(Stock comes to an end at the Albee. Ad in the Providence paper on August 30, 1926.)
ALBEE
Farewell
to the 26th Edward F. Albee Stock Company, oldest and best of all.
CLOSING WEEK STOCK SEASON
is the funniest farce yet
WE’VE GOT TO HAVE MONEY
A tornado of laughs.
Lots of closing week fun at every performance…
Starting Labor Day
VAUDEVILLE and PHOTOPLAYS
A pretentious array of Keith-Albee stars and a perfect feature picture will inaugurate our Fall-Winter season of continuous performances, Boxes, loges, stalls reserved, except Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
An ad appearing in the Providence newspaper on August 30, 1926:
[i]Edward M. Fay announces the reopening next Monday at noon of the new Emery, a Fay Theatre, 79 Mathewson Street.
Completely refurnished, redecorated and re-established as a modern theatre, a marvel of the decorator’s art. Under new and efficient managerial supervision. A Playhouse providing entertainment in comfort for each member of the family. Its shows guaranteed to be consistently good —– vaudeville and pictures.[/i]
Here is a set of some recently found photos of the Olympia dating to 1926, around the time of its opening and during a presentation of a Valentino film following the death of the star. They are the first photos of the Olympia that I have ever seen. Thanks to theatre owner Jacob Conn’s great-granddaughter Laura Frommer. OLYMPIA SET
From The Providence Journal, June 20, 1999. Article on Fays by Jim Seavor:
“VAUDEVILLE STAYED ALIVE, if not exactly well, in Providence because of one man, Edward M. Fay.
“Fay took over, and gave his name to a theater at 60 Union St. in 1916. For a dime, you got six acts of vaudeville, a movie, comedy short and a newsreel. Over the years, the theater played host to the biggest names. That dime admission didn’t even go up when Sarah Bernhardt, considered to be one of the greatest actresses of all time, played a one-night stand.
“In 1925, Gertrude Ederle, who had swum the English Channel, appeared at Fay’s in what was billed as "The Most Expensive Vaudeville Act Ever Played in Providence.” Fay had shelled out $6,000. Her stay got off to a shaky start when it took firemen longer than expected to fill Ederle’s 4,000-gallon tank and she had to stand in front of the curtain and talk for a half hour.
“There were rough times over the years, and Fay’s would occasionally close for a while or revert to an all film policy. But Fay perservered. In 1934, you got a first-run movie and five acts of vaudeville. Vaudeville was still there in the early 1940s, although the movie was always an oldie, and not always a goodie.
“The final curtain came down in December of 1950, when Fay’s closed "temporarily.” The reasons given for the closing were the traditional slow business while people prepared for the holidays – and television. Fay had even installed a big-screen TV and shown pro football on Saturdays to fight the electronic intruder.
“The "temporary” closing became permanent the following year when what was then the Sheraton-Biltmore sought to lease the site, raze the building and turn the space into a parking lot.
Harold M. Morton was a former motion picture projectionist and was also the manager for 14 years of the Gilbert Stuart Theater, Riverside, until its closing in 1965.
Article in The Providence Journal on Joe Jarvis, and his naming and management of the Jane Pickens Theatre:
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin Mar 25, 1986
“When Joe Jarvis was a kid growing up in East Providence, his one ambition was to get into the movie theater business. In 1936, when he was 16, he got his first job as an usher at the old Hollywood Theater on Taunton Avenue across from City Hall.
“At that time you had double features,” he recalls. “I worked six days a week for $7 and I thought that was wonderful.”
“Today, 50 years later, the 65-year-old Jarvis is still spending at least five days a week selling tickets at the Jane Pickens Theatre in Newport, only now he’s the owner as well. "To me this is not a job, because I enjoy it,” he said.
“For Jarvis, the last 10 years, since he bought the former Strand on Washington Square, restored it and renamed it after actress and Newport summer resident Jane Pickens, have been a return to simpler times when showing good movies to an appreciative audience was the most important thing.
“It wasn’t always so. After working his way up to head usher ($10 a week), he served in the Navy during World War II, then returned to the Hollywood as assistant manager. There, he learned the art of promotion as the owners sought to fill up the 1,100-seat theater, which was limited at that time by film studios to second-run films.
“On weekends, in addition to the double features, there were vaudeville acts and regular appearances by local favorites Marie and the Hollywood Orchestra. On slow Mondays and Tuesdays, there were dish nights "for the ladies” and on Wednesdays there was bank night, sort of an early version of Lot O Bucks.
“Then, after a second tour in the Navy during the Korean callback and two years managing a small theater in Vermont, where he met his wife, Jarvis returned to Rhode Island and got the opportunity to run his own moviehouse in his home town. It was 1955 and the theater, which he leased, was the old 400-seat Lyric in Riverside.
“"This was a time when television was really hurting us,” Jarvis said. Another problem was the theater’s location off Maple Avenue, on the wrong side of the tracks. “Riverside used to be a tough neighborhood and it was really something to get people to go down there.”
“Jarvis changed the theater’s name from Lyric to Gilbert Stuart and began a campaign to clean up its image. If the movie-going crowd was tough, so was Jarvis, remembers Providence native John E. Connors, now city manager in Newport. "He used to haul kids right out the front door.”
“He also immersed himself in community affairs and served a term on the East Providence School Committee. His most successful public relations effort was a series of ads he’d write about coming attractions, giving his own critiques of shows he’d seen at the first-run houses in Providence. The technique worked so well MGM asked him to travel around the country and speak to other theater owners.
“In many ways it was an idyllic time. Known and respected in the community, Jarvis was happy with his life and his business. "It was a family affair. My wife (Joanne) sold tickets for me,” he said.
“In 1965, the opening of the two-screen Four Season Cinema in Rumford by the Esquire group forced the closing of the Gilbert Stuart. Jarvis switched over to Esquire as manager of the Four Seasons and his career took on an accelerated pace.
“"When they built the Four Seasons, they were the first suburban theaters to become first-run in Rhode Island,” he said. As the downtown Providence area went into decline and emphasis shifted to outlying communities, Jarvis became district manager for Esquire, in charge of theaters in Pawtucket, Smithfield, Middletown and elsewhere. The life was fast, with a lot of traveling and no shortages of acquaintances happy to accept the free movie passes Jarvis handed out.
“But he still didn’t have a theater of his own, so in 1975 he bought the run-down Strand in Newport, once part of the Esquire chain. "When they found out that I bought it, they let me go,” he said.
“Jarvis tided himself over by working for B.A. Dario at Loew’s State in Providence for a year while renovating the Strand. "It was terrible. I wanted to give it a new image and with a new image, I wanted a new name. Jane Pickens, a singing and stage star of the 1940s, agreed to lend her name if he promised never to show X-rated films, a proviso he had no difficulty meeting. "I wouldn’t run a theater if I had to bring in X-rated movies to make a living,” he said.
“Nor would he attract much of a following in Newport. "The audience here in Newport, they know what they want to see. They enjoy the better film,” he said. Knowing this, Jarvis, who prefers a good comedy himself, tries “not to get the run-of-the-mill picture – more of a class picture.”
“As the owner of one of the last, certainly largest, single-screen cinemas in the state, Jarvis has little margin for error in selecting movies. After previewing a film in Boston, where the major studios maintain offices, he offers a bid price, which often requires a cash advance, along with a guarantee of playing time.
“If he books a flop, as he did several years ago with "Alien,” a science fiction movie, he loses money for the duration, with no extra screens to offset the loss. Sometimes he wins, outbidding the big chains for a sleeper like “E.T.” “I won that bid,” he said. “It ran for about 14 weeks.”
“Adding a screen or two would give him more flexibility, but his clientele, in a survey he conducted last year, let him know emphatically they wanted the theater kept whole. Aside from offering "a clean house and a big screen,” Jarvis, the promoter, provides his customers a little extra.
“On Wednesday and Saturday evenings, theater goers are treated to pipe organ music by members of the Southeastern New England Theater Society. The organ is a 1926 Marr-Colton symphonic registrator originally used to accompany silent films. It was rescued from a New London, Conn., theater by the society and given a home at the Pickens several years ago.
