A Merry Christmas to All

Another evening of Christmas shopping winds down at one of America’s earliest and most famous shopping centers. This is Framingham, Massachusetts’ Shoppers World, pictured here all-decked out for the season in the early 1970’s.

A two-story outdoor shopping center, opened in 1951 and anchored by a magnificent “flying saucer-like” Jordan Marsh department store on one end (which is visible in the background of the photo), Shoppers World drew customers from a wide swath of the greater Boston area. It was a wonderful attraction at holiday time for years on end. Among its many distinctions, Shoppers World boasted the first of many shopping center-based indoor theatres of what would become the General Cinema Corporation.

The original structure survived more or less intact, despite a plethora of tenant changes and store remodelings, until 1994 when it was demolished. A completely different “Shoppers World” center now sits in its place.

My very special thanks to Michelle McElroy of the Framingham History Center for the use of this great photo. Michelle writes a blog called This Is Framingham, a mix of current event news and area history. Recently, Michelle started a fun new site called Different but the same, where she compares past and present packaging of household-name food items and consumer products.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you, friends and readers of this site, for your continued interest and for your comments and kind emails. Wishing you and your families the joy and peace of what Christmas brings and a wonderful and healthy new year!

Dave

Matchless Memories of Mammoth Mart

The word “mammoth” calls to mind something big, huge, out of the ordinary. So the giant new discount stores must have seemed to folks who were used to shopping at the traditional “five and ten” - type variety stores that were a fraction of their size. It only makes sense, then, that one of these new “discount houses”, the upstarts of the retailing world, would adopt a “mammoth” as its trademark. And when it happened, did they choose an ancient woolly mammoth, with its ultra-long, curved tusks and generally terrifying appearance? Not at all. Instead, they went with a refined, genteel, bi-pedal elephant, smartly dressed in trousers, a sportcoat and tie. This friendly fellow was “Marty”, official mascot of Mammoth Mart, the late, great New England-based discount chain.

Quincy, Massachusetts native Max Coffman, the founder of Mammoth Mart, was born in 1910 to Russian immigrant parents. Coffman was one of those people of whom it could truly be said that retail was “in his blood”. Starting out as a grocery delivery boy, Coffman worked his way through high school and college performing a number of retail jobs. After four years with Enterprise, a Boston-area department store, Coffman joined Union Premier Food Stores, forerunner to Food Fair, where his responsibilities included overseeing the opening of new stores. In 1937, he joined Economy Grocery Stores, parent of Stop and Shop, a leading New England area chain. At Stop and Shop, Coffman’s responsibilities were once again centered on the company’s new store program. It was here that he learned the benefits of self-service, and especially of having a centralized checkout area at the front of the store - a practice that he would help pioneer later on for the discounting field, where it had previously been a foreign concept.

In 1941, Coffman, along with his brother-in-law Henry Gornstein, went into business for himself, opening an Army/Navy surplus store in Quincy. Problem was, with the outbreak of World War II, the supply of military surplus items had dried up, so Coffman stocked a variety of apparel, mainly work clothes, instead. The end of WWII in 1945 unleashed a flood of surplus items to the market, enabling Coffman to open five more surplus stores by 1948.

By the early 1950’s, as discussed numerous times on this site, a new form of retailer was springing up all over the New England area, known in the early days of the business as the “discount house”. Again, as mentioned, these new stores were often located in old, vacated factories that begged for tenants and were available for a song. J.M. Fields, Ann and Hope and Interstate Stores’ (who would later buy out Topps and White Front) first discount operation all began in this mold. While Zayre chose to come out of the box with new construction instead of the “mill building” approach, their merchandising approach bore some similarities to the aforementioned companies. The stores were very simple, often outfitted only with pipe racks and basic fixtures (as these chains became successful, much more sophisticated store designs would follow), but they made money hand over fist. Max Coffman was quick to recognize the potential of this new self-service, volume based, low price approach, and decided it was the route he needed to take.

