#Bijou theatre full#

There is also a full bar serving your favorite adult beverages. I took the reel of film that they played to announce intermission time and the last carbon arcs out of the projectors due to my sentimentality. The Bijou’s concession stand offers popcorn, soda, water, coffee and assorted candy & treats. The same with the Dartmouth Drive-In and the Westport Drive-In. I was amazed at the equipment that was still not vandalized. The interior of the Bijou Theatre was remodelled by architectural. It was rebuilt as a slightly larger theatre (again to the plans of architect Harry G. It was renamed Bijou Opera House in 1890, but was destroyed by fire in December 1890. I now have it, as a momento of my father. The People’s Theatre was opened October 31, 1887. In 1990 I went to that booth 35+ years later and noticed his speaker. The Little Mermaid is the beloved story of Ariel, a beautiful and spirited young mermaid with a thirst for adventure. My father took a ramp speaker and ran a wire up along the ceiling and to the big amplifier. PG for action/peril and some scary images. When the Fairhaven Drive-In opened, there wasnt a speaker in the projection booth so that the projectionist could hear the sound track. With television causing theaters to go dark, my father was squeezed out of the theaters in New Bedford and found some work with the Fall River Local.

I think they were the Bailey Square (Arcade) in New Bedford and the Keith in North Fairhaven. Located at 1239 Broadway between 30th and 31st Streets, had been converted from a drinking and gambling establishment into a theatre for variety, and opened. Before I was born my father worked other theaters. In about 1948 when I was about 5 year old, my mother and I would go with my father to the Dartmouth Drive-In in our Chevy Coupe and I would sleep on the shelf in the back. In Fall River it was the Plaza and the Embassy – and there was the Newport Theater in RI. In New Bedford he worked at the Empire, Capitol, New Bedford, Orpheum, Dartmouth Drive-In, and Fairhaven Drive-In. My father started as a ticket-taker and usher and thats how he met my mother. Union contracts specified a 2-man booth, as the projection rooms were called.

#Bijou theatre license#

In those days you had to study electronics and get a license to be a projectionist.

#Bijou theatre movie#

In 1937, it once again was a movie house, but by the end of the same year, was closed. Our goal now is to retain the spirit that comes with it.My father, Gilbert Hemenway, was a projectionist and he worked at the Keith and at many of the New Bedford area theaters, starting at the Allen Theater where he and his brother George were trained by their brother Floyd to be projectionists. The Bijou Theatre opened on Apwith the play The Knife and continued as a legitimate theatre until 1935, when it switched to an all-cartoon movie format, but only briefly, since by 1936, it had returned to legitimate theatre. One hundred years after showing its first movie, the Bijou Theatre regained its original name. There are a lot of little signs that businesses and patrons are taking tentative steps toward pre-pandemic normal. Trends come and go, and in the second half of the 1900s the Bijou Theatre underwent different identities and was renamed The Rivoli, Downtown Cinema and then Downtown Family Cinema. Quilty, a master dance instructor, operated his College of Dancing, bringing waltz, polka, tap and ballet lessons to the city of Bridgeport until 1950. Peter Dawe bought the building and Daniel J.

The price per ticket back then? 5 cents for matinees, 10 cents for evening shows! Aside from movies, the Bijou Theatre was alive with music and dance. It was common for the Bijou to offer three or four Vaudeville shows every day. Southey to design a movie house with a two-story ballroom above. Silent films were growing in popularity and Lillian Ashmun commissioned architect Ernest G. About THE bijou The Bijou Theatre has a long and colorful history dating back to 1909.