“Last year, Jarvis also provided a late-evening home to Flickers, the Newport Film Society, which has its own art film following. Last summer, he gave customers a taste of bygone days by opening up the balcony, a policy he will renew this summer.
“In his 50th year in the business, Jarvis and his family – his wife still works beside him – have found their own home at the Jane Pickens. "When I was starting out, I thought, ‘When I get older I’m going to get a theater of my own, or a chain of my own.’ I never got a chain, but I certainly have a theater of my own and I’m very happy.”"
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“WOONSOCKET —– At one time they were numerous. In the days before television when textile employment was still booming and it was hard to find a spot to stand on downtown sidwalks on a Saturday night. But now only one of Woonsocket’s old moviehouses is still standing, and you can still settle into its throwback opulence on a weekend to catch a new film.
“The Stadium was always the showpiece of the city’s six theaters since opening on September 6, 1926 at a cost (along with a connecting four-story office and retail building) of $1 million. Both buildings, on the National Register of Historic Places, stand pretty much as they did nearly six decades ago.
“BUT BACK then the Stadium’s competitors were not the multi-screen shopping center cinemas. There was the Olympia, successor to the city’s original theater, The Music Hall, which opened around 1850. Located at 40 Main St., across from what is now Bob and Ray’s Furniture (for many year’s Kornstein’s), it became the Nickel Theatre and, in 1900, the Strand. It has at least one claim to local theatrical fame – the great actor Edwin Booth played Hamlet there on Thanksgiving Day, 1872.
…So attention was turned to the Stadium, still in fine physical condition, but deteriorated culturally into an X-rated cinema with occasional nude dancing.
“The Stadium was hatched by the manager of the vaudeville-strong Bijou. He convinced the Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky circuit that the city needed a first-run movie theater and a wealthy widow friend put up the money.
“Darman, who’d left home at age 14 for a road show called "Humpty-Dumpty” and later was a successful Springfield, Illinois restauranter, helped secure the original Stadium mortgage and took over the project when the widow’s financing faltered.
“He expanded its scope to include the equally elegant office building and embellished the theater’s design. Darman didn’t want the gaudiness of the moviehouses of the day. Along with Paramount’s head designer, he settled on an elaborate but stylish look that has held up well.
“The long, low lobby features Adamesque relief work, painted floral arches, Dutch-influenced murals, Italian Renaissance-modeled side tables, chairs and benches, and distinctive drinking fountains of Art Noveau-patterned tiles in a classical framework.
“The auditorium’s configuration was considered ideal for medium-sized theaters, sweeping the seating upward without the use of a suspended balcony. The absence of pillars (the so-called stadium plan) gave the theater its name.
“For 36-year-old Darman, the Stadium was another statement of his civic commitment. At the time a deluxe movie house was regarded as a prime physical and cultural asset, and an educational one as important as a library or school. In his later years, he proudly noted his theater’s capablities, "If there’s anything in the world that is good in theater and Woonsocket wants it, we can get it.”
“Forty-four curtains and backdrops are still at the ready to host most any kind of production. The Wurlitzer concert organ has been scrupulously maintained and can produce the sounds of horses' hooves and thunder and lightning.
“A typical show in those early years (there were three, starting at 2 p.m.) included an overture from the 12-piece orchestra, an organ concert – often with singalong, a chorus girl rountine, vaudeville act , newsreel and feature film.
“Darman’s close rapport with the head of the Publix Pictures managing circuit (the expanded product of a Paramount merger) and their shared opinion that "Rich people can go to New York for amusement. I want the working man to be able to get just as good right here at home” kept big name acts coming to Woonsocket (aided by Darman’s reputation for generous hospitality). That commitment to live entertainment made the Stadium one of the last places in the country where vaudeville played on a regular basis (into the early 50’s) .
“THE LATE industrialist was never an absentee owner. Darman’s daughter, Sylvia Medoff, remembers his "tremendous capacity for detail… He always had a finger on it, was always active in it.”
“That involvement intensified in 1956, when Publix’s regional subsidiary stopped managing the Stadium. Darman assumed management by forming the AIDCO Corporation and invested in alterations that included a new marquee, air conditioning and more spacious seating.
“For some 18 years, he continued to operate the theater at a substantial loss. Darman leased the Stadium to a Boston outfit in 1974 that assured him, "Don’t worry. We’ll be able to get enough pictures.” He was shocked when they began showing X-rated films and didn’t set foot in the theater during their tenure, but he was powerless to break the seven-year lease.
“There were police raids in 1975, but the city found itself without legal grounds to revoke the new operator’s entertainment permits. The pressure was stepped up when historical and arts groups succeeded in getting the Stadium placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“The turning point was the city’s changeover from phone cable to radio-connected fire alarm systems. The porno promoters balked at the installation cost and the last movie was shown on New Year’s Eve, 1976.
“Boosters of the local arts scene active in the Opera House fight, Paul Lawhead and Larry Leduc, approached Darman about returning the Stadium to family films and live entertainment. A deal was struck and the two high school teachers reopened the Stadium with "The Pink Panther Strikes Again” four months later.
“Their weekends-only policy helped cut overhead and tapping Darman’s experience, the newcomers were able to confound predictions that they wouldn’t last a month. Lawhead says it’s taken a few years to learn the ropes (and jettison a booking agent that "had us booking along with NBC and ABC”).
“NOW, they’re enjoying "one of the best quarters we’ve ever had,” according to Lawhead and continuing to lure back downtown moviegoers who had deserted to the suburban malls. He sees a trend where “the theater experience” of a giant screen, resonant sound and big hall is proving an attraction over small, sterile cinemas.
“Not only that, but Lawhead says because the cinema complexes "are cutting their own throats” by having too many competing high-priced screens, more recently-released films are available for the $2-a-seat Stadium to choose from (“If it’s top ten, eventually we’ll get it.”).
“The new broom at the Stadium has swept live shows back in. The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Arthur Feidler and the Boston Pops, country and western music, hometown jazz great Dave McKenna and the Alexander Peloquin Chorale are among the live acts that have brought life back to the Stadium stage.
“The Northern R.I. Council on the Arts is in its third year of live presentations bringing in student audiences from as far away as South Kingston and Framingham, Mass. The next one (open to the general public as well) May 7 has a double bill of one-man shows, Ken Richer as Mark Twain and Jerry Rockwood as Edgar Allan Poe.
“At this rate, the Stadium may revive its advertising motto of the 40’s, "Woonsocket’s Finest Theatre – The Biggest Show Value in Town.”"
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“Shortly after the turn of the century, Lynch’s Theatre opened across the street [from the Olympia] at 41 Main. From its original vaudeville fare it switched to movies, changing to the Rialto, offering "Entertainment to Chase the Blues Away” and “Free! Beautiful! Five Piece Dinette Set. Bring your green coupons” (according to a 1944 ad)."
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“The life breathed into the Stadium to rescue it from its X-rated days in the 1970’s is a spin-off of the interest in historical preservation and incubating the local arts scene stirred by the Woonsocket Opera House in its final years.
“The Opera House, a six-story giant that was one of New England’s finest which, in its posterity, will probably always lay claim to being the largest stage ever in the state, opened to rave reviews in 1888. Monument Square hotels and guest rooms were packed as 1,700 people crowded the 1,500-seat Opera House to see Maude Banks in "Ingomar the Barbarian.”
“In 1910, as road shows lost popularity to the "flickers,” boxing was tried. Three years later, as the Park Theatre, the typical bill combined three vaudeville acts with six film reels, but was short-lived because the Bijou was the dominant vaudeville house. By 1915, it was mostly all movies.
“What one later-day critic dubbed "a gaudy middle-aged fling in vaudeville” was attempted during World War II when the Stadium’s builder, industrialist Arthur I. Darman, made $25,000 in renovations and reopened the New Park Theater on Labor Day, 1942.
“It proved a money-loser, but a cultural boost for Woonsocket and a big hit with big-time performers. As with the Stadium, Darman designed meticulous facilities for the troupers. He arranged limousine rides from Providence’s Union Station and lavish post-show buffets. The favorable reputation was summed up in the title of a 1945 Saturday Evening Post article, "Book Me in Woonsocket.”
