Park Square Cinema

The Telepix first opened in March 1939. An article with photo of mayor appeared in the Boston Globe on March 15, 1939.

I was moved by reading the words by filmgene"about my aunt Inga Lovén, manager at the Telepix. Yes she returned to Sweden and this coming year 2016 there will be an exhibition of her paintings at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. I am her niece and the project manager of the exhibition. I would very much like to come in contact with the person behind the signature filmgene. I would like show her deep and broad intellectual on many areas, not only painting. She later became friends with the poet Charles Olsson and translated his poetry to Swedish. I would also like to get in contact with the signature debweil. Mr Isaac was my aunt employer. He gave her very free hands from what I understand. Maybe you have photos, poster or stories to tell about my aunt. My email is:

I frequented the Park Square Cimema(Actually renamed THE PARK SQUARE MOVIEHOUSE by then)in ‘72-'73 when I was 13 and 14.I saw THE GANG’S ALL HERE(1943)in jaw-dropping Technicolor in 1972, and wished that movies could still look like that.I wished my LIFE could like like that!I searched for more 40s Technicolor films like that, but in vain(“Gang’s All Here” was a special Dye Imbibition reprint)-Technicolor printing was close to obsolete, and in a few years Fox would convert all the negatives to splotchy, blotchy Eastmancolor versions and throw the Technicolor originals away!At least they’re Color-TV stations often ran them only in B/W!

How nice to remember the Telepix. I was a film student at BU during the early sixties and got to know the Manager of the theater quite well. She was Inge Loven, a lovely Swedish woman with an artificial leg who was a connoisseur of cinema. I remember spending hours in her tiny office at the theater talking about Kurosawa and the other greats. I believe she eventually returned to Sweden. I left Boston for New York before the name change. I am the new Director of the Visual Arts Theater in NYC (see entry). I hope Inge would be pleased. I think of her often.

Is Ty Burr’s article online? Can you link to it? Thanks.

From the MIT newspaper The Tech, September 26, 1962:

Park Square Cinema: Telepix With New Face
[quote]The old Telepix Theater has received a new look and a new name. Now the Park Square Cinema, it seats 300 people, has a wider screen and new murals.

The abstract murals, done by Norman Ives, are of wood blocks that protrude at different depths from the wall. The outside mural is in white and black, the inside one in red and black.

New Zeis-Ikon projectors, not using carbon arcs, have been added.[/quote]
Next to this article is a review of the movie Divorce – Italian Style, playing at the Park Square. I don’t know whether this was the first movie to play at the theatre under its new name.

The MGM Theatre Photograph and Report form for the Telepix Theatre has an exterior photo taken in May 1941. There is a rather fancy doorway with a double door set in it. Above is a small rain canopy with “Park Square Building” on it. Above the canopy is a small vertical sign but it’s not readable. There is nothing about this entrance which suggests there’s a cinema inside. The Report states that the Telepix is a Newsreel theatre; that it’s on St. James Avenue, that it has been showing MGM product for 2 years; that it was built in 1939, is in Good condition, and has 500 seats, all on one floor. On the Report is written “Nice little house”.

Correction to the above— the Telepix was in the Park Square building, not the Greyhound bus station. The bus station, a typical ‘Hound semi-Deco structure, was directly across St. James Avenue. There was an earlier Park Square Theatre, not related to this one, located a short distance to the east. It was the former Cort Theatre, a legit house.

The name was changed from Telepix to Park Square sometime in the early 1960s. It was across from the old Greyhound bus station in the Park Sq. Bldg. There was a small plain sign outside, rather inconspicuous.

Here is an article from the Harvard Crimson about the opening of the Telepix in 1939. I don’t know exactly when it became the Park Square, but it was probably 1962 or 1963. I went to a movie here (The Bicycle Thief) at the end of December, 1961 when it was the Telepix. In July of 1963 the place was showing Love at Twenty and was called the Park Square. So the name change had to have taken place within that time.

Saw some grade Z lite ‘X’ movie here in 1968-69 – the one and only time I ventured into the wierd entrance, which was so difficult to ascertain.
Totally forgetable, although we chattered like mongooses over the dialog for weeks afterwards – it was that bad.

I didn’t know that Hugh Stubbins was the designer-thanks for the info. I loved that theater, used to go there as the Telepix. They showed some foreign films and various short subjects. I remember seeing the Sacha Guitry film ‘Royal Affaires at Versailles’ (with the auteur, Edith Piaf, Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, & Gerard Philipe)-also the Picasso film where he paints directly onto transparencies. It was cheap, and you got to see lots of stuff. The scheduling was a little random, and you couldn’t be exactly sure when anything would start. Later, mid 60s, it became the Park SQ, and seemed more ‘art house’ with features. The building is the ‘Park Sq. Building’. When built, it was supposed to revolutionize office layout, since each floor was 3 football fields long, and you could cram a whole company on each floor. The street floor houses branch banks, shops, travel agencies, etc. I remember the lobby of the theater space had a sculptural relief of painted wooden square pegs, with the ends painted in different bright colors, somewhat resembling a scifi atomic pile.

The Park Square Cinema started out as the Telepix Newsreel Theatre. The following is a quote from an architectural magazine circa 1939. ‘In Boston is the tiny but very distinguished Telepix Newsreel Theater, designed by Marc Peter, Jr., and Hugh Stubbins. By intelligent use of color, and by accentuation of planes, the architects succeeded in enlarging the apparent volume. The seating arrangement in the auditorium is mechanically ingenious and also superbly comfortable.’