1969 Palace Theatre Closing

50 years ago today, Sunday, July 20, 1969, the Palace Theatre closed it's doors "forever." Part of the story that has circulated for several decades now is that the air conditioning broke during a showing of Krakatoa East Of Java, which is untrue. The Palace wasn't running air conditioning that summer, either it really was broken, or they didn't want the added expense of cooling a giant auditorium for a couple hundred people, tops. The BO in those last years was abysmal, often less than fifty people weekday evenings, really surprised Blair Mooney and Stuart Wintner kept the place open as long as they did. A string of big budget - hard ticket flops: Agony and the Ecstasy, Is Paris Burning and of course Thoroughly Modern Millie were BO disasters at advanced prices. Millie was supposed to be the next Sound of Music, it wasn't. In between the big budget flops, the regular grind fare didn't do any better. So on the day of the moon landing, the Palace went dark, leaving the Hanna around the corner on 14th as the only operating theatre at Playhouse Square.

July 2, 1969, Tom Prusha/Cleveland Press photo, From the Cleveland Memory Project.

Rita Kertzman of the Muscular Dystrophy Association with Stuart Wintner and Blair Mooney in a publicity photo for the opening of Is Paris Burning, from the Plain Dealer, October 13, 1966. This picture was a hard ticket disaster, tons of deadwood after this run. Wintner was an ozoner, ran a chain of drive-ins, and a few kiddie parks (Memphis Kiddie Park on Cleveland's West Side is still run by his son). Mooney was the film booker for Co-Operative Theatres, a sub-run outfit. When it came to picking winners for a big downtown deluxer Mooney picked only losers.

From the Plain Dealer, July 4, 1969.

 From the Plain Dealer, July 17, 1969.

From the Plain Dealer, July 18, 1969.

Final notice, Plain Dealer, July 20, 1969.

From the Plain Dealer, July 19, 1969.

Not long after the Palace joined it's neighbors in darkness, the marquee was removed and the front covered in plywood, the fire escapes on the east (17th Street) side of the auditorium were also cut down. The following summer (1970) International Trade and Fair would move in and occupy the lobby for the next couple years. The stage was used for storage in the otherwise dark auditorium. The Trade Fair went bankrupt in the summer of 1972, and things started turning around then. The Palace would re-open in November 1973 with a production of Ben Bagley's Decline and Fall of the Entire World as Seen Through the Eyes of Cole Porter.

Worthy of mention is back in the early 70's, Blair Mooney told Ray Shepardson that "if they couldn't run the Palace, nobody could."