“The New Park’s ads proclaimed its "2-in-1 stage and screen shows… All for 40c and 50c plus tax… The Best Fun Investment” in town. But as the red ink mounted Darman sold out in 1945.
“DESPITE innovations such as a CinemaScope, screen movie audiences waned in the 50’s. By 1961, the Park’s twin horseshoe balconies only saw action on weekends and closed altogether in 1963, a "Watch for Reopening” sign presiding sadly over increasing vandalism and sporadic small fires. When the city took control in 1970 because of unpaid tax bills demolition bids were sought.
“A battle ensued in which preservationists and arts buffs tried to convince city fathers that grant money could be assembled to revive the Opera House. A state offer of $250,000 helped convince the city, but as the legal formalities were being ironed out, two weeks before the transfer to the Opera House Society the building mysteriously burned on September 22, 1975.”
My above post for the Olympia was mistakenly put on this page. I intended this one on the Laurier:
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“THE SOCIAL NEIGHBORHOOD had its Laurier Theater at 17 Cumebrland St., named for Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier. "One of our finest movie houses,” is how one-time Woonsocket Historical Society President James C. Byrne remembered it.
“Today’s head of that group, Phyllis Thomas, recalls how her prim and proper French teacher urged her high school pupils to sharpen their ear for the language by attending the French films sometimes shown at the Laurier, and unwittingly recomending some rather "racy” movies.
“Ads for the Laurier’s second-run and B-movie fare in 1944 bore the slogan "Always a Good Show.” Those shows sometimes included a breath of home for Woonsocket’s many Canadian immigrants. For instance, a two-night stand that April by the “Fameuse Troupe Jean Grimaldi de Montreal… an all-new French 3-hour Riot of Fun” crowed the billing, with such attractions as Rolando Giraldo “The Canadian Cab Calloway.” All for 65-cents in the orchestra and 55-cents in the balcony. The Laurier fell victim to Hurricane Diane that flooded the Social District in 1955."
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“BUT BACK then the Stadium’s competitors were not the multi-screen shopping center cinemas. There was the Olympia, successor to the city’s original theater, The Music Hall, which opened around 1850. Located at 40 Main St., across from what is now Bob and Ray’s Furniture (for many year’s Kornstein’s), it became the Nickel Theatre and, in 1900, the Strand. It has at least one claim to local theatrical fame – the great actor Edwin Booth played Hamlet there on Thanksgiving Day, 1872.
“Fire took the lives of two children at the Strand on New Year’s Day, 1926. After repairs it reopened as the Olympia Theatre, but also became known as the "scratch house” because of the fleas that shared seats with patrons. The Olympia’s slogan was “Big Shows, Small Prices” and lower budget Republic pictures were featured, along with the chance to play “Honey” for cash prizes,
“The Olympia showed its last movies in the 1950’s, its insides removed and shrunk from its original five stories to two-and-a-half floors of office and retail space when remodeled in 1956. It played home to such local fixtures as the Coney Island weiner restaurant and the Brass Rail bar before falling to the wrecker’s ball only last September.”
Shortly after the turn of the century, Lynch’s Theatre opened across the street at 41 Main. From its original vaudeville fare it switched to movies, changing to the Rialto, offering “Entertainment to Chase the Blues Away” and “Free! Beautiful! Five Piece Dinette Set. Bring your green coupons” (according to a 1944 ad).
On the other end of Main Street, where Chan’s Restaurant is now, was the Bijou Theatre, referred to in some local history books as the Electric Theatre. It was a house of worship befiore becoming a vaudeville and movie house.
The Social Methodist House was moved a block near the turn of the century to 273 Main St. to make way for a new post office. In 1912, to the church auditorium was added space for a stage and wings, and the building leased to famed theatrical figure Edward Albee. Stock companies, vaudevillians and movies played there.
The Bijou was hit twice by fire. The second, November 23, 1936, closed the theater for 13 months. It closed again in 1952 because business was off, reopening weekends only in 1955, but dark for many months at a stretch before its demolition began the final day of 1963. It’s last owner was U.S. Sen. Theodore Francis Green.
THE SOCIAL NEIGHBORHOOD had its Laurier Theater at 17 Cumebrland St., named for Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier. “One of our finest movie houses,” is how one-time Woonsocket Historical Society President James C. Byrne remembered it.
Today’s head of that group, Phyllis Thomas, recalls how her prim and proper French teacher urged her high school pupils to sharpen their ear for the language by attending the French films sometimes shaown at the Laurier, and unwittingly recomending some rather “racy” movies.
Ads for the Laurier’s second-run and B-movie fare in 1944 bore the slogan “Always a Good Show.” Those shows sometimes included a breath of home for Woonsocket’s many Canadian immigrants. For instance, a two-night stand that April by the “Fameuse Troupe Jean Grimaldi de Montreal… an all-new French 3-hour Riot of Fun” crowed the billing, with such attractions as Rolando Giraldo “The Canadain Cab Calloway.” All for 65-cents in the orchestra and 55-cents in the balcony. The Laurier fell victim to Hurricane Diane that flooded the Social District in 1955.
The life breathed into the Stadium to rescue it from its X-rated days in the 1970’s is a spin-off of the interest in historical preservation and incubating the local arts scene stirred by the Woonsocket Opera House in its final years.
The Opera House, a six-story giant that was one of New England’s finest which, in its posterity, will probably always lay claim to being the largest stage ever in the state, opened to rave reviews in 1888. Monument Square hotels and guest rooms were packed as 1,700 people crowded the 1,500-seat Opera House to see Maude Banks in “Ingomar the Barbarian.”
In 1910, as road shows lost popularity to the “flickers,” boxing was tried. Three years later, as the Park Theatre, the typical bill combined three vaudeville acts with six film reels, but was short-lived because the Bijou was the dominant vaudeville house. By 1915, it was mostly all movies.
What one later-day critic dubbed “a gaudy middle-aged fling in vaudeville” was attempted during World War II when the Stadium’s builder, industrialist Arthur I. Darman, made $25,000 in renovations and reopened the New Park Theater on Labor Day, 1942.
It proved a money-loser, but a cultural boost for Woonsocket and a big hit with big-time performers. As with the Stadium, Darman designed meticulous facilities for the troupers. He arranged limousine rides from Providence’s Union Station and lavish post-show buffets. The favorable reputation was summed up in the title of a 1945 Saturday Evening Post article, “Book Me in Woonsocket.”
The New Park’s ads proclaimed its “2-in-1 stage and screen shows… All for 40c and 50c plus tax… The Best Fun Investment” in town. But as the red ink mounted Darman sold out in 1945.
DESPITE innovations such as a CinemaScope, screen movie audiences waned in the 50’s. By 1961, the Park’s twin horseshoe balconies only saw action on weekends and closed altogether in 1963, a “Watch for Reopening” sign presiding sadly over increasing vandalism and sporadic small fires. When the city took control in 1970 because of unpaid tax bills demolition bids were sought.
A battle ensued in which preservationists and arts buffs tried to convince city fathers that grant money could be assembled to revive the Opera House. A state offer of $250,000 helped convince the city, but as the legal formalities were being ironed out, two weeks before the transfer to the Opera House Society the building mysteriously burned on September 22, 1975.
So attention was turned to the Stadium, still in fine physical condition, but deteriorated culturally into an X-rated cinema with occasional nude dancing.
The Stadium was hatched by the manager of the vaudeville-strong Bijou. He convinced the Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky circuit that the city needed a first-run movie theater and a wealthy widow friend put up the money.
Darman, who’d left home at age 14 for a road show called “Humpty-Dumpty” and later was a successful Springfield, Illinois restauranter, helped secure the original Stadium mortgage and took over the project when the widow’s financing faltered.
He expanded its scope to include the equally elegant office building and embellished the theater’s design. Darman didn’t want the gaudiness of the moviehouses of the day. Along with Paramount’s head designer, he settled on an elaborate but stylish look that has held up well.
The long, low lobby features Adamesque relief work, painted floral arches, Dutch-influenced murals, Italian Renaissance-modeled side tables, chairs and benches, and distinctive drinking fountains of Art Noveau-patterned tiles in a classical framework.
