The Golden Age of Cinema Endures

About as old as talkies, the Music Box Theater has had to find new ways to attract movie lovers.

- EMMA PATCH

PROFILE

WHO: Buck LePard

WHAT: Senior Operations Manager at Music Box Theatre

WHERE: Chicago

Are you a historical landmark? We don't have landmark status, but we are very much an icon, I would say, in Chicago. And we really saw a lot of that come out when our 90th anniversary came around in 2019, with people celebrating the Music Box and our history. We get e-mails or notes all the time from folks, or posts on social media. When the Music Box was built in 1929, it was one of the smaller theaters in Chicago. Back then, most movie theaters were 2,000 or 3,000 seats, and the Music Box is only 750 seats. But that helped us survive. So now we're one of the larger movie theaters in Chicago. We're constantly making updates and restorations to the theater, but we never want to feel like we're getting too far away from that classic moviegoing experience, harkening back to when going to the movies was a really special experience for our audience.