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The Early Years |
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Lobby |
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The first movie at the Garland |
The
Garland Movie Theater opened in late November 1945 to a line that stretched
around the block with the movie It’s a
Pleasure, starring Sonja Henie. According to the Spokane Daily Chronicle
(Nov. 22, 1945) the Garland Theater was nothing less than state-of-the-art,
saying “Modern in every detail, the blue and wine auditorium drew particular
comment on the continental seating and extra-large spacing between rows.
Germicidal lamps on the walls keep the air purified. The lobby was lined with
baskets of flowers.” The original capacity was near 1,000 seats, although today
that number is 630 due to larger seats that were eventually put in.
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View from the back row |
14
years after it opened and still “Spokane’s newest and most modern theater”
(Spokesman Review. May 16, 1960) the Garland Theater merged with the Favorite
Theater operation which owned several theaters in the Spokane area, including
drive-ins on East Sprague and East Trent. Several upgrades accompanied this
merger, including new carpeting and newer seats.
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X-Rated |
After
changing ownership again in the early seventies to the Sterling Recreation
Organization based out of Bellevue, the Garland Theater found itself with a bit
of controversy on account of their new foray into X-rated movies. According to
the Spokesman Review “‘Madam Kitty’
and ‘Emmanuelle’ are the first X-rated films to be shown at the Garland since
1972 when ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was screened for several weeks” (Feb.1, 1977) ‘Rocky,’
by the way, played alongside these two X-rated films for several weeks.
Thanks
in part to the changing times the Garland Theater closed its doors between
1986-1988, struggling to compete against the new Cineplex’s that came to
dominate the movie-going marketplace. Don Clifton bought the Garland in late
1988, converting it into a discount theater, which it still is today. As
Clifton said at the time, “The Garland draws fans from two basic groups: the
people who usually wait for video, and the people who want to see a specific
film again but don’t want to pay a full price…we saw that real dramatically
with Die Hard” (Spokesman Review, May 28, 1989) This discount model that
Clifton describes has lasted until present day, even as ownership changed hands
once again in 1999 to Katherine Fritchie.
With
a trendy new cocktail bar, The Bon-Bon, adjoined to the theater one can sip on
some drinks before heading into a movie selection that ranges from
just-out-of-the-regular-theater blockbusters like ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Men In
Black’ to kids movies like ‘The Mighty Ducks,’ and ‘Shrek,’ to oldies like ‘The
Terminator,’ ‘Ghostbusters,’ and of course ‘Die Hard.’
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Present day Garland. |
Great post Tyler, I would include some photos of the interior to show how modern the Garland was when it was built, great post otherwise.
ReplyDeleteGood idea on some inside shots. I'll get couple uploaded as soon as I get a chance to take a few pics.
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