The auditorium’s configuration was considered ideal for medium-sized theaters, sweeping the seating upward without the use of a suspended balcony. The absence of pillars (the so-called stadium plan) gave the theater its name.
For 36-year-old Darman, the Stadium was another statement of his civic commitment. At the time a deluxe movie house was regarded as a prime physical and cultural asset, and an educational one as important as a library or school. In his later years, he proudly noted his theater’s capablities, “If there’s anything in the world that is good in theater and Woonsocket wants it, we can get it.”
Forty-four curtins and backdrops are still at the ready to host most any kind of production. The Wurlitzer concert organ has been scrupulously maintained and can produce the sounds of horses' hooves and thunder and lightning.
A typical show in those early years (there were three, starting at 2 p.m.) included an overture from the 12-piece orchestra, an organ concert – often with singalong, a chorus girl rountine, vaudeville act , newsreel and feature film.
Darman’s close rapport with the head of the Publix Pictures managing circuit (the expanded product of a Paramount merger) and their shared opinion that “Rich people can go to New York for amusement. I want the working man to be able to get just as good right here at home” kept big name acts coming to Woonsocket (aided by Darman’s reputation for generous hospitality). That commitment to live entertainment made the Stadium one of the last places in the country where vaudeville played on a regular basis (into the early 50’s) .
THE LATE industrialist was never an absentee owner. Darman’s daughter, Sylvia Medoff, remembers his “tremendous capacity for detail… He always had a finger on it, was always active in it.”
That involvement intensified in 1956, when Publix’s regional subsidiary stopped managing the Stadium. Darman assumed management by forming the AIDCO Corporation and invested in alterations that included a new marquee, air conditioning and more spacious seating.
For some 18 years, he continued to operate the theater at a substantial loss. Darman leased the Stadium to a Boston outfit in 1974 that assured him, “Don’t worry. We’ll be able to get enough pictures.” He was shocked when they began showing X-rated films and didn’t set foot in the theater during their tenure, but he was powerless to break the seven-year lease.
There were police raids in 1975, but the city found itself without legal grounds to revoke the new operator’s entertainment permits. The pressure was stepped up when historical and arts groups succeeded in getting the Stadium placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The turning point was the city’s changeover from phone cable to radio-connected fire alarm systems. The porno promoters balked at the installation cost and the last movie was shown on New Year’s Eve, 1976.
Boosters of the local arts scene active in the Opera House fight, Paul Lawhead and Larry Leduc, approached Darman about returning the Stadium to family films and live entertainment. A deal was struck and the two high school teachers reopened the Stadium with “The Pink Panther Strikes Again” four months later.
Their weekends-only policy helped cut overhead and tapping Darman’s experience, the newcomers were able to confound predictions that they wouldn’t last a month. Lawhead says it’s taken a few years to learn the ropes (and jettison a booking agent that “had us booking along with NBC and ABC”).
NOW, they’re enjoying “one of the best quarters we’ve ever had,” according to Lawhead and continuing to lure back downtown moviegoers who had deserted to the suburban malls. He sees a trend where “the theater experience” of a giant screen, resonant sound and big hall is proving an attraction over small, sterile cinemas.
Not only that, but Lawhead says because the cinema complexes “are cutting their own throats” by having too many competing high-priced screens, more recently-released films are available for the $2-a-seat Stadium to choose from (“If it’s top ten, eventually we’ll get it.”).
The new broom at the Stadium has swept live shows back in. The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Arthur Feidler and the Boston Pops, country and western music, hometown jazz great Dave McKenna and the Alexander Peloquin Chorale are among the live acts that have brought life back to the Stadium stage.
The Northern R.I. Council on the Arts is in its third year of live presentations bringing in student audiences from as far away as South Kingston and Framingham, Mass. The next one (open to the general public as well) May 7 has a double bill of one-man shows, Ken Richer as Mark Twain and Jerry Rockwood as Edgar Allan Poe.
At this rate, the Stadium may revive its advertising motto of the 40’s, “Woonsocket’s Finest Theatre – The Biggest Show Value in Town.”
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
BUT BACK then the Stadium’s competitors were not the multi-screen shopping center cinemas. There was the Olympia, successor to the city’s original theater, The Music Hall, which opened around 1850. Located at 40 Main St., across from what is now Bob and Ray’s Furniture (for many year’s Kornstein’s), it became the Nickel Theatre and, in 1900, the Strand. It has at least one claim to local theatrical fame – the great actor Edwin Booth played Hamlet there on Thanksgiving Day, 1872.
“Fire took the lives of two children at the Strand on New Year’s Day, 1926. After repairs it reopened as the Olympia Theatre, but also became known as the "scratch house” because of the fleas that shared seats with patrons. The Olympia’s slogan was “Big Shows, Small Prices” and lower budget Republic pictures were featured, along with the chance to play “Honey” for cash prizes.
“The Olympia showed its last movies in the 1950s, its insides removed and shrunk from its original five stories to two-and-a-half floors of office and retail space when remodeled in 1956. It played home to such local fixtures as the Coney Island wiener restaurant and the Brass Rail bar before falling to the wrecker’s ball only last September.”
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“On the other end of Main Street, where Chan’s Restaurant is now, was the Bijou Theatre, referred to in some local history books as the Electric Theatre. It was a house of worship before becoming a vaudeville and movie house.
“The Social Methodist House was moved a block near the turn of the century to 273 Main St. to make way for a new post office. In 1912, to the church auditorium was added space for a stage and wings, and the building leased to famed theatrical figure Edward Albee. Stock companies, vaudevillians and movies played there.
“The Bijou was hit twice by fire. The second, November 23, 1936, closed the theater for 13 months. It closed again in 1952 because business was off, reopening weekends only in 1955, but dark for many months at a stretch before its demolition began the final day of 1963. It’s last owner was U.S. Sen. Theodore Francis Greene.”
The Cable Car Cinema, now under new management, has recently had its auditorium refurbished. I peeked in at the spiffy new black couches and new theatre seats. Rather nice. Now if they would spend some additional money on a screen that can accomodate CinemaScope’s 1:2.35 format for movies made in that ratio, and some adjustable masking, it would be a real advancement. Anamorphic wide screen films continue to be substantially cropped at the right and left edges in this cinema. For their opening post-remodeling presentation the theatre ran It’s a Wonderful Life. The format was DVD projection!!!!! I was informed they couldn’t get a 35mm print. Just as well, since the top and bottom of this 1:1.33 ratio film would have been cropped in the hopelessly untutored and destructive projection that reigns here. I hope the DVD wasn’t colorized.
It opened at the Victoria, according to the review a day later in the New York Times on January 12, 1946. The New York Times generally mentioned the theatre where a reviewed film was playing. You can easily find these on the NYT website by typing in the film’s name in the movie section review search page, as I just did.
This picture from the early 20th Century shows Bazar’s Hall (entrance right). According to the Images of America volume South Providence, the hall was a center of Jewish social life for the neighborhood. Weddings, dances, lectures, plays took place here. On Friday nights the hall became the neighborhood’s silent movie house, listed in the city directory as the Star. It seems to have been on the second floor.
I’m wondering if the co-feature No Greater Sin was the 1941 film about the ‘scourge of syphilis.’ If so, that would make it 28 years old at the time of this showing.
Were they being exploitative? Breathless was Godard’s legendary first film, for those who don’t know, and one of the classics of the French New Wave cinema.
“He would have been in his seventies when Gerald was working there.”
If you are referring to me, I never said I worked there. That 1970 image was scanned from a book. I am simply interested in the topic of old R.I. theatres and have posted my own photos of the Empire as well as historic ones I’ve found, many of them on vintage postcards.
The Gaiety operated from 1914 to 1927, when it was demolished for the construction of Loew’s State, now Providence Performing Arts Center. The Gaiety occupied the space where the entrance lobby to PPAC is now located.
Here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vokoban/1243775432/
Thanks. That’s the theatre which became the R.K.O. Albee, next to Grace Church, and was torn down in the early 1970s.
There is a brief scene at the end of the 1954 release Crime Wave, with Sterling Hayden, in which the theatre exterior is clearly visible.
