Theatre By The Sea

364 Cards Pond Road,
Matunuck, RI 02879

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Gerald A. DeLuca
Gerald A. DeLuca on November 23, 2023 at 2:46 am

This theatre showed movies in the immediate postwar period. HOTEL BERLIN and HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN played here in 1945 according to ads found in the Westerly Sun. At that time they shared bookings with the Strand Theatre in Hope Valley.

Gerald A. DeLuca
Gerald A. DeLuca on October 10, 2017 at 4:32 am

Craigie, are you sure you are not thinking of the Casino in Narragansett? I don’t think the Matunuck Theatre-by-the-Sea would show Disney films in the 1970s. Plus they didn’t have 35mm projection. For the special series in 1968 they set up 16mm projectors. (See my comment above.)

Craigie
Craigie on December 28, 2011 at 10:32 pm

I saw several Disney movies there during the early-to-mid 1970s. I used to get car-sick in those days, so I won’t forget the long, long drive from Providence and back in the back of a Volkswagen squareback, usually with no seatbelt.

TLSLOEWS
TLSLOEWS on August 9, 2010 at 11:12 am

Interesting name.

Gerald A. DeLuca
Gerald A. DeLuca on August 9, 2010 at 10:37 am

I have no documentation about its use as a movie theatre in the immediate postwar period. But I do know that in the month of September 1968, immediately after the live theatre season, there was a film festival of classic and foreign movies here. I myself was consulted on what format that might take, because at that time I ran a film society in Providence called Prestige Film. I wound up having no hand in the program in Matunuck. The promoters settled on a collecion of selected movies distributed by Janus Films. A screen was set up and temporary 16mm projectors were put in place. I attended two of the films shown that month: the von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich The Blue Angel on Monday, September 2 and Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes on Tuesday, September 17. A printed calendar was distributed listing the offerings in the series, but I no longer have a copy of it, so I do not remember how many films were shown over how many nights. The series ran only selected nights during the month, as I recall. But I did see those two movies here in 1968.

Roger Katz
Roger Katz on April 7, 2010 at 3:47 am

I’d thought this was never a movie theatre. However at http://www.theatrebythesea.com/History.aspx it states: “By 1941, with the war raging and gas rationing in place, the theatre went dark for a few years, but then sporadically played as a movie house.”