NEWS
By Jacques Kelly | September 26, 2009
Joseph Armando Liberto, a 54-year veteran of Baltimore movie houses who managed the Stanley, once Baltimore's largest cinema, died of Alzheimer's disease complications Sept. 19 at the Northwest Hospital Center. The Catonsville Manor resident was 82. Born in Baltimore and raised on Greene Street in downtown Baltimore, he attended St. John the Baptist Parochial School and was a 1944 graduate of Mount St. Joseph High School. While in high school, he worked summers in his family's Lexington Market produce business.
NEWS
By TEXT BY CHRIS KALTENBACH | January 20, 2008
With the addition of just one new movie house - November's opening of the Landmark Theatres in Harbor East - the number of Baltimore theaters skyrocketed by a whopping 33 percent. How times have changed. Over the past century, Baltimore has had more than 100 movie houses, from the palatial - the Grand, the Metropolitan, the Northwood, the Patterson - to the neighborly - the Blue Bell, the Community, the Plaza. But beginning in the 1960s, theaters began flocking to the suburbs. Parking was easier; the huge movie palaces of the silent era became too expensive to maintain; neighborhoods became places to move away from, rather than grow up in. Today, those theaters are gone, but many of the buildings remain - ghosts of a city's cinematic past.
NEWS
By JACQUES KELLY | May 6, 2006
I received a e-mail from an old friend, McNair Taylor, a retired city elementary teacher and Northwest Baltimore resident. He wanted to know why I hadn't included black-patronized film houses in last week's column. My short answer was segregation. In the heyday of my movie-going, the city's places of public accommodation were not open to all. In 1960 Baltimore, I mainly patronized neighborhood movie houses in Waverly and along North Avenue. Integration was coming, but it hadn't yet arrived.
NEWS
By Dan Thanh Dang | May 27, 2005
Gliding into a parking space in front of Apex Cinema in Calvert County on a recent Sunday evening, Jennifer Mutchler stepped out of her dark green Neon with little time to spare before the 8:10 showing of the flick The Amityville Horror. The 20-year-old Huntington resident did not rush, however. She had purposefully arrived a little late. It has become part of her moviegoing routine. "I hate commercials before movies," Mutchler said. "I go to the movies to see movies, but I don't go to watch commercials.
NEWS
By Blanca Torres | March 1, 2005
Reisterstown-based R/C Theatres is selling seven of its 18 movie houses to Regal Entertainment Group, the country's largest theater chain, for $31 million, company executives said yesterday. Four of the theaters being sold are in Maryland, including Eastpoint 10 in Baltimore, Carrolltowne 6 in Eldersburg, Valley Mall 16 in Hagerstown and Westview 16 in Frederick. The other three are in Culpeper, Va., Carlisle, Pa., and Pinellas Park, Fla. The sale totals 76 screens, about half of the number privately owned R/C operates in five states.
NEWS
By Matthew Buck | December 21, 2003
IT'S DIFFICULT to imagine a more important time for a most important story, the one J.R.R. Tolkien brilliantly penned, to be beautifully retold on screen. The final chapter, the heroic resolution of the film version of that story is in movie houses now. But it is in Middle Earth's middle act that we find so much that reminds us of our world today. At the climax of director Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, an exasperated King Theoden of Rohan contemplates the destruction of his people by the brutal Uruk-Hai army, monsters 10,000 strong, when it barges through the gates of Helm's Deep, a previously impenetrable fortress and sanctuary for the people of Rohan.
NEWS
By Chris Kaltenbach | May 23, 2003
Senator owner Tom Kiefaber's passion for historic movie houses has earned him another round of national kudos, with the National Trust for Historic Preservation giving him its 2003 "Business Leadership" award. Kiefaber, whose grandfather Frank Durkee once owned a chain of some 40 Baltimore-area movie houses, has spent more than a decade fighting to keep the 64-year-old Senator - the last of those theaters still under family ownership - open. That hasn't always been easy, given the frequent cash-flow problems inherent in running a single-screen theater in this age of the megaplex.
NEWS
By Allison Klein | August 26, 2001
Tucked away in Federal Hill - and in the minds of many an old-timer - is a shell of a grand movie theater built in 1917 during the heyday of silent movies when tickets cost 10 cents. The cavernous McHenry Theatre quickly became the center of the neighborhood social scene and was the last of the area's golden-era movie houses when it closed in 1971. After being dark for three decades, the McHenry Theatre is making a comeback with one last picture show, for one night only. The theater - which opened May 26, 1917, with The Undying Flame starring Olga Petrova - will be converted into technology offices by early next year.
NEWS
By Chris Kaltenbach | July 7, 2001
Baltimore's Senator Theatre moves its fight for survival to an even more visible national stage tonight, as it kicks off a History Channel program spotlighting 11 of the country's most endangered historic sites. The 62-year-old showplace, which is being cited by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as a prime example of the endangered "historic theaters of America," is the first location visited during "Save Our History: America's Most Endangered 2001," premiering at 10 p.m. It also serves as home base for narrator Josh Binswanger, and pops up repeatedly during the hour.
NEWS
By Jamie Stiehm | June 26, 2001
North Baltimore's landmark Senator Theatre was showcased yesterday in the National Trust for Historic Preservation's annual list of America's 11 most endangered historic places, described as a classic example of grand -- but vanishing -- American movie houses. Historic movie theaters were listed -- along with Midwestern prairie churches and barns, a California temple built by Chinese immigrants in 1880 and Jackson Ward, a historically black neighborhood in Richmond, Va. -- to warn that such places are slowly dying.