In March 1956, the first “Mammoth Mart” (originally Mammoth Mills) was opened in a 51,000 square foot former foundry building in Framingham, Massachusetts. Robert Drew-Bear, in his book Mass Merchandising, describes the opening day scene, where there happened to be a “…very heavy snowfall. As a matter of fact, even the large searchlights were buried by the storm. Nevertheless, the buying public came to the store opening and a new era was born for Max Coffman and Mammoth Mart”.

The profitability of his Army/Navy surplus stores paled in comparison with that of the discount store, so Coffman soon closed them down in order to fully devote his resources to opening new Mammoth Marts. Coffman expanded cautiously, especially in the early years. “I wanted to get a good solid foundation established first”, he was quoted in the Drew-Bear book. In 1959, the second Mammoth Mart was opened in Bangor, Maine, with a third unit in Lewiston, Maine the next year. 1961 through 1965 saw the opening of an average of two new Mammoth Marts per year, and also the company‘s first public offering of stock. 1966 was the chain’s “breakout” year, so to speak, with the opening of six units, one of which replaced the original Framingham store.

The Mammoth Marts were located in strip shopping centers (except the free-standing Bangor unit), usually next door to a supermarket. The store size ranged from 42,000 to nearly 90,000 square feet. The stores’ merchandise mix, was heavily weighted towards apparel. In the early years, factory overruns and seconds were stocked. Drew-Bear’s book notes the chain’s private label brands, including “Princess Anne” for their nylon stockings. (Somehow, that just sounds better than “Mammoth” stockings, eh?) The company also operated their own shoe departments, a rarity in the discount industry where they were generally leased out to others. Small appliances, housewares, cameras, records and books helped round out the mix. Another feature of the stores were their snack bars, de rigueur for the time.

As the Mammoth Mart chain grew, so did Max Coffman’s reputation as a respected businessman, a fact acknowledged well outside his company’s New England trading area. In 1967, Coffman received the prestigious Horatio Alger Award, which he accepted that year alongside such other notables as Dr. Michael DeBakey, the famous heart surgeon, Lawrence Welk, and Ewing Kauffman, chairman of Marion Merrell Dow pharmaceuticals and soon-to-be founder of the Kansas City Royals.

Coffman’s retailing savvy also caught the attention of one Sam Moore Walton, operator of a small Arkansas discount chain with a big future. In his autobiography, entitled Made in America, Walton specifically mentioned Mammoth Mart. Sam called on the Mammoth Mart offices and was given a tour of the operation by Coffman’s son Jeffrey, which he recalled in his father’s obituary as reported by the Boston Globe - ''I showed him around," said Jeffrey. ''I was only 20 years old. Who knew what he would become?"

At the end of 1970, Mammoth Mart was in great shape. Seven new stores had been added, bringing the company total to 34. Two were located in Maine, one in Vermont, and the company’s first four stores outside of New England – Bel Air (suburban Baltimore), Maryland and Lumberton, Henderson and New Bern, North Carolina. A childrens’ clothing store division,”Boston Baby”, was started around this time.

On a personal note, Mammoth Mart is special to me because it’s one of a handful of classic retail chains outside of the Chicago area that I shopped at extensively. Throughout the 1970’s, my brother and I spent three or four weeks every August with our grandparents in North Smithfield, Rhode Island, where we frequently shopped at the Mammoth Mart at Park Square, an area of town located just on the edge of Woonsocket. It was located in an “L-shaped” shopping center along with a Star Market. A Kentucky Beef restaurant sat on the edge of the parking lot, which later became a Burger Chef. Many times we’d hit all three in the space of an afternoon. Across the street was an Almacs grocery store, a popular Rhode Island chain.

