the original stage house and could only be accessed through a separate entrance and box office on Balmuto Street. The Uptown 1, 2, and 3 played all the major releases, while the Uptown Backstage 1 and 2 usually played "art" films, such as extremely long runs of A Clockwork Orange and The Gods Must Be Crazy during the 1970s. Eventually the Backstage dropped the word "Uptown" and was considered a separate cinema. In the mid 1970s, Nat Taylor sold his chain of theatres known as "Twentieth Century Theatres" (no relation to the studio) to Famous Players, including the Uptown and the Yonge Theatre (later renamed the Elgin). Mr. Taylor would later found a new chain of multiplex cinemas in 1979 with Garth Drabinsky, called Cineplex Entertainment. The Uptown was a favourite place to see films, always doing good business. It was the last remaining large-audience big-screen, old-style movie theatre still operating in downtown Toronto for Famous Players. In addition to the sudden closure of another major downtown historic Famous Players movie theatre, the Imperial Six, in 1986, many other Famous Players theatres in the Yonge and Bloor area closed during the 1980s, including The Plaza 1 and 2 Cinemas in the Hudson's Bay Centre and the University Theatre on Bloor Street West (now a Pottery Barn). Following the loss of the Imperial in 1986, the Uptown became the theatre of choice for many movie goers in downtown Toronto and regularly played midnight shows on the weekend. The Uptown was also an important venue for the Toronto International Film Festival. Demise In 2001 new regulations mandated that the theatre be made wheelchair accessible. Famous Players balked at paying to estimated $700,000 expense and announced that they would be closing the cinema. The five screen cinema made little financial sense in the era of megaplexes, especially when the land it was on was worth millions of dollars. Despite community protests the cinema was closed on September 14, 2003 immediately after the 2003 TIFF. The last film to be shown there was Undead. Demolition and redevelopment The site was sold to developers who planned to replace it with a condo. In December 2003 Priestly Demolition was engaged in demolishing the structure, when a large section of the building collapsed. An operator cut vital steel support beams on a roof truss. The roof suddenly collapsed onto the balcony structure below, pushing out the brick