The Premiere of General Cinema

I’m a fan of the old major-city movie palaces of the 1920’s and 30’s. Those majestic structures with ornate terra cotta facades, soaring marble-clad lobbies, gigantic auditoriums lined with sculptures, and huge stages with curtains that look like they were designed for royalty – you get the idea. In their early days, they often featured a complete, multi-act live show, featuring comedians,

The General Cinema Experience

“The movies” looked like a great place to be on this icy winter’s night in 1969. For many folks who grew up in the sixties or seventies (or even beyond), these scenes of a General Cinema theatre should be instantly recognizable. Boston-based General Cinema Corporation was the pioneer of the “shopping center theatre” concept. Originally a drive-in operator, General Cinema (called General Drive-In

The Kroger Superstores!

In the early 1970’s, Kroger was at the proverbial crossroads. The closing years of the sixties and early years of the seventies had brought about many changes in American life - the most obvious, of course, being political and social in nature. Far less obvious, but sweeping nonetheless, were the changes in the retail business environment. The supermarket industry, in particular,

A Tale of Kroger, Old and New

The photographs above depict the Kroger store at the Southland Shopping Center, located on the corner of Westnedge and Milham Avenues in Portage, Michigan. Portage is just south of Kalamazoo, and about 150 miles from Chicago. They were taken by the late John Todd, a Kalamazoo-based commercial photographer who extensively documented the area’s growth over a four decade career. They date