32 Elvis Movies

While traveling along the eastern seaboard last fall, Melissa found this newspaper clipping from Friday, January 4th 1924, promoting Buster Keaton's Three Ages at the Imperial Theatre in Saint-John, New Brunswick. Expecting the Imperial to have been yet another standard vaudeville hall-turned cinema with a hyperbolized name, I never bothered to look into it, until I stumbled across this picture of the now-restored interior, and wow - what a palace! The 1600 seat Imperial opened in the fall of 1913, and most likely offered a combination of vaudeville performances and silent films. While up-and-coming movie mogul and Saint-John, N.B.-raised Louis B. Mayer was not one of the owners, one of his close friends did end up managing the place upon its opening; one has to wonder what Mayer's influence, if any, had to do with the grand majestic allure of the place. In the 1950s, the building was purchased by a religious organization, but in the 1980s, the building was purchased after a  year-long fund-raiser by the city of Saint-John. It was restored to the same elegance it had known back in 1913, and officially opened in 1994. While it no longer shows them flickerin' images as it did that winter day back in 1924, it now serves as New Brunswick's grandest concert hall, following in the likes of Toronto's restored Pantages and Elgin Theatres.