Actor Alberto Sordi said that after his 1942 film I 3 aquilotti opened at the Barberini, he would pass by every afternoon to watch the patrons going in and out. Someone asked him for an autograph. It was the first one of his life.
Fellini’s 8 ½ program booklet from its showings at the Park Square and Kenmore Square Cinemas. It was eight pages of blurbs and reviews and I saved it.
I just watched the 1945 movie Doll Face with Viviane Blaine and Perry Como. Blaine’s character is in a stage show she is to perform in at the Belmont Theatre in New York. In the last half hour of the movie we see the theatre exterior at night with lights and the theatre name “Belmont” as well as interior shots of stage and audience. I have no way of knowing whether the actual Belmont was used for exterior and interior shooting or whether other locations were employed for either or both. Perhaps it was all done in Hollywood, but it’s supposed to be the Belmont in New York. Perhaps someone can look at the DVD and come to a conclusion.
Nick,
Regarding “art house conversion” coming sometime after Love Story, the Avon had been an art house long before that, briefly after its 1938 opening, then throughout the postwar period up to the later 1960s, when it became more mainstream. The 1970s saw it as a repertory cinema (it was renamed “Avon Repertory Cinema”) and showed double bills of generally classy foreign and domestic films with two or three program changes per week, mostly revivals but with some new ones thrown in.
I remember the 1950s and 1960s when the theatre opened every day at 2:00 P.M. and had continuous showings. Admission back then ranged from 75 to 90 cents. There was no snack concession, probably because they considered themselves to be in the same league as a legit theatre, where people don’t buy candy, popcorn or drinks to eat at their seats. Their motto then was “Choice of the Discerning.” I used to go there as a high school student in the 1950s and would buy a couple of candy bars beforehand at the next door Rexall Drugstore to eat during the show.
There was a taint of the forbidden associated with the cinema at that time, because a number of the films that played there were “condemned” by the Catholic Legion of Decency, which were often films of international acclaim. When I was in the seminary, we were expresssly forbidden from attending the Avon during our breaks because of this reputation it had. But many of us went anyway, and so did priests! The quality of the films shown back then was very high. It still is now, pretty much, though sometimes there is daydating with the Showcase Seekonk Route 6. In its heyday, the Avon ran programs that were exclusive to the area and would play almost nowhere else in Rhode Island.
Times have changed. They have a hard time getting large audiences for anything at the Avon any more, though the size is decent on many shows. It may be heresy, but this is a theatre I think would benefit from multiplexing (or add-ons of small auditoriums up top) with three or four smaller cinemas. They could increase their boxoffice, provide a wider variety of films. Many films that we see trailers or posters for never show up. Others remain far too long. Still, it is an indispensable place for many.
In his satiric 1990 novel A Tenured Professor, John Kenneth Galbraith described a visit by one of his characters to what is clearly the Harvard Square Theatre:
“Walking across the Yard in front of the Widener Library and then along beside Massachusetts Hall, the oldest of Harvard buildings, which now houses the office of the president, he made his way through the traffic in the upper part of Harvard Square. Glancing around out of habit to see that he was unnoticed, he went into the recently refurbished movie theatre. Once one great hall for the display and breathless admiration of Pickford, Chaplin, Swanson, Grant, Cooper and Bacall, it was now divided into five anonymous cubicles, each with its equally anonymous offering. Professor McCrimmon chose one at random and settled down for the afternoon.”
Alan,
Those are very interesting recollections. You should post the comments on their appropriate individual pages as well, such as the above story about the Embassy, which could be added to the Embassy page. As far as photos go, use a photo server such as Photobucket.com and link to them on the appropriate Cinema Treasures pages. It is unlikely that you will soon have any opportunity to post them here directly.
In his book A Life in the 20th Century, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. writes a chapter on what he enjoyed while at Harvard in the 1930s. In this quoted paragraph, he mentions seeing movies at the University Theatre in Cambridge and then goes on about the Fine Arts Theatre in Boston:
“Came the talkies. The University Theater in Harvard Square was a constant refuge. So was George Krasna’s Fine Arts Theater, near Symphony Hall in Boston. Here one saw the great UFA movies from Germany – von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Die Frau im Mond (By Rocket to the Moon, both feeding my fascination with the future, and his powerful and scary M, with Peter Lorre as the child murderer. Here too one saw lighthearted German musicals like Erik Charrell’s Congress Dances and William Thiele’s Die Drei von der Tankstelle, where I acquired an early enthusiasm for the ravishing Lilian Harvey, English by birth but a great favorite in pre-Hitler Germany.”
