I saw the film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY at the Golden Gate Cinerama in
San Francisco in the Summer of '68. As Roland mentioned earlier, the
film played there for 73 weeks. The theatre had Cinerama on the main
floor. The balcony, at that time, had been converted to 70MM and was
showing KRAKATOA EAST OF JAVA the next year (1969) when 2001 was still
playing in the big house downstairs.
I also saw 2001 at the Kachina Cinerama Theatre in Scottsdale, AZ
(suburb of Phoenix) in later in 1968. Roland has informed me that it
played there for 25 weeks. The hippie crowd loved the fact that there
was an intermission. They would go outside, smoke pot, and then come
in to enjoy the "star gate" psychedelic sequence in the second half.
This was pretty much a movie-going ritual with that film! The Kachina
was an important theatre in Phoenix -- the only Cinerama Theatre and
also offering reserved seats, 70MM, 6 track stereo sound, smoking loge
with ash trays, etc. 2001 was the last of the big "roadshow" movies
that played hard ticket for pretty long runs in American movie
theatres. After this, movies like HELLO DOLLY, STAR, & DOCTOR
DOOLITTLE tried the same marketing approach and they all died at the
box office. That this film played 25 weeks in Phoenix (not a
particularly arty or intellectual city) indicates that the film really
was a pretty big hit or it wouldn't have had such an incredibly long
run. 73 weeks in SF was astounding at that time!
As to PLANET OF THE APES -- that was a regular release film that would
probably have been shown as a double bill. I saw it the first week a
the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto. The film was popular, but
certainly wouldn't have had more than a few weeks run at the time.
Kirby, your thoughts?
Channing thomson
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