Other Theater-related Items

• Here's a picture of the Drexel Theater in Bexley, Ohio. Built by converting a grocery store into a theater, it opened in 1937. Its large auditorium split into three screens, it now shows a mix of mainstream and art films.
  

• A few blocks to the east of the Drexel Theater, we find the Bexley Theater, which opened in 1935. Yes, this is the theater that made news all across the country a few years ago when local residents preferred leaving the Bexley a rundown adult theater/video store rather than allowing McDonald's to put a restaurant on the site. (Well, that's the story the media told you, but that's only half of it. It's not that the residents wanted the porno theater, but rather they didn't want a McDonald's luring their children across the dangerous intersection where the theater is located.)

  "...if the Bexley Theater is to be torn down to make room for a fast food restaurant or anything else, it deserves at least to be remembered as more than just a porn video store and XXX-rated movie house. It had many more good years than bad.

  Theodore L. and son Ted Lindenberg opened their revolutionary Bexley Theater over 60 years ago, on Tuesday evening, October 22, 1935. The feature film was Naughty Marietta starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald. Despite persistent rains, all seats had been purchased before the first of two showings began.

  A promotional pamphlet stated that the Bexley was "the only theater in the world having two auditoriums into which the same picture is projected simultaneously from a single film." This was accomplished by means of an exclusive optical system, developed in Columbus, that split the projector beam and sent identical sharp images to both auditoriums. No light beam was visible to patrons.

  Each auditorium, the Blue Room and Rose Room, had 300 seats with plenty of leg room and a relatively small 10'x8' screen. When one room had become comfortably filled, new arrivals were seated in the second room. Consequently, patrons were not constantly being disturbed by others entering the row.

  The Bexley featured the patented Lindenberg Sound System, which had been pre-tested a year in the Grandview Theater [another Columbus neighborhood theater]. It reproduced voices and music with greater fidelity than other systems in use at the time.

  Even the Bexley's automatic drinking fountains were revolutionary, being activated by means of selenium cells, or "electric eyes".

  Following Theodore Lindenberg's sudden death in 1941, the Bexley was operated for nine years, 1943-51 by J. Real Neth, who also ran the State, Markham, Eastern, Clinton, Cameo, and Lincoln. In 1954, Lou Sher's Art Theater Guild took over operation of the house, altering its name to the Bexley Art Theater.

  Although the original neon sign is gone, and overgrown trees obscure the view, the Bexley's unique architecture remains a thing of beauty to those who take the time to look."

  Phil Sheridan
  Theater Historian, Columbus

  The Bexley Theater was demolished on April 22, 1997.

• Columbus residents may want to visit the local library and check out Phil Sheridan's 3-volume series Those Wonderful Old Downtown Theaters. Full of terrific photos, artwork and background information, these books provide an excellent history of all the downtown theaters, including Loew's Ohio, Loew's Broad, the RKO Grand, the RKO Palace, the Hartman, Uptown, and more! Volume three includes a section on Columbus neighborhood theaters. Mr. Sheridan has a fourth volume in the works and we're told the Drexel North will be included among the fatalities...

• Collecting cinema equipment

• Steve Kraus' home page (look under "Movie Stuff")

• Jean-Francois Chaput's historic theaters of Paris

• Film formats web page, an extensive table of cinematographic processes

• Picture Theatres in Queensland Australia

• Columbus, Ohio's downtown theaters

• Stefan Adler's terrific widescreen cinema site