The Music Box Theatre at 3733 N. Southport Ave., Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois, opened on August 22, 1929, a time when the movie palace

Movie palace

A movie palace is a term used to refer to the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opened every year between 1925 and 1930.There are three building types in particular which can be subsumed...

s in downtown Chicago each had seating capacities of around 3,000 people. The Music Box, which sat 800, was considered an elaborate little brother to those theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

s. Theatre Architecture magazine noted in 1929 that the theatre "represents the smaller, though charming and well equipped, sound picture theatre which is rapidly taking the place of the 'deluxe' palace." The opening film was Mother’s Boy

Mother's Boy (1929 film)

Mother's Boy is a 1929 American black-and-white musical film.-Cast:*Morton Downey - Tommy O'Day*Beryl Mercer - Mrs.O'Day*John T. Doyle - Mr.O'Day*Brian Donlevy - Harry O'Day*Helen Chandler - Rose Lyndon*Osgood Perkins - Jake Sturmberg...

starring Morton Downey

Morton Downey

Morton Downey was a singer popular in the United States, enjoying his greatest success in the 1930s and 1940s. Downey was nicknamed "The Irish Nightingale".-Early years:...

 (father of talk show host Morton Downey, Jr.

Morton Downey, Jr.

Morton Downey, Jr. was an American singer, songwriter and later a television talk show host of the 1980s who pioneered the "trash TV" format on his program The Morton Downey Jr. Show....

), Beryl Mercer

Beryl Mercer

Beryl Mercer was a Spanish-born American-based actress of the 1920s and 1930s.Born to British parents in Seville, Beryl Mercer was best-known for her motherly roles in film and regularly appeared as a grandmother or cook or maid in some high profile films...

 and a young Brian Donlevy

Brian Donlevy

Brian Donlevy was an Irish-born American film actor, noted for playing tough guys from the 1930s to the 1960s. He usually appeared in supporting roles. Among his best known films are Beau Geste and The Great McGinty...

 (in his 5th film)

The Building

The theatre was built for a cost of $110,000. The entire building, which also included nine storefronts and 32 apartment

Apartment

An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...

s, cost $260,000. Louis A. Simon, a local architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

, who was better known for his Depression era WPA Post Offices and homes for the nouveau riche

Nouveau riche

The nouveau riche , or new money, comprise those who have acquired considerable wealth within their own generation...

, designed the building. The building was erected by The Southport Avenue Businessmen’s Association and operated by Lasker and Sons, who operated several smaller neighborhood houses in Chicago.

Innovation

The design of the Music Box was indicative of the growth of the motion picture. The grand movie palaces that preceded it were multiple use facilities with stage and film presentation capabilities. The Music Box had no stage and, therefore, could only be a film presentation house. When the theatre was built, sound film

Sound film

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...

s were a new technology, and the plans included both an orchestra pit

Orchestra pit

An orchestra pit is the area in a theater in which musicians perform. Orchestral pits are utilized in forms of theatre that require music or in cases when incidental music is required...

 and organ chambers if sound films failed and silent film

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 accompaniment was needed. The first known silent film presentation at the Music Box theatre was "Wings" in 1983 using the operators home theatre organ and accompanied by Barbara Sellers, the daughter of Preston and Edna Sellers who were Chicago Silent Film and radio theatre organ personalities of the 1920s - 1940s. The first Theatre organ - an Allen three manual electronic - was installed in the previously empty organ chambers, in 1984. The organ is now used for intermission music on weekends and for silent film accompaniment.

Architectural Style

As Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

 architectural critic Paul Gapp wrote (Arts and Books, July 31, 1983), "The architectural style is an eclectic mélange of Italian, Spanish and Pardon-My-Fantasy put together with passion." The actual style is called atmospheric. The dark blue, cove-lit ceiling with “twinkling stars” and moving cloud formations suggests a night sky. The plaster ornamentation of the sidewalls, round towers, faux-marble loggia

Loggia

Loggia is the name given to an architectural feature, originally of Minoan design. They are often a gallery or corridor at ground level, sometimes higher, on the facade of a building and open to the air on one side, where it is supported by columns or pierced openings in the wall...

 and ogee arched organ chambers are, by Hollywood standards, reminiscent of the walls surrounding an Italian courtyard

Courtyard

A court or courtyard is an enclosed area, often a space enclosed by a building that is open to the sky. These areas in inns and public buildings were often the primary meeting places for some purposes, leading to the other meanings of court....

. The overall effect is to make the patron feel that they are watching a film in an open-air palazzo

Palazzo

Palazzo, an Italian word meaning a large building , may refer to:-Buildings:*Palazzo, an Italian type of building**Palazzo style architecture, imitative of Italian palazzi...

.

