Loew's Oriental Theatre
1832 86th Street,
Brooklyn,
NY
11214
1832 86th Street,
Brooklyn,
NY
11214
31 people
favorited this theater
Showing 76 - 100 of 252 comments
Here’s a nice front view pic I took in either the summer of ‘97 or '98:
<img src=“http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a253/Brooklyn00/LoewsOriental2.jpg” alt=“Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket”>
My grandparents lived off of 86th street (around the corner from the Benson). My grandfather only took us to the Oriental once in 1972. We saw a peculiar kids adventure movie called “Flight of the Doves”. It was a British movie about orphans finding there real parents, and a menacing uncle with a hawk tattooed on his hand was after them. The theater seemed gigantic to me! I love reading all these posts/stories/folk lore. Really haunting and sad… P.S. the above poster who was there when the seats were being tossed in a dumpster—did you take one??????? I would have!
While parking would be necessary for a store such as Marshalls, the difference between a theater and a store is that while with a store you have lots of people coming through the doors over the course of let’s say a day, you don’t have them all coming at the same time, and all parking at the same time as you would with a theater.
Yeah John, remember “The Godfather” at the Oriental very well. Went on a Sunday night in May of 1972 with my friend Mike McG-don`t want to reveal his last name, and his brother Sean.Since they are Irish, I had to tell them what all those Italian expressions ment! The theater was so packed that we had to sit in the first row, center stage.A great night at the movies.
The Oriental was a terrific theater. I grew up six blocks from it and saw many films there. Hercules with Steve Reeves,Visit To A Small Planet, Tarzan The Magnificant, Thief of Bagdad, Wakiest Ship In The Army, Cinderfella, The Cardinal, The Commancheros,Exodus, Guns of Navarone, Von Ryan’s Express,King of Kings, Hey Let’s Twist, Mad Dog Cole, Morgan The Pirate, GI Blues,Blue Hawaii, Of Human Bondage (Kim Novak verison), Amorous Adventures fo Moll Flanders, Five Easy Pieces, In Like Flint, The Train, Stagecoach (1966), Reds and many others. Last fil m I saw there was Leagl Eagelsin 1986.
I remember well when the The Godfather started playing there. The crowds were around the block! The entire neighborhood went. Even my parents who had not been to a movie theater in years.
The theatre, if booked right and the place was cookin', on a Friday or Saturday night would draw far more customers at any given time than Marshalls can, particularly now that there few theatres left in Brooklyn – hence, the parking issue. There’s a Marshalls over here by me and you could throw a bomb in there and not bother anybody…. Besides, Sony was not interested in the theatres – they were just part of the the baggage they got when they took over Columbia Pictures. Once they discovered they owned them they decided to use them as a petri dish for their experiments with cinema audio equipment and development of SDDS.
Incredible-isn`t it. Parking was never an issue for the almost 70 years the Oriental was open for. They just gave up on it, gutted it and opened a Marshalls.I quess the future of Bensonhurst will be more stores and many, many more of those so-called “Cookie Cutter” houses that are spreading like wild mushrooms throughout the neighborhood on almost every vacant lot there is. Call it “borough improvement” if you like. I call it a blight-and an eyesore that is even worse than the closed Oriental theater and the surrounding stores that were near it.The nearest theaters that are still open are the UA Sheepshead and the Alpine. The less said about these, the better.
Yes Mr Feuer, Marshall’s really enhanced the district. Real upscale.
Thank you, Patrick, for addressing the issue ! You see, boys, we’re not alone ! DOWN, Warren !!! SIT !!! QUIET !!!
Good points, Theaterat and Bway, and so, so apropos to Election Day !
As we approach Veterans Day, let’s stop running both the “bad movie”, as Bway called it, and end the war within Cinema Treasures.
I agree it’s time for this movie engagement to end, its the same movie in so many theaters…. it’s been playing in so many theaters on this site already….pretty impressive even for theater that have been closed to showing movies….
Time to take those letters off the marquee and move on, and get back to what we are all here for (and it’s not this bad “movie”).
Friends, Romans, countrymen, etc,etc, etc, Lets stop the personal attacks and senseless accusations. This is a website devoted to theaters and infomation on them be it past or present.After all, we did have enough of that during the election campaign with all those cheap and negative ads from the politicos from BOTH parties! Lets not carry that over to Cinema Treasures!
Warren, it’s not your job to worry about whether an image has copyright issues. Leave that to the people who run this website.
As you can see, attacking the contribution of another user is pretty counter-productive. And, personally, I’m pretty tired of dealing with the same argument, over and over, on multiple theater pages.
Your contributions are welcome. But, if you can’t get along with other users on this site, or at least stop baiting people with negative comments, we may be forced to suspend your posting privileges for a while.
From Warren: <<If “Mark W” needs to contact me, my private e-mail address is displayed (and always has been) at my membership page. There is no need for him to post complaints to the webmaster, if he really has.>>
If Warren had only followed his own advice more often, think of all the space we might have saved on these pages not having to waste bandwidth on the bilge about the bilge! G whiz!
Seriously, I REALLY do know Mark, not personally, but have met him in person a few times. He is most definitely a real person.
MarkW is definitely a different and single person. He is not any of the other people here, I know him from a different forum, and is most definitely not any of the other people here, and can vouch for his credibility.
Lost, the word is “deportment”… which perhaps needs to be amended to “deportation” in his case.
I write this comment openly to Patrick and/or Ross and would like to know why it is that Warren continues to get away with wantonly aggravating other members on this site with no apparent provocation? Perhaps he has been privately admonished, but I see no contrition or abatement on his part. It may be Warren has been careful not to cross any “obvious” lines and becoming vulgar or explicit – but aren’t some of his comments of late even in the slightest bit reprehensible? Go check out his comments on the Beacon Theater page (CT #42) from November 6th towards Lost Memory and mikemovies and tell me I’m wrong.
As great as so many of his contributions over the years have been to this site, I am hard pressed to think of another individual member who has been the cause of more personal rancor on this site or wasted more bandwidth by belligerently haranguing folks over the nature of their contributions and comments.
I am getting pretty fed up with it.
I don’t understand how that comment got messed up. Perhaps ‘Warren" caused it. haha
Very cool photo. Thanx for sharing and not being selfish like another fella here.
Originally the theatre was made into a twin in the mid 70’s by splitting the orchestra and balcony sections.
Later in the early 80’s the balcony was split into two thus creating a triplex theatre. Two theatres above and a single theatre underneath.
The balcony was split into 2 theaters. The orchestra was untouched.
How was it cut up when they multiplexed it, two or three theaters in the old balcony?
So some enterprising person could do something with the balcony theatres?
The last movie to play here was “A Pyromaniac’s Love Story.” A long way from “Moonstruck”, which I saw there one cold winter’s night !