Grandson Corbin

Thursday February 8th, 2001

Ted in Indianapolis Office

Karl & Margaret, Clarence & Meinhardt

Video Message from Michael Madsen 

​​​​​​​Ted in Blvd Office 

Granddaughter Zoe

​Mancow

Ted & Margaret

Ted 

Texas

Granddaughters Jade & Zoe

Dog named Bear

Mancow 

​​​Zachary

Gordon

Long lines at Hollywood Blvd 

Feet

​​​The Whimpy Kid

Ted & Richard Dreyfuss

​Great Grandmother "Mom"

​​Ted & Munchkins

Contact at Ted.Bulthaup@gmail.com

Zachary Gordon

Basic Skill Set

• Serial Entrepreneur

• CEO

• Imagineer

• Builder of Places, Spaces & Things

• ​Getter of Things Done 

• ​Overcomer of Obstacles
  

• Paver of Yellow Brick Roads

• Sweeps Up Popcorn

• Stuff Like That, read more on the right

Jerry, Karl & Mickey

Friendly Bat

Ted Bulthaup established his first business, Caribou Productions, in Chicago while still attending DePaul University.  Caribou promoted various live performance artists at various venues throughout the central United States. Examples include such artists as Cheap Trick, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Doobie Brothers, Genesis, Supertramp, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Brown, Beach Boys, Yes, Charlie Daniels, etc. Bulthaup later consulted on various historic renovations of pre-depression era movie palaces, restoring and converting them into live performance venues.  He testified before the House Ways & Means Committee on tax incentives for historic preservation of architectural landmarks.

Bulthaup interrupted the normal course of business for several years, leaving Chicago to take care of aging relatives in Indianapolis until their death. His Grandparents were too old to live on their own, but too healthy for a nursing home.  Bulthaup continued his earlier efforts with the restoration of old dilapidated movie palaces which sparked the idea of a "dinner and a movie" concept.

In 1991 that idea became this country’s first full service dinner cinema, “Hollywood Bar & Filmworks” which he built and opened in downtown Indianapolis.

Bulthaup was the first entrepreneur to offer full to-your-seat food and beverage service consisting of a complete selection of libations including beer, wine and cocktails as well as a wide range of appetizers, salads, sandwiches, pizza and desserts including crepes and ice cream parfaits infused with liqueurs and traditional candies, and popcorn with real butter from real cows, not that artificially flavored and colored yellow soybean syrup.  

In 2003 Bulthaup opened Hollywood Blvd Cinema in Woodridge Illinois, followed in 2009 by Hollywood Palms Cinema in Naperville, both in the far western suburbs of Chicago.  At their peak, Blvd and Palms cinemas each enjoyed the nation's highest seating occupancy rate, the highest attendance per seat and per screen, and the highest sales per patron of any theater in the country, with annual attendance at each location topping the number of NFL fans at Bears games in Soldier Field,

Being a totally new concept, the Filmworks underwent a series of trials and tribulations upon opening, especially since it was located in dilapidated and largely vacant downtown Indianapolis district with a mountain of short term debt. This was at a time when Indianapolis suburbanites did not care to travel downtown to a hybrid cinema so completely different that the general public could not quite comprehend that radical concept of it, with at the time only offering sub–run films (shortly before video release).

Filmworks was the first new movie theater in downtown in over 60 years and the first one to operate in Indy's core in over two decades. Hollywood quickly became a leading regional destination and received recognition over the years for excellence, consistently winning state, local & national entertainment and restaurant “Best of” awards in various local reader’s polls, including Downtown Indy’s Best New Addition, Indy’s Best Movie Theater, Indy’s Best Kept Secret, and as having Indy’s Best Service, Best Movie Popcorn and 2nd Best Pizza. The Restaurant & Hospitality Association of Indiana awarded Hollywood with a “Good Neighbor Award” and Hollywood was selected as having the State's “Best Menu”. The National Association of Theater Owners and the Hollywood Reporter named the theater as Best in Community Service & Marketing in the country. Indianapolis Monthly called the theater one of Indy’s “Crown Jewels” and also listed it as the third best place to take out-of-towners (after the 500 Mile Race and the Children’s Museum).

Bulthaup received both CEO Magazine’s “Service Excellence Award” and Mass Mutual’s/U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “Blue Chip Enterprise Award” for Entrepreneurship. Bulthaup was the founding President of the Downtown Indianapolis Restaurant & Hospitality Association and later served terms on the Board of Directors of both that organization and the Theater Owners of Indiana.

