For the record, a showing I attended last Sunday of the 1929 silent PICADILLY was shown in an incorrect 1:1.66 aspect ratio, causing heads and bottom of frame to be sliced off. When I protested at the end of the first showing, it was still not corrected by the second showing. The Brattle has proper lenses, aperture plates, and maskings to show films on this type in a 1:1.33 ratio(actually even that’s too wide for this silent). Very bad indeed!
I drove by yesterday. The theatre is closed. In one of the poster windows is a leftover poster from CATCH ME IF YOU CAN. Does anyone have any information on whether there are any current plans for this theatre?
I saw many imports there during the 60s. Several that come to mind are THE SILENCE by Bergman, Fellini’s 8 ½, Petri’s THE TENTH VICTIM, Jacobsen’s A STRANGER KNOCKS, De Sica’s MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE with Loren and Mastroianni. The theatre sometimes day/dated with the Park Square Cinema.
What great experiences I had watching APOCALYPSE NOW and the revival of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in that empyrean. At the Ziegfeld on Sunday, October 15, 1972, I was the first person in line for the opening of FELLINI’S ROMA; so I bought the first ticket sold in America for that film! The night before I had seen the world premiere of Bertolucci’s LAST TANGO IN PARIS (untrimmed)at the New York Film Festival. After the Fellini film I went to Truffaut’s TWO ENGLISH GIRLS at the Fine Arts on 58th Street. Good weekend!
Many decades ago the theatre was known as the Wakefield Opera House and then, for a very long time, the Community Theatre. The venue might very well function as a showcase for foreign and independent American films that do well at the Avon in Providence but are never booked at the Entertainment Cinemas.
Your reference to the Cine Roma (a.k.a. Broadway Cine Roma) is interesting, since I didn’t know it was the same theatre as the Republic. Was the policy of showing films from fascist Italy ill-advised because they could not sustain the house or because they shouldn’t have been shown? Most of the films from fascist Italy,with very few exceptions, were non-political genre pieces, adventures, soap operas, vapid light comedies, musicals…as the 1978 Museum of Modern Art series showed. Films from the Soviet Union shown at various New York theatres from the 1920s on were often propaganda-saturated. During the war years, films from Italy (Germany and Japan too, of course) were banned. Those prints that were in the U.S. were confiscated and stored by the government at a military base..
In some of their newspaper ads of the 1950s they adopted folksy commentary. Of RAINTREE COUNTY, a film of tepid critical success, the management wrote: “Held Over 2nd Smash Week. The public is the final arbiter of entertainment and they endorse this great motion picture.” The Gilbert Stuart referred to itself in its ads as “The little theatre off Riverside Square.” It was a very likable place.
Thank you very much. On a visit to New York in 1959 I remember walking by the Bryant and noticing that they were running a revival double bill of OPEN CITY and PAISAN. I am interested in, in addition to movie theatres in general, those that may have played European films, and especially Italian movies. The Bryant doesn’t seem to be listed. Perhaps I’ll add it. On the topic, do you happen to know if the Cinema Giglio in Little Italy was the same place as the Canal Theatre?
Loew’s State did not normally play foreign-language films, but they did run the Italian TOMORROW IS TOO LATE in 1952 in a subtitled print to enormous business (Variety: ‘Tomorrow’ Smash 45G). It was a lovely but now forgotten movie featuring Pier Angeli and Vittorio De Sica and dealt with the sexual awakening of adolescents. The movie went on to play art houses around the country, and in a dubbed version was even shown at drive-ins.
But they had had a long non-porn history that went way back. I have a 1948 ad here for the French film CONFESSIONS OF A ROGUE with Louis Jouvet. The Pix also day/dated with the Beekman for part of the opening run of Visconti’s great ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS in 1961.
In the 1950s for a time it ran silent films as the Inwood Art Theatre. I have an ad clipping of a run of Chaplin’s THE GOLD RUSH which had a very long play in 1959. PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, with live piano accompaniment, were listed as the upcoming program.
In 1952 the Carlton showed one of my favorite Italian films from that period: TOMORROW IS TOO LATE, with Pier Angeli and Vittorio De Sica. It dealt with the sexual awakening of adolescents and was very well done. In New York it had opened to great success in the Loew’s State in Times Square, unusual for a foreign film. I actually first saw it later at Providence’s Avon. That film even went on to play at drive-ins…like the Pike Drive-In on Hartford Avenue in Johnston, RI.