Restoration and Rebirth

Between 1977 and 1983, the Music Box was used sporadically for Spanish language

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 films, pornographic films and lastly, Arabic language

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

 films. In 1983, Christopher Carlo, Robert Chaney and Stan Hightower formed the Music Box Theatre Corporation and restored and reopened the theater with a format of double feature

Double feature

The double feature, also known as a double bill, was a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatre managers would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.The double feature, also known as...

 revival and repertory films. The August 1983 opening double bill was In Old Chicago

In Old Chicago

In Old Chicago is a 1937 American drama film directed by Henry King. The screenplay by Sonya Levien and Lamar Trotti was based on the Niven Busch story, "We the O'Learys." The film is a fictionalized account about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and stars Alice Brady as Mrs. O'Leary, the owner of...

with Alice Faye

Alice Faye

Alice Faye was an American actress and singer, called by The New York Times "one of the few movie stars to walk away from stardom at the peak of her career." She is remembered first for her stardom at 20th Century Fox and, later, as the radio comedy partner of her husband, bandleader and comedian...

 and Tyrone Power

Tyrone Power

Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...

 and Wabash Avenue

Wabash Avenue (film)

Wabash Avenue is a 1950 musical film directed by Henry Koster and starring Betty Grable. The film was a remake of Grable's earlier hit 1943 film Coney Island.-Plot:...

starring Betty Grable

Betty Grable

Elizabeth Ruth "Betty" Grable was an American actress, dancer and singer.Her iconic bathing suit photo made her the number-one pin-up girl of the World War II era. It was later included in the LIFE magazine project "100 Photos that Changed the World"...

 and Victor Mature

Victor Mature

Victor John Mature was an American stage, film and television actor.-Early life:Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky to an Italian-speaking father from the town Pinzolo, in the Italian part of the former County of Tyrol , Marcello Gelindo Maturi, later Marcellus George Mature, a cutler,...

. Eventually, foreign films were reinstated, and independent

Independent film

An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...

 and cult film

Cult film

A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...

s were added to the roster. The Music Box Theater has introduced Chicago to directors such as John Sayles

John Sayles

John Thomas Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter and author.-Early life:Sayles was born in Schenectady, New York, the son of Mary , a teacher, and Donald John Sayles, a school administrator. He was raised Catholic and took to labeling himself "a Catholic atheist"...

 and Pedro Almodóvar

Pedro Almodóvar

Pedro Almodóvar Caballero is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer.Almodóvar is arguably the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. His films, marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular...

, Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater

-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...

, Aki Kaurismaki

Aki Kaurismäki

-Career:After studying Media Studies at the University of Tampere, Aki Kaurismäki started his career as a co-director in the films of his elder brother Mika Kaurismäki. His debut as an independent director was Crime and Punishment , Dostoyevsky's famous crime story set in modern-day Helsinki...

, Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh

Michael "Mike" Leigh, OBE is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid 1960s...

, Ken Loach

Ken Loach

Kenneth "Ken" Loach is a Palme D'Or winning English film and television director.He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialist beliefs, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as homelessness , labour rights and child abuse at the...

, Errol Morris

Errol Morris

Errol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...

 and Zhang Yimou

Zhang Yimou

Zhang Yimou is a Chinese film director, producer, writer and actor, and former cinematographer. He is counted amongst the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, having made his directorial debut in 1987 with Red Sorghum....

. Film retrospectives have been screened on the works of Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...

, Garbo

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...

, von Stroheim

Erich von Stroheim

Erich von Stroheim was an Austrian-born film star of the silent era, subsequently noted as an auteur for his directorial work.-Background:...

, Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature...

, Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...

 Studios, Warner Brothers pre-code movies and Betty Boop

Betty Boop

Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in...

. By 1993, The Music Box had matured into its current film presentation format of Specialty Films showing first-run features weekly, repertory and independent features every Saturday & Sunday matinée and Midnight cult films on Friday & Saturday nights. The Music Box Theatre now presents a yearly average of 300 films, making it Chicago's year-round film festival

Film festival

A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...

.

Film presentation capabilities at The Music Box are 16mm film, 35mm film (1:33-1, 1:66-1, 1:85-1 and Cinemascope film ratios), 70mm film, two-projector 3-D and digital projection. The sound systems are Laser optical, DTS, Dolby, Dolby Digital.

In 1991, in an article for Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

, Chicago Tribune Film Critic Gene Siskel

Gene Siskel

Eugene Kal "Gene" Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted the popular review show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies from 1975 until his death....

 called the Music Box his favorite Movie Theatre and "a significant Chicago cultural attraction, a showcase for progressive filmmaking at a time when American movie theater

Movie theater

A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....

s are as homogenized as the films the exhibit".

In 1991, management decided to add a second screen. Rather than split the main theater in two, a small theater was built in an existing storefront adjacent to the lobby

Lobby

Lobby may refer to:* Lobby , an entranceway or foyer in a building* Lobbying, the action or the group used to influence a viewpoint to politicians* Lobby , a thick stew made in North Staffordshire, not unlike Lancashire Hotpot...

. The ambiance of the theatre was designed to echo the architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

 of the main auditorium

Auditorium

An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances at venues such as theatres. For movie theaters, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens.- Etymology :...

