The RIDGE Theatre

Synopsis & History of RIDGE, by Heath Tait:

Vancouver BC's much-loved RIDGE Theatre stood tall as a stylish postwar icon on the city's upper westside, adapting to the generations that came and went- the public returning to its large scale single screen auditorium time and again. Its charm and convenience of locale served the immediate community throughout its lifetime, Vancouverites also travelling from all directions to attend its prized screenings at 3131 Arbutus Street, between West 15th and 16th Ave, with lots of roomy free parking provided.

Opening April 13,1950 with Laurence Olivier's 1944 "HENRY V", one could argue that from its start it was destined to become a repertory theatre for much of its life. Striking in red and bulb-studded neon, giant all-caps metal RIDGE letters cast their shadow from on high, free of backing against the skyline as the centrepiece of a strip-mall comprised of small retail stores on its either side. Complete with a restaurant and bowling alley, it was known as the Arbutus Village. Deemed by the press at its completion as "the most beautiful theatre in all Canada" with "every conceivable luxury installed", it was also promoted as an engineering marvel, special "Softone" acoustical plaster employed to insulate surrounding businesses from the theatre and bowling alley's boom. And it boasted Vancouver's only "Crying Room", next to the ladies' washroom, a sound-proof exclusive mini theatre for young parents up in its top back corner, a glass capsule balcony hovering over the regular seating below, replete with its own audio and volume knob.

Entering the RIDGE over a swirl of colourful Terrazzo flooring, the thick and heavy glass doors popped with shiny, bulbous wooden bubbles, the auditorium's effervescent doors even more so, rich in both tradition and new age Art Deco fantasy, a nod to the near future of Op Art and its decorative play on circles and dots. Towering above, the busty sweeping architectural ribbon, much like how film itself threads curvy through a projector, dazzled beautifully feminine against a wall of mirrors, doubling the lobby's impact, a sharp flight of stairs travelling its height. Special recessed lighting and unique colours completed the magic and its nostalgia. Through those twin multi-bubbled soda pop doors and seated with one's popcorn or even a custom cappuccino, and with hardwood floors running long underfoot, the ceiling lapped in waves consecutively outward, massive backlit Deco clamshells fanning out against golden curtains, heralding the famous west coast's giant screen.

But the RIDGE was not unlike all other movie theatres in western Canada for over a quarter century, catering to the limitations of Hollywood's mainstream popcorn product. Enter, a young Leonard Schein. A former Californian psychologist and film lover, Schein longed for access to better films in a country dominated by typical run-of-the-mill, first-run fare. To satisfy his hunger for unique cinematic culture while attending the University of Saskatchewan, he created a film club wherein unique pictures could be seen for a small fee. In Vancouver, and closest to UBC on its westside, the RIDGE became his interest much the same, and in 1977 he contacted its manager with his desire to lease the theatre, programming the best of repertory and retro cinema in all forms: Hollywood, foreign, independent and experimental. And so by early 1978 it began, The RIDGE Theatre becoming the first of several old Vancouver single screen theatres to resist the wrecking ball, a la Schein, while becoming icons of rare artful fare as he programmed the best of world cinema- subtitles and all- and "educated" the public as to its possibilities. Likewise, by 1982 from out of the RIDGE theatre Schein envisioned and grew the Vancouver International Film Festival, the seminal event and its locale spurring more stimulation and enjoyment than one could ever gather for the west coast region and beyond.

Things were already a tough go for old repertory theatres, but when home video emerged by the mid-eighties, and with the Vancouver International Film Festival having grown so large and fast, Schein subleased the RIDGE to projectionist Ray Mainland who would carry the theatre on for many years. But times changed and the business of film exhibition, crossed with ever-rising property evaluations, taxes and more, made the single screen theatre financially unfeasible and it, like so many other film and performing arts theatres, became endangered. Artist and filmmaker Heath Tait would attend the RIDGE many a time, mainly from the year 2000 on with his return to Vancouver. Ironically, it was that year that operator Ray Mainland was killed in an auto accident nearby, and though his wife passionately continued the struggle to keep the theatre in the black with its very low cost after-market of mainly Hollywood's best, by December 23, 2005, it was over. Hard talk of demolition and development, the fate of so many other Vancouver theatres, grew louder. Enter again, Leonard Schein. Destruction of the mall complex came to an end for a while longer, the theatre returning to first-run cinema as it had exhibited prior in its lifetime to cover the bills- but with a special emphasis on better commercial fare and a sideline of festival films and special events. But gone were the cultured double bills, the unique old film classics and radical auteur art-house works that the theatre had become most known and loved for.

