Plaza Theatre
42 E. 58th Street,
New York,
NY
10022
42 E. 58th Street,
New York,
NY
10022
18 people
favorited this theater
Showing 126 - 150 of 167 comments
Ed, NOT A LOVE STORY, the feminist anti-porn documentary with all the porn scenes plate dthe 57th St. Playhouse in June 1982. The PLAZA was showing an extended run of the hit DIVA.
I’m still curious if anyone knows whether any of the original Plaza Theater decor remains in the current Tao restaurant that occupies the space. I drove past not too long ago and the place is definitely still open, but I couldn’t see much inside. I’m fairly certain I saw the Lindsay Anderson comedy “Brittania Hospital” with Malcom McDowell here in ‘83. And there was a quasi-documentary film in 1986 called “Stripper” that I also saw here. Or so I believe. Does anyone know of any interior photos?
I’m not sure that I ever attended this theater, but I’m trying to track down if a movie named “Not a Love Story” played here around 1981? This was an un-rated (but definitely graphic) documentary about the porno industry that I definitely saw in one of the small mid-town theaters in the upper ‘50’s. I originally thought I saw this at either the Festival or 57th Street Playhouse but then I got to thinking it might have been here at the Plaza or maybe even the Paris Theater or the Cinema III in the Plaza Hotel.
Does the movie ring a bell with anyone? Anyone familiar with midtown bookings for the film?
The director of this film used to make pro nazi films. I have never seen this film but remember reading a lot about it in a film class.
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Was the theater completely gutted for the TAO restaurant? I understand the food there is good, and might be interested in making some dinner plans, with camera on hand, particularly if any of the original decor remains.
As hardbop mentioned back in April, there is confusion regarding this theater and the one that was actually located within the Plaza Hotel on Central Park South. I was confused myself about it. That theater (in the hotel) was called Cinema III and was also turned into a restaurant! Here’s the cinematreasures page: /theaters/6461/
I remember going with my dad and brother back in the 1950’s to see an Alex Guiness film. It was a charming movie house that added to New York’s charm.
Does anyone have further information on the Chaplin series that played at the Plaza in the 60s? Or on where The Great Dictator played when it was re-released in 1972?
It was a mess over when they were building that Four Seasons hotel.
I saw “Henry V” and “A Midnight Clear” here in the early 1990s. Great theatre but its location was a bit off the beaten path for moviegoers. I just walked by yesterday, it’s some kind of club or restaurant now. I saw some of the comments above saying it is called TAO but I did not see a name. What I recall about seeing both films there is that even though I attended them years apart, the street and sidewalk outside the Plaza theatre were very messy. Trash, dirty gutters, parts of the street barricaded and jackhammering going on, etc. The theatre itself was nearly empty.
A brief scene filmed at the New York premiere here of De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis in December of 1971 appears in the Italian TV documentary That’s Life: Vittorio De Sica. It is included on the Criterion DVD of Umberto D. The director, others associated with the film, and moviegoers can be seen walking in. The Plaza marquee is clearly evident. We see the front of the theatre and inside the entrance. The scene appears toward the very end of the documentary.
THESE THEATRE ADS appeared in a program booklet “Stadium Concerts Review” for Lewisohn Stadium, College of the City of New York, for July 29 to August 4, 1936. The concerts were by the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra. The small ads tout what was playing at several New York movie theatres. One of them was for the Plaza, then showing The Princess Comes Along.
Here’s a Showbill from December, 1960:
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Ποτή τιν ΚυÏιάκι was a huge hit because it made prostitution and sex seem funny and political at the same time. Melina Mercouri supplied the fun on screen with her energetic performance, which she later repeated on the B’way stage in a musical version of the film, I believe one of the first live musicals to derive from a film rather than vice versa. Appropriately too, Mercouri was intensely political in her off-screen activities; it flowed in her blood as the daughter of a Greek Minister of Parliament and granddaughter of the Mayor of Athens. Off-screen, Jules Dassin supplied yet more politics as a resister to McCarthyism in H’wood and an ex-pat who found open-mindedness abroad. On screen, he was hardly funny at all. Mercouri worked in overdrive to give the film the bounce it had.
The article mentioned on the cover, “Can We Take It?†by Robert Hughes, a filmmaker who worked with the United Nations Film Unit, argues that foreign films such as “Hiroshima mon amour” and “Generale della Rovere” have made better anti-war statements than the American-made “Paths of Glory” and “On the Beach.” It ends with a plea for the theatrical showing of John Huston’s unreleased (read: censored) “Let There Be Light,” a 1945 short about combat neurosis. In this year of Our Lord 2005, what could be more relevant?
I noticed that also.
Curious that “David & Lisa” was a Walter Reade release but was not (according to the above ad), exhibited at any of his NYC art-house outlets.
“David & Lisa” was in it’s 7th month in this ad.
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After they had installed the new sound system, one of the rock films they screened was Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels.I went on a Friday night and it was so crowded people were sitting in the aisles.On the other side of the moviegoing spectrum, I also saw Travels With My Aunt, and The Madwoman Of Chaillot[pardon the spelling]and Otto Preminger’s Rosebud
Here’s a Showbill program from the Plaza in December, 1959:
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“Black Orpheus†was a huge hit with college kids who knew enough of the Greek myth to be able to trace the lines of telling and retelling in its modernized Brazilian setting. It was perhaps even more of a hit with cinephiles who could compare it with Jean Cocteau’s symbolist-Orphic trilogy. Though I liked Cocteau’s versions, my friends persuaded me that Camus’s film was more kinetic, more hip, and certainly more musically thrilling than any of his.
I carried the message back to campus, and when the film moved from the Plaza to the Apollo on 42 Street a few months later, I organized a bunch of students who’d never seen a sub-titled film to accompany me. I think it was on Good Friday evening, and it changed more than a few lives by winning converts to the religion of foreign film. The picture’s AA for Best Foreign Film of the Year that Spring seemed to validate the effort.
A great theater and fond memories for me since the Plaza was the first theater I went to in Manhattan (from Brooklyn). Went to see Tony Richardson’s Mademoiselle there. Also remember seeing:
Petulia
Hurry Sundown
Rachel, Rachel
Alfredo, Alfredo
Fillmore
That’s Entertainment or maybe it was That’s Entertainment 2
Cineplex Odeon destroyed this cinema’s image by playing dumb mainstream comedies and move-over films instead of the specialised art films that worked so well. On films such as CROSSING DELANCEY and MY OWN PRTIVATE IDAHO that Plaza provided some of the highest grosses in the country.
Charles, what do the pictures in that link have to do with the Plaza on 58th Street???
One other nice touch I liked about the Plaza and some other theatres was the reception area in the basement. I remember the Biograph on 57th Street and the Gramercy on 23rd Street had these type of rooms as well.
The Plaza went under pretty quietly. That was Cineplex Odeon’s modus operandi when it came to closing its theatres – suddenly and without any advance press or notice. What that policy failed to take into account was the special attachment New Yorkers tend to have towards their favorite moviegoing haunts.
I can’t remember where I saw “Flirting:"it was "Spanking” that I caught at the Plaza. My bad. In fact, “Spanking” may have been the last film I caught at the Plaza. That was back in ‘94.
I don’t remember any kind of hullabaloo when the Plaza closed. It was done very quietly. I never went to the theatre when it ran that “New York Experience” type of show nor have I been to the restaurant that is there now.
‘Spanking the Monkey’ was actually David O. Russell’s first film, hardbop. The Plaza, meanwhile, closed in January of ‘96 with 'Grumpier Old Men’, while ‘Flirting with Disaster’ opened in March of that year; it was also the final film booked into the 68th Street Playhouse – perhaps that’s where you saw it?
This is the one theatre that I wish had been saved of the theatres I patronized since I moved to NYC (‘82). What a beauty. It would have made for a great revival house.