My favorite part of the Mammoth Mart, of course, was their record department, a welcome sight after those exasperating moments spent in the fitting rooms, trying on yet another pair of corduroys. The record department had a great cut-out bin, where I picked up a number of bargains. Without a doubt, the oddest album I found there was Yoko Ono’s 1973 double-album entitled “Approximately Infinite Universe” on the Beatles’ Apple label. It was a bit on the surreal side for Mammoth Mart – I remember thinking “What an ironic juxtaposition - How incongruent!” (Actually, being 12 or 13 at the time, it was more along the lines of “Man, this is weird!”) I didn't buy the album.

Getting back to the storyline, the retail landscape grew bleak for many discount and variety chains in the early 1970’s. Interstate Stores (Topps and White Front), Arlan’s, and Grants, among others, got into financial trouble, leading to the eventual closure of those chains. The stagflation of the American economy caught many retailers flatfooted, especially those with older stores or less than stellar merchandising. Some chains did well, including Kmart on the national level, and local competitors Ames and Caldor. Unfortunately, Mammoth Mart ended up in the former category.

In June 1974, Mammoth Mart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The ten “Boston Baby” stores were closed. Happily, (unlike many other chains) the company emerged from it six months later, and shortly thereafter resumed payments of dividends to its shareholders. In April 1977, a “secret suitor” made an offer to buy out the 51-store Mammoth Mart chain. The “secret suitor” was soon revealed to be King’s Department Stores, Inc., a Boston area discounter (ironically founded in 1956, the same year the first Mammoth Mart, and headquartered in Brockton, Mass, Mammoth Mart’s original corporate home) with 121 stores along the eastern seaboard. The deal was finalized in August 1977. Mammoth Mart was no more.

The next year, King’s was set to merge with W.R. Grace and Company, a firm best known for chemical production but had recently acquired a number of retailers – Herman’s World of Sporting Goods, Sheplers Western Wear and Handy City hardware, to name a few. The merger failed to go through, and King’s more or less faded away over the next few years, closing most of its stores, including several former Mammoth Marts. In August 1982, King’s parent company, KDT Industries, went bankrupt, selling its remaining 42 stores to Ames the following year.

Max Coffman, Mammoth Mart’s founder and early discounting pioneer, spent his post Mammoth Mart years in real estate ventures and philanthropy. Mr. Coffman passed away in 2005 at the age of 95.

The North Smithfield Mammoth Mart I referred to earlier was torn down around 1990 (the store, of course, had closed much earlier) along with the Star Market. A Super Stop and Shop was built in their place. The Burger Chef was torn down to make room for expanded parking. The Almacs across the street closed along with the rest of the chain in 1995. A Hollywood Video store and an Ocean State Job Lot (which is actually a very interesting store – I visited it for the first time last year) now occupy the building. Time sure marches on.

And as for “Marty”, the retired Mammoth Mart elephant mascot? Last I heard, he was living a quiet life at his place on the Cape.

The photos above, from a 1962 trade ad, show the brand-new 88,000 square foot Mammoth Mart in Brockton, Massachusetts. Mammoth Mart was headquartered in Brockton, “home of (champion boxer) Rocky Marciano”, as Max Coffman proudly told a UPI interviewer in 1965. The company’s HQ was later moved to nearby West Bridgewater. Here are a couple of links of interest - a list of the Mammoth Mart locations, and a nice photo of the Scarborough, Maine Mammoth Mart circa 1967.

The Premiere of General Cinema

I’m a fan of the old major-city movie palaces of the 1920’s and 30’s. Those majestic structures with ornate terra cotta facades, soaring marble-clad lobbies, gigantic auditoriums lined with sculptures, and huge stages with curtains that look like they were designed for royalty – you get the idea. In their early days, they often featured a complete, multi-act live show, featuring comedians, dancers and bands followed by a movie program – a newsreel, cartoon (or a Three Stooges or Our Gang two-reeler) and the feature film. “Going to the movies” in major cities in that era would be more accurately be described as “going to the show”. It was easily a 4 to 5 hour long event.