Conn’s Theatre:
View link
Star Theatre:
View link
(Stock comes to an end at the Albee. Ad in the Providence paper on August 30, 1926.)
ALBEE
Farewell
to the 26th Edward F. Albee Stock Company, oldest and best of all.
CLOSING WEEK STOCK SEASON
is the funniest farce yet
WE’VE GOT TO HAVE MONEY
A tornado of laughs.
Lots of closing week fun at every performance…
Starting Labor Day
VAUDEVILLE and PHOTOPLAYS
A pretentious array of Keith-Albee stars and a perfect feature picture will inaugurate our Fall-Winter season of continuous performances, Boxes, loges, stalls reserved, except Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
An ad appearing in the Providence newspaper on August 30, 1926:
[i]Edward M. Fay announces the reopening next Monday at noon of the new Emery, a Fay Theatre, 79 Mathewson Street.
Completely refurnished, redecorated and re-established as a modern theatre, a marvel of the decorator’s art. Under new and efficient managerial supervision. A Playhouse providing entertainment in comfort for each member of the family. Its shows guaranteed to be consistently good —– vaudeville and pictures.[/i]
Here is a set of some recently found photos of the Olympia dating to 1926, around the time of its opening and during a presentation of a Valentino film following the death of the star. They are the first photos of the Olympia that I have ever seen. Thanks to theatre owner Jacob Conn’s great-granddaughter Laura Frommer.
OLYMPIA SET
From The Providence Journal, June 20, 1999. Article on Fays by Jim Seavor:
“VAUDEVILLE STAYED ALIVE, if not exactly well, in Providence because of one man, Edward M. Fay.
“Fay took over, and gave his name to a theater at 60 Union St. in 1916. For a dime, you got six acts of vaudeville, a movie, comedy short and a newsreel. Over the years, the theater played host to the biggest names. That dime admission didn’t even go up when Sarah Bernhardt, considered to be one of the greatest actresses of all time, played a one-night stand.
“In 1925, Gertrude Ederle, who had swum the English Channel, appeared at Fay’s in what was billed as "The Most Expensive Vaudeville Act Ever Played in Providence.” Fay had shelled out $6,000. Her stay got off to a shaky start when it took firemen longer than expected to fill Ederle’s 4,000-gallon tank and she had to stand in front of the curtain and talk for a half hour.
“There were rough times over the years, and Fay’s would occasionally close for a while or revert to an all film policy. But Fay perservered. In 1934, you got a first-run movie and five acts of vaudeville. Vaudeville was still there in the early 1940s, although the movie was always an oldie, and not always a goodie.
“The final curtain came down in December of 1950, when Fay’s closed "temporarily.” The reasons given for the closing were the traditional slow business while people prepared for the holidays – and television. Fay had even installed a big-screen TV and shown pro football on Saturdays to fight the electronic intruder.
“The "temporary” closing became permanent the following year when what was then the Sheraton-Biltmore sought to lease the site, raze the building and turn the space into a parking lot.
“It did – the Washington Street Garage”
Harold M. Morton was a former motion picture projectionist and was also the manager for 14 years of the Gilbert Stuart Theater, Riverside, until its closing in 1965.
Article in The Providence Journal on Joe Jarvis, and his naming and management of the Jane Pickens Theatre:
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin Mar 25, 1986
“When Joe Jarvis was a kid growing up in East Providence, his one ambition was to get into the movie theater business. In 1936, when he was 16, he got his first job as an usher at the old Hollywood Theater on Taunton Avenue across from City Hall.
“At that time you had double features,” he recalls. “I worked six days a week for $7 and I thought that was wonderful.”
“Today, 50 years later, the 65-year-old Jarvis is still spending at least five days a week selling tickets at the Jane Pickens Theatre in Newport, only now he’s the owner as well. "To me this is not a job, because I enjoy it,” he said.
“For Jarvis, the last 10 years, since he bought the former Strand on Washington Square, restored it and renamed it after actress and Newport summer resident Jane Pickens, have been a return to simpler times when showing good movies to an appreciative audience was the most important thing.
“It wasn’t always so. After working his way up to head usher ($10 a week), he served in the Navy during World War II, then returned to the Hollywood as assistant manager. There, he learned the art of promotion as the owners sought to fill up the 1,100-seat theater, which was limited at that time by film studios to second-run films.
“On weekends, in addition to the double features, there were vaudeville acts and regular appearances by local favorites Marie and the Hollywood Orchestra. On slow Mondays and Tuesdays, there were dish nights "for the ladies” and on Wednesdays there was bank night, sort of an early version of Lot O Bucks.
“Then, after a second tour in the Navy during the Korean callback and two years managing a small theater in Vermont, where he met his wife, Jarvis returned to Rhode Island and got the opportunity to run his own moviehouse in his home town. It was 1955 and the theater, which he leased, was the old 400-seat Lyric in Riverside.
“"This was a time when television was really hurting us,” Jarvis said. Another problem was the theater’s location off Maple Avenue, on the wrong side of the tracks. “Riverside used to be a tough neighborhood and it was really something to get people to go down there.”
“Jarvis changed the theater’s name from Lyric to Gilbert Stuart and began a campaign to clean up its image. If the movie-going crowd was tough, so was Jarvis, remembers Providence native John E. Connors, now city manager in Newport. "He used to haul kids right out the front door.”
“He also immersed himself in community affairs and served a term on the East Providence School Committee. His most successful public relations effort was a series of ads he’d write about coming attractions, giving his own critiques of shows he’d seen at the first-run houses in Providence. The technique worked so well MGM asked him to travel around the country and speak to other theater owners.
“In many ways it was an idyllic time. Known and respected in the community, Jarvis was happy with his life and his business. "It was a family affair. My wife (Joanne) sold tickets for me,” he said.
“In 1965, the opening of the two-screen Four Season Cinema in Rumford by the Esquire group forced the closing of the Gilbert Stuart. Jarvis switched over to Esquire as manager of the Four Seasons and his career took on an accelerated pace.
“"When they built the Four Seasons, they were the first suburban theaters to become first-run in Rhode Island,” he said. As the downtown Providence area went into decline and emphasis shifted to outlying communities, Jarvis became district manager for Esquire, in charge of theaters in Pawtucket, Smithfield, Middletown and elsewhere. The life was fast, with a lot of traveling and no shortages of acquaintances happy to accept the free movie passes Jarvis handed out.
“But he still didn’t have a theater of his own, so in 1975 he bought the run-down Strand in Newport, once part of the Esquire chain. "When they found out that I bought it, they let me go,” he said.
“Jarvis tided himself over by working for B.A. Dario at Loew’s State in Providence for a year while renovating the Strand. "It was terrible. I wanted to give it a new image and with a new image, I wanted a new name. Jane Pickens, a singing and stage star of the 1940s, agreed to lend her name if he promised never to show X-rated films, a proviso he had no difficulty meeting. "I wouldn’t run a theater if I had to bring in X-rated movies to make a living,” he said.
“Nor would he attract much of a following in Newport. "The audience here in Newport, they know what they want to see. They enjoy the better film,” he said. Knowing this, Jarvis, who prefers a good comedy himself, tries “not to get the run-of-the-mill picture – more of a class picture.”
“As the owner of one of the last, certainly largest, single-screen cinemas in the state, Jarvis has little margin for error in selecting movies. After previewing a film in Boston, where the major studios maintain offices, he offers a bid price, which often requires a cash advance, along with a guarantee of playing time.
“If he books a flop, as he did several years ago with "Alien,” a science fiction movie, he loses money for the duration, with no extra screens to offset the loss. Sometimes he wins, outbidding the big chains for a sleeper like “E.T.” “I won that bid,” he said. “It ran for about 14 weeks.”
“Adding a screen or two would give him more flexibility, but his clientele, in a survey he conducted last year, let him know emphatically they wanted the theater kept whole. Aside from offering "a clean house and a big screen,” Jarvis, the promoter, provides his customers a little extra.
“On Wednesday and Saturday evenings, theater goers are treated to pipe organ music by members of the Southeastern New England Theater Society. The organ is a 1926 Marr-Colton symphonic registrator originally used to accompany silent films. It was rescued from a New London, Conn., theater by the society and given a home at the Pickens several years ago.
