Road Show Movies

10/10/22 - posted by John Martini

When I was a kid, going to Road Show movies was a very big deal. (Not the Bing Crosby-Bob Hope series, but prestigious movies like Ben Hur that played for weeks or months in the larger movie houses). Going to one of these usually involved an entire afternoon outing, frequently combined with going out for dinner before or after.

Some of the prestige theaters were located downtown but two were in the Outside Lands, The Coronet on Geary near Arguello and The Alexandria at Geary and 18th Ave. Here are some of the road shows I remember seeing there:

Coronet: Music Man; 55 Days at Peking; Star Wars (2x of course); Twister

Alexandria: El Cid; The Longest Day; The Train; Towering Inferno; Poseidon Adventure; The Hindenburg; Earthquake

Am I right? Or is my aging mental hard drive missing some memory bytes? And you'll notice I didn't include some of the longest-running road shows, like Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. As a budding teen, I declined going to such treacly musicals. (I was almost literally dragged to see Music Man.) I desperately wanted to see Ben Hur and Spartacus, but the Legion of Decency proclaimed them too violent for young viewers.