During the depression and war years, hard times forced the cutback and eventual elimination of the live shows, leaving only the movie program portion. Built “for the ages”, the economic model for this type of theatre was pretty much shot by the early 1950’s. Some of the reasons were the same as those behind the closing of downtown variety stores – declining downtowns, increased crime, lousy parking and other negatives. Added to this were factors more directly associated with theater operation - high labor costs (for large usher staffs, curtain operators, etc.) and the enormous maintenance costs of those beautiful old buildings, among other things. By the time I came around, most of these theatres were gone – either torn down, or boarded up, or converted to another use such as a bowling alley. Most that could still be nominally considered “theatres” were showing X-rated or exploitation films.

No, for many of my generation - those of us who began our moviegoing habit in the 60’s, 70’s or very early 80's, “going to the movies” meant pulling up to a white, boxy looking building of simple modern design with the lone word “CINEMA” (occasionally followed by a few roman numerals) as its only identification. They were located next to the mall, or to Korvettes, or whatever the local shopping center might have been. These were the theatres of the General Cinema Corporation.

Though his company would eventually become known as the pioneer of the ever-present “shopping center theatre”, General Cinema’s founder enjoyed earlier success as a proprietor of standard downtown theatres, and later on of drive-in theatres, that pop culture icon of the 40’s and 50’s - an institution which played no small part in the demise of the aforementioned movie palaces. The company that would eventually become General Cinema Corporation was founded by Philip Smith, a Syracuse, New York native, who moved to Boston in 1918 upon being hired to operate the National theatre, a unit of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (later known as Radio-Keith-Orpheum, or “RKO”) theatre circuit. Smith later leased the theater to operate it on his own, and by 1922 had formed his own company, Smith Theatrical Enterprises. By 1930, Smith was operating some 18 theatres in the New England area.

By the early thirties, as the depression entered its darkest days, Smith was in search of a unique approach to the film exhibition business, something that would set his company apart from the pack, giving it a better chance of surviving those tough years. When Smith learned of the new “outdoor amphitheatre” for automobiles that opened in Camden, New Jersey in 1933, he was intrigued, and closely studied the drive-in concept over the next couple of years. Confident, both in his aptitude for the theatre business and in the potential of the new concept, Smith eventually made the decision to jump in.

Joining forces with financier David Stoneman and his family, Smith started a new company called Mid-West Drive-In Theatres, Inc. This may seem like an ironic name for a Boston-based enterprise, but the fact was that most of their early drive-in theaters were indeed opened in the Midwest, where Smith saw the greatest potential for the business. Mid-West’s first theatres were opened in the Detroit and Cleveland areas in the spring of 1938. The company grew slowly over the next 12 years, constrained (as were other drive-in operators) by the lack of access to first-run motion pictures. A series of lawsuits aimed at the famous ”studio system” – the cartel of studios who owned their own theatres, which included 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Paramount and MGM (the Loew’s theatre chain), eventually leveled the playing field for the drive-ins.

In 1950, Mid-West Drive-In, with Phil Smith’s son Richard now a full partner in the business, launched a major expansion drive. At this point there were 14 drive-in theatres in addition to the company’s traditional New England downtown theatres, and the company had footholds in Omaha, Des Moines, Pittsburgh, Gary, Indiana, and Chicago (La Grange, on Route 66) in addition to their established Ohio and Michigan locations. Soon afterward they began opening drive-ins in the northeast for the first time, including three in New Jersey and one in Natick, Massachusetts, near their home turf. More were to come. Bettye Pruitt, author of the book “The Making of Harcourt General”, an excellent history of GCC which serves as the basis for much of the information here, notes that “by 1952, Massachusetts would have the most drive-ins per square mile of any state in the nation”.

