Like all great things in Classic Las Vegas, it was not to last. For a time, between the Cinerama’s Dome, the Convention Center Rotunda and the Landmark Hotel that section of Paradise Road was mid-century modern nirvana. I dragged my friends there to see many a film, including 'Fantasia', 'The Hindenburg' and 'The Three Musketeers'. In 1967, MGM studios re-released “Gone With the Wind” in 70mm and my mother took me to this theater for the first time. It opened on Januwith the John Wayne potboiler, “Circus World”. Located on Viking Road just off Paradise, this was a terrific theater. The Cinerama Theater -there weren't very many of them built-but, surprisingly in Las Vegas, we had one. Back then, movie theaters were one of the recreational places we had on a hot summer day. It is time to fire up the Way Back Machine.Īs we celebrate the waning days of summer (somewhere that’s not the southwest where we have summer for another two months), I thought it might be fun to take a look at the movie theaters that were scattered around the Las Vegas Valley when I was growing up there back in the day.
