Theatre movies were a very big deal for us. Saturday afternoon matinees in the 50s attracted huge crowds of kids . We had a neighborhood theatre, Marda, on 33 avenue SW and my first ‘date’ was with a boy who took me to a matinee there when I was six. We walked the two blocks together and he showed me his whole dollar that he was allowed to spend for us.
The big theatres downtown were really palatial with red velvet curtains that were opened and closed for the film. They had balconies and grand ceilings and décor.
The technology had vastly changed over our parents’ time.
1890- short black and white movies had images that were sometimes hand-painted or with a stencil process colored using Pathecolor
1920- movies were in black and white, dialogue was printed on screen and there was a live piano player on stage who played music to add drama to the action sequences
1922 – The Jazz Singer uses Vitaphone to broadcast speech and songs of the actors. For the first time we had ‘talking motion pictures’ or ‘talkies’
1922- The Toll of the Sea for the first time uses a two color process with red and green filters.
1939- the Wizard of Oz uses a 3 step coloring process with red, green and blue filters
During our time the technology advanced too.
1952 – Singin in the Rain used more Technicolor processes
1953 – Cinemascope creates a wider image on screen
1954 – On the Waterfront becomes a classic movie and it is still in black and white
1956 – The Ten Commandments was in color. More movies use the Eastman process
1957 – 12 Angry Men is made and it is dramatically still in black and white
Calgary theatres
Some of the theatres had been there for a long time
1912 – Grand was renovated in the 1950s and had 1500 seats
1914 – Strand Theatre -on 8 avenue SE
1921 – Palace -on 8th avenue downtown- it had silent films, vaudeville acts and radio broadcasts
1921 – Capitol- it was renovated in 1954 and in 1958 showed its first 70mm movie
1935 – Plaza Theatre in Kensington
1936 – Tivoli theatre in Cliff Bungalow district
1949 – Hitchin Post theater- for westerns – on 8 avenue SE
When my cohort were little, we had all those options and a few new theatres had just come along too
1951 – Uptown on 8 avenue SW with 1100 seats
1952 – Marda theatre on 33 avenue SW
There were even more theatres as we turned teens in the 1960s
1965 – Towne Cinema
1965 – Chinook Cinema on Macleod Trail
1967 – North Hill Cinema
1969 – Calgary Place cinemas on 4 avenue SW
Movie theatres had huge audiences. They tried out new things like 70 mm films in the 1960s and showed Ben Hur, Exodus, Spartacus, My Fair Lady, Cleopatra, Doctor Zhivago, Camelot, Hello Dolly- on massive screens.
In 1958 Calgary had 17 theatres and in 1958 because some of them were ‘twinned’.
There were also drive- in theatres where families could take the kids and park at stalls beside polls with speakers to latch onto the car window. My cohort was there for the peak of the drive in era and those theatres eventually phased out, likely because the land was more valuable if used for housing or retail or LRT garages
1949 – Chinook Drive In – on Macleod Trail– space for 650 cars and with a 60 x 45 foot screen
1950 – Sunset Drive -In on Edmonton Trail -space for 750 cars. There was also pre show bingo
1953 – Cinema Park Drive -today’s Point McKay community -had 65 foot wide screen
- – Corral Drive in- on Macleod Trail at Anderson road- parking for 1100 cars
The movies
Our parents had gone to movies. Some of the ones we later watched as kids had been made actually in much earlier
1919 – movie Back to God’s country, silent movie made in Calgary
1925 – United Pictures films The Calgary Stampede
1937 – Snow White
1940 – Pinocchio, Fantasia
1941 – Dumbo
1942 – Bambi
1945 – Son of Lassie is filmed in Banff area
1949 – movie Canadian Pacific is filmed around Banff and Morley
In the 1950s there were some kids’ movies and at the theatres a lot of serialized movies where you had to come next week to see what happened next.
In the early 50s we were just toddlers so did not see these when they were first released. It was common to have a ‘crying room’ at the theatre so that mothers could sit in an enclosed upper room seeing the screen but with sound proofing so the babies’ crying would not disturb others. Many of us had the experience of seeing a movie that scared us. For some the Wizard of Oz (had been made in 1939) was particularly terrifying and many were the parents who had to take a scared child out of the theatre. Parental judgment was required and most provinces did not have a movie rating system of G, PG or R until the 1970s. Here are the release dates of some of the movies of our era.
1950 – Cinderella, Treasure Island
1951- Alice in Wonderland
1952- Robin Hood
1953 – Peter Pan
1954 – Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
1954 – River of No Return is filmed in Banff area – Marilyn Monroe stars
1955 – Lady and the Tramp, Davy Crockett
1957 – Old Yeller
1959 – Sleeping Beauty, the Shaggy Dog
In the 1960s we were preteens and teens. This means that kids ‘ movies ere made but were not as interesting for us. Some of us found them outright childish though privately maybe still kind of cute
1960 – Pollyanna, Kidnapped, The Sign of Zorro
1961- 101 Dalmatians, the Absent-Minded Professor, The Parent Trap
1963 – The Sword in the Stone
1964 – Mary Poppins
1965 – The Sound of Music
1965 – Charlie Brown Christmas
1967 – The Jungle Book
We were also starting to be interested in movies not directed to kids
1960 – Swiss Family Robinson
1961 – Breakfast at Tiffany’s
1961 – The Guns of Navarone
1962 -The Music Man
1963 – From Russia with Love
1963 – The Great Escape
1964 – Goldfinger
1964 – The Pink Panther
1965 – The Great Race
1966 – Born Free
1966 – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
1968 – The Lion in Winter
1968 – Oliver!
1969 – Easy Rider
1969 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1969 – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Calgary also attracted some famous stars to come to town.
The Stampede guests here included:
1957 – Leo Carillo Pancho on TV show The Cisco Kid)
1959 – Gene Barry (Bat Masterson on TV)
1959 – Bing Crosby
1962 – Roy Rogers
1963 – The Three Stooges
1963 – Bob Hope
- – Walt Disney
- – Imax movies came to Calgary ( we were 18)
It was interesting for us to see movies continuing to be made in southern Alberta. It often masqueraded as other countries but its beautiful scenery was now seen by the world. 1970 – Little Big Man is filmed in southern Alberta
1976 – Buffalo Bill and the Indians is filmed on Stoney Reserve
1977- Why Shoot the Teacher? Is filmed around Hanna Alberta
1978- Superman is filmed with scenes from Barons, Benyon and Blackie Alberta
1980 – Superman II
1983 – Superman III
1985 – the Journey of Natty Gan
1987 – Storm
1989 – Dead Bang
1992 – Unforgiven
1993 – Cool Runnings
1994 –-Legends of the Fall- around Morley, Ghost River and Banff
1999 – Mystery, Alaska- in Canmore Area
2005 – Brokeback Mountain
2006 – RV
2007 – Resurrecting the Champ
2008 – Passchendale
2012 – The Bourne Legacy- some scenes in Kananaskis
2014- Interstellar
2017- War for Planet of the Apes – in Kananaskis area
2019 – Jumanji, the Next Level
2021- Ghostbusters Afterlife
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