Originally the RIDGE opened with "Luxurious, Western-made Airfoam Seats" provided by Vancouver's Dunbar Theatre Seat Company, and when Schein again took over the lease, the 832 green seats he had originally installed (which had become a comedic and endurance legend all their own as probably the worst in the city, by his own estimation) were replaced with 486 new cushy purple ones. For new media-saturated audiences inevitably fewer in number (2006, even prior to the social media avalanche), they offered higher backs, cup-holders, greater leg room and more aisle space. But fast-changing public behaviours, punishing taxes and growing development pressures accumulated continually and by June of 2011, the owner of the greater Arbutus Village complex sold it to developer Cressey, Schein fighting for the theatre but seeing clearly its end, all too aware of its mere luck in persisting as long as it had.

A final film festival of diverse pictures was held come January 2013 in which the once-controversial cross-dressing hilarity (and RIDGE staple weekend midnight screening) The Rocky Horror Picture Show took place, followed by a final screening of the same zany cult fave Feb 2nd. 24 hours later, before going dark forever, the very last screening at the RIDGE theatre commenced, Woody Allen's 2011 Midnight in Paris. Much loved and fitting as it was, still it was in lieu of a film print of another old staple of the theatre (and one of Schein's favourites), Casablanca, the classic feature he had originally opened with March 31,1978.

At the time Kodak was bankrupt, the film pioneer much like the theatre and unable to swiftly adapt to the incessant digital revolution assailing traditional film and its price, and all companies manufacturing film negative and print by 2013 had abandoned the medium. Kodak, by the end of 2013, would sell off some of its assets and return to black, and even continue to manufacture a range of film negative, the look and feel of film irreplaceable to the discerning eye, its latitude to photographers legendary; its traditional workflow, even the old school mechanical buzz and clatter of the cameras and projectors much loved by those inside movie-making who intimately understand the tangible nature of its use. But for The RIDGE Theatre, and for the sudden lack of film prints relied on to run through its traditional twin-projectors, its demise finally had come, Vancouver Vagabond Heath Tait at its end with exclusive documentation of the much-loved theatre, its screenings and its adoring public. 📽

TRIVIA:
The very artful and legendary 1975 The Rocky Horror Picture Show became a staple of The RIDGE Theatre, its weekend midnight screenings reliably putting bums in seats and keeping the enterprise alive. Over the decades, the film (and the theatre itself) became a likewise cult favourite like very few, if any, for the public to make personal theatre around, costumes and safe but outrageous behaviour tolerated at its oft-drunken late night screenings, dry items brought en masse and thrown about in the seats overtop of fellow audiences in an orgy of cinematic excess that only the seventies could've ever mustered. To this day, even Easy Rider doesn't invite nor accommodate such public expectation, The RIDGE Theatre a unique venue decades long in its accommodation of both art and comedy, free and open expression of an animated audience united in self reflection of campy spoof. 🤪

TRIVIA II:
February 2013. As the RIDGE Theatre came to its end, Leonard Schein worked to save as many of its "artifacts" before all would end up in the landfill. Its old wooden flooring was salvaged for nostalgic home renovation, its screen and some curtains also were saved, as were many of its newer purple seats. Its effervescent popping Deco doors were very gladly grabbed for installation in the independent and radical RIO Theatre on Broadway. Its still-functioning 50's projectors were taken away to serve as outdated cinematic decor- and there were strong overtures made regarding the iconic, colourful stained glass beaming projector that Schein had constructed and installed over the RIDGE entrance in 1978 when having started its renaissance. It sounded simple enough and the public came to expect it, the loss of the RIDGE unthinkable. The Arbutus Village strip mall, however, with its original bowling alley's archetypal giant pin typical to the very brief but spirited immediate postwar period when playful promotional theatre was integrated into novel building design, had come of age and found itself too much a luxury, too expensive to imagine or even bother with. The pin was saved, albeit at a shocking price afforded only in overt philanthropy, and when complex technical assessments arrived for the stained glass windows, the project was dropped. October 2013, the neighbourhood was made sick with the sound of shattering glass, its anger as resonant as the perceived mockery of developer Cressey for actually saving the RIDGE signage and mounting it atop their new condo development, as if a complimentary tribute to its lifetime prior. 😔

TRIVIA III:
The general privacy of the soundproof "Crying Room" mini theatre at the RIDGE seems to have invited, at times, certain activities other than child management... always with the added danger-thrill of getting caught, no less... ♥