Does anyone who is familiar with theatres in Queens have information on a place that in the 1950s was called the “Inwood Art Theatre” that ran silent films? I have an ad clipping of a run of Chaplin’s THE GOLD RUSH which had a very long play in 1959. PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, with live piano accompaniment, were listed as the upcoming program. The address was 106-03 Metropolitan Ave., Forest Hills, Queens.
In late 1991 the proprietors of the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts were close to finalizing a deal that would have allowed them to program the Festival Theatre on 57th Street as a repertory house. This plan, though reported in a Boston Globe article as imminent, would fall through.
No, Savage, the Biograph was further west from the Little Carnegie, on 57th near Broadway and right near Hard Rock Cafe'. I believe it started out as the Lincoln Art in the 1960s, and I remember seeing a good number of movies there in my visits to New York, including Fellini’s THE CLOWNS. For a long stretch it was the Bombay Cinema, showing films from India. The Little Carnegie was a block east, a couple of doors down from Carnegie Hall.
Their programming was even better than the Brattle in Cambridge at the time (1960s) because you generally got double bills for one low admission, whereas the Brattle then showed only a single film at 7:30 and 9:30. This is where I first saw Visconti’s WHITE NIGHTS, with Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Schell, which was hardly shown anywhere else. I brought two friends to see UMBERTO D and THE BICYCLE THIEF on a double bill. They kept running to the concession stand to buy snacks and soften the neo-realist misery. They showed lots of French new wave and classics like GRAND ILLUSION with RULES OF THE GAME, Ingmar Bergman films, Bogart and Cagney series. Truly a great place.
I saw several films here during the theatre’s modest life. THE CONSEQUENCE by Wolfgang Peterson was one. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s astonishing ARABIAN NIGHTS was another.
Richard, I believe you are right. I remember walking in once and mourning the loss of the theatre. Nothing against churches, but why aren’t more churches converted into theatres rather than the other way around?
For the record, a showing I attended last Sunday of the 1929 silent PICADILLY was shown in an incorrect 1:1.66 aspect ratio, causing heads and bottom of frame to be sliced off. When I protested at the end of the first showing, it was still not corrected by the second showing. The Brattle has proper lenses, aperture plates, and maskings to show films on this type in a 1:1.33 ratio(actually even that’s too wide for this silent). Very bad indeed!
The Cable Car Cinema is a SINGLE SCREEN THEATRE, NOT A TWIN. Above information should be corrected. The theatre seats 125.
Since there is so much discussion here of the Lincoln Art/Angelika 57/Bombay/Biograph, I’m adding that theatre as a new posting under “Angelika 57”.
I drove by yesterday. The theatre is closed. In one of the poster windows is a leftover poster from CATCH ME IF YOU CAN. Does anyone have any information on whether there are any current plans for this theatre?
It was located at the end of the trolley line that ran up Pocasset Avenue and a brief stretch of Dyer Avenue.
The space where the theatre had been became a medical lab.
I think this theatre popped up in the 1970s, carved out of a parking garage building. I saw Ingmar Bergman’s CRIES AND WHISPERS there in 1973.
I saw many imports there during the 60s. Several that come to mind are THE SILENCE by Bergman, Fellini’s 8 ½, Petri’s THE TENTH VICTIM, Jacobsen’s A STRANGER KNOCKS, De Sica’s MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE with Loren and Mastroianni. The theatre sometimes day/dated with the Park Square Cinema.
What great experiences I had watching APOCALYPSE NOW and the revival of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in that empyrean. At the Ziegfeld on Sunday, October 15, 1972, I was the first person in line for the opening of FELLINI’S ROMA; so I bought the first ticket sold in America for that film! The night before I had seen the world premiere of Bertolucci’s LAST TANGO IN PARIS (untrimmed)at the New York Film Festival. After the Fellini film I went to Truffaut’s TWO ENGLISH GIRLS at the Fine Arts on 58th Street. Good weekend!
Many decades ago the theatre was known as the Wakefield Opera House and then, for a very long time, the Community Theatre. The venue might very well function as a showcase for foreign and independent American films that do well at the Avon in Providence but are never booked at the Entertainment Cinemas.
Your reference to the Cine Roma (a.k.a. Broadway Cine Roma) is interesting, since I didn’t know it was the same theatre as the Republic. Was the policy of showing films from fascist Italy ill-advised because they could not sustain the house or because they shouldn’t have been shown? Most of the films from fascist Italy,with very few exceptions, were non-political genre pieces, adventures, soap operas, vapid light comedies, musicals…as the 1978 Museum of Modern Art series showed. Films from the Soviet Union shown at various New York theatres from the 1920s on were often propaganda-saturated. During the war years, films from Italy (Germany and Japan too, of course) were banned. Those prints that were in the U.S. were confiscated and stored by the government at a military base..
