The following is an excerpt of D.M. Anderson's book, CINEMA 69: FROM VICTORY TO WONDERLAND, now available on Amazon from Free Kittens Publishing.
COMING
ATTRACTIONS: From Victory to Wonderland
Three
decades before it was unofficially rechristened Cinema 69, the
Victory Theater opened in downtown Milwaukie, Oregon on August 18,
1942. This was the third in a chain of suburban cinemas in the
Portland area owned and operated by local mogul Harry Moyer Sr.
Located on
the corner of Main and Jefferson Streets, it wasn't as grand and opulent as nearby Portland's Bagdad or Broadway (which occasionally
hosted gala, star-studded movie premieres). Compared to those
immaculate palaces, the Victory was relatively small and humble,
though the auditorium itself was one of the last new cinemas in the
area to include a balcony. The theater's exterior was rather plain
and unremarkable, its most noteworthy feature being the blazing-red
neon V at the center of the marquee, proudly lighting up the
intersection. A bit more care was given to the interior…an art-deco
style popular during the previous two decades.
This was
back when communities surrounding large cities still maintained their
own small-town identity, before urban expansion began erasing
boundaries and stuffed the spaces between with as many businesses,
schools, apartments, malls and factories as humanly possible. Today,
nothing separates Portland from its outlining communities. It’s a
constant barrage of traffic lights, convenience stores, offices,
industrial parks, shopping centers, gas stations, neighborhoods and
strip clubs (in fact, Portland currently has more strip clubs per
capita than any city in North America).
But in
1942, Milwaukie was still relatively isolated, so the grand opening
of its very first movie theater was a big deal indeed. Being that
this was shortly after the beginning of America’s involvement in
World War II (when patriotism was at an all-time high), the place was
aptly named and effectively exploited in a front page article of The
Milwaukie Review:
The new
Victory is keeping with the times, as its decorations carry the
victory motif throughout, even the usherettes wearing uniforms that
sport the red, white and blue. For the grand opening Wednesday, the
building was decorated with buntings and the flags of the United
Nations were flying from the marquee. Up and down Main Street,
welcome banners and streamers were strung across the street.
The author
went on to write of “youngsters who are grateful for the chance to
attend a show at home instead of having to go into the big burg to
see the flickers.” Sounds a bit cornpone, perhaps, but probably
representative of Milwaukie's small town pride at the time. The city
had a grand little theater of its own to catch the latest Hollywood
had to offer. At the same time, the Victory was still community
oriented, hosting local talent shows, civics groups and guest
lecturers, not to mention being the home of the annual Miss Milwaukie
Pageant for many years.
The Victory
was first part of a small chain called Suburban Theaters, then
Neighborhood Theaters, then Community Theaters, actual ownership of
the place changing hands several times over the years. But the
Victory always did big business because, for decades, it was
Milwaukie's only movie house.
Then in
1966, Harry Moyer's son (entrepreneur and former Golden Glove boxer,
Tom Moyer) built the Eastgate, one of the first multi-screen theaters
in the Portland area. While totally lacking the visual opulence of
Portland's established cinemas (some of which were just beginning to
show their age), the Eastgate was bigger, more luxurious, more
technically advanced and, most ominously, located in the suburbs
where tiny theaters like the Victory thrived. In the ensuing decade,
many more Moyer multiplexes and drive-ins followed, including the
Southgate, a boxy quad cinema erected a mere mile from the aging
Victory and where The Towering Inferno
(one of the 70's biggest films) had its Portland premiere in 1974.
All the
while, the Victory slowly became a run-down relic, a dirty,
puke-colored shadow of its former self. Unlike Portland's beloved
Bagdad, with its still-hip location and neon marquee shining as
brightly as it did in the 20s, the Victory became a squalid dump in
the 70s, sometimes showing porn films back when the genre was
flirting with mainstream acceptance.
Around
1973, it was purchased by the Metro Cinemas chain and rechristened
Cinema V, though no renovations were actually made. With it’s
permanently sticky floors and once-plush seats now matted and frayed
from thousands of butts over the years, Cinema V was a second-run
dumping ground for blockbusters after they enjoyed their initial
theatrical runs before being sold to TV.
The theater
also showed matinees of kid-friendly pictures as part of a summer
movie program, where parents could purchase books of tickets and
drop-off their brood to catch movies most of the adult world had
already forgotten. It was around this time my family settled in
Milwaukie and I was first exposed to Forbidden
Planet, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Green Slime,
old Disney movies like The Love Bug
and Blackbeard's Ghost,
not to mention a plethora of Godzilla flicks. It was here that I fell
in total love with, not just movies, but the act of going
to the movies and the theaters where they played.
