HARK! HARK! IT’S NEWS OF THE CLARK!
From 1946 on, Bruce Trinz literally was the “voice of the Clark.” As theater manager and part owner, he chose the films, handled advertising and spoke to the press.
He also mentored young film buffs and critics such as Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. When Siskel, in one of the articles on this page, mentions how film students would further their educations by going to the Clark three or four times a week, he was probably speaking of himself.
Bruce Trinz was the Clark and the Clark was Bruce Trinz. It is impossible to separate the two. You can learn a lot about the man by the various films he chose to show in his theater, and his lifelong commitment to education and excellence.
-David Sadowski
Inquiring Camera Girl (Chicago Tribune, November 17, 1953) – This article is in PDF format.
Chicago Tribune, October 15, 1954:
Voice from Above
Bruce Trinz, manager of the Clark theater, reports the strangest telephone call in the long history of his movie house. He was summoned to the phone by a voice asking to speak to the manager, and when he picked up the receiver, heard the voice say, “Can you find me a seat up here?”
“Up wheer?” asked Trinz, a little shakily, wondering if this were a semi-celestial message from heaven.
“In your mezzanine,” came the reassuring reply.
Investigation revealed that the desperate customer was calling from a phone booth on the mezzanine floor. Ushers finally found the voice, with man attached, and a seat for them both.
Chicago Daily Defender, February 7, 1956:
Clark Theater – A Chicago Landmark
One of the most historic theatres in Chicago is the Clark, located at 11 N. Clark st.
The house is now featuring its annual “Film Festival” in which many of the pictures that were “Oscar” winners in the past are shown in double feature programs.
Owners Bruce Trinz and Howard Lubliner, were surprised at some of the facts uncovered in the theater’s 50 year history.
An unexpected item was that MGM mogul Dore Schary, Shirley Booth, and even Sally Rand appeared on the theater’s stage when the Clark was known as the Adelphi.
Another unusual fact is that the Clark is the only movie theater in Chicago that has changed its double feature daily for the past five years, offering about 3,600 pictures in that time.
Trinz and Lubliner are also trying to get more information about acts that appeared in the pre-Adelphi days when the theater was the Columbia Burlesque House.
Chicago Tribune, January 12, 1958:
1958 Is Silver anniversary of Clark Theater
This year marks the 25th anniversary of one of Chicago’s unusual movie theaters. In 1933, just seven years after the first full length talkie was introduced, the Clark theater opened its doors. Since then the Clark has shown more pictures than any other movie theater in Chicago. Since 1951 the theater has had a daily change of double features.
Under the management of Howard Lubliner and Bruce Trinz, the clark has introduced many unique policies. One is the Film Festival, a special program of outstanding films from Hollywood and Europe. The 1957 festival was made up of academy award films comprising a total of 47 Oscar winners. In November, 1950 the Clark started its Sunday Film Guild to re-show two all-time film favorites each week.
Suburbanite Economist, May 14, 1958:
Clark Sets New Movie Book Policy
For the first time in any theater in Chicago, Clark theater patrons can now see the movie, then buy the book in the lobby.
Noting Hollywood’s current trend to film versions of popular books, Bruce Trinz, an owner of the Clark theater, has introduced this new service for movie patrons.
A rack containing pocketbook editions of filmed novels has been installed in the Clark lobby.
Chicago Daily Defender, October 21, 1958:
‘For Gals Only’ Seats – Clark Theater Gimmick
An entirely new idea, created especially for ladies who treat themselves to the movies, will be introduced tomorrow when the Clark Theatre, at Clark and Madison, unveils its all new “ladies only” mezzanine.
The feminine decor has been designed to appeal to the many women movie-goers who would enjoy sharing some of that glamour usually found just on the screen.
“The Clark’s new ‘little gal-lery for glas only’ marks the first time any theatre has especially decorated an entire section of the house just for women,” according to Bruce Trinz and Howard Lubliner, co-owners of the Clark.
It’s (a) Festival for See-ers (and Z=z-ers) (Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1966) – An article in PDF format.
Festival of Films Extended (Chicago Daily Defender, September 12, 1966) – An article in PDF format.
Chicago Daily Defender, July 12, 1969:
Clark Film Festival Has Senior Citizen’s Rates
Bruce Trinz is celebrating the Clark Theater’s 17th annual summer-long film festival by introducing a special Senior Citizen’s reduced admission price of 85 cents.
