Movie theaters have a long, rich history in the Salt Lake area

Who can forget that first movie watched with a special heartthrob? Maybe it was a 1968 double date at The Movie in Olympus Hills, where "Ulysses" was playing. For some couples in 1954, the Tower at Ninth and Ninth was the setting for romance, as Luciano Della Marra pursued a beautiful Ethiopian slave in "Aida," with Sophia Loren in the title role.

Perhaps it's a group outing that sticks in one's mind — standing with friends in a line that stretched around the block from the Centre Theatre at State Street and Broadway, hoping to get into the first showing of "Star Wars" in 1977.

The Deseret News has covered many movie events, from glittering world premieres to the local theaters' ban on such films as the controversial 2005 "Brokeback Mountain." For this article, Ronald Fox, a history buff and collector who lives in North Salt Lake, selected photos of Salt Lake area theaters from the newspaper's archives.

Besides photographs printed here, other historic views are posted online.

Through the years, dozens of Salt Lake theaters have come and gone, but an outing at the movies has been a consistent treat for locals.

In 1911, the Liberty Theatre opened at 162 S. State; nine years later it became the Gem Theatre. It closed in 1968 and was demolished, according to utahtheaters.info, a Web site dedicated to "preserving the history of theaters in the state of Utah."

Older Salt Lake residents may recall the Gem as an elegant movie house, somehow similar in style to the Lyric Theatre, which opened in 1905 as a vaudeville stage at 132 S. State.

The Lyric went through a handful of names, including the Orpheum. It changed into a film theater before ending its history as a stage setting once again, home to Promised Valley Playhouse. Today its fa?de, offices and 12-foot Venus are preserved on a new structure.

"Cries and Whispers," the 1972 Ingmar Bergman triumph, played at the Studio, 161 S. Main. When it opened in 1933, the Studio was a mainstream theater, but before it closed in 1983 it had morphed into more of an art house.

Across the street at 148 S. Main was the Utah Studio, which opened as the Pantages Theatre in 1919, with the named later changed to the RKO Orpheum. In 1937 it acquired its present name, the Utah Theater, according to utahtheaters.info. One frisky former coed has vivid memories of watching the naughty Jane Fonda vehicle "Barbarella" there more than 40 years ago.

Today, the Capitol Theater, 50 W. 200 South, is the home of Utah West, the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and the Utah Opera. When it opened in 1913 it was a stage theater, but utahtheaters.info says it was converted to a motion picture house in 1927. During its movies era its seats could slide back and forth to accommodate moviegoers of all sizes and inclinations.