Bay Cinema
570 2nd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10016
570 2nd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10016
6 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 42 of 42 comments
I think it was the Kips Bay that hosted a Roger Corman festival around the mid-70s. A great lineup (Day the World Ended, Atlas, et al) but a bit ahead of its time, I think (before Roger was widely recognized as a moving force in the film world), since I recall attendance being pretty sparse at most shows. If it wasn’t the Kipps Bay, it was another theater nearby (East 30s) but I’m pretty sure it was this one.
Saw The Outsiders here when I was 9. I was real young, but I remember walking in and the screen seeming HUGE!
Paul & Tom in 70mm
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I ran this place for a couple of months. “Field of Dreams” was huge there during that period. The theater was sort of annoying to run though; very little lobby space, plus there were no doors on the theaters, just curtains. So we couldn’t let anyone in until the previous show had cleared out, and we couldn’t pop popcorn during the movie.
Anytime AIT needed a filler in the 60’s and 70’s they would book “Fantasia” here.
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I’ve been to that old Kips Bay theatre many times and still live in the area. The actual theatre took up most of the space it lived in. It didn’t have much of a lobby and had a narrow hall in the back from which to enter and exit. The theatre’s screen was hugh, yet it had the smallest consession stand (always a line). I remember when you went to find a seat the theatre was always too dark, maybe to cover up its age. And walking down the aisle towards the front you felt like you were walking downhill. The last film I saw there was Joe Versus The Volcano. It was great…. but a little sad. My girlfriend and I were the only ones in the theatre. I suppose the end was near.
This theater had a desk (built IN) as a box office one of the few theaters i have ever seen with this set up.
Saw Monterey Pop at the Kips Bay in ‘68. It was incredible to experience both Janis Joplin & Jimi Hendrix on that big screen
always liked this theater not big or grand but a nice theater to see a movie
I worked at the Kips Bay as the projectionist during the porno days as well as after Walter Reade changed it to the Bay Cinema. I was flabergasted that a porn house had ToddAO 35/70MM projectors showing porn. There is one porno movie that actually was shot partially in the Kips Bay booth.
When Walter Reade opened it again as a first run theater I was the projectionist for the opening day and stayed there for quite a number of years. I actually rewired the booth for Dolby mag sound and Albert Broccoli actually commented that the Bay Cinema gave the best performance of one of the Bond movies we showed.
I opened ET there that ran for 6 months and was proud to have this movie house be known as one of the best presentations in New York. When Woody Allen opened Stardust Memories in the Bay Cinema I worked with United Artists and they put in Xenon lamps (took away the old carbon arc lamps) and a new screen.
I really enjoyed working there and sometimes miss the fun we used to have. I have lot’s of stories to tell about this great theater.
Oops, in addition to THE ENDLESS SUMMER, I also saw Godard’s LA CHINOISE here in 1968. It’s about as different as you can get from the surfing film: a radical Maoist late New Wave revolutionary tract.
I saw the 7-½ Percent Solution here. I must say the new Loew’s is a beauty for a modern theater, big lobby, high ceilings, large cinemas with big screens and good sound. If it wasn’t so off my path I would go more often.
This theater opened in late 1961 or 1962. The first
movie was “The Manchurian Candidate”
“The Endless Summer” became the endless movie in
the neighborhood, as it ran for about a year
Franw
Funny how I remember this…and I did check, but the only film I ever saw at the Kips Bay was in July of 1966. It was Bruce Brown’s surfing film THE ENDLESS SUMMER, which I believe had its first New York run here.
Robert’s correct – the former Kips Bay Cinema was known as the Bay Cinema during its final years of operation. After closing on December 31, 1993 (the last film booked into the theatre was ‘Carlito’s Way’), the Bay Cinema sat empty and, for quite some time, boarded up, until the leases for the remaining tenants of the strip mall it was a part of (which also included a bicycle supply shop, a bank, and a grocery store) ran out, leading to the demolition of the entire property in the fall of 1997. A new retail structure was built on the site and, in the late spring/early summer of 1999, its tenants (including the Loews Kips Bay multiplex – which resides close to, if not at, the exact spot where the Bay Cinema stood) opened for business.
I believe the name was shortened to Bay Cinema when it became part of the Reade Chain. A friend was the manager of this theatre in the late seventies and he said it was so annoying that they would schedule his shows for any movie under 2 hours at 12-2-4-6-8-10 and he would scrable with the ushers to clean the theatre quick and let the line in. Every weekend they would run off schedule.
Before Walter Reade took it over around 1977 (first attraction The Boys from Company C), this was a neighbourhood house with an odd history…First as an AIT theatre sometimes day-dating with the 72nd St Playhouse, sometimes showing foreign arty films, sometimes some first run…then as a discount house…and as a porn house with a nearly year long run of Devil and Miss Jones…My only real visit was for a Pink Panther movie in 77 or 78 but I can attest to ET having a nearly 6 month first run there in 82