Harris/Selwyn Theaters

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Harris/Selwyn Theaters, Dearborn Theater, Michael Todd and Cinestage Theaters, Goodman Memorial Theater
Life Span: 1923-Present
Location: 180 N. Dearborn, Southwest corner of Lake and Dearborn
Architect: Crane & Franzheim

Chicago Tribune, November 24, 1920

Harris Becomes Manager of One Selwyn Theater
The proposed new theatrical circuit announced in The Tribune some months ago and whose foundation is the Selwyns, Sam H. Harris, and Arthur Hopkins, began to assume form in Chicago yesterday, when one of the new Selwyn theaters here passed under the management of Mr. Harris. He will have the larger of the two houses to be built in Dearborn street, north of Randolph, and will use it as a production center for many of his enterprises. The Messrs. Selwyn also plan to make their other theater a beginning place for productions. Mr. Harris will retain a half interest in Cohan’s Grand, but that house hereafter will be controlled by George M. Cohan. The terms of the lease from the Hamlin estate call for improvements of the Grand costing $250,000 within four years. It will be rebuilt without a gallery. The new Selwyn theaters, which are to be identical with the Times Square and Apollo theaters in New York, are likewise to have only two floors.

Negotiations which have been pending for the last year between the Sel-wyns, Mr. Harris, and Mr. Hopkins wiil be consummated within the next ten days. The plan of those producers is a working agreement whereby all their productions will have the coöperation of the three organizations. The stag-=ing of plays will be under the direction of Messrs. Hopkins, Edgar Selwyn, and Sam Forrest. Mr. Harris and Archibald Selwyn will take charge of the business end, Crosby Gaige of New York having complete charge of the building and management of the various theaters. These three managements will have the two new Chicago theaters; in New York the Cohan & Harris, the Plymouth, the Music Box, the Selwyn, the Apollo, and the Times Square; in Boston the Park Square and new houses in Boston and Philadelphia now under negotiation. It is the intention of these producers to have theaters enough to house their attractions in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York City independent of the Erlanger and Shubert institutions.

Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1922

A New Theater and a Fine Play
By Sheppard Butler.
The new Selwyn theater, at Dearborn and Lake streets, was opened last evening in what may conservatively be termed a blaze of glory. Funereal flora graced the lobbies, and an audience of our elite, impressively garbed, enlivened the friendly interior, giving it the aspect of a local chapter out of Who’s Who. You could look nowhere without seeing some one you knew, from their pictures.
On the stage there were varied excitements, ranging from a curtain speech by John Drew, made as only John Drew, God bless him, can make them, to some forbidding apparitions of blazing lights and things with cranks, involved in a business of turning the assemblage into a movie. Lofty sentiments were expressed by Corporation Counsel Ettelson, representing your mayor; Mrs. Leslie Carter smiled and wept a little, confiding whimsically that she never could make a speech, anyway, and Archie Selwyn, the host of the evening, emerged just long enough to plant a kiss on Mrs. Carter’s cheek.

These pleasant adventures punctuated a nne performance of a fine play in “The Circle,” Mr. Somerset Maug ham has submitted an uncommonly diverting example of ironic comedy, and it is acted to the life by Mr. Drew and Mrs. Carter, in rôles that seem to fit them like gloves.

Here they are, in late middle life, enacting with humorous verity the tag end of a romance. Thirty years have passed since Lady Catherine Cham-pion-Cheney ran away with the debonair Lord Porteous. For thirty years they have been living on the continent without benefit of clergy. To the wife of Lady Catherine’s son comes word that they are visiting in London, and she invites them to her home.

The son and heir of the Champion-Cheneys is disturbed, not to say horrified, but his young wife is dreamily expectant. Here are two who have given up all for love. Her own heart has been wandering where it shouldn’t, and she seeks inspiration in this exemplar of the grand passion.

“When you love as she has loved you grow old beautifully,” she opines. “I think her pale face is unlined, like a child’s.”

Well, the elderly lovers arrive. Lady Catherine’s pale cheek is rouged. She is flighty, twittering, and shallow. She exclaims “My boy!” gustily to the wrong person and indulges in a panic over a lost lipstick. Lord Porteous, the gallant of former days, is given to sardonic grunts and is having trouble with his new teeth. The two are testy and petulant; romance has degenerated into a matter of recriminations and quarrels over cards.

It is, of course, both pathetic and funny, and these phases of the matter are developed with rare gusto by the two veteran players. The one chatters incessantly; the other is profoundly immersed in a chronic grouch. Piquancy is added to the situation by the chance presence of Lady Catherine’s husband. He is quizzical and resigned by his own confession “a wicked, happy old man”—and be taunts her cheerily when she ventures a wistful desire to come back.