“Last year, Jarvis also provided a late-evening home to Flickers, the Newport Film Society, which has its own art film following. Last summer, he gave customers a taste of bygone days by opening up the balcony, a policy he will renew this summer.
“In his 50th year in the business, Jarvis and his family – his wife still works beside him – have found their own home at the Jane Pickens. "When I was starting out, I thought, ‘When I get older I’m going to get a theater of my own, or a chain of my own.’ I never got a chain, but I certainly have a theater of my own and I’m very happy.”"
Francis L. Moses was manager of the former Community Theater, Centredale, for more than 25 years, before retiring in 1973.
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“WOONSOCKET —– At one time they were numerous. In the days before television when textile employment was still booming and it was hard to find a spot to stand on downtown sidwalks on a Saturday night. But now only one of Woonsocket’s old moviehouses is still standing, and you can still settle into its throwback opulence on a weekend to catch a new film.
“The Stadium was always the showpiece of the city’s six theaters since opening on September 6, 1926 at a cost (along with a connecting four-story office and retail building) of $1 million. Both buildings, on the National Register of Historic Places, stand pretty much as they did nearly six decades ago.
“BUT BACK then the Stadium’s competitors were not the multi-screen shopping center cinemas. There was the Olympia, successor to the city’s original theater, The Music Hall, which opened around 1850. Located at 40 Main St., across from what is now Bob and Ray’s Furniture (for many year’s Kornstein’s), it became the Nickel Theatre and, in 1900, the Strand. It has at least one claim to local theatrical fame – the great actor Edwin Booth played Hamlet there on Thanksgiving Day, 1872.
…So attention was turned to the Stadium, still in fine physical condition, but deteriorated culturally into an X-rated cinema with occasional nude dancing.
“The Stadium was hatched by the manager of the vaudeville-strong Bijou. He convinced the Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky circuit that the city needed a first-run movie theater and a wealthy widow friend put up the money.
“Darman, who’d left home at age 14 for a road show called "Humpty-Dumpty” and later was a successful Springfield, Illinois restauranter, helped secure the original Stadium mortgage and took over the project when the widow’s financing faltered.
“He expanded its scope to include the equally elegant office building and embellished the theater’s design. Darman didn’t want the gaudiness of the moviehouses of the day. Along with Paramount’s head designer, he settled on an elaborate but stylish look that has held up well.
“The long, low lobby features Adamesque relief work, painted floral arches, Dutch-influenced murals, Italian Renaissance-modeled side tables, chairs and benches, and distinctive drinking fountains of Art Noveau-patterned tiles in a classical framework.
“The auditorium’s configuration was considered ideal for medium-sized theaters, sweeping the seating upward without the use of a suspended balcony. The absence of pillars (the so-called stadium plan) gave the theater its name.
“For 36-year-old Darman, the Stadium was another statement of his civic commitment. At the time a deluxe movie house was regarded as a prime physical and cultural asset, and an educational one as important as a library or school. In his later years, he proudly noted his theater’s capablities, "If there’s anything in the world that is good in theater and Woonsocket wants it, we can get it.”
“Forty-four curtains and backdrops are still at the ready to host most any kind of production. The Wurlitzer concert organ has been scrupulously maintained and can produce the sounds of horses' hooves and thunder and lightning.
“A typical show in those early years (there were three, starting at 2 p.m.) included an overture from the 12-piece orchestra, an organ concert – often with singalong, a chorus girl rountine, vaudeville act , newsreel and feature film.
“Darman’s close rapport with the head of the Publix Pictures managing circuit (the expanded product of a Paramount merger) and their shared opinion that "Rich people can go to New York for amusement. I want the working man to be able to get just as good right here at home” kept big name acts coming to Woonsocket (aided by Darman’s reputation for generous hospitality). That commitment to live entertainment made the Stadium one of the last places in the country where vaudeville played on a regular basis (into the early 50’s) .
“THE LATE industrialist was never an absentee owner. Darman’s daughter, Sylvia Medoff, remembers his "tremendous capacity for detail… He always had a finger on it, was always active in it.”
“That involvement intensified in 1956, when Publix’s regional subsidiary stopped managing the Stadium. Darman assumed management by forming the AIDCO Corporation and invested in alterations that included a new marquee, air conditioning and more spacious seating.
“For some 18 years, he continued to operate the theater at a substantial loss. Darman leased the Stadium to a Boston outfit in 1974 that assured him, "Don’t worry. We’ll be able to get enough pictures.” He was shocked when they began showing X-rated films and didn’t set foot in the theater during their tenure, but he was powerless to break the seven-year lease.
“There were police raids in 1975, but the city found itself without legal grounds to revoke the new operator’s entertainment permits. The pressure was stepped up when historical and arts groups succeeded in getting the Stadium placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“The turning point was the city’s changeover from phone cable to radio-connected fire alarm systems. The porno promoters balked at the installation cost and the last movie was shown on New Year’s Eve, 1976.
“Boosters of the local arts scene active in the Opera House fight, Paul Lawhead and Larry Leduc, approached Darman about returning the Stadium to family films and live entertainment. A deal was struck and the two high school teachers reopened the Stadium with "The Pink Panther Strikes Again” four months later.
“Their weekends-only policy helped cut overhead and tapping Darman’s experience, the newcomers were able to confound predictions that they wouldn’t last a month. Lawhead says it’s taken a few years to learn the ropes (and jettison a booking agent that "had us booking along with NBC and ABC”).
“NOW, they’re enjoying "one of the best quarters we’ve ever had,” according to Lawhead and continuing to lure back downtown moviegoers who had deserted to the suburban malls. He sees a trend where “the theater experience” of a giant screen, resonant sound and big hall is proving an attraction over small, sterile cinemas.
“Not only that, but Lawhead says because the cinema complexes "are cutting their own throats” by having too many competing high-priced screens, more recently-released films are available for the $2-a-seat Stadium to choose from (“If it’s top ten, eventually we’ll get it.”).
“The new broom at the Stadium has swept live shows back in. The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Arthur Feidler and the Boston Pops, country and western music, hometown jazz great Dave McKenna and the Alexander Peloquin Chorale are among the live acts that have brought life back to the Stadium stage.
“The Northern R.I. Council on the Arts is in its third year of live presentations bringing in student audiences from as far away as South Kingston and Framingham, Mass. The next one (open to the general public as well) May 7 has a double bill of one-man shows, Ken Richer as Mark Twain and Jerry Rockwood as Edgar Allan Poe.
“At this rate, the Stadium may revive its advertising motto of the 40’s, "Woonsocket’s Finest Theatre – The Biggest Show Value in Town.”"
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“Shortly after the turn of the century, Lynch’s Theatre opened across the street [from the Olympia] at 41 Main. From its original vaudeville fare it switched to movies, changing to the Rialto, offering "Entertainment to Chase the Blues Away” and “Free! Beautiful! Five Piece Dinette Set. Bring your green coupons” (according to a 1944 ad)."
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“The life breathed into the Stadium to rescue it from its X-rated days in the 1970’s is a spin-off of the interest in historical preservation and incubating the local arts scene stirred by the Woonsocket Opera House in its final years.
“The Opera House, a six-story giant that was one of New England’s finest which, in its posterity, will probably always lay claim to being the largest stage ever in the state, opened to rave reviews in 1888. Monument Square hotels and guest rooms were packed as 1,700 people crowded the 1,500-seat Opera House to see Maude Banks in "Ingomar the Barbarian.”
“In 1910, as road shows lost popularity to the "flickers,” boxing was tried. Three years later, as the Park Theatre, the typical bill combined three vaudeville acts with six film reels, but was short-lived because the Bijou was the dominant vaudeville house. By 1915, it was mostly all movies.
“What one later-day critic dubbed "a gaudy middle-aged fling in vaudeville” was attempted during World War II when the Stadium’s builder, industrialist Arthur I. Darman, made $25,000 in renovations and reopened the New Park Theater on Labor Day, 1942.