Through a variety of tactics, Hollywood challenged the way films were distributed in this country, causing some fundamental industry changes including, the status of intermediate run and first-run move-over theaters and eliminating the release barrier for theaters wanting to provide expanded food and beverage selections with to-your-seat service. Hollywood in Indianapolis paved the way for this end of the industry and was generally recognized as the nation’s leading high-amenity theater.

Among the industry changing efforts was bringing and winning an anti-trust suit against MGM. After that experience, Bulthaup became a resource for the US Department of Justice on industry anti-trust issues and the 1949 Paramount Consent Decree, most recently testifying before the legal committee on the merger of Chicago based Show Place Cinemas and AMC.  AMC was later ordered to divest several Chicago area theaters (which they then sold to Regal).

More recently Bulthaup has testified several times on behalf of the Illinois Department of Economic Opportunity before standing State House and Senate Committees and the US Treasury Department.

The Indianapolis operation had always enjoyed a great national reputation for excellence. Disney approached Bulthaup about building a theater like the Filmworks at Epcot.  If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, General Cinema had later experimented with a copycat operation and several second rate imitators had also spawned following Indy’s success. Hollywood Indy was the only local recommendation of a great place to visit in a USA Today article during the Final Four Conference in Indianapolis. MS*NBC focused on Filmworks not only as a unique theater, but what great value it delivers compared to New York City cinema’s. LA Sports talk radio broadcasted live from the theater “Hollywood to Hollywood” when the Pacers were in the NBA playoffs against the Lakers. Warner Bros offered Bulthaup a job as National Director of Special Projects (Marketing) if he would sell the Indy location and move to LA.

During this period Bulthaup’s house burned down early Thanksgiving morning, almost taking the life of several of the children who Ted pulled out of the flaming house. Trapped by the flames he threw one child through the burning kitchen into a clear area near the front door. Running back upstairs he kicked out a second floor window; went out on the roof, swinging the last child into a bush before jumping himself. Ted asked a friend who was the human interest reporter on the local CBS affiliate to tour the burnt out shell as the aftermath of house fires are seldom covered by media. Those segments were nominated for a local Emmy. Bulthaup later filmed a PSA to run before children’s movies at the theater. The National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) recognized our Hollywood’s Kids Fire Safety Program for a special “Community Service Award”.

The City of Indianapolis later created a huge downtown mess starting with the long construction of the Circle Centre Mall; followed by the negative affect of a new professional basketball arena being developed in the heart of downtown. The subsequent hyper-inflation of neighborhood parking rates during special events became a severe challenge to all of downtown’s restaurant and entertainment operations. Suddenly, after Hollywood enjoyed years of success, downtown parking rates inflated by 735% on over 100 event nights per year due to the close proximity of the Conseco Fieldhouse.  Bulthaup led the charge against the insiders and powers that be - despite the old maxim that you can't fight city hall.

The City had taken the proceeds from a special restaurant tax for the arena and created a devastating situation, severely hurting the number of downtown visits by Indianapolis’s own suburban population.

Of the businesses that signed a petition asking the Mayor to remedy the problem, two thirds were soon driven out of business citing the new parking dynamic as the number one issue. The local Mayor continued to embrace anti-small business practices and even doubled already harmful business taxes, and so on the 15th Anniversary of Hollywood Bar & Filmworks opening Bulthaup voluntarily closed the Indianapolis location.  All local loans and debts of any kind were voluntarily paid in full to all, secured and unsecured creditors alike, and the assets were moved to Illinois for later use in one of Hollywood Blvd Cinema’s expansions.  

Even so, in the last year of operation, Hollywood Bar & Filmworks was listed in the Indianapolis Business Journal as the 8th fasted growing company in Indy. This wreckage was all due to local governments reckless and uncaring actions about this issue.  This later cost the Mayor his Office and his cronies their offices over the next several election cycles. Bulthaup also saved local taxpayers some $55 million dollars by disclosing the facts of his theaters and the other businesses closures.  Ted proved the local NBA team was just the opposite of the economic powerhouse for the City it pretended to be and that professional sports teams are unworthy of large public investments based on any ROI.

Regardless, Teds' Indianapolis business was a total loss. It was a very family oriented business and one young employee even committed suicide due to losing her family due to the closure of that business. The Indianapolis City Council passed a “Posthumous” resolution the day after the theaters closing, saying the theater was one of the city’s greatest assets and even called Bulthaup one of the “iron men” and “visionaries” of downtown’s resurgence. A 2015 news article listed the top ten things that are missed in Indianapolis and the likes of which will never be seen again. Hollywood was on the list.

