: The Mayfair, St. James, Lyric, Ocean, Paramount and Savoy. He soon became embroiled in fighting the corruption in Asbury Park from 1946 onward after he started a newspaper that had some unfavorable things to say about his adversaries. [1]
Walter Reade, Jr. (1916–1973) was the President and Board Chairman of the Walter Reade Organization, which owned and operated theatres in Manhattan, New Jersey, Boston and upstate New York. As the son of the company founder, Walter Reade Jr. served as an executive in the company. When his father died in the early 1950s, he assumed control of the company, and continued in that position until his death. In addition to its movie theatre operations, the Walter Reade Organization owned and operated television station WRTV in Asbury Park, New Jersey, between 1954 and 1955.
Reade started Continental Film Distributors in 1954 to distribute foreign films in the USA.
In 1961, Walter Reade acquired Sterling Television, renaming it to Reade-Sterling and then as the Walter Reade Organization in 1966. The company posted a major financial loss in 1964, due to the failure of its foreign film releases with the American public (the company had been responsible for issuing most of the films of Jacques Tati, and for also releasing the Canadian film The Luck of Ginger Coffey ).
The Walter Reade Organization also distributed and sometimes financed foreign films for showing in American theatres and sold packages of dubbed foreign films for American television. The company financed Ulysses (1967). Reade was described by Joseph Strick, the director of that film, as "a big, bluff man who wore a fresh carnation every day". [2]
Reade declared "You can't take major awards to the bank" and began a program of more commercial releases such as a double feature of the British Hot Enough for June retitled Agent 8+3⁄4 to make it sound more like a James Bond spoof and the Japanese Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster in 1965. [3] Reade also presented Behind the Great Wall, in "AromaRama", at the DeMille Theater in New York. The theater's air conditioning system was used to circulate various scents to provide an olfactory experience in addition to the sights and sounds. By three weeks, AromaRama beat a competing system, Scent of Mystery (1960), in Smell-O-Vision. [4] Reade's biggest success was releasing and exploiting Night of the Living Dead (1968).
The firm also owned the Charles Cinema in Boston, which opened in April 1967 and closed in December 1976. Major engagements included Easy Rider (1969) and Star Wars (1977). The space was later operated by other exhibitors, but finally closed in 1994. [5] In 1969, the company's flagship Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City opened. [6]
At its peak in the mid- to late-1960s, the Walter Reade Organization also operated two flagship foreign film movie theaters in Beverly Hills, California. The Beverly Hills Music Hall on Wilshire Boulevard was the exclusive exhibitor in the region of the 1969 Russian production of War and Peace . The six-hour epic, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, was treated as a prestige product, shown in two parts on two separate days, requiring "hard ticket" roadshow treatment and separate management handling the advance reservations. All the motion picture industry elites turned out for the several months of that engagement, including Katharine Hepburn, Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, Mike Nichols, Joanne Woodward, and scores of others. Theater staffers were required to wear Russian tunics for this engagement, and the doormen wore full-length Cossack coats, fur hats and accessories. The second Walter Reade cinema in Beverly Hills was the Beverly Canon, which also exhibited the company's licensed foreign films and was the site of world premiere screenings that included Peter Bogdanovich's Targets .
Sheldon Gunsberg later took over the company from Reade when he was killed in a skiing accident in Switzerland [7] (St. Moritz [8] ). The company filed for bankruptcy in 1977, emerging four years later. Columbia Pictures purchased 81% of the organization in 1981, buying the company completely in 1985, but later sold it to the Cineplex Odeon Corporation on June 26, 1987. [9]
First National Pictures was an American motion picture production and distribution company. It was founded in 1917 as First National Exhibitors' Circuit, Inc., an association of independent theatre owners in the United States, and became the country's largest theater chain. Expanding from exhibiting movies to distributing them, the company reincorporated in 1919 as Associated First National Theatres, Inc. and Associated First National Pictures, Inc.
Cineplex Odeon Corporation was one of North America's largest movie theatre operators and live theatre, with theatres in its home country of Canada and the United States. The Cineplex Odeon brand is still being used by Cineplex Entertainment at some theatres that were once owned by the Cineplex Odeon Corporation, with newer theatres using the Cineplex Cinemas brand. The company was the result of Cineplex Corporation in 1984 purchasing and merging with Canadian Odeon Theatres, which itself was the result of a merger between Canadian Theatres and Odeon Theatres of Canada in 1978.
Smell-O-Vision is a system that released odor during the projection of a film so that the viewer could "smell" what was happening in the movie. Created by Hans Laube, the technique made its only appearance in the 1960 film Scent of Mystery, produced by Mike Todd Jr., son of film producer Mike Todd. The process injected 30 odors into a movie theater's seats when triggered by the film's soundtrack.
