Villa has a long, storied history

During its more than 50-year run, the Villa Theatre has been the biggest of the big movie theaters in the Salt Lake Valley. Not only did it have the biggest movie screen, the Villa also hosted the biggest movie audiences and showed many of the biggest, most successful movies.

The theater, 3092 S. Highland Drive, opened Dec. 23,1949, with showings of "Prince of Foxes," a costume epic starring Tyrone Power and Orson Welles. With a capacity for more than 1,000 patrons, the Villa was the pride of the Joseph L. Lawrence Theatres, which also operated the Uptown, the Rialto, the Murray and the Southeast.

That chain's biggest competition in those days was the Fox Intermountain Theatre, which also operated several moviehouses in the Salt Lake Valley.

Despite the Villa's size, theater owners actually had to sue the Hollywood studios to get first-run films there, according to E. Hunter Hale, a local film buff who programs the silent classics shown at the Organ Loft. "Things were a lot different in those days," Hale said. "If you weren't located in the downtown area, you couldn't get first-run movies. The Villa helped change all that."

In 1955, Fox Intermountain bought the Villa, installing an early form of stadium seating that expanded its capacity to 1,300 seats. And five years later, a 100-foot screen was installed to allow the theater to show films shot in such new widescreen formats as CinemaScope and Technirama-70.

Throughout the '60s, the Villa was Salt Lake's Cinerama showhouse, starting with the premiere of "This is Cinerama" in 1961. The opening-night events for that movie included a performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

"That was really something to see," said Art Proctor, a longtime local theatrical entrepreneur who has a history with the Villa. When it opened, Proctor worked at the competing Marlo Theatre. "I remember my bosses sent me over there at the end of the week to buy a ticket, so we could check the number on it and see how much business they did."

Proctor is owner of the Avalon Theatre, 3605 S. State, one of only two remaining single-screen movie houses in the valley. These days, the Avalon only occasionally shows movies, remaining dark most evenings, except for hypnotist shows on Saturday nights. The other single-screen Salt Lake movie theater is the Tower, 876 E. 900 South, which shows independent, foreign and repertory films.

"It's a shame to see some of the things that have happened to the Villa in the years since," Proctor said with a sigh.