Bulthaup opened a long vacated General Cinema multiplex as Hollywood Blvd Cinema in Woodridge, Illinois on March 2nd of 2003 as the exit strategy from Indianapolis, but also under trying circumstances. After construction was three/fourths complete, building inspectors for the first time demanded that the entire facility be brought up to code, not just the new construction as the code reads. This necessitated a three month delay, postponing the Grand Opening and causing the heavy Christmas movie going season to be missed. The rescheduled Grand Opening coincided with the declaration of war on Iraq which focused the nation’s attention, especially the media, on their small screen televisions. With the additional demanded upgrades and due to these circumstances, there was an immediate cash shortfall of about one million dollars. Hollywood Blvd was named by Chicago Magazine as “Best Cinema” in its first year of operation, beating out the new $30,000,000 AMC/Imax downtown. Hollywood Blvd was the only theater to receive an “A+” rating by the Chicago Sun Times and was also named as one of the nation’s top ten new concepts by Restaurant Business Magazine.  The operation received recognition as the nation’s best marketed theater several times by the Hollywood Reporter with National Association of Theater Owners, and also received Entrepreneurial Excellence Awards from Business Ledger Magazine.

First year sales of $2,500,000 increased an average of $2,000,000 per year afterward. The new operation had positive cash flow after several months, brought venders current and was on normal terms after fourteen months. A venture capital company loan of $200,000 plus interest at 14% was paid in full and all the investors recouped their money after just two years. A new LLC was formed which bought the assets of the previous operation, Hollywood Bar & Filmworks and Hollywood Blvd Cinema both, and took over operating the first Illinois location. Sales continued to grow every year at the same rate until 2010 and by many statistics the theater still outperformed the industry in general and neighboring cinemas in particular. In those first seven years of operation ending in 2010, there were five major expansions at Blvd. 

Hollywood Blvd’s last expansion was completed in December 2010 and brought the screen count up from the original four up to ten, the lobby tripled in size including a large glass atrium, the box office was expanded to twice its space, washroom capacity increased, a private party room and even a Hollywood museum were added. The museum had an extensive collection of historic Hollywood items, some owned and others on loan. A full size Blues Mobile with statues of the Blues Brothers was added over the new entrance and roof top searchlights now beamed across the night sky. These searchlights were used 365 days annually and required enabling legislation.  Bulthaup shepherded those ordinances through both Naperville and Woodridge and they are the only municipalities in Illinois to allow such use.  More people typically attended movies at the Woodridge theater in a year than attended Soldier Field to see the Chicago Bears play.

Also as part of that expansion a casual sit down Chinese restaurant was added, the new “Formosa Café” was a truly spectacular restaurant that received rave reviews and terrific repeat business, but road construction in 2011 & 2012 had a catastrophic effect. Formosa rent was temporarily cut in half, Bulthaup reduced payroll by 1/3 and sales were up an average of 30% in 2013, but it was not enough.  

In September 2009 Bulthaup opened the seven screen Hollywood Palms, A Cinema, Bar & Eatery in Naperville in the midst of the nation’s worst economic chaos since the Great Depression. Yet within nine short months of opening, sales were being generated at a rate that was not accomplished at Hollywood Blvd until after 3 years of operation and was cash flowing almost immediately. Partial 3D technology was added to each of these operations in May 2010 and the digital transition was completed in the summer of 2013 (which was a must, since studios soon stopped the release of movies on film).

One of the highlights during Bulthaup's initial years at Hollywood Blvd Cinema was when he arranged for his little friends “The Munchkins” to receive a Star on the sidewalk of the other Hollywood Blvd, (the street in LA).  At that time, Hollywood Blvd had the highest attended screenings of “The Wizard of Oz” in the world and had always brought in the remaining seven Munchkin actors in for those screenings. Bulthaup’s first nomination of the Munchkins for the honor was rejected (22 honorees being selected from over 600 nominations).

Bulthaup started calling friends in the industry to help lobby for the cause.  Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Ted Turner, Roger Ebert, Hugh Hefner, Tippi Hedren, Harvey Weinstein, Mickey Rooney, Jane Russell, AFI, Leonard Maltin, TCM as well as every major Hollywood studio including Warner Bros, Universal, MGM, Sony, Disney, Paramount and others all wrote letters or made personal appeals to the Mayor of Hollywood. The Munchkins were given their Star in November 2007.

