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Looking Back

October 1956

Step back in time to see what our movie palaces were presenting in October 1956. Also included is interesting history about other area movie theaters. Film titles are linked to the Internet Movie Database.

Visitors to Redford on Oct. 10-13 watched a double bill that saw one era beginning as another was ending. The Killing, an early triumph for director Stanley Kubrick, was paired with Pardners, one of the last movies to team Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Pardners enjoyed a week-long run and also played with Johnny Concho, in which "Frank Sinatra, the Screen's Hottest Star, Turns on the Heat in His First Western."

Moby Dick (Gregory Peck) led seven days of Redford double bills with the drama The Catered Affair (Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine and Debbie Reynolds) and the western Star in the Dust (John Agar and Mamie Van Doren). The King and I also played for a week, with Stranger at My Door (MacDonald Carey and Patricia Medina) and These Wilder Years (James Cagney and Barbra Stanwyck). And young Paul Newman felt that Somebody Up There Likes Me, on a double bill with Olivia de Havilland in The Ambassador's Daughter.

The passions of War and Peace played out on the Michigan screen for a held-over run of 10 days. This epic starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda was shown three times daily, with "Admission Prices For This Attraction Only" at 90 cents before and $1.25 after 4 p.m., $1.25 all day Sundays, and 50 cents always for children. Other popular movies at the Michigan were the drama The Unguarded Moment (Esther Williams), the musical The Best Things in Life are Free (Gordon MacRae and Dan Dailey), and Foreign Intrigue (Robert Mitchum).

Controversy hit the big screen at the Michigan's Ann Arbor partner in the Butterfield chain, the State Theater. On Oct. 13, The Bad Seed opened, with an Ann Arbor News ad that read "Recommended for Adults Only!" and "Note! There will be a brief 'catch-your-breath' intermission at each showing...No One Will Be Seated During The Last 15 Minutes!"

Area art film lovers visited the Orpheum in Ann Arbor to see Too Bad She's Bad (1954, Sophia Loren), Riviera (1954, Martine Carol) and the moving 1952 Italian neorealistic drama Umberto D. In Detroit, the World and Studio showed Rififi (1954), which played at the Detroit Film Theatre in December 2000. Big Detroit premieres included Tea and Sympathy at the Adams and The Solid Gold Cadillac at the Michigan. And the Fox celebrated Halloween with a midnight double bill of House of Dracula (1945) and House of Frankenstein (1944) on Friday, Oct. 26 and Saturday, Oct. 27.

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