In some of their newspaper ads of the 1950s they adopted folksy commentary. Of RAINTREE COUNTY, a film of tepid critical success, the management wrote: “Held Over 2nd Smash Week. The public is the final arbiter of entertainment and they endorse this great motion picture.” The Gilbert Stuart referred to itself in its ads as “The little theatre off Riverside Square.” It was a very likable place.
Thank you very much. On a visit to New York in 1959 I remember walking by the Bryant and noticing that they were running a revival double bill of OPEN CITY and PAISAN. I am interested in, in addition to movie theatres in general, those that may have played European films, and especially Italian movies. The Bryant doesn’t seem to be listed. Perhaps I’ll add it. On the topic, do you happen to know if the Cinema Giglio in Little Italy was the same place as the Canal Theatre?
Loew’s State did not normally play foreign-language films, but they did run the Italian TOMORROW IS TOO LATE in 1952 in a subtitled print to enormous business (Variety: ‘Tomorrow’ Smash 45G). It was a lovely but now forgotten movie featuring Pier Angeli and Vittorio De Sica and dealt with the sexual awakening of adolescents. The movie went on to play art houses around the country, and in a dubbed version was even shown at drive-ins.
But they had had a long non-porn history that went way back. I have a 1948 ad here for the French film CONFESSIONS OF A ROGUE with Louis Jouvet. The Pix also day/dated with the Beekman for part of the opening run of Visconti’s great ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS in 1961.
In the 1950s for a time it ran silent films as the Inwood Art Theatre. I have an ad clipping of a run of Chaplin’s THE GOLD RUSH which had a very long play in 1959. PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, with live piano accompaniment, were listed as the upcoming program.
HAMLET ran on a reserved-seat, two showings per day policy, under the aegis of the Theatre Guild.
In 1952 the Carlton showed one of my favorite Italian films from that period: TOMORROW IS TOO LATE, with Pier Angeli and Vittorio De Sica. It dealt with the sexual awakening of adolescents and was very well done. In New York it had opened to great success in the Loew’s State in Times Square, unusual for a foreign film. I actually first saw it later at Providence’s Avon. That film even went on to play at drive-ins…like the Pike Drive-In on Hartford Avenue in Johnston, RI.
So is there a posting for the Loew’s State Theatre which existed in the 50’s and 60’s in Times Square??? Not clear here.
Does anyone who is familiar with theatres in Queens have information on a place that in the 1950s was called the “Inwood Art Theatre” that ran silent films? I have an ad clipping of a run of Chaplin’s THE GOLD RUSH which had a very long play in 1959. PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, with live piano accompaniment, were listed as the upcoming program. The address was 106-03 Metropolitan Ave., Forest Hills, Queens.
In late 1991 the proprietors of the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts were close to finalizing a deal that would have allowed them to program the Festival Theatre on 57th Street as a repertory house. This plan, though reported in a Boston Globe article as imminent, would fall through.
No, Savage, the Biograph was further west from the Little Carnegie, on 57th near Broadway and right near Hard Rock Cafe'. I believe it started out as the Lincoln Art in the 1960s, and I remember seeing a good number of movies there in my visits to New York, including Fellini’s THE CLOWNS. For a long stretch it was the Bombay Cinema, showing films from India. The Little Carnegie was a block east, a couple of doors down from Carnegie Hall.
Their programming was even better than the Brattle in Cambridge at the time (1960s) because you generally got double bills for one low admission, whereas the Brattle then showed only a single film at 7:30 and 9:30. This is where I first saw Visconti’s WHITE NIGHTS, with Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Schell, which was hardly shown anywhere else. I brought two friends to see UMBERTO D and THE BICYCLE THIEF on a double bill. They kept running to the concession stand to buy snacks and soften the neo-realist misery. They showed lots of French new wave and classics like GRAND ILLUSION with RULES OF THE GAME, Ingmar Bergman films, Bogart and Cagney series. Truly a great place.
I saw several films here during the theatre’s modest life. THE CONSEQUENCE by Wolfgang Peterson was one. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s astonishing ARABIAN NIGHTS was another.
Richard, I believe you are right. I remember walking in once and mourning the loss of the theatre. Nothing against churches, but why aren’t more churches converted into theatres rather than the other way around?