The successful campaign and the ceremony itself was a 15 minute special feature on the 70th Anniversary Oz DVD and was covered on an unprecedented 575 television news shows in the USA alone, including Good Morning America, the Today Show, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and even Hardball with Chris Mathews took note. Around the world event coverage included NPR, BBC, AP, Reuters and other news wire services.  Stories ran throughout Europe, China, India, Japan, and the Middle East – Bulthaup was even mentioned in an Istanbul newspaper as Cinesman Sahib Ted Bulthaup.

 Bulthaup used the occasion of the Munchkin’s Star ceremony to host a Wizard of Oz event at Grauman’s Chinese Theater; in front of which the Munchkins were getting their Star placed the next morning and which was the venue where “The Wizard of Oz” had premiered 68 years before. Amazingly, some of the attending Munchkin Honorees were actually present for that premiere.

Over $30,000 was raised for historic preservation of Hollywood architectural landmarks.

One of the special hallmarks of Bulthaup’s operations is when show business friends or connections were asked to stop by for a weekend at the theaters to meet audiences and sign autographs. People like Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Rita Moreno, Burt Reynolds Tony Curtis, Teri Garr, Richard Dreyfus, William Shatner, David Carradine, Shirley Jones, Leslie Nielsen, Karen Allen, Peter Falk, Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney, Paris Hilton, Ernest Borgnine, Channing Tatum, Michael Madsen, Martin Landau, Penny Marshall, Malcolm McDowell, Verne Troyer, Tippi Hedren, Peter Fonda, Elliot Gould, Robert Englund, and many, many others individually came to town with screenings of their films.

Several “Harry Potter” actors came to the theaters for the openings of their films, including the Phelps (Weasley) Twins, and for the final installment of the Potter movies, Tom Felton, who played ‘Draco Malfoy’ was the guest host.  Paramount had Johnny Knoxville come in for the opening weekend of the last “Jack Ass” movie. Jennifer Hudson was there for the opening of “Dreamgirls”. David Arquette hosted exclusive screenings of the first film he produced, wrote, directed and starred in with several other cast members. Eight actors from the “Twilight” films including Ashley Green & Kellan Lutz have hosted opening weekends of that series; with Peter Facinelli hosting the opening weekend of the last installment of Twilight.  Zach Gordon who plays the title role of the “Wimpy Kid” in the movie series of the same name spent the opening weekends hosting these films. Virginia Madsen was in for the opening weekend of the exclusive Chicagoland run of “The Miracle of Belle Island” (in which she co-starred with Morgan Freeman). The week before Christmas, Hollywood hosted Bailee Madison & Josh Rush for the Chicagoland Premier of “Parental Guidance”, which later opened on Christmas Day and in which they co-stared with Billy Crystal & Bette Midler.

Hollywood has also been the host for cast reunions such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Hannah Montana, Animal House, West Side Story, Rocky Horror, The Poseidon Adventure, High School Musical, Back to the Future, Oliver, Star Wars, Willie Wonka, A League of Their Own & others. Roger Ebert had ‘Tweeted” that Hollywood Blvd and Palms was his favorite theaters. The amount of recognition on the national, state, and local levels with various, marketing, community service and achievement awards that Bulthaup’s businesses have been honored with are now too numerous to list here, but include two more marketing awards from the National Association of Theater Owners and nine ‘best’ awards for publicity from the Chicago Publicity Club. 

Bulthaup and the theaters are frequent subjects of state, national and worldwide news stories and a ‘go to’ resource for CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Reuters, and others on industry issues such as CNN & ABC after Aurora, Colorado theater shootings.

Over the years Bulthaup has been an occasional guest lecturer to students on marketing and entrepreneurship.

Based on column inches, broadcast minutes, and website hits, the annual value of generated publicity approached $15,000,000.  That is more than the entire tourism advertising budget for the City of Chicago and the State of Indiana combined. The cinema’s website received at least 5000 hits per week and approximately 160,000 people subscribed to the movie guide which is distributed by email every week. This is a great boon for the cities in which the theaters were located. Bulthaup has always interacted with the community and charitable organizations. Giving away movie tickets is not allowed by the studios and theaters doing so are charged the full cost of admission regardless of the no-charge ticket.  Most cinemas do not donate tickets because of these costs. Bulthaup donated admissions to many causes at his own expense.

