Movie Theaters

Longer ago than anyone alive remembers, the city's mai theater district lay on both sides of the Jones Falls down in a raffish part of town crowded with saloons, cheap clothing stores and ethnic eateries. It was frequented before the Civil War and for years afterward by a lighthearted set who rarely ventured to the respectable westside retail district around Howard and Eutaw streets -- let alone to the elegance of Mount Vernon.Those old days of the Holliday Street and the Front Street theaters died more than a century ago, when live theater took to the westside -- the area of upper Howard, Eutaw and Charles streets in the main.

Movie screens won't be coming to Towson Marketplace any time soon, even though a Baltimore County official ruled yesterday to allow a scaled-down multiplex.Deputy zoning commissioner Timothy M. Kotroco ruled that Florida-based developer James A. Schlesinger of Talisman-Towson could build six movie screens with 1,500 seats instead of the requested 16 screens with 3,500 seats.But a disappointed Mr. Schlesinger, who has proposed a $20 million renovation of the mall, said movie companies would not build a theater complex that small.

Judging from the number of laughs and cries, the crowd seems to like Adam Sandler's latest flick. But then, about half of those in the theater are asleep. That's not a commentary on the movie Click, the mothers filling the White Marsh theater will tell you. It's a chance to watch a movie in its entirety. Offered a weekly break in otherwise baby-centered days, about 30 mothers have come to the AMC Loews White Marsh theaters on a Tuesday morning, carrying their infants in fabric slings or pushing them in strollers with the requisite dangling bags.

If such golden oldies as "Maniac," "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and, of course, "Flashdance… What a Feeling" still run through your head, there's a show heading to Baltimore ready to scoop you up in a wave of feel-good nostalgia. Those songs played an integral role in a 1983, critic-proof Paramount Pictures release called "Flashdance," about a young woman named Alex who worked as a welder in Pittsburgh, but dreamed of being a professional dancer. Three decades later, along comes "Flashdance - The Musical," complete with the famous water-dousing dance scene that got many a teenage hormone racing in movie theaters.

LIKE MANY of the sequels shown inside them these days, the new generation of movie theaters is getting bigger and bolder, with more bells, whistles and lots of pyrotechnics.The number of U.S. screens has swelled by 50 percent to nearly 30,000 since 1986. It has been more than a generation since the heyday of one-screen theaters like Baltimore's majestic Senator on York Road, with balconies and sweeping marquees. Falling, too, are some of the original multiplex theaters in the inner suburbs such as the just-closed Westview Cinemas in Catonsville.

COME summer, when Hollywood traditionally offers up a big stash of films, Baltimore movie-goers have a definite advantage. Small towns with single multiplex theaters show only the big hits. Larger cities have theaters with competing films, allowing moviegoers a choice of, say, "The Flintstones" or the more off-beat "Kika."But not without certain prerequisites. For city movie fans, a car is a must. Catching the film of your choice -- especially an obscure one -- usually involves a hike to the county.

This is a story about the power of art to improve our lives. Admittedly, this story may be nothing more than a fantasy-- but no, I prefer to dream.Therefore, this is indeed a story about the power of art to improve our lives."

The time is the spring of 1941 and the place is South Broadway. Nobody calls the place Fells Point.A local movie camera operator cranks away on an open car along the street, showing the Latrobe Monument, the old Leader Theatre, a Provident Savings Bank branch, St. Patrick's Church and the Broadway Market. A Cloverland Dairy sign stretches across its Fleet Street entrance.It's all a wonderful, pre-World War II Baltimore neighborhood.The streets are jam-packed with shoppers. The boys wear knickers.

THE RECENT funeral of a friend stirred up nostalgic feelings for many of us baby boomers in attendance because the setting was the old Harlem theater, now the Harlem Park Community Baptist Church on North Gilmor Street in West Baltimore.My friends and I grew up in a Baltimore with neighborhoods rigidly defined by race, class and movie theaters. Yes, the cultural significance of those now-vanished showplaces may be overlooked by the general public, but their names still resonate with those old enough to remember the Bridge, the Lafayette, the Biddle, the Regent, the Met, the Roosevelt, the Carey, the New Albert, the Capitol and many others.

Is everything old really new again?That's the way it seems with movie theaters, where the trend favors huge, multiscreen complexes reminiscent of the movie palaces of old, those spacious, elaborate, ornate theaters that were as distinctive as the movies themselves.Complete with state-of-the-art sound, state-of-the-art seats and state-of-the-art projection systems, these "megaplexes" -- as they're known in theater-owner parlance -- have begun to displace the generic let's-see-how- many-screens-we-can-fit-into-a-corner -of-the-mall theaters that sprouted like weeds throughout the '70s and '80s.