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Towne Cinemas
120 West Main Street
American Fork, Utah  84003
801 756-3181
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Surprise Theatre
Bountiful, Utah

Lamoni Call opened the Surprise Theatre on 12 May 1909. The theater did so well that a company organized a year later to buy and enlarge the theater to 500 seats. A stage was to be added, "sufficiently large to accommodate the best traveling troupes that visit small towns."

 
 
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Photo by Grant Smith, 18 October 2003
 

Towne Cinemas
(Coral Theatre, Towne Cinema)
 
120 West Main Street
American Fork, Utah 84003
801 756-3181
http://www.townecinema.com/
 
Status:
Open 
Auditoriums:
Total Seats:
583 
Open:
1953  
 

John Miller built the Towne Cinema in American Fork after moving there from Heber, where he started his first theater in the mid 1920s.  In the 1940s, he also purchased the Alhambra in Pleasant Grove and a theater in Lehi.1

The theater was known as the Coral Theatre from about 1955<2> to 1980.<3>

On 5 September 2003, Johnny Biscuit opened a performing arts venue called, "The Biscuit Theatre," at the Towne Cinema. A stage and theatrical lighting were added to theater 1 to accomodate the weekend program, which includes not only Johnny Biscuit's hypnosis shows and stand-up, but other forms of live entertainment, such as a monthly talent show.<4> The Towne Cinema continues to show movies in both theaters during the rest of the week. For more information, visit www.biscuittheatre.com.

1. "Grove Theater Legacy", New Utah, 4 December 2003, page 3
2
. "Excel fle", movietheatre.org, listing as its sources the Film Weekly Film Journal yearbooks 1920, 1925, 1930, 1935, 1940, 1945, 1950, 1955 and International motion picture almanacs 1961, 1964, 1969, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 1998, 2000
3. Timpanogas Phone Directory, 1980
4. "Biscuit bites into local entertainment with new theater", The Daily Herald, 24 September 2003, page B1