Paris Cinema

841 Boylston Street,
Boston, MA 02215

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Showing 26 - 45 of 45 comments

bunnyman
bunnyman on February 8, 2005 at 1:38 pm

I’m not sure who owned it during its softcore days. May have been pre-Sack.

Also to answer WHY theatres close without advance word is because the company does not want any bad publicity and any theatre closing always brings out folks who loved the house. Just look at the few good comments on Copley Place after it closed. If the property is being sold the fans may try to block the theatre being torn down. Perhaps even try to get it landmark status. The last thing a movie company wants is a landmark because ANY changes in the place have to be approved by a commission.
Sack resisted having the Saxon given landmark status for years because they wanted to sell it, not restore it.

David Wodeyla
David Wodeyla on February 7, 2005 at 4:07 pm

I think it was a Sack theatre in 1967 when I saw “The Graduate” there.

Ron Newman
Ron Newman on February 7, 2005 at 3:47 pm

I thought Sack bought this in the late 1970s — did they really run it as a soft-porn operation?

bunnyman
bunnyman on February 7, 2005 at 3:41 pm

The Paris also had a time as a softcore/high class porn house in the late 70s early 80s. I remember a fairly long run for ‘The Naughty Victorians’ and also ‘Autobiography of a Flea.’ Likely others too.

Ron Newman
Ron Newman on January 27, 2005 at 9:38 pm

The Beacon Hill also booked art and foreign films in 1982, and I think this policy lasted until the Copley Place opened in February 1984. I’ve posted more about this on the Beacon Hill page.

The Paris closed less than four months after the Beacon Hill closed.

Gerald A. DeLuca
Gerald A. DeLuca on January 27, 2005 at 2:44 pm

I can tell you with certainty that the Beacon Hill was indeed one of Boston’s prime art houses in the 1950s and 1960s and, I believe, earlier, with many of the top foreign films playing here. I remember movies like the French version of “Gigi” playing here in the early 50s. I was too young to come to Boston to see it at the time, but I used to like to check out movie ads in the Boston papers. I believe the first movie I ever saw here was Nanni Loy’s “The Four Days of Naples” in 1963. I came up from Providence as a college student just to see that. I too saw “Casanova” here, but I don’t remember it as being reserved seat at the time. The other art houses in the period of the 1950s and 1960s were the Kenmore Cinema (torn down to build I-90), the Exeter Street Theatre, and the Telepix (later Park Square Cinema), the West End Cinema (1960s).

ErikH
ErikH on January 27, 2005 at 12:57 pm

I don’t remember the Beacon Hill as an “art house” per se, although I remember the occasional foreign film was shown there. Fellini’s “Casanova” played the Beacon Hill on a reserved seat basis in the mid-1970s, before the conversion to a triplex. And after the conversion, the Beacon Hill mostly showed first runs of Hollywood films not considered strong enough for the Cheri, etc. or moveovers.

bunnyman
bunnyman on January 25, 2005 at 11:02 am

The Copley Place Cinema closing?
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving theatre.
Badly designed and done strictly so Sack Theatres (or whatever they were called at the time) could control the art house movies. When it opened it was widly reported that they had raised the price for art house films. distributors could get paid more for running there than traditional art houses in Boston. All part of the chain attempting to control the city. They all ready had the only regular theatres in town, so it was only art films & revival houses as alternatives.
Anyone remember the Beacon Hill triplex as an art house?

Ron Newman
Ron Newman on January 6, 2005 at 1:50 pm

Whenever I read an old article about Sack/USACinemas/Loew’s closing a theatre in Boston, it’s always the same story: the theatre closes stealthily with no advance notice, and the people inside on the last day have no idea they’re the last patrons.

Why can’t they do this with some style and class for a change? Announce the last day a month in advance. Book a special film for the last day, or better yet a film festival for the last week, featuring movies that once showed at the soon-to-close theatre. Go out on a high note, and give people a chance to say proper goodbyes to a place where they spent so much time and money for so many years.

Perhaps I should post this comment under Copley Place, which will soon be the next Loew’s theater to close.

IanJudge
IanJudge on January 5, 2005 at 2:29 pm

Chains often buy theaters to control a market – to prevent others from having that power – rather than because they like a theater for its size and style. They also know how hard it is to build a new theater in an urban area, so they figure by buying and controlling the local market, nobody will challenge that for a long time, which is true in Boston – look how long it took for the Fenway and Boston Common theaters to open after years of closing houses left and right. It also makes the chain more powerful to film distributors – “you want your film to play Boston, you deal only with US”. I am not saying this is at all right, but it is one of the reasons why.