This included regular LifeSource blood drives at the cinemas, (get a free ticket when you give blood) and those two theaters were the largest private source of blood for DuPage County. Other highlights included the Easter Seals where entire facilities were donated for use to hold private pre-release events for each of the Harry Potter series of films. The funds were used for the fight against childhood leukemia and eventually a total of about $200,000 was raised. Total admissions of over $50,000 for a weekend of “Back to the Future” screenings were donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation when four of the films actors, including Christopher Lloyd made an in- theater personal appearance.  When Terri Garr hosted screenings of “Young Frankenstein” $30,000 was raised in one evening for the fight against MS (which she suffers from). The annual Oscar Night big screen event raised money for the Variety Children’s Charity, exceeding the amounts raised from Richard Roeper’s downtown Oscar events.

The theaters received national awards for such efforts from Easter Seals, Variety Clubs Children’s Charities, National Association of Theater Owners, Life Source and recognition from many state and local organizations; including from schools, little leagues, park districts, boy & girl scouts, suicide prevention, wildlife rescue, veterans organizations and various other causes.

 Whenever the remaining Munchkins visited the theaters for the annual screenings of “The Wizard of Oz”; Bulthaup would take several of them to area hospital and visit the children’s ward, or hold large

“Meet a Munchkin” events in the hospital cafeterias. Two free tickets were awarded for every toy donated to one of the theaters during the Christmas holidays, which were in turn donated to the WGN toy drive. Karolyn Grimes who played ZuZu in “It’s a Wonderful Life” made 15 consecutive annual paid personal appearances hosting screenings of that iconic film at the theaters. Bulthaup would always have her lead the procession of full toy laden vehicles to the studios, hosting on air segments for the toy drives final day and filming ‘promo spots ‘for the following year. Bulthaup also occasionally lectured to students about marketing and entrepreneurship. Bulthaup has been in the entertainment industry for 40 years, originated the dinner and a movie concept and has been successful in that business for 25 years; easily the most experienced person in the nation on this sector of the industry. Bulthaup is no longer associated with the Hollywood cinemas.

Bulthaup attended both Northern Illinois University for Biology and then DePaul University Majoring in Business Administration for a total of 4 years, all on scholarships. Early education included being named to the National Honor Society and chosen President of the Senior Class at Downers Grove South High School, which is still the only graduating class to leave a surplus in the treasury. Bulthaup managed to hire the band ‘Styx’ to perform at his high school the same month their song “Lady” hit “Number 1” on the national charts. Interested in many things, especially science and history, Ted still holds the record for the most 1st Place Science Awards in the State of Illinois.  Among other awards, Ted won the International Science & Engineering First Prize for Zoology for his work on the biology of bats. This is the Olympics for science fairs with over 1,000,000 students competing worldwide.  He first worked with captive Vampire Bats at Brookfield Zoo in 7th grade and later had laboratory space and equipment at Argonne National Lab’s Biology Building donated for use in his work during his junior and senior years of High School. Between the ages of 12 and 21, Bulthaup gained a national reputation for this work, was a guest lecturer at various high schools, colleges and even the US Naval Research Center in San Diego. Bulthaup was also widely covered in local and national media. The first national television was with Frank Reynolds on the ABC evening news, and later in “Real People” with Sarah Purcell; also the Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, National Enquirer, etc.  He was invited to write an article about his work for National Geographic at age 18, and to locate at the Panama Research Station on Barro Colorado Island for a summer of field work.

Bulthaup was influential in inducing ComEd to donate a 212 acre tract of land that sheltered approximately 30,000 hibernating bats of six species, two of which were endangered and were the only surviving colony of these animals in Illinois.  Those long vacant mines and the surrounding area are now the Pecumsaugan Creek Nature Preserve.

It may be worth mentioning Bulthaup had contracted rheumatic fever at age six, just after starting elementary school, was hospitalized and then confined to bed, not being allowed to walk for almost a year, home studying so as not to be left behind.

Ted is a native Texan, born June 1st, 1957 on the US Air Force base in Lubbock where his father was
a pilot.  Ted was a member of St’ Johns UCC while in Indianapolis (with which his family was affiliated for 4 generations) and now attends Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. He recently divorced but has three children and four grandchildren.  He also sponsored Tony Curtis’ horse rescue ranch ‘Shiloh’ a tiger at Tippi Hedren’s wildlife rescue and bats through Bat Conservation International. ‘Shamballa’. Ted has also maintained his deep childhood interest in American history, especially the Texas Revolution and the Civil War period, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Hollywood movie history and bat conservation.

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Tarrantino 

Granddaughter Jade 

​​Ted's Hollywood Palms Office

 Paver of Yellow Brick Roads

   Ted

​​Ted's Hollywood Palms Office

​​Roger Ebert