The play reaches its height in a tender scene wherein Lady Catherine confesses to her daughter-in-law the abject failure of her own romance and pleads with the girl not to make the same mistake. But the girl goes any-way, with a penniless adventurer from the antipodes, and thus the ironic circle is completed.

So you have a tale airy enough in its outward aspects, but, in the manner of its telling, rich in subsurface humor and threaded with a vein of deep feeling. The acting of it is mostly in the hands of its central figures, but there is other good playing to be en-countered. Miss Clara Moores, as the young wife, gives sympathetic and honest interpretation to a rôle that does not greatly tax her powers. Ernest Lawford bestows much quiet skill on the part of Lady Catherine’s wise and cynical husband, and Robert Rendel manages to be persuasive in the rather difficult role of her fussy and priggish son. Jerome Patrick, as the adventur-er, seems at times to be a bit beyond his depth.

Chicago Tribune, August 17, 1922

Paint Bombs Hurled at New Theater.

Chicago Tribune, September 6, 1959

Smell-O-Vision Director to See Equipment Here
Movie Director Jack Cardiff will arrive in Chicago Monday from his native London to inspect the Cinestage theater’s installation of equipment for the presentation of Michael Todd Jr’s “Scent of Mystery.” Cardiff directed this Jack Cardiff directed this production, the first picture to employ Smell-O-Vision, the process of projecting a variety of aromas to the audience, synchronized with sight and sound on the screen.

Chicago Tribune, January 3, 1960

Chicago Tribune, November 3, 1985

Todd, Cinestage Theaters getting new lease on life
By Gene Siskel
In a bold move to improve the quality of movie going downtown, the adventuresome M&R Amusement Co. of Skokie has signed a 20-year lease on the once prestigious, now dingy Michael Todd and Cinestage Theaters, will turn them into first-run movie houses.

The theaters will be called the Dearborn Cinemas and are to open by Christmas.

The lease was signed with Cinestage Inc., a corporation formed by the owner, the estate of the late producer Michael Todd, a former husband of Elizabeth Taylor.

The decision to lease the theaters to a movie company could have a profound effect on promoters of Chicago’s legitimate theater and dance communities, some of whom had coveted the sites as home for a performing arts center.

The Michael Todd Theater, the southernmost of the pair, on Dearborn Street between Randolph and Lake Streets, currently is dark, while the Cinestage, at 190 N Dearborn St., is showing porno movies.

“We took possession of the Michael Todd Theater effective Nov. 1,” said Richard Rosenfield, one of the principal owners of M&R, “and we have given the operators of the Cinestage 30 days notice to vacate the premises. We take possession Dec. 1.

“We plan on spending about $300,000 to clean up the theaters before their Christmas opening and, at a later date, another $300,000 to twin each theater, so that ultimately there will be four, 500-seat Dearborn Cinemas,” Rosenfield said. “Our booking policy will be to present first-run, commercial films of a quality not currently found in the downtown area, films that we hope will draw black and white audiences alike.”

Films under consideration as opening attractions for the theaters include a revival of the popular Walt Disney family film “101 Dalmatians,” the Steven Spielberg-directed drama “The Color Purple” and “White Nights,” a thriller about two dancers [portrayed by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines] trying to flee the Soviet Union.

The surprise announcement by M&R is the latest in a series of innovative moves by the powerful local chain that runs counter to he prevailing trend in theater exhibition which is to build large complexes of mini theaters in suburban shopping malls.

In 1980, the company revitalized the dying Portage Theater, a spacious neighborhood house on the city’s Northwest Side, and turned it into twin theaters. In 1982, the company brought quality art films downtown by. turning the former World Playhouse and Studebaker legit theaters into, eventually, five art houses, known as the Fine Arts Theaters.

Earlier this year, M&R refurbished the shuttered Hyde Park Theater on the South Side into a first-run triplex, opening the first neighborhood theater south of the Loop in many decades.

To counter the resistance of people who might not want to attend movies downtown because of parking expenses, Rosenfield said he hopes to work out a reduced parking fee arrangement with similar a nearby to garage, the 4-hours-for-$3.60 deal at a garage near the Fine Arts Theaters.

Chicago Tribune, August 22, 1991

The long-empty Michael Todd and Cinestage theaters (formerly the Selwyn and Harris) on North Dearborn Street continue to decay while plans for their purchase as a possible site for Goodman Theatre are stalled.

NOTES:

¹ The movie was a critical and financial failure. The film was re-released under the title “Holiday in Spain” without the odors and shown in Cinerama equipped houses in 70mm as a single strip Cinerama presentation.

NOTES:

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