Autumn Years Winter 2023/24

using the Palisades cliffs. The director of the original 1914 “cliffhanger” was on hand. Austin would go on to appear in 11 more movies, including two Elvis Presley films. This theater continued into the 1970s, but then closed and was converted to a CVS store. In Paramus, the Stanley Warner Route Four Theatre opened in 1965

for the showing of Be Kind to Animals . Imagine his surprise when a young woman showed up with a camel! Split into a “fourplex” and renamed Teaneck Cinemas , the theater currently shows first-run films. Fair Lawn’s Hyway Theater opened in July 1942. A major draw to this sleek, modern, Art Deco-style, 1,064-seat the ater was that it offered air conditioning. By 1966, it offered reserved seats. Hugh Mannisto, who grew up in East Pater son (today’s Elmwood Park), remem bers that in the 1960s, “There was usu ally a double feature, and it was only 60

cents to get in.” Eventually carved into a “fiveplex,” the theater closed in 2009.

Today it houses medical offices. The 1950s and 1960s

Two theaters opened in Fort Lee during this time. The first was the Lee Theater on Lemoine Avenue, which opened in

1951. Seating capacity was 1,500 in an expansive, but rather unadorned audito rium. It was closed and demolished in 1973. The second was the Linwood Theater located in the Linwood Shopping Cen ter. It opened in 1963 with Bye, Bye Birdie . In 1967, well-known tele vision actress Pam Aus

as a 2,000-seat, sin gle-screen theater. In 1970, Route 4 Cinema opened in an addition to the larger building. With 600 seats, the smaller theater was de scribed as “of the more intimate type.” Eventu ally, the entire building became the Loews Cin eplex Route 4 Tenplex .

tin had the world premiere of her first movie, The Perils of Pauline , at the Lin wood Theater. The original Perils of Pauline (as people know it), starring Pearl White, was filmed in Fort Lee 53 years prior

It was the first theater in New Jersey to present the digitally projected Star Wars Episode I . The theater closed in 2007 and is now a 24 Hour Fitness location.

47

WINTER 2023/24 I AUTUMN YEARS