Demolition of the Seville Theatre began yesterday. This afternoon, I noticed that a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk – most were older gentlemen come to pay their last respects to the theatre, which has stood on the corner of Sainte-Catherine and Chomedey for the past 80 years.
One gentleman told me that he remembered when the building housed a Vaudeville theatre, before it became a cinema. He pointed out the space at the north end of the building where the stage had been and the wings where performers once waited to make their entrances. He said he had recently been able to go into the abandoned building to take some photos and found that a group of homeless Inuit had taken up residence in the wings, laying down bedding on all three levels of the structure. The Seville has been abandoned for 25 years.
3 comments
Although the day of the smaller theaters has come and gone, the Seville and the way it was just left to die has always rankled me.
I always hoped Dawson College would purchase it.
People forget that when Steve Miller was running The Seville as a rep house, he brought back the stage.
I can’t remember when, but it couldn’t have been that long into the run as a rep house. Pulled out some rows of seats, and built a stage. I have no idea whether there was any attempt to replicate the stage that had been there or not. Remember, before it was a rep house, it was a movie theatre run by one of the major chains, showing first run films, so the stage likely wsa demolished in that era.
The plan was to use the stage for live acts. I can’t remember if that was ever done much or not. I suspect there were instances after the stage was installed, but not enough that I remember it happening later.
One time they showed “Waiting for Fidel”. DIrector Michael Rubbo came along with the film and I can picture him on that stage talking about the film. That would have been 76 or 77 so it was early on.
I saw so many films there the first year it was a rep house (and for at least a few years after). It was such a different form, a mixture of classic films (I saw “The Wizard of Oz” on Christmas Eve, or probably the day before, not just the first time I actually saw it, but obviously the first chance I had to see it on a big screen; the same with “Lawrence of Arabia”), and films that had finished their initial run (the day Elvis died I was watching either “Foul Play” or “Bound For Glory”). It was much less common to have films playing there for the first time locally. It was a different time, if you wanted to see a movie you’d have to hope it showed up on late night tv (well CFCF was still running afternoon movies at that point), or go to a rep house. There were some movies I went to every time it played, just in case it would be the last chance.
I somehow got into movies at The Sevill for free on a number of occasions.
Of course, when The Seville first became a rep house, they were all over the place. There was a theatre in that medical building where Westmount turns into NDG, and it was a rep house for a bit, either before or after being a porn theatre. The Imperial on Bleury was a rep house briefly in 1977, they put a divider in and operated two screens. Plus Cinema V was still running. The Monkland was a rep house for a while, but that had to be later since it wouldn’t have been at the same time as Cinema V. Cinema V did operate a rep house out of the Paris cinema downtown for a while around 1979 (and then later of course it became a rep house again run by the Thierry Martin who had run Cinema V, before high rents caused him to move to La Cite). Concordia had older films most nights of the week for a long time, and of course one could see films at McGill via the McGill Film
Society that went bust about 1995. There was a rep house in Decarie Square for a while, don’t ask me what year. Even The Rialto for a while, though that was much later. And plenty of French rep houses.
All of those rep houses are gone. But so are the theatres they used. Forty years ago, there were movie theatres everywhere, you’d go to the neighborhood one rather than always go downtown. I saw a Charlie Brown film about 1970, and all the kids in the neighborhood were there, going by themselves. Some of the buildings still exist (such as The Snowdon and The Monkland), others were replaced (the one on Greene Avenue in Westmount for example). Even the theatres downtown were relatively small though of course they split The Loews (and had an open house to show off the place) and then The Palace. But all of those are gone too, replaced by a couple of megaplexes.
Michael
my oldest memory of the Seville includes going to see the premiere of “Lawrence of Arabia” with my parents on a rare evening outing, i was 11 yrs old. a memorable night in a beautiful building in its prime as a movie house. i will never forget that place.