The price, in effect all day and at any hour, is offered to all Clark customers producing their Medical or CTA identification cards.
Film festival highlights during July include a full week of all time favorite slapstick comedies dating back to 1925. “Slapstick Week” begins Sunday the 13th with “Way Out West” starring Laurel and Hardy to be shown with the Marx Brothers in “Duck Soup.”
Monday July 14th finds the Mark Brothers in a hotel in the 1938 “Room Service.” Co-featured is “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”
Harold Lloyd is an Egyptologist in “Professor Beware” on Tuesday, July 15th showing with Robert Youngson‘s 1967 “Further Perils of Laurel and Hardy” which features the highlights of the duo’s hits.
On Wednesday, July 16th, Abbott and Costello find themselves in the army in “Buck Privates” and the Marx Brothers decide to go to college in their 1932 film “Horse Feathers.”
In “Monkey Business” the Marx Brothers panic an ocean liner and Laurel and Hardy encounter a case of dual identity when they become confused with their twins in “Our Relations” on Thursday the 17th.
Friday the 18th features W. C. Fields as a river boat captain in “Mississippi” plus Laurel and Hardy in a tropical paradise in “Utopia.”
Charlie Chaplin stars and directs his 1925 classic, “The Gold Rush” shows on Saturday the 19th with “If I Had a Million” with W. C. Fields.
Throughout the week there will also be shorts featuring W. C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
The Clark Summer Film Festival will continue with a different double-bill of all-time classics daily through September.
Editor’s note: This booking was of particular interest to me, and I recall seeing several films shown that week. This included the “good, the bad, and the ugly” from the great film comics’ output. I love Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, Our Relations, The Gold Rush, and Mississippi. But Professor Beware, a sound film he made in 1938, is quite simply not very good, and Lloyd himself did not excel in sound pictures. By way of comparison, I would say that Bringing Up Baby, also made in 1938, has a Harold Lloyd type of character in it, but the difference is that role is played by Cary Grant. Grant could not only do great slapstick, but he had a much better voice for sound pictures than Lloyd did
The “ugly” in this festival was certainly Utopia, a miserable 1951 release that was unfortunately Laurel and Hardy’s swan song in pictures. Both men were hospitalized during filming, and Stan Laurel in particular looks like death warmed over in this unfunny disaster. But I don’t regret seeing it– more than 45 years later, it is still not that easy to see some of these films. I do not think Professor Beware has been released on DVD, and it is not generally shown on Turner Classic Movies, unlike the bulk of Lloyd’s other sound output.
Likewise, Utopia (also known as Atoll K) is hardly ever seen on cable. Room Service is a very weak and unfunny effort by the Marx Brothers, who were beginning their descent into B-pictures. The main reason they made this film was that RKO offered them a lot of money, but somehow everyone forgot that they needed to make it funny.
Of course, even in 1969 there were some films that were simply unavailable for viewing. For example, the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers (1930) was tied up in legal disputes for several years over ownership of the copyright. It was finally re-released in 1974, after a successful public campaign involving octogenarian Groucho himself.
Now, the film has been restored and is looking better than ever on Blu-Ray, including a small amount of unseen footage.
-David Sadowski
Chicago Daily Defender, June 27, 1970:
Clark Theatre Becomes A Firstrun House Today
On Friday, June 26, the Clark Theatre will end its 22 year policy of “a different double feature every day.”
When Bruce Trinz, co-owner and manager of the Clark introduced the daily change over two decades ago, it was considered a wild experiment.
The experiment proved successful and spawned its share of imitators in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and several other cities.
“Times are changing,” says Trinz, “and more people these days seem to be interested in the what’s new than the what’s old.”
That’s why on June 26 the Clark will start its policy of single feature first run films, with “The Hawaiians,” the new United Artists film starring Charlton Heston and Geraldine Chaplin.
Another policy change at the Clark will be its tentative new schedule, with doors opening at 9 a.m. and last show ending at midnight, possibly with midnight shows on Friday and “for gals only” and its special Saturday nights.
Policies made famous at the Clark that will continue will be its special “ladies gal-lery for gals only” and its special senior citizens price reduction.
The Clark tradition of catering to film buffs will not completely end though, as Trinz assures that he hopes to screen as many tasteful art films as possible and may occasionally run brief film festivals similar to his traditional policy.
Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1970:
Attempting to make good on his promise to make the Clark a distinctive first-run theater, Manager Bruce Trinz will open Francois Truffaut‘s latest, “Mississippi Mermaid,” with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve, on Friday.
Trinz will also show Truffaut’s first work, a short fiction film, “Les Mistons” (1957).
In addition, Monday thru Thursday, the Clark will present a retrospective of Truffaut’s films including “Jules and Jim,” “Shoot the Piano Player,” “The 400 Blows,” “The Bride Wore Black,” and, possibly, “Stolen Kisses.” The older films will form a different double feature each day with “Mississippi Mermmaid.”
Trinz said he will try to follow this program– a new film by a major director coupled with a retrospective– whenever possible.
-Gene Siskel
(Editor’s note: I actually met Francois Truffaut and spoke to him briefly at the 1981 Chicago International Film Festival. The occasion was a screening of his 1979 film Love on the Run at the Biograph Theater.)
Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1971:
MOVIE MANIA: The movies remain the one form of entertainment that stands numbers and dollars above all the rest put together. Even tho film attendance since the advent of television has declined dramatically, a million tickets a weekend are sold by Chicago movie houses… The super success of “Love Story” at the Chicago has helped other Loop houses, according to industry observers who had begun to have qualms about downtown showcasing of new movies…
The Clark Theater’s Bruce Trinz is lamenting having given up his daily changing show policy. He’s tried major bookings, a series of horror films and what-have-you. But what he’d really like to do is turn the venerable Clark into an art house (not a skin flick operation) and present worthy “small films” which play both coasts but not here. I wish he’d try it. Chicago may be ready to support at least one serious cinema emporium… Prediction: Porno pics, which seemed ready to swamp the Loop, will reach a zenith (in number) within a few months and then will play only a few grind houses because sex and sadism pics just aren’t proving to be the box office success they were thought to be.
-Larry Townsend
(Editor’s note: At age 16, I took my girlfriend to see Love Story at the Chicago Theatre during its initial run described above. That was our first date.)
Suburbanite Economist, March 14, 1971:
New group offers film classics for film students
By Shirley Haas
A new organization is bringing the classroom in the movie theater for a rare opportunity to see film classics uninterrupted by commercials and under ideal viewing conditions.
Film Education Resources Corp. will open its film field trip series with David Lean‘s “Oliver Twist” at 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on March 17 at the Lamar, Oak Park, and March 18 at the new Brementowne, Tinley Park.
The program, aimed at high school and college classes, will continue at the same theaters April 20-22 with Jean Renoir‘s “Grand Illusion” and May 11-13 with Bryan Forbes‘ “Whistle Down the Wind.”
Special rates for the series are $3 or $1.25 individually. No tickets will be sold at the box office. Teachers may make reservations by writing the corporation at 1825 Willow rd., Northfield, or by telephoning 446-4153.
The program’s first film will have special meaning for any student who has studied Dickens since his multiplicity of characters and interweaving story lines present a challenge to the filmmaker. Although his novels have been translated into movies many times, one of the biggest critical and financial successes was the 1948 release of “Oliver Twist.”
“We want these students to see ‘Oliver’ in the theater as it should be seen and not as a classroom experience,” said Bruce Trinz, manager of the Clark theater and a member of the corporation. “They’ll get good prints, 35-mm. projection, the works.”
Until recently Prinz revived old classics at the Clark where students got in for reduced prices. This new venture is an expression of his continued interest in bringing fine films and young people together. Prinz teaches film history at the Institute of Design and has served as a judge at the Chicago High School Film competition.
In “Oliver Twist,” students will see excellent character portrayals by Alec Guinness as Fagin; Robert Newton as Bill Sikes; Anthony Newley, then a young teen, as The Artful Dodger and Kay Walsh as Nancy. Because of a charge of antisemitism leveled at the characterization of Fagin, the movie was greeted with riots in Berlin, picketing in New York and its distribution was held up in most of the United States for three years.
Basically, the film is about the effects of environment on an individual or group. Although it deals with the seamy worlds of crime, poverty and the workhouse of 19th century London, sociologists say it could be laid in a contemporary American city and retain its relevance. Students and their teachers will get film outlines and study guides for an enrichment of the viewing experience.