By this time, Mid-West was also involved in “drive-ins” of another sort, specifically drive-in restaurants, another institution that was surging in popularity at the time. Their first “Richard’s Drive-In”, named after Richard Smith, Philip’s son, opened adjacent to one of the company’s Detroit area drive-in theatres in 1946. Soon more restaurants would be built in the Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago areas. In Chicago, Richard’s units were opened in Lincolnwood, Wilmette and Evergreen Park, among other locations. Later on, the chain would expand into the northeast, following the company’s theater development. The menu was typical of carhop joints of the time-hamburgers, fries, chicken sandwiches and “frappes”, (which translates to “milkshake” in most areas outside New England). Larry Cultrera’s “Diner Hotline” website has a great article and pictures of some of the Richard’s units. If you haven’t checked out his site, it’s a real gem – a great look at the golden (and present) age of the diner, along with other pre fast food- era restaurants. There were other restaurant ventures as well- Peter Pan Snack Shops, a 7–unit chain that Mid-West would buy and expand to 18 units, Jeff’s Charcoal Broil, named after Phil Smith’s grandson, and the Amy Joy Doughnut and Pancake Houses, an early competitor to Dunkin’ Donuts and Mister Donut in the New England area, named, of course after his granddaughter.

In 1951, Mid-West opened their first shopping center indoor theatre, a move that in retrospect started the company on its destiny. In 1950, plans were announced for an innovative new shopping center, to be opened in Framingham, Massachusetts and known as Middlesex Center. The name was changed to “Shoppers World” prior to its opening, and the new center received considerable coverage in the retail and architectural trade press. Bettye Pruitt quoted Architectural Record on the new shopping center’s design – it was “laid out as a carnival midway, with the main attractions (a theater and a department store) at either end”. The “department store” in this case was the funky, flying-saucer-like Jordan Marsh store. This website has an excellent history of Shoppers World, along with an in-depth look at the original GCC Shoppers World Cinema, with great photos of the original and expanded versions of the theatre. They also appear to have mirrored the defunct GCC website, complete with a listing of the chain’s locations as of 1983 and 1999. The Framingham Cinema’s original business was slow, and as Ms. Pruitt points out in a fascinating anecdote, for a couple of summers, “Smith rented the auditorium to the cartoonists Al Capp (Li’l Abner) and Lee Falk (Mandrake the Magician), who ran a summer theater program in the Boston area, bringing in Hollywood actors such as Mae West, Melvyn Douglas and Marlon Brando to star in their productions”. Within a couple of years, however, the cinema was doing much better, and presumably the cartoonists had to look elsewhere. More importantly, Mid-West began to consider the possibility of opening shopping center theatres on a large scale.

In 1960, the company, now renamed General Drive-In, went public. The restaurants were spun-off as a separate operation, still under the control of the Smith family, allowing the new entity’s business to focus strictly on theatres. For a while, that is – that same year, the company decided to enter another recreation field – as an operator of bowling centers. This was spurred on by a nationwide decline in movie attendance, due in large part to a continued drop in new film releases, from roughly 450 a year in 1948 to only 350 a year in 1960. By 1963, the company owned 15 “Holiday Lanes” bowling centers, mostly in the New England states.

In 1961, General Drive-In suffered two tragic losses – Phil Smith, the company founder, died at age 62 in July, and Morris Lurie, his son-in-law, passed away around the same time. Lurie was largely responsible for running the family’s restaurant businesses. Forced to assume the responsibilities of two other top executives in addition to his own, Richard Smith decided to sell off the restaurant group within the next couple of years, in order to concentrate fully on the company’s shopping center theatre business. When the buyer defaulted on the purchase, Smith continued to operate them for several more years before a suitable new buyer could be found.

The bowling centers proved to be an unhappy venture, due in part to the difficulty the company found in organizing bowling leagues, the lifeblood of any bowling alley, in the New England area, as compared to the more industrial, factory-rich Midwest. Also, “ten-pin” (today’s standard sized bowling pins) bowling was relatively new to the area, and didn’t have the following that locally favored “candlepin” (cylindrical pins) or “duckpin” (short, squatty pins) bowling had. In 1965, GCC began to put the bowling centers up for sale.

