On the evening of Nov. 29, 1926, the New Branford Theatre opened its doors for the first time.
The feature was Padlocked, a silent film starring Lois Moran. The program also included a comedy and newsreels, with music supplied by a Wurlitzer organ. The theater advertised three shows a day beginning the following afternoon: 2:45, 7 and 9 p.m.
Admission brought moviegoers into a new 1,300-seat theater at 25 North Avenue West, built on the former site of Cranford’s Township Building.
One hundred years later, the address is the same. So is its purpose.
Now called the Cranford Theater, the movie house will mark its centennial this fall, making 2026 an occasion to look back at a building that has spent a century doing essentially what it was built to do: showing movies to people who come downtown to watch them together.
Its history also provides a record of how that experience changed.
The theater opened near the end of the silent era. Sound pictures arrived soon afterward. A single auditorium became two and eventually five. The Wurlitzer disappeared. Corporate theater chains came and went. Television entered American homes, followed by cable, videotape, DVDs and streaming.
The Cranford Theater remained.
Its first change came almost immediately.
The New Branford name lasted less than two months. On Jan. 27, 1927, after a dispute over the name was resolved, the letter “B” on the electric sign was replaced by a “C.” The Cranford Theatre had arrived.
By 1941, it was operated by Warner Bros. Circuit Management Corp. But the theater was not used solely for an evening at the movies.
In June 1945, with World War II still underway, the Cranford Citizen and Chronicle announced that the theater would host a local War Bond rally. The attraction was Bob Hope in The Princess and the Pirate. Admission was not purchased at the box office in the usual way: A ticket came with the purchase of a $25 Series E War Bond.
The local committee hoped the event would sell between $25,000 and $30,000 in bonds.
It was one night in the theater’s history, but it shows the place the building had assumed in town life less than 20 years after it opened. The screen could sell tickets, but it could also be put to work for Cranford.
The theater changed physically as moviegoing changed around it.
Its original capacity was eventually reduced to 1,209 seats. The single theater was divided into two auditoriums in 1978. Cineplex Odeon operated it during the late 1980s and 1990s. In 1998, it was divided again, becoming a five-screen theater.
By then, the idea of a 1,300-seat neighborhood movie palace with an organ beside the screen belonged to another age. The building had survived in part because it had not remained one.
Its present chapter began in 2019.
After the theater closed that September, Jesse and Doreen Sayegh took it over and renovated it. New seats, carpeting, drapes, digital projectors, sound equipment and an updated concession area were installed. The Cranford Theater reopened on Nov. 8, 2019.
Four months later, COVID-19 shut down movie theaters across New Jersey.
The Cranford eventually moved its screen outside, operating a drive-in at the Orange Avenue Pool while audiences could not gather inside. The indoor auditoriums later reopened.
Then, on April 30, 2025, part of a suspended ceiling collapsed inside one of them. No one was injured, but the theater closed again, this time for seven months while repairs and inspections were completed.
“Safety. Everything revolved around safety the second time,” Sayegh said of the work. “I wasn’t interested in shortcuts.”
The theater reopened Nov. 25, 2025 — four days before its 99th birthday.
Its 100th year has been less about recovering from another closure than deciding what an old movie theater should be now.
First-run films remain the principal business. But the Cranford also uses its auditoriums for comedy, festivals, filmmaker appearances, fundraisers and other live and community programs.
“I no longer look at our five auditoriums and think only about what movies I can put on those screens,” Sayegh said. “I look at them as five spaces where I can create experiences and give people a reason to leave their homes and come together.”
There is a practical reason for that approach. A movie theater in 2026 competes with forms of entertainment that did not exist for most of the Cranford’s history. A film can now be watched at home on demand, often not long after its theatrical release.
But using the theater for other purposes is not entirely new.
The original Cranford theater had a stage. The 1945 War Bond rally made use of a movie screening to bring residents together for something beyond entertainment. What has changed is the range of reasons people now have for staying home.
“You can watch a movie anywhere, but there is something completely different about experiencing it together,” Sayegh said.
The centennial will make that argument by returning to the beginning.
On Nov. 7, the theater plans to screen a restored version of Padlocked, the same film advertised on its marquee in November 1926. Silent-film accompanist Ben Model is scheduled to provide live music.
The audience will not be sitting in the same 1,300-seat auditorium. There is no original Wurlitzer waiting beside the screen. The building has been remodeled repeatedly, and almost everything required to project a motion picture has changed.
The choice of film, however, is exact.
The theater has also been collecting photographs, notes, memories and other small items from residents for a centennial time capsule to be sealed as part of the anniversary observance.
For Sayegh, reaching 100 is not an argument for turning the theater into a museum.
“My goal isn’t to reinvent the Cranford Theater into something unrecognizable,” she said. “It’s actually the opposite. I want to preserve what people have loved about this theater for 100 years while giving them new reasons to keep walking through those doors.”
When those doors opened in 1926, the newspaper advertisement promised “high-class entertainment” and “New Jersey’s finest organ.”
It listed the opening attraction in large type:
Padlocked.
A century later, the Cranford Theater is putting it on the screen again.
The Cranford Theater is at 25 North Avenue West, Cranford, NJ. The centennial screening of Padlocked with live organ accompaniment is scheduled for November 7, 2026, get tickets here.
