It's Always New Year's Eve at Greenbriar

Rochester, Minnesota's Chateau Theatre Is Now a Barnes and Noble

Kids Get The Party Jump On Parents

Park the tykes and fill up the liquor cabinet. That may have been parental notion on New Year's Eve as stage was set at home for "grown-up" partying that night. What better occasion to unload kids at Rochester, Minnesota's Chateau Theatre, where each 60's New Year brought delight in the form of features management rented at $25 top (plus cartoon seasoning) to fill 1,488 seats. Concession sales would tie a ribbon on it. Free popcorn and a dime candy bar, sure, but would sugared-up moppetry stop at that? Like with mom and dad hours later, "just one" would scarcely do, adult intake of alcohol matched by offspring's Coke downpour and cherry smashing. And note that drinks weren't free at the Chateau, this assuring youth would tap concession well to wash down free corn. There was method to madness of kid shows, Saturdays the profit day at virtually any venue. Note use of a 1960 ad slick recycled for 1963's event. And how many had seen or would remember The Three Worlds Of Gulliver from three years before? Smaller kids would be coming to it fresh --- that's how  many such pix stayed evergreen through much of a decade, only question being if exchanges kept prints on hand and what shape they were in. By the way, that dime candy bar would have been a hoss in 1963. I remember ten cent Baby Ruths pulling weight for entire shows, being big as a nine-year-old's outstretched arm. And look here --- there's compensation of Charade for teetotaler adults and/or those not invited to New Year blowouts.