My favourite movie theatre growing up was the Hiland Theatre on North Fort Thomas Avenue im Fort Thomas, Kentucky, where I grew up. It was also the only theatre in town. We saw everything there. It was run by Kenny Broadhurst...a single man who lived with his mother. In retrospect, he was probably rather put upon by us kids, but he ran a tight ship and was viligent in telling us to keep our feet of the backs of seats and to hush up when we were too loud and patrolling the aisle with a flashlight for misbehaviour. In fact, if there were more guys like Kenny keeping miscreant patrons in line, I might go out to the movies more often.
Another great thing was that the concession stand was at the back of the theatre itself, not, in the lobby, so that you could actually go back to it in the middle of the movie and get something with out missing any of the movie. I think the last movie I saw there the Timothy Dalton/Anna Calder-Marshall, Wuthering Heights when I was in college. It closed shortly after that and became an insurance company.
I also remember all the big movie palaces in downtown Cincinnati, which were where you went for a date...The Albee, the Keith, others.
In college, there was the run-down Opera House on Broadway in downtown Lexington. It had once been a grand touring house where people like the Barrymores had played. When I was in school, it was a 65-cent double-feature, third-run house where I saw a lot of great movies...The Fixer, Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Support Your Local Sheriff, the strange Royal Hunt of the Sun.
A few years later, the theatre was refurbished for theatre again and had its opening with Julie Harris in Belle of Amherst,, which I saw. In the eighties, it was where my Sherlock Holmes play, The Ebony Ape, premiered. It is the major house where touring shows are booked.