“It proved a money-loser, but a cultural boost for Woonsocket and a big hit with big-time performers. As with the Stadium, Darman designed meticulous facilities for the troupers. He arranged limousine rides from Providence’s Union Station and lavish post-show buffets. The favorable reputation was summed up in the title of a 1945 Saturday Evening Post article, "Book Me in Woonsocket.”
“The New Park’s ads proclaimed its "2-in-1 stage and screen shows… All for 40c and 50c plus tax… The Best Fun Investment” in town. But as the red ink mounted Darman sold out in 1945.
“DESPITE innovations such as a CinemaScope, screen movie audiences waned in the 50’s. By 1961, the Park’s twin horseshoe balconies only saw action on weekends and closed altogether in 1963, a "Watch for Reopening” sign presiding sadly over increasing vandalism and sporadic small fires. When the city took control in 1970 because of unpaid tax bills demolition bids were sought.
“A battle ensued in which preservationists and arts buffs tried to convince city fathers that grant money could be assembled to revive the Opera House. A state offer of $250,000 helped convince the city, but as the legal formalities were being ironed out, two weeks before the transfer to the Opera House Society the building mysteriously burned on September 22, 1975.”
My above post for the Olympia was mistakenly put on this page. I intended this one on the Laurier:
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“THE SOCIAL NEIGHBORHOOD had its Laurier Theater at 17 Cumebrland St., named for Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier. "One of our finest movie houses,” is how one-time Woonsocket Historical Society President James C. Byrne remembered it.
“Today’s head of that group, Phyllis Thomas, recalls how her prim and proper French teacher urged her high school pupils to sharpen their ear for the language by attending the French films sometimes shown at the Laurier, and unwittingly recomending some rather "racy” movies.
“Ads for the Laurier’s second-run and B-movie fare in 1944 bore the slogan "Always a Good Show.” Those shows sometimes included a breath of home for Woonsocket’s many Canadian immigrants. For instance, a two-night stand that April by the “Fameuse Troupe Jean Grimaldi de Montreal… an all-new French 3-hour Riot of Fun” crowed the billing, with such attractions as Rolando Giraldo “The Canadian Cab Calloway.” All for 65-cents in the orchestra and 55-cents in the balcony. The Laurier fell victim to Hurricane Diane that flooded the Social District in 1955."
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“BUT BACK then the Stadium’s competitors were not the multi-screen shopping center cinemas. There was the Olympia, successor to the city’s original theater, The Music Hall, which opened around 1850. Located at 40 Main St., across from what is now Bob and Ray’s Furniture (for many year’s Kornstein’s), it became the Nickel Theatre and, in 1900, the Strand. It has at least one claim to local theatrical fame – the great actor Edwin Booth played Hamlet there on Thanksgiving Day, 1872.
“Fire took the lives of two children at the Strand on New Year’s Day, 1926. After repairs it reopened as the Olympia Theatre, but also became known as the "scratch house” because of the fleas that shared seats with patrons. The Olympia’s slogan was “Big Shows, Small Prices” and lower budget Republic pictures were featured, along with the chance to play “Honey” for cash prizes,
“The Olympia showed its last movies in the 1950’s, its insides removed and shrunk from its original five stories to two-and-a-half floors of office and retail space when remodeled in 1956. It played home to such local fixtures as the Coney Island weiner restaurant and the Brass Rail bar before falling to the wrecker’s ball only last September.”
Shortly after the turn of the century, Lynch’s Theatre opened across the street at 41 Main. From its original vaudeville fare it switched to movies, changing to the Rialto, offering “Entertainment to Chase the Blues Away” and “Free! Beautiful! Five Piece Dinette Set. Bring your green coupons” (according to a 1944 ad).
On the other end of Main Street, where Chan’s Restaurant is now, was the Bijou Theatre, referred to in some local history books as the Electric Theatre. It was a house of worship befiore becoming a vaudeville and movie house.
The Social Methodist House was moved a block near the turn of the century to 273 Main St. to make way for a new post office. In 1912, to the church auditorium was added space for a stage and wings, and the building leased to famed theatrical figure Edward Albee. Stock companies, vaudevillians and movies played there.
The Bijou was hit twice by fire. The second, November 23, 1936, closed the theater for 13 months. It closed again in 1952 because business was off, reopening weekends only in 1955, but dark for many months at a stretch before its demolition began the final day of 1963. It’s last owner was U.S. Sen. Theodore Francis Green.
THE SOCIAL NEIGHBORHOOD had its Laurier Theater at 17 Cumebrland St., named for Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier. “One of our finest movie houses,” is how one-time Woonsocket Historical Society President James C. Byrne remembered it.
Today’s head of that group, Phyllis Thomas, recalls how her prim and proper French teacher urged her high school pupils to sharpen their ear for the language by attending the French films sometimes shaown at the Laurier, and unwittingly recomending some rather “racy” movies.
Ads for the Laurier’s second-run and B-movie fare in 1944 bore the slogan “Always a Good Show.” Those shows sometimes included a breath of home for Woonsocket’s many Canadian immigrants. For instance, a two-night stand that April by the “Fameuse Troupe Jean Grimaldi de Montreal… an all-new French 3-hour Riot of Fun” crowed the billing, with such attractions as Rolando Giraldo “The Canadain Cab Calloway.” All for 65-cents in the orchestra and 55-cents in the balcony. The Laurier fell victim to Hurricane Diane that flooded the Social District in 1955.
The life breathed into the Stadium to rescue it from its X-rated days in the 1970’s is a spin-off of the interest in historical preservation and incubating the local arts scene stirred by the Woonsocket Opera House in its final years.
The Opera House, a six-story giant that was one of New England’s finest which, in its posterity, will probably always lay claim to being the largest stage ever in the state, opened to rave reviews in 1888. Monument Square hotels and guest rooms were packed as 1,700 people crowded the 1,500-seat Opera House to see Maude Banks in “Ingomar the Barbarian.”
In 1910, as road shows lost popularity to the “flickers,” boxing was tried. Three years later, as the Park Theatre, the typical bill combined three vaudeville acts with six film reels, but was short-lived because the Bijou was the dominant vaudeville house. By 1915, it was mostly all movies.
What one later-day critic dubbed “a gaudy middle-aged fling in vaudeville” was attempted during World War II when the Stadium’s builder, industrialist Arthur I. Darman, made $25,000 in renovations and reopened the New Park Theater on Labor Day, 1942.
It proved a money-loser, but a cultural boost for Woonsocket and a big hit with big-time performers. As with the Stadium, Darman designed meticulous facilities for the troupers. He arranged limousine rides from Providence’s Union Station and lavish post-show buffets. The favorable reputation was summed up in the title of a 1945 Saturday Evening Post article, “Book Me in Woonsocket.”
The New Park’s ads proclaimed its “2-in-1 stage and screen shows… All for 40c and 50c plus tax… The Best Fun Investment” in town. But as the red ink mounted Darman sold out in 1945.
DESPITE innovations such as a CinemaScope, screen movie audiences waned in the 50’s. By 1961, the Park’s twin horseshoe balconies only saw action on weekends and closed altogether in 1963, a “Watch for Reopening” sign presiding sadly over increasing vandalism and sporadic small fires. When the city took control in 1970 because of unpaid tax bills demolition bids were sought.
A battle ensued in which preservationists and arts buffs tried to convince city fathers that grant money could be assembled to revive the Opera House. A state offer of $250,000 helped convince the city, but as the legal formalities were being ironed out, two weeks before the transfer to the Opera House Society the building mysteriously burned on September 22, 1975.
So attention was turned to the Stadium, still in fine physical condition, but deteriorated culturally into an X-rated cinema with occasional nude dancing.
The Stadium was hatched by the manager of the vaudeville-strong Bijou. He convinced the Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky circuit that the city needed a first-run movie theater and a wealthy widow friend put up the money.
Darman, who’d left home at age 14 for a road show called “Humpty-Dumpty” and later was a successful Springfield, Illinois restauranter, helped secure the original Stadium mortgage and took over the project when the widow’s financing faltered.
He expanded its scope to include the equally elegant office building and embellished the theater’s design. Darman didn’t want the gaudiness of the moviehouses of the day. Along with Paramount’s head designer, he settled on an elaborate but stylish look that has held up well.
