Boyd Theatre, 1953 (b/w photo)

Verso: Cinerama - December 5, 1953: A part of excited throng of Philadelphia School children who attended a special Saturday morning show of "This is Cinerama" made possible to them at a reduced price in cooperation with the Board of Education. This 1953 photograph from the Evening Bulletin shows a crowd in front of the Boyd Theatre, attending a publicity screening of "This Is Cinerama.” Keeping up with advances in filmmaking techniques, the Boyd was the only Philadelphia theater at the time able to show movies in Cinerama--a new panoramic widescreen process, developed in the 1950s. The Boyd continued to screen Cinerama features until 1963. The venerable Boyd Theatre was opened in 1928, the largest of the Philadelphia movie palaces of that era. It outlasted all the others of its kind in Philadelphia, closing in 2002.