In his book A Life in the 20th Century, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. writes a chapter on what he enjoyed while at Harvard in the 1930s. In this quoted paragraph, he tells of seeing movies at the University Theater in Cambridge and the Fine Arts Theatre in Boston:
“Came the talkies. The University Theater in Harvard Square was a constant refuge. So was George Krasna’s Fine Arts Theater, near Symphony Hall in Boston. Here one saw the great UFA movies from Germany – von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Die Frau im Mond (By Rocket to the Moon, both feeding my fascination with the future, and his powerful and scary M, with Peter Lorre as the child murderer. Here too one saw lighthearted German musicals like Erik Charrell’s Congress Dances and William Thiele’s Die Drei von der Tankstelle, where I acquired an early enthusiasm for the ravishing Lilian Harvey, English by birth but a great favorite in pre-Hitler Germany.”
Warren, no. Just Flickr. Flickr offers several options. You can link to the entire page (with space for viewer comments) or else to the image itself inder “all sizes.” I prefer direct linkage to the image in a specific size. Dec. 18 is an example of the whole page. Today I linked directly to the image, a procedure which nobody else seems to have trouble linking to. I’ve tested it after logging off CT and entering it anonymously, also at the public library yesterday. I will ask other people to try it. I prefer doing it that way because it desn’t make my 5,000+ photos and images (family, friends, travel, etc.) instantly available to folks who just came to see the one picture and not my family and personal history. If you have further trouble, just bookmark my Flickr account to find anything you may have missed, though most is not earth-shattering: http://www.flickr.com/photos/italiangerry/
You can even perform an internal search for anything I have, since I tag everything profusely. Most of my posts will deal with Italian cinema publicity. That, and the movies themselves, have been a lifelong passion, as well as RI theatres. I have Flickr sets that are representative of those topics.
Films about classical composers as well as opera films were very popular here in the 1940s and 1950s especially. Here is a DOUBLE BILL of Lucia di Lamermoor and Rossini scheduled for November 1949, after a revival run of the Marx Brothers' duo Animal Crackers and Duck Soup.
In 1963 you could see this double bill of dubbed Italian films, both actually considered very good. They were: On Any Street / La notte brava, Mauro Bolognini, from material by Pier Paolo Pasolini & Mill of the Stone People / Mill of the Stone Women / Il mulino delle donne di pietra, Giorgio Ferroni, 1960. Sexy Elsa Martinelli was a considerable draw at the time.
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1967 Oedipus Rex didn’t have its New York commercial first run and American premiere until 1984 here at the Public. Fabiano Canosa often dug up unseen important films such as THIS ONE.
No, Warren. The images work for others. And they worked for me when I went into CT anonymously at the library computer yesterday. I cannot understand the problem you are having. But here is a page link.
The second little theatre at the Carnegie Hall Cinema, the tiny Carnegie Hall Screening Room, was leased by SACIS of Italy and opened a series of Italian films in the late 1980s under the heading of “Cinema Italia – Roberto Rossellini.” In 1987, they played the uncut 4-hour version of Visconti’s 1972 Ludwig. Here is the Variety ad announcing that run. Many other fine Italian films, mostly recent first-runs, played here at that time.
Actor Alberto Sordi said that after his 1942 film I 3 aquilotti opened at the Barberini, he would pass by every afternoon to watch the patrons going in and out. Someone asked him for an autograph. It was the first one of his life.
Here is a vintage postcard, circa 1917, of Emery’s Majestic Theatre as it appeared not long after it opened.
Fellini’s 8 ½ program booklet from its showings at the Park Square and Kenmore Square Cinemas. It was eight pages of blurbs and reviews and I saved it.
An exterior photo can be seen HERE.
I just watched the 1945 movie Doll Face with Viviane Blaine and Perry Como. Blaine’s character is in a stage show she is to perform in at the Belmont Theatre in New York. In the last half hour of the movie we see the theatre exterior at night with lights and the theatre name “Belmont” as well as interior shots of stage and audience. I have no way of knowing whether the actual Belmont was used for exterior and interior shooting or whether other locations were employed for either or both. Perhaps it was all done in Hollywood, but it’s supposed to be the Belmont in New York. Perhaps someone can look at the DVD and come to a conclusion.
Nick,
Regarding “art house conversion” coming sometime after Love Story, the Avon had been an art house long before that, briefly after its 1938 opening, then throughout the postwar period up to the later 1960s, when it became more mainstream. The 1970s saw it as a repertory cinema (it was renamed “Avon Repertory Cinema”) and showed double bills of generally classy foreign and domestic films with two or three program changes per week, mostly revivals but with some new ones thrown in.
I remember the 1950s and 1960s when the theatre opened every day at 2:00 P.M. and had continuous showings. Admission back then ranged from 75 to 90 cents. There was no snack concession, probably because they considered themselves to be in the same league as a legit theatre, where people don’t buy candy, popcorn or drinks to eat at their seats. Their motto then was “Choice of the Discerning.” I used to go there as a high school student in the 1950s and would buy a couple of candy bars beforehand at the next door Rexall Drugstore to eat during the