Mitchell Mark and Early Movie History in Buffalo - Table of Contents ....... Buffalo Movie Theaters - Table of Contents
First Buffalo Motion Picture History Tour is Big Success!
BUFFALO, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
The first ever tour of Buffalo's fabulous motion picture related history was sponsored by the Buffalo International Film Festival on Saturday, September 29, 2009.
20 members of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) from all over the United States and the UK were guided to such historic places in the city as the site of Edisonia Hall and the Vitascope Theatre (the world's first purpose-built Motion Picture Theater opened in the Ellicott Square Building in October 1896 by Mitchell Mark, Buffalo's true visionary of movie theaters) and the Regent Theater (1914 (now Bethesda World Harvest Church) which is the birthplace of TODD-AO.
Martin Wachadlo, author of Oakland Place: Gracious Living in Buffalo was the entertaining and engaging docent for this unique, long-needed tour. He supplied remarkable building-by-building facts and insight.
Belonging to such diverse organizations as the Library of Congress, the National Archives (NARA), the BBC, the Academy Award Archives, and the UCLA Film Archive, these highly skilled and prominent archivists were astonished at the sheer diversity of architecture in the city. Beyond such masterpieces as the Guarantee Building and the Darwin Martin House, the number of early 20 th Century Movie Theaters still surviving is unique in the world. These include The Michigan (1910), The Savoy (1911), The Sattler (1914 on the foundation of a 1900 theater). Although in need of restoration, the theaters ó once attended by Mary Talbert ó still glow with beautiful terra-cotta decorations. One member of the tour remarked that in Hollywood, no movie houses before 1920 even exist! This makes Buffalo truly unique in having preserved a fabulous "Time Machine" peek into the past.
Mitchell Mark, the genius who foresaw the rise of the movies and constructed the quintessential theaters to view them in, opened Vitascope Theater as part of his Edisonia Hall barely 6 months after Thomas Edison premiered the Vitascope Projector in April 1896 at Koster & Bial's Music Hall in New York City (on the site where Macy's now stands). Mark was responsible for bring Marcus Loew (of Loew's Theaters), Adolph Zukor (co-founder of Paramount Pictures), and Roxy (the flamboyant movie theater showman of Broadway) into the motion picture business. Mark was also, apparently, the first individual to distribute Lumiere / Pathe films in the United States circa 1895. This may mean that the first film show at the Vitascope Hall was one of the premieres of the Lumiere Brothers' films in America.
A highlight of the tour was a visit to The Regent Theater (1914) at Main and Utica. Now Bethesda World Harvest International Church, this beautifully remodeled building still preserves many of the architectural features of the original movie house which was used by Buffalo's American Optical Company to test the revolutionary 30 frame per second 70mm TODD-AO camera/projection system commissioned by mogul Mike Todd for his movie of Around the World in 80 Days starring David Niven and Frank Sinatra. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were flown to Buffalo in 1953 to see a demonstration that influenced them to give their permission to make Oklahoma into a film using TODD-AO.
Buffalo was also an important Motion Picture Exchange from the turn of the twentieth century up to the 1960s. Film Exchanges handled and shipped the 35mm prints of all the newest motion pictures and made sure that theaters from Syracuse to Cleveland, from Erie, PA to Toronto had them on time and in perfect condition for each evening's programming. Pathe, Vitascope, Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, Universal all had offices in Buffalo along Franklin and Pearl Streets starting as early as 1906. Mr. Wachadlo pointed out nearly a dozen of them still standing, although now used for other purposes. The Warner Brothers' building on Franklin is now a restaurant.
The positive response to this unique tour will be an inspiration for future tours that will expand and enrich the international appreciation of Buffalo as a unique site of Motion Picture history.
Richard Baer of Baer & Associates funded the tour with the help of Nancy Eckerson, a writer from Akron, NY. Other organizers were Marti Gorman of Buffalo Heritage Press and Chuck LaChiusa. Transportation was provided by Gray Line of Niagara Falls.
Buffalo International Film Festival, Inc. is a 501c3 not-for-profit charity incorporated in Buffalo to celebrate the artistic, cultural and scientific accomplishments of the Western New York region to the world's motion picture heritage.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: BuffaloFilmFestival@Gmail.Com