The shopping center cinemas were a completely different story, however, and very quickly became the company’s mainstay. At the end of 1961, the company had eight shopping center theatres, including new locations in Pompano Beach, Sarasota, Daytona Beach and Orlando, Florida, and Menlo Park, New Jersey. They also bought the existing Plaza Cinema in Memphis that year. The Chicago, St. Louis and Cleveland markets were entered the following year, and many more followed in quick succession - Northern California (San Mateo’s Hillsdale Mall, the first of many NorCal units), Denver, Detroit, Charlotte, Minneapolis, Dallas, Houston, Akron, Cincinnati and Milwaukee, among other metro areas, by 1966.

While the drive-in business grew steadily – from 26 units in 1963 to 49 in 1968, the shopping center theatres exploded – from only 10 in 1963 to 319 ten years later. In a nod to the obvious, the company changed its name to General Cinema Corporation in 1964.

Interestingly, GCC did not have to invest a great deal of resources to come up with new locations, as was often the case in the history of many great retail chains of the mid-20th century. A number of examples come to mind – from McDonald’s Ray Kroc or Publix’s George Jenkins flying all over in company–owned prop planes, feverishly scouting new locations on which to plant their respective flags, eventually setting up sophisticated market research departments as their businesses grew. Instead, within just a few years, mall and shopping center developers were flocking to the company to offer them prime sites, and as long as the terms were good, the company generally went for it. This was a big reason behind the very wide geographic reach that GCC reached in such a short time. As Ms. Pruitt writes, “Where competitors might carefully research the socio-economic characteristics of potential theater locations, General Cinema left that kind of analysis to others”.

The GCC theatres had a fairly uniform look, designed by architect William Reisman. With their white-painted steel framed and red upholstered seats, they were certainly austere compared to the ornate theatres of years past. The lobbies, as shown in the previous post, did have a nice sense of style, now breathlessly referred to of course as “Mid-Century Modern”. One GCC innovation that permanently changed the industry (for better or worse depending on your point of view) was the “shadowbox” screen. Gone were the theatre curtains (and the projectionists’ union members who operated them) and the stage itself. In their place was a simple white wall with a recessed portion for the screen, somewhat akin to a “tray ceiling” tilted up on its side.

A huge step forward for the company was the introduction of the “twin” cinema, the first of which was opened at the Northshore Shopping Center in Peabody, Massachusetts in 1962. While this obviously enabled a location to show two different pictures at once, it also allowed it to utilize two screens for the same film, with staggered showtimes, in the case of a blockbuster like “The Sound of Music”. Of course, the other big advantage to the twin was the fact that the two auditoriums shared a common lobby, concession area and projection room, minimizing the added incremental operating cost. Soon after the Peabody unit opened, twins followed in Charlotte, NC (the first GCC theatre in the state) and in Fort Lauderdale. In 1966, the first Chicago-area twin (a third theatre was added in 1971) opened at the new Ford City Mall. As time went on, more and more GCC theatres were opened with two or more screens.

As far back as 1962, Time Magazine hailed the shopping center theatre, acknowledging General Drive-In’s (General Cinema’s) leadership role in the trend - “Now the movie theater operators, who have been shuttering one downtown palace after another, have latched on to the shopping center as the place where the people are (or can get to)”. Throughout the 1960’s, an ever-growing percentage of the American public could easily “get to” a General Cinema theatre.

The six artist's renderings above, showing typical GCC exterior configurations, are circa 1964. (The film listed on the marquee in the third photo, “Tunes of Glory” was actually a 1960 release.) Below is an unknown Florida location, in a circa 1963-64 photo, appearing here courtesy of Leon Reed, whose father took the photo during a family vacation. Added bonuses are the Christmas decorations (Christmas in Florida – now we’re talkin'!), the Woolworth’s and Mr. Reed’s Ford wagon and Airstream trailer. I believe the location might be Miami’s Cutler Ridge Shopping Center, but don’t really know for sure.