The program’s second film was released in France in 1937, a year before Hitler began his expansion across Europe, and it is considered one of the best examinations of why men submit to war ever put on the screen. Highly praised for its theme philosophy, construction, staging, mood and performances, “Grand Illusion” was chosen best film at the Venice Film festival of 1937 and in 1938 won the best foreign film award from New York critics.
The movie, which stars Jean Gabin, Erich von Stroheim and Pierre Fresnay, was also labeled one of the six best films of all time at the Brussels Film festival of 1958.
The third movie on the schedule is a British drama of a group of children who befriended a criminal they believe to be Jesus returned to earth. “Whistle Down the Wind” stars the young Hayley Mills, Bernard Lee, and Alan Bates in what the New York Times called “one of the most beautiful and heartwarming films we have ever seen.”
What’s next for Prinz and his two associates, Jack Behrend, a film equipment distributor, and Hank Newenhouse, a film distributor. They’re now planning short intensive courses in the basics of film making and television programming using 8 and 16-mm. cameras and projectors, lighting equipment, sound recorders and other cinematic tools. Films made during the course will be developed overnight and ready the following morning for viewing, editing, and critiques.
A film and videotape technical orientation also is being designed for teaching staffs to give them a working knowledge of all types of equipment. Finally, July and August camping sessions near Madison, Wis. are being scheduled to allow film students to use rural backgrounds for their movies and to escape the distractions of urban living.
Trinz: Old hand at a new helm by Gene Siskel (Chicago Tribune, June 16, 1974):
GOOD NEWS: Bruce Trinz is back in business. Between 1948 and 1970 Trinz owned and operated the most exciting movie theater in Chicago, if not the United States. The name: The Clark. The location: downtown on Clark near Madison Streets in the Planters Building.
During the good old days, the Clark presented a different double feature each day, 365 days each year– more than 15,000 films in 22 years. The movies ranged from classic oldies to contemporary, violent westerns, but the accent was invariably on quality. Theater owner Trinz, a movie fan of the highest order, took particular delight in presenting mini-festivals of his favorite stars and directors.
The Clark was a fun place to visit. The crowd was diverse. Movie buffs filled in gaps in their film education by spending three and four nights each week there. A haven for the downtrodden and lonely, the Clark was the place for the inebriated to rub elbows, arms, and thighs with the intelligentsia. So much rubbing went on that Trinz, ever mindful of the comfort of his guests, set up a women-only balcony section called, in pre-lib days, “The Little Gal-lery… for gals only.”
Alas, the Clark “died” in 1971, a victim of the “Vixen”-inspired skin-flick blitz that was sweeping the Loop. Today the Clark, operated by Kohlberg Theaters, Inc., is playing a soft-core double bill of “Dark Dreams” and “Splendor in the Pad.” The Planters Hotel is vacant, being readied, rumor has it, for demolition next year.
Out of the rubble, however, comes the good news that Trinz is about to sign a consulting contract with Clyde Klepper and Jim Burrows, the enterprising young men who run the Devon, Adelphi, and 400 Theaters on Chicago’s North Side. Trinz’ responsibilities will include booking films, designing advertisements, and providing for the comfort of the audience. In snaring Trinz out of semiretirement (he has been running a film education program for north suburban secondary school students), Klepper and Burrows have pulled off a coup that augers well for their theaters.
“I’m just getting started,” said Trinz, “and so I’m not exactly sure what the audience wants. Basically, I think our goal is to use the 400 Theater (6746 N. Sheridan Road) as a revival house. Maybe we’ll do three or four different double features each week.”
Last week the Adelphi played a double-bill of Maximillian Schell’s “The Pedestrian” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Passion of Anna.” The booking was Trinz’ first for the Klepper-Burrows chain, and it reflects his impeccable taste.
Both films are precisely the kind of quality pictures that typically have a brief first run at a Near North side “art theater” like the Cinema and then disappear from view. For North Side film audiences, Trinz’ new efforts promise a chance to see quality films at less than first-run prices.
We welcome Bruce Trinz back to the business.
Hark! Hark! Remember the Clark? by Bruce Trinz (Chicago Tribune, August 25, 1974) – An excellent article in PDF format.
Chicago repertory cinema: From grind to boom to bust by Dave Kehr (Chicago Tribune, July 5, 1987) – This article is in PDF format.
The Clark Theater 