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Ambassador Theater saw better days

Submitted by tleonard on 01/11/2012 - 10:02
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Seventy-five years ago today, ground was broken for Raleigh's new Ambassador Theater. Ambassador Josephus Daniels did the honors. The theater was a showplace for years, but it went the way of many downtown theaters in the 1970s, a fate worsened by the conversion of Fayetteville Street to a pedestrian mall.
 
On the eve of its 1989 demolition, former N&O writer Judy Bolch reminded readers of the theater's better days.
 
She was the Ambassador Theater, the last of Raleigh's old-time movie houses. She closed in June 1979 after years of declining health. But nobody ever got around to a funeral.
 
[...]
 
The lady's luck has run out.
 
Raleigh will be the only major North Carolina city that has lost all its downtown theaters.
 
The Ambassador never was a grande dame like the State, the 1924 Raleigh Vaudeville house/musical theater/cinema demolished two years ago. The ambassador was a flashy flirt, an example of the Art Deco design that was the last word in modern when she opened in 1938. In her glory days, she had 1,700 leather and chrome seats. She had rhinestone-trimmed curtains, golden doors, a curving chromium staircase and a 40,000-watt marquee called the brightest spot in the city.
 
[...]
 
Much of the Ambassador was lost long ago. The bulldozers will flatten an empty building where pigeon droppings are a foot deep. They will crush elaborate plaster trim hidden behind '60s renovations. They will demolish a theater that began its run with stars and closed with kung-fu movies.
 
But the spirit of the Ambassador lingers.
 
"We turn the lights out at night and still hear Elvis sing," says Richard W. Vanderpool, who directed the removal of asbestos in the theater.
Photo Courtesy NC State Archives
 
Passersby told him about Elvis Presley's stage appearance there in the 1950s, when both were still in their prime. They recalled "The Sound of Music," which had a year-long run there.
 
[...]
 
The Ambassador's curtains opened for the first time on Monday, Feb. 21, 1938, and the screen lit up with "Radio City Revels" starring Ann Miller. Bargain hour tickets were a quarter. Children could come any time for a dime.
 
The ambassador was built on the site of the historic Grand Theater, which had burned a decade earlier. She was named for Josephus Daniels, who had been editor and publisher of The News and Observer and ambassador to Mexico.
 
[...]
 
"It was high class," says Nell J. Styron, a long-time Raleigh film-goer. "If your date wanted to make an impression, he took you to the Ambassador."
 
The Ambassador was Raleigh's A movie house, a "theee-ate-tah" as Mrs. Styron calls it. For years, popcorn was banned from its elegant interior. Only first-run movies played there, and the feature changed twice a week. The theater's own artist turned out original posters to advertise the films.
 
Male moviegoers wore coat and tie; women donned their Sunday best. The ushers had blue gray Eton jackets with double rows of buttons. 
 
[...]
 
Patrons never waited for the start of a movie. They walked in when they arrived; they saw the end of one show and the beginning of the next. Sometimes they sat there all day, seeing the same movie again and again. - The News & Observer, 7/5/1989

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THE AMBASSADOR THEATRE

Fri, 01/20/2012 - 15:48 — raymondiation

A lof of history was within the theater and for the many years it served the Raleigh area,it was one of its finest.

I do recall "The Sound of Music" playing at the Ambassador Theater in 1965 as one of it's roadshow reserved seat engagements. Instead,the film broke all attendance records during its astounding 61 week run which lasted until mid-1966. It also was one of three movie theatres in the Carolinas that played it as a roadshow(the others were the Carolina Theatre in Charlotte,and the Winston Theatre in Winston-Salem).

During the 1950's and 1960's,The Ambassador was the place to go to see a the exclusive engagements. A lot of great films played here from "Gone With The Wind",to "The Ten Commandments",to "Ben-Hur", "Cleopatra", "How The West Was Won",to its exclusive engagement run of "2001: A Space Odyssey". During the mid-1970's,it was had the exclusive showing of the 1976 remake of "King Kong". by the late-1970's the theatre was reduced to showing "B" movies and kung fu flicks until it's closing on June 26,1979.

 

"The Exorcist II" played here first-run in June of 1977.

A different set of downtown Raleigh memories

Wed, 01/18/2012 - 15:28 — lawn819
I am a Raleigh native named Lauren Jones who read your reminiscence on the Ambassador Theatre.  It is absolutely no fault of yours that the perspective of the 1989 article was encased in the fog of nostalgia and slanted only toward Raleigh's positive history, so I want to share with you my memories of that grand hall.
 
I was born in August, 1958 at Raleigh's Saint Agnes Hospital, so I am 53 years old now.  When I was a child, the ravages of Jim Crow still haunted Raleigh, and the Ambassador was not immune to the stench of segregation.  My first memory of that theatre was going with my mother to see The Sound of Music in 1965 when I was a first grader at Crosby-Garfield School.  All of us who were then called colored or Negro had to sit in the balcony; only whites could sit in the main auditorium.  I didn't mind because I was six; I could see both the big screen and, if I leaned forward just right, I could also observe the people seated on the first few rows from my vantage point.  But my mother was grimly resigned to the absurdity of it all.  I remember she never cracked a smile the whole time we were in the theater.
 
Just one year later, in 1966, I got my first pair of glasses at Leon Bynum Opticians, a downtown company that was, I believe, on Martin Street.  At any rate, it was walking distance from the Ambassador. I had to have my pupils dilated, and cotton pads were placed over my eyes. I could see out of the corners of eyes as my mother led me to a waiting room.  I was about to turn into a tastefully appointed waiting room with recessed lighting, wall air conditioners, and Musak playing softly overhead,  when my mother jerked my shoulder slightly and led me away to a waiting room where the only light was a naked overhead bulb that cast eerie shadows on the furniture from which white tufts of stuffing were breaking free.  (Later that year, in the summer, my family and I bypassed the colored section of Myrtle Beach in South Carolina and went to the white section.)
 
From those events, and a few more, my mother, who was probably considered quite uppity -- I like to think of her as fiercely patriotic AND fiercely proud of her ethnicity, which is what she was -- by whites, insisted that when the times changed, as they would by law by 1967, I was never to sit in theatre balconies, go to "colored" beaches, or sit anywhere but in the first row of every class I attended.  I was to vote in every election as soon as I was old enough, and in the meantime, I would accompany my mother into the voting booth each time there was an election. I was not to call anyone ma'am or sir lest I be misconstrued by someone white as subservient.  I was never to call myself or regard myself as a minority, and there was never anything wrong with the terms black or Afro-American.  All adult females were women -- there was no differentiation between Negro women and white ladies -- and I had every right to be anywhere I chose to be.
 
So, that is the downtown Raleigh I remember from the heyday of the Ambassador Theatre, and those were a few of the lessons I learned from my mother about how to navigate through a hostile world.

My 1st Movie Theater with my friend's!

Mon, 01/16/2012 - 19:02 — Donloosmn1962

I will never forget in 1972 me and my friend's were 10&11 years old and we rode our bike's to see our 1st James Bond movie. One of my friend's parent's had seen it the weekend before and talked about it for day's. Soooooooooooo being the mischiefs boy's we were (and wanting to see thing's we were not suppose to see) We went to the Ambassador! I also remeber it was B-Rated. That was the only time I went there, but it was great! Thank's for bringing it up again. I almost forgot about it. yours truly D.K.Loosman

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