The long, low lobby features Adamesque relief work, painted floral arches, Dutch-influenced murals, Italian Renaissance-modeled side tables, chairs and benches, and distinctive drinking fountains of Art Noveau-patterned tiles in a classical framework.
The auditorium’s configuration was considered ideal for medium-sized theaters, sweeping the seating upward without the use of a suspended balcony. The absence of pillars (the so-called stadium plan) gave the theater its name.
For 36-year-old Darman, the Stadium was another statement of his civic commitment. At the time a deluxe movie house was regarded as a prime physical and cultural asset, and an educational one as important as a library or school. In his later years, he proudly noted his theater’s capablities, “If there’s anything in the world that is good in theater and Woonsocket wants it, we can get it.”
Forty-four curtins and backdrops are still at the ready to host most any kind of production. The Wurlitzer concert organ has been scrupulously maintained and can produce the sounds of horses' hooves and thunder and lightning.
A typical show in those early years (there were three, starting at 2 p.m.) included an overture from the 12-piece orchestra, an organ concert – often with singalong, a chorus girl rountine, vaudeville act , newsreel and feature film.
Darman’s close rapport with the head of the Publix Pictures managing circuit (the expanded product of a Paramount merger) and their shared opinion that “Rich people can go to New York for amusement. I want the working man to be able to get just as good right here at home” kept big name acts coming to Woonsocket (aided by Darman’s reputation for generous hospitality). That commitment to live entertainment made the Stadium one of the last places in the country where vaudeville played on a regular basis (into the early 50’s) .
THE LATE industrialist was never an absentee owner. Darman’s daughter, Sylvia Medoff, remembers his “tremendous capacity for detail… He always had a finger on it, was always active in it.”
That involvement intensified in 1956, when Publix’s regional subsidiary stopped managing the Stadium. Darman assumed management by forming the AIDCO Corporation and invested in alterations that included a new marquee, air conditioning and more spacious seating.
For some 18 years, he continued to operate the theater at a substantial loss. Darman leased the Stadium to a Boston outfit in 1974 that assured him, “Don’t worry. We’ll be able to get enough pictures.” He was shocked when they began showing X-rated films and didn’t set foot in the theater during their tenure, but he was powerless to break the seven-year lease.
There were police raids in 1975, but the city found itself without legal grounds to revoke the new operator’s entertainment permits. The pressure was stepped up when historical and arts groups succeeded in getting the Stadium placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The turning point was the city’s changeover from phone cable to radio-connected fire alarm systems. The porno promoters balked at the installation cost and the last movie was shown on New Year’s Eve, 1976.
Boosters of the local arts scene active in the Opera House fight, Paul Lawhead and Larry Leduc, approached Darman about returning the Stadium to family films and live entertainment. A deal was struck and the two high school teachers reopened the Stadium with “The Pink Panther Strikes Again” four months later.
Their weekends-only policy helped cut overhead and tapping Darman’s experience, the newcomers were able to confound predictions that they wouldn’t last a month. Lawhead says it’s taken a few years to learn the ropes (and jettison a booking agent that “had us booking along with NBC and ABC”).
NOW, they’re enjoying “one of the best quarters we’ve ever had,” according to Lawhead and continuing to lure back downtown moviegoers who had deserted to the suburban malls. He sees a trend where “the theater experience” of a giant screen, resonant sound and big hall is proving an attraction over small, sterile cinemas.
Not only that, but Lawhead says because the cinema complexes “are cutting their own throats” by having too many competing high-priced screens, more recently-released films are available for the $2-a-seat Stadium to choose from (“If it’s top ten, eventually we’ll get it.”).
The new broom at the Stadium has swept live shows back in. The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Arthur Feidler and the Boston Pops, country and western music, hometown jazz great Dave McKenna and the Alexander Peloquin Chorale are among the live acts that have brought life back to the Stadium stage.
The Northern R.I. Council on the Arts is in its third year of live presentations bringing in student audiences from as far away as South Kingston and Framingham, Mass. The next one (open to the general public as well) May 7 has a double bill of one-man shows, Ken Richer as Mark Twain and Jerry Rockwood as Edgar Allan Poe.
At this rate, the Stadium may revive its advertising motto of the 40’s, “Woonsocket’s Finest Theatre – The Biggest Show Value in Town.”
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
BUT BACK then the Stadium’s competitors were not the multi-screen shopping center cinemas. There was the Olympia, successor to the city’s original theater, The Music Hall, which opened around 1850. Located at 40 Main St., across from what is now Bob and Ray’s Furniture (for many year’s Kornstein’s), it became the Nickel Theatre and, in 1900, the Strand. It has at least one claim to local theatrical fame – the great actor Edwin Booth played Hamlet there on Thanksgiving Day, 1872.
“Fire took the lives of two children at the Strand on New Year’s Day, 1926. After repairs it reopened as the Olympia Theatre, but also became known as the "scratch house” because of the fleas that shared seats with patrons. The Olympia’s slogan was “Big Shows, Small Prices” and lower budget Republic pictures were featured, along with the chance to play “Honey” for cash prizes.
“The Olympia showed its last movies in the 1950s, its insides removed and shrunk from its original five stories to two-and-a-half floors of office and retail space when remodeled in 1956. It played home to such local fixtures as the Coney Island wiener restaurant and the Brass Rail bar before falling to the wrecker’s ball only last September.”
From an article on Woonsocket theatres in The Providence Journal.
Copyright Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin May 16, 1985
“On the other end of Main Street, where Chan’s Restaurant is now, was the Bijou Theatre, referred to in some local history books as the Electric Theatre. It was a house of worship before becoming a vaudeville and movie house.
“The Social Methodist House was moved a block near the turn of the century to 273 Main St. to make way for a new post office. In 1912, to the church auditorium was added space for a stage and wings, and the building leased to famed theatrical figure Edward Albee. Stock companies, vaudevillians and movies played there.
“The Bijou was hit twice by fire. The second, November 23, 1936, closed the theater for 13 months. It closed again in 1952 because business was off, reopening weekends only in 1955, but dark for many months at a stretch before its demolition began the final day of 1963. It’s last owner was U.S. Sen. Theodore Francis Greene.”
The Cable Car Cinema, now under new management, has recently had its auditorium refurbished. I peeked in at the spiffy new black couches and new theatre seats. Rather nice. Now if they would spend some additional money on a screen that can accomodate CinemaScope’s 1:2.35 format for movies made in that ratio, and some adjustable masking, it would be a real advancement. Anamorphic wide screen films continue to be substantially cropped at the right and left edges in this cinema. For their opening post-remodeling presentation the theatre ran It’s a Wonderful Life. The format was DVD projection!!!!! I was informed they couldn’t get a 35mm print. Just as well, since the top and bottom of this 1:1.33 ratio film would have been cropped in the hopelessly untutored and destructive projection that reigns here. I hope the DVD wasn’t colorized.
It opened at the Victoria, according to the review a day later in the New York Times on January 12, 1946. The New York Times generally mentioned the theatre where a reviewed film was playing. You can easily find these on the NYT website by typing in the film’s name in the movie section review search page, as I just did.
This picture from the early 20th Century shows Bazar’s Hall (entrance right). According to the Images of America volume South Providence, the hall was a center of Jewish social life for the neighborhood. Weddings, dances, lectures, plays took place here. On Friday nights the hall became the neighborhood’s silent movie house, listed in the city directory as the Star. It seems to have been on the second floor.
I’m wondering if the co-feature No Greater Sin was the 1941 film about the ‘scourge of syphilis.’ If so, that would make it 28 years old at the time of this showing.
“Adults Only fare”?
Were they being exploitative? Breathless was Godard’s legendary first film, for those who don’t know, and one of the classics of the French New Wave cinema.
“He would have been in his seventies when Gerald was working there.”
If you are referring to me, I never said I worked there. That 1970 image was scanned from a book. I am simply interested in the topic of old R.I. theatres and have posted my own photos of the Empire as well as historic ones I’ve found, many of them on vintage postcards.
The Gaiety operated from 1914 to 1927, when it was demolished for the construction of Loew’s State, now Providence Performing Arts Center. The Gaiety occupied the space where the entrance lobby to PPAC is now located.