Also, distribution changes and release patterns have drastically changed in the last 25 years, not to mention the population changes in Boston. There was a terrific article in the Phoenix a few years back that recalled how Boston went from a city for masses of ‘regular’ people (many large theaters, huge cafeteria style restaurants, dozens of local and corner markets) to a city for more upscale and particular people (small botiques, smaller stylish restaurants, many small screens for special tastes at theaters rather than one for everybody). The population of Boston proper has dropped from a high of over 800,000 in 1950 to 550,000 today, yet there is a huge housing crunch, all because these neighborhoods used to be teeming with families and are now occupied by young professionals. On my residential street alone, there are at least 70 apartments… years ago, each apartment would have two parents, a couple of kids, an aunt or uncle or grandparents… now, one or two young professionals live in each unit… that’s at least one hundred less people on my street who USED to go to stores, restaurants, and MOVIES. And that’s one street.

Times have changed and unfortunately, the theaters are one of the victims.

Ron Newman
Ron Newman on January 5, 2005 at 1:37 pm

That’s a pattern that has repeated itself throughout the history of the Sack – USACinemas – Loews chain of ownership. They build or buy a theatre, gradually let it run down, then close it. Happened to the Beacon Hill, the Pi Alley, the Charles, the Savoy, the Saxon, the Gary, the 57, the Cheri, the Nickelodeon, the Janus …

ErikH
ErikH on January 5, 2005 at 1:27 pm

The NYC Paris has a very unique history as it was owned for decades by the French company Pathe. For that reason, a connection between the Boston and NYC Paris theaters is probably unlikely.

I agree that the Boston Paris was neglected by Sack/USA. For example, despite its reputation as a prestige house in the 70s and 80s, management never bothered to install a stereo sound system at the Paris, even when Dolby had become commonplace.

Ron Newman
Ron Newman on January 5, 2005 at 1:02 pm

Anyone know when this opened? Did it have any relationship to the Paris cinema in New York City?

bunnyman
bunnyman on January 5, 2005 at 12:58 pm

A great single screen house.
At one point in its history it was owned by the same group that owned the Welles who tried to bring a sense of fun to it including an ‘Paris goes ape’ film marathon the year the horrible King Kong remake came out.
Mostly it was neglected by the Sack chain that owned it afterwards.
It’ll always be in my memory because when he was filming Bostonians in town, Christopher Reeve came by to see Zelig and stayed around to talk a bit afterwards.

Ron Newman
Ron Newman on January 4, 2005 at 9:21 am

The last picture show at the Paris began on Sunday, March 21, 1993, at 10:15 pm, according to a Boston Globe article published the following month.

“The handful of patrons watching ‘Sommersby’ probably had no idea they were saying finis to Boston’s last single-screen movie house; Loews Theaters gave no advance notice to nostalgia.”

brcleve
brcleve on November 8, 2004 at 1:38 pm

The facade was all glass, looking into the lobby, which did indeed have benches. You had to walk through the entire lobby to get to the doors into the auditorium. Originally part of the Embassy Theatre chain (Joseph E Levine), along with the Kenmore, Park Sq, West End and (I believe) The Abbey. Showed Euro art films in its early days as I recall. “The Graduate” had a very long run there in the late 60’s. Had the Eiffel Tower on it’s signage.

avkarr
avkarr on March 21, 2004 at 9:55 pm

A great theatre, seem to remember a lot of glass and vinyl benches
in the lobby. Saw MOVIE MOVIE there and others. Similiar cachet to
seeing movies at the BEEKMAN or (new) ZIEGFELD in Manhattan.

br91975
br91975 on March 16, 2004 at 11:09 pm

Ian’s correct – the final film to screen at the Paris was indeed ‘Sommersby’, in the spring of 1993. The theatre – which, for a time, was where a vast majority of Woody Allen’s films were booked first-run in Boston – was completely demolished within two months' time.

IanJudge
IanJudge on March 16, 2004 at 1:58 pm

The old Paris is now a Walgreens. I believe that the last movie to play there was “Sommersby” with Jodie Foster.

Gerald A. DeLuca
Gerald A. DeLuca on March 16, 2004 at 10:52 am

I remember seeing some terrific or terrifically interesting movies here over the years. Among the first I saw in the theatre’s opening years were Antonioni’s ZABRISKIE POINT, with the doomed star Mark Frechette meeting patrons in the lobby before the evening show, Pasolini’s THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT MATTHEW, Rossif’s TO DIE IN MADRID, Loren and Mastroianni in De Sica’s YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW. It was a comfortable roomy place.