Elwood=“Does anyone know the wherabouts of the couple running the Bleecker Street Cinema and the Carnegie Hall Cinema in the mid seventies to the mid eighties (jacqueline… and syd….)
In fact syd re-opened the Carnegie Hall Cinema as a classics movie theater in 73 or 74 after its closing for a few year as a porn cinema!I think syd died in 85 and his wife continued running the Bleecker street for a while. I’d like to know more.”
Jacqueline Reynal and Sid Geffen. Sid died in a mysterious way, and much of the staff felt Jackie was responsible, but maybe because she was such an unpleasant person. She’d made some film “Hotel New York” loosely based on her NYC experiences…she’d supposedly edited for Renoir, and done some acting. One memorable review called her “a grade Z Rita Hayworth”. HNY was quite bad, the rumour went. We had cans and cans of that film stored all over the theatres, the “forever edit”…Anyway, after Sid died she got involved with a rich French doctor. She owner the theatres, but never actually ran them, at least not while I worked for them in the early-mid 80’s.
Edward Havens: “It should also be noted the Bleecker Street helped create the cult of "The Toxic Avenger,” by picking the film up for Saturday midnight screenings when no other theatre (in town or around the country) would touch the film."
I was working at the Bleecker when Toxic Avenger opened there. The writer, Joe something, used to hang out, amazed that the film was so popular. I remember wild posting for it late at night, along with the concession guy. At the time, I remember thinking it was brilliant. Too much cough syrup, perhaps.
The Bleecker had this great mural hidden away behind the stairway. If you remember the theatre, you had to go through a door to go upstairs to go to the restrooms. If you turned left, you hit the stairsway. If you turned right, you’d see a mural that depicted WW2 Italian soldiers being tended to by medics..the best part of it was the bullet strafing across about 40% of it. I’m guessing a mob hit when it was a restaurant?…They also had that great organ on stage in the theatre on the right, hidden in the wings…
The thing that made me leave the Bleecker and move to the West Coast was when we showed Goddard’s “Hail, Mary” and some goofy Catholic group decided to protest us. They had a statue of the Virgin Mary delivered by limo every morning, and said the rosary & stations of the cross all day long. They were protesting me by name on signs, and helped turn a film that was dying a dog’s death a week before into a real moneymaker that ran what felt like an aeon…left in September of 1986 and it closed a while later…what a cool place.
UFO
commented about
777 Theatreon
Sep 8, 2006 at 8:41 am
I used to work at the H'wood Twin when Nick Marino ran it. Whatta nuthouse…programming was done by Nick and a guy named Gary Grann. The theatre was turned over by Nick to his half-brother Robert at the request of Robert’s father, Nick’s stepfather. The place closed soon after. Moved on to the Carnegie Hall, then the Bleecker Street; they were owned by real eastate maven Sid Geffen and his filmmaker wife Jackie Reynal. That was an odd time for rep houses. VCRs were just becoming popular, and so movies you could only see in rep houses became more widely available and viewable in your own home…
Elwood=“Does anyone know the wherabouts of the couple running the Bleecker Street Cinema and the Carnegie Hall Cinema in the mid seventies to the mid eighties (jacqueline… and syd….)
In fact syd re-opened the Carnegie Hall Cinema as a classics movie theater in 73 or 74 after its closing for a few year as a porn cinema!I think syd died in 85 and his wife continued running the Bleecker street for a while. I’d like to know more.”
Jacqueline Reynal and Sid Geffen. Sid died in a mysterious way, and much of the staff felt Jackie was responsible, but maybe because she was such an unpleasant person. She’d made some film “Hotel New York” loosely based on her NYC experiences…she’d supposedly edited for Renoir, and done some acting. One memorable review called her “a grade Z Rita Hayworth”. HNY was quite bad, the rumour went. We had cans and cans of that film stored all over the theatres, the “forever edit”…Anyway, after Sid died she got involved with a rich French doctor. She owner the theatres, but never actually ran them, at least not while I worked for them in the early-mid 80’s.
Edward Havens: “It should also be noted the Bleecker Street helped create the cult of "The Toxic Avenger,” by picking the film up for Saturday midnight screenings when no other theatre (in town or around the country) would touch the film."
I was working at the Bleecker when Toxic Avenger opened there. The writer, Joe something, used to hang out, amazed that the film was so popular. I remember wild posting for it late at night, along with the concession guy. At the time, I remember thinking it was brilliant. Too much cough syrup, perhaps.
The Bleecker had this great mural hidden away behind the stairway. If you remember the theatre, you had to go through a door to go upstairs to go to the restrooms. If you turned left, you hit the stairsway. If you turned right, you’d see a mural that depicted WW2 Italian soldiers being tended to by medics..the best part of it was the bullet strafing across about 40% of it. I’m guessing a mob hit when it was a restaurant?…They also had that great organ on stage in the theatre on the right, hidden in the wings…
The thing that made me leave the Bleecker and move to the West Coast was when we showed Goddard’s “Hail, Mary” and some goofy Catholic group decided to protest us. They had a statue of the Virgin Mary delivered by limo every morning, and said the rosary & stations of the cross all day long. They were protesting me by name on signs, and helped turn a film that was dying a dog’s death a week before into a real moneymaker that ran what felt like an aeon…left in September of 1986 and it closed a while later…what a cool place.
I used to work at the H'wood Twin when Nick Marino ran it. Whatta nuthouse…programming was done by Nick and a guy named Gary Grann. The theatre was turned over by Nick to his half-brother Robert at the request of Robert’s father, Nick’s stepfather. The place closed soon after. Moved on to the Carnegie Hall, then the Bleecker Street; they were owned by real eastate maven Sid Geffen and his filmmaker wife Jackie Reynal. That was an odd time for rep houses. VCRs were just becoming popular, and so movies you could only see in rep houses became more widely available and viewable in your own home…