While most
kids built spaceships and weapons with their Legos, I constructed
movie theaters, complete with seats, screens, balconies, box offices,
concession stands and marquees. When the Sunday Oregonion arrived at
our doorstep each week, I'd grab the entertainment section while
scarfing down Cheerios to gaze in awe at the big, glorious ads
showing what was currently playing and the wonders soon to come. I
often clipped-out the more impressive ads to pin on the bulletin
board in my bedroom, whether or not the movie was actually any good
(1974's Beyond the Door
may have been a cheap Italian Exorcist
knock-off, but man, was that picture scary!).
Mom and Dad
would occasionally treat us to the Southgate for a family night out,
but when money was tight, Cinema V came in handy. They would also
drop me off there while shopping or attending a Portland Buckaroos
hockey game. Because of its relative proximity to my house, my
friends and I eventually started biking there ourselves once we were
old enough.
For the
longest time, the admission price was only 69 cents, and that was for
two movies! 69 CENTS
was perpetually plastered on its cracked and weathered marquee at
least five times bigger than the film titles themselves (which were
almost always missing a letter or two). In fact, my friends and I had
been calling the place Cinema 69 for years (snickering like Beavis &
Butthead once we eventually learned the sexual connotation of that
number).
The popcorn
from the snack bar was gummy and stale, the Milk Duds were rock-hard
and likely left over from when the place was still called the
Victory. The most appealing beverage choice was RC Cola, which always
tasted flat, closer to syrup than real soda. But everything was just
as cheap as the price of admission, so I never complained.
Though the
place was old, dank, dimly-lit and had a long slit in the screen
hastily repaired with masking tape, it was pretty awesome to be able
to catch a show just by rummaging through sofa cushions for loose
change. As a second-run house, most movies only played for a week or
two before another cinematic wonder came along. They may not have
been new movies, but more often than not, they were new to me. The
place also gave me the chance to catch some of my favorites one last
time on the big screen. Best of all, Cinema 69 never checked IDs (at
least when Herb was manning the box office, which was pretty-much all
the time). Hence, I was exposed to a lot of R-rated wonders before I
was even able to drive.
When
inflation reared its ugly head, the admission price eventually
skyrocketed to 99 cents, but I have to assume this pricing decision
was based on the relative ease of simply turning the 6 upside-down
before commencing with business as usual.
God bless
the second-run theater, an endangered species nowadays. There aren’t
many of them around anymore. As it becomes cheaper and more
convenient to see movies at home, one by one, these theaters are
dropping like flies. Sure, some still exist in major cities, but
mostly after rechristening themselves theater-pubs where hipsters
congregate to pretend they enjoy microbrews that taste like socks, or
cinema-arcades to prepare kids for a life of gambling addiction. Even
the old Cinema 69 is now one of the latter, the original auditorium
gutted to make room for Skee-Ball and Whack-A-Mole.
Movies
alone are seldom enough to keep these places in business, even with
an admission price less than a glorified milkshake from Starbucks.
There are still a few second-run cinemas left which offer just
movies, but it is just a matter of time before they are all gone.
That’ll be a sad day.
Times
marches on. Friends come and go. Places we once haunted get crushed
in the gears of time. I'm certain old Herb (who looked a century old
in the 70s) has since gone to that great box office in the sky.
Ironically, the old Victory still marks the corner of Main and
Jefferson long after 20 screen megaplexes rendered the Southgate and
Eastgate obsolete (the former was unceremoniously demolished, the
latter became a Slavic church).
While
I’m personally happy the Victory is still showing movies at a
reasonable price, it isn’t the old Cinema 69 I remember. The
original auditorium is full of teenagers stomping-away to Dance Dance
Revolution and the old balcony is a storage room. Movies are now
regulated to the two 100-seat crackerboxes that were added back in
the early 80s, during which time the old Victory was rechristened
yet-again as Milwaukie Cinemas. And while I truly miss the double
features, matted seats, stale popcorn and Herb's brown-toothed
smoker's grin, at least my beloved old hangout is still there, which
is more than I can say for most of the other time-ravaged relics from
my youth.
Cinema 69
was an important part of my formative years and I sort-of grew up
there. Not only was it my personal hang-out of choice, it was where I
saw most of the movies, classic and not-so-classic, that are still
some of my all-time (or sentimental) favorites, and where I was
exposed to countless actors and directors who made movies such a
wonderful escape. It was at this dilapidated palace that I developed
boyhood crushes on Ann-Margret and Faye Dunaway, and inspired to try
and be as impossibly cool as Charlton Heston, James Caan and Steve
McQueen. It provided my first education in sex (on and off screen),
terrorism, good vs. evil, creative uses of the F-word, the
consequences of getting shitfaced and why one should never sit
directly under a balcony. It’s where I discovered giant spiders,
boobs, demonic cars, disaster movies, zombies, grown-up cartoons, how
to play Rollerball and the joy of watching stuff blow up.
Aside from
my family, movies have always been the most important part of my
life, and Cinema 69 was where I lived a lot of it.
This is our
story...
An early 1970's photo of Cinema V from down Main Street
