In military terms I am conducting “retrograde” operations with Ankylosing Spondylitis, an auto-immune disease similar to rheumatoid arthritis which is very painful and prone to periodic flares. This latest bout with the disease has kept from doing much of anything so I’m falling back on reruns again…and as the historic 4th Avenue Theater in downtown Anchorage is rumored to be scheduled for demolition this summer its only proper a cinema-related post should be this week’s offering
1963
As much as I loved the sweeping epic motion pictures of the Fifties and Sixties I did not see “The Great Escape” when it first came out. Oh, I saw all the previews and was extremely interested in the subject matter but wasn’t able to actually see the movie because I was on the losing side of an ideological divide as vast as Crown & Colonists or Union & Confederacy.
I was a Fourth Avenue theater kid and the “The Great Escape” was being shown at the Denali.
In those days before the Good Friday earthquake there were just two movie theaters in Anchorage and they were located at the two ends of Fourth Avenue. Kids from the west side of town went to the Fourth Avenue theater while the kids from the east side went to the Denali….and never the twain did meet.
1970
“You’re…
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David R. Deitrick, Designer 