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 U.S. 131 (1948), was a landmark United States Supreme Court antitrust case that decided the fate of film studios owning their own theatres and holding exclusivity rights on which theatres would show their movies. It would also change the way Hollywood movies were produced, distributed, and exhibited. It also opened the door for more foreign and independent films to be shown in U.S. theaters. The Supreme Court affirmed the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York's ruling that the existing distribution scheme was in violation of United States antitrust law, which prohibits certain exclusive dealing arrangements.
Regal Cinemas is an American movie theater chain founded on August 10, 1989 and owned by the British company Cineworld, headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, and operates the second-largest theater circuit in the United States, with 6,853 screens in 511 theaters as of December 31, 2021. The three main theater brands operated by Regal Entertainment Group are Regal Cinemas, Edwards Theatres, and United Artists Theatres.
Thomas White Lamb was a Scottish-born, American architect. He was one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas of the 20th century.
A film distributor is a person responsible for the marketing of a film. The distribution company may be the same as, or different from, the production company. Distribution deals are an important part of financing a film.
The Ziegfeld Theatre was a single-screen movie theater located at 141 West 54th Street in midtown Manhattan in New York City. It opened in 1969 and closed in 2016. The theater was named in honor of the original Ziegfeld Theatre (1927–1966), which was built by the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.
State Theatre New Jersey is a nonprofit theater, located in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It has seating for 1,850 people. Designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb in 1921, it is one of the oldest theaters in the State of New Jersey.
A multiplex is a movie theater complex with multiple screens or auditoriums 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.
The Astor Theatre was located at 1537 Broadway, at West 45th Street in Times Square in New York City. It opened September 21, 1906, with Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and continued to operate as a Broadway theatre until 1925. From 1925 until it closed in 1972, it was a first-run movie theater.
Scent of Mystery is a 1960 American mystery film directed by Jack Cardiff and starring Denholm Elliot and Peter Lorre. It was the first film to use the Smell-O-Vision system to release odors at points in the film's plot, and the first film in which aromas were integral to the story, providing important details to the audience. It was produced by Mike Todd, Jr., who, in conjunction with his father Mike Todd, had produced such spectacles as This Is Cinerama (1952) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).
National General Corporation (NGC) was a theater chain holding company, film distribution and production company and was considered one of the "instant majors". It was in operation from 1951 to 1974.
The Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States, is co-located with the Asbury Park Convention Hall on the boardwalk along the Atlantic Ocean. The two are connected by an arcade that spans the boardwalk, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, and Bradley Park on the west. A statue of Asbury Park founder James A. Bradley faces the buildings west facade.
Clearview Cinemas was a chain of movie theatres within the New York metropolitan area. Most of the Clearview Cinema locations were purchased by Bow Tie Cinemas in April 2013.
The Battle Cry of Peace is a 1915 American silent war film directed by Wilfrid North and J. Stuart Blackton, one of the founders of Vitagraph Company of America who also wrote the scenario. The film is based on the book Defenseless America, by Hudson Maxim, and was distributed by V-L-S-E, Incorporated. The film stars Charles Richman, L. Rogers Lytton, and James W. Morrison.
BTM Cinemas is an American movie theater chain, with eight locations in Colorado, New York, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. It is the oldest surviving movie exhibition company in the United States, having been founded in 1900. As of 2013, it was the eighth-largest movie theater chain in the United States, when it operated 63 multiplexes across the East Coast states. Since then, many former locations have been sold to AMC or other competitors, with only eight venues remaining as of September 2024.
Klaw and Erlanger was an entertainment management and production partnership of Marc Klaw and Abraham Lincoln Erlanger based in New York City from 1888 through 1919. While running their own considerable and multi-faceted theatrical businesses on Broadway, they were key figures in the Theatrical Syndicate, the lucrative booking monopoly for first-class legitimate theaters nationwide.
At the Stage Door, also known by its working title Women of Conquest, is a 1921 silent American romantic drama film directed by Christy Cabanne. It stars Billie Dove, Huntley Gordon, and Miriam Battista, and was released on December 11, 1921. The film gives a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes reality of life in the New York theater, as seen by a small town girl trying to make it in the big city. The picture received mixed reviews. This was Dove's first time on film, having moved over from the Ziegfeld Follies.
WRTV was a television station that broadcast on channel 58 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, United States. It was owned by the Walter Reade Organization and broadcast as an independent station between January 22, 1954, and April 1, 1955, in hopes of securing a VHF channel for the station that never came. In the 1960s, Reade attempted to move the unbuilt station from channel 58 in Asbury Park to channel 68 in Newark, which was treated as an application for a new station; granted in 1970, Reade sold the permit before it went on air.