. The feeling is still atmospheric but because of the 13-foot ceiling, the feel is that of sitting under a garden trellis

Trellis

Trellis may refer to:* Trellis Drainage System* Trellis , an architectural structure often used to support plants* Trellis , a special kind of graph, often used in coding...

 with stars in the night sky beyond.

The Theatre Ghost

Old theaters often have their own ghost

Ghost

In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...

 myths and The Music Box is no exception. “Whitey”, as was his neighborhood nickname

Nickname

A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....

, was the manager of The Music Box from opening night 1929 to November 24, 1977. His wife was the cashier

Cashier

Cashier is an occupation focused on the handling of cash money.- Retail :In a shop, a cashier is a person who scans the goods through a machine called a cash register that the consumer wishes to purchase at the retail store. After all of the goods have been scanned, the cashier then collects...

 and they raised their family two blocks away from the theater. According to one of Whitey’s daughters and his daughter-in-law, he spent most of his time at the theater. Young people who grew up in the neighborhood tell tales of working for Whitey, being tossed out by Whitey and accidentally-on-purpose skinning their knee to get a free piece of candy

Candy

Candy, specifically sugar candy, is a confection made from a concentrated solution of sugar in water, to which flavorings and colorants are added...

 from Whitey. Parents speak of the embarrassment of having their child’s instamatic

Instamatic

The Instamatic was a series of inexpensive, easy-to-load 126 and 110 cameras made by Kodak beginning in 1963. The Instamatic was immensely successful, introducing a generation to low-cost photography and spawning numerous imitators....

 photo in the cashier’s station “rogues gallery” of children not allowed back in the theater for any of a myriad of offenses. On Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...

 eve, 1977, Whitey returned to close the theater. He fell asleep on the couch in the lobby and never woke up. Patrons prone to superstitious beliefs sometimes attribute events at the theatre to his ghost.

Current operations

For more than two decades, the Music Box Theatre has been the premiere venue in Chicago for independent and foreign films. It currently has the largest movie theater space operated full time in the city. In 2004, after 21 years, The Music Box Theatre Corporation (Bob Chaney & Chris Carlo), ceded operation to the theatre building’s owner, Bill Schopf and the new Southport Music Box Theatre Corporation. SMBC, through its Music Box Films division, also distributes foreign and independent films in the theatrical, DVD and television markets throughout the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Brian Andreotti, who was hired by Carlo & Chaney in 1996 from Cinema Chicago/ The Chicago International Film Festival

Chicago International Film Festival

The Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America....

, continues under the new management as film booker and product specialist.

Special/Annual Events

The Music Box holds many annual events, some decades old traditions and some just getting started. Since 1983 the Music Box has been showing White Christmas and It's A Wonderful Life for the week leading up to Christmas. Santa greets audience members and leads them all in a Christmas Sing-a-Long before the movies begin and takes photos with the children in the lobby after. Two newer traditions adopted by The Music Box are the showing of The Poseidon Adventure on New Year's Eve and a 24 hour horror movie film festival in October known as "The Music Box Massacre".

Another special event the theatre is known for is showing midnight movies every week. Offerings have included 1970s San Francisco-made 3-D X-rated films (very bad) and the ever popular Toxic Avenger films from Troma Releasing. The movies are mostly cult films, the most popular being The Rocky Horror Picture Show which The Music Box has been screening for 22 years accompanied by actors from the local Chicago theatre troupe Midnight Madness. The Midnight Madness cast also participates in the showings of Clue, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and The Little Shop of Horrors.

Notable premiers

While The Music Box has been home to the premiers of many smaller films, it has also been home to some big budget premier's as well. In 1940 the premiere of Charles Chaplin's The Great Dictator was too controversial for the first run exhibitors in Chicago at the time, so the film opened at the Music Box and the Ramova Theatre at Halsted and 35th streets on the South Side. Jack Okie made a personal appearance at the Music Box and Mr. Chaplin appeared at the 1500 seat Ramova. John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer had its National premiere at the Music Box in 1990. The Academy Award winning Indochine starring Catherine Deneuve premiered 1992. Both Lily Tomlin (co-producer) and Vito Russo (writer) made personal appearances to introduce their film The Celluloid Closet in 1997. In 2006 it was the site of the premier for the Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn film The Break-Up

The Break-Up

The Break-Up is a 2006 American comedy-drama romance film directed by Peyton Reed, starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. It was written by Jay Lavender and Jeremy Garelick and produced by Universal Pictures.-Plot:...

, as well as more recently showing the premiers for the Patton Oswalt films Big Fan

Big Fan

Big Fan is a 2009 independent drama film written and directed by Robert D. Siegel, and starring Patton Oswalt, Kevin Corrigan, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Michael Rapaport, and Scott Ferrall. The story revolves around the bleak yet amiable life of the self-described "world’s biggest New York Giants fan",...

 and Where The Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are (film)

Where the Wild Things Are is a 2009 American fantasy drama film directed by Spike Jonze and adapted from Maurice Sendak's 1963 children's book Where the Wild Things Are. It combines live action, performers in costumes, animatronics, and computer-generated imagery...

.