Plaza Theatre
42 E. 58th Street,
New York,
NY
10022
42 E. 58th Street,
New York,
NY
10022
18 people
favorited this theater
Showing 151 - 167 of 167 comments
I too miss this cinema. What I most remember about it was its dark wood. I can never remember it having a clear identity like its neighbor, for example, the Paris Cinema. Like Jamal, I remember seeing “Straight Out of Brooklyn” here when it opened. I also remember seeing “Flirting With Disaster,” David O. Russell’s first film.
Also there was a lot of confusion between the Plaza Theatre and Cinema 1 I believe it was called, which was actually located in the Plaza Hotel.
I remember very clearly seeing RAN at Cinema I when it opened. I took frineds and family back a few times to see it again and again (This was, of course, in the days before vcr’s). Perhaps they shared the run, I don’t recall now.
Among other memorable films mentioned above (except for “Hiroshima mon amour” and “The 400 Blows,” which opened at the Fine Arts down the block), I remember at the Plaza “Witness for the Prosecution” (day-dating at the Victoria), “The Leopard,” and Kurosawa’s “Ran,” from which I exited the first row of the raised section in a power-locked trance. Yum.
A true jewel box and its closure has been a major loss. A miniature movie palace that like its bigger cousins transported you into the movie world, shutting out the outside. The walnut paneling made it feel like a private club. Under the Rugoff stewardship there was some updating, particularly the installation of state of the art sterophonic sound when Gimme Shelter (a Cinema 5 release)was presented. Somehow, this did not detract from the special ambiance. Seeing both Amarcord & Garden of the Finzi Continis there added to the uniqueness of both films. Before becoming a Rugoff venue, wasn’t the Plaza under the ownership of Ilya Lopert?
In reading prior comments, I now recall this theatre. At that time I lived with my family in Brooklyn, N.Y. I saw BLACK TIGHTS and I believe NEVER ON SUNDAY here. I really like the Plaza. I remember the stadium seating.
Anyone know what became of Polly, legendary cashier of the late 70’s?(“Somehing’s rotten in Denmark and it isn’t cheese!”)
The Plaza shut its doors in January of 1996 with ‘Grumpier Old Men’. The last first-run, initial release film I recall being booked into it was ‘Blue Sky’, in October of 1994.
The building that the Plaza Theatre was in was built in the late 1800s and originally the stable for the Vanderbilt mansion that occupied the site where Bergdorf-Goodman is today from 1889 to 1926. The blocks between Madison and Lexington were industrial/commercial/utility properties, because Park Avenue at that time was the New York Central right-of-way with railroad tracks on the surface going into the old Grand Central Terminal. Open rail yards occupied the area from 57th St. to the old terminal on 42nd St. from Lexington to Madison Avenues. The ajoining blocks were not desirable property until sometime after 1910, when the new (present) Grand Central Terminal was built, and it’s rail yards and right-of-way was put under ground.
In addition to the Vanderbuilt stable becoming a movie theatre, The main house on Fifth Ave. also had a connection to the movie theatres. Before the above-mentioned Vanderbilt mansion was demolished in 1926, Marcus Loew bought and and disassembled the Vanderbilt’s mosaic Moorish Smoking Room and had it reassembled as the Ladies Lounge in the Loew’s Midland Theatre in Kansas City, and it is still there today. The chandelier from the same room was installed in the lobby of the Loew’s State Theatre in Syracuse.
When I worked for Cinema 5 in the late 70’s I would sometimes usher at the Plaza. While it was not a comfortable theatre, it had beautiful architecture including a gorgeous wood panelled lobby you would enter descending down a staircase from the front lobby.
Does this theater appear in “Annie Hall”? There’s a scene where Diane Keaton meets her date in front of the Plaza Theater. It’s supposed to be some suburban theater in Wisconsin or somewhere, but I always thought it was filmed at the Plaza in New York. I don’t remember what the theater looked like now, and I had only been there once, for Fellini’s “Amarcord”.
What a beautiful theatre. And it was on the south side of 58th St. It hosted the first run in NY of such films as Never on Sunday, Hiroshima Mon Amour, the 400 Blows, Black Orchid, Black Orpheus, Black Tights, and other foreign language or art films. The venue changed, and in the early 90’s had such fare as a Shirley MacLaine/Teri Garr film with the word “Light” in the title. Around 1960, Otto Preminger appeared there in person one Saturday morning to talk about his by then several year old film Saint Joan. He discussed it and answered questions from the students and film buffs present, then showed the movie (or vice versa, perhaps).
The Plaza is now an excellent restaurant called TAO.
The Plaza was one of New York’s most architecturally unique and magnificent art houses! Its demise will long be lamented by film buffs. I do not live in New York but would often go there to see films when in the city. The wood panels and moldings made it seem like you were in an English country church. Just walking into this place made you happy. It had true class. In the 1960s a revival series of Chaplin’s great feature films, many unseen in decades, played here and this is where I went to see CITY LIGHTS for the first time. De Sica’s GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS is also a special memory from the Plaza. There was a delightful waiting area downstairs where you could relax before the film began. It hurts to know that this treasure is gone.
The Plaza was always a Rugoff/Cinema 5 theatre from my consciousness in the mid 60s until it ended up with Cineplex Odeon in the 80s…a great great house with its older small town trimmings in the lobby…saw a wide range of pictures there in first and second run including a Charlie Chaplin retrospective in the 60s, Alfredo Alfredo, The Garden of the Finzi Contini, Viva Maria, Round Midnight, Bird, The Music Box, The Cook, The Thief His Wife and Her Lover the first half at least until the film broke…In the 80s Diva ran here for nearly a year and Branagh’s Henry V was here for a 5 – 6 month run
I’m just thinking Walter Reade may have also had The Plaza at one time?????
Cinema 5 had this theate for many years but I dont know who operated it in its infancy. To the day it closed it had wooden box protectors that were manually placed over the show cases at night. Another thing I remember was alot of the ornateness was wood and not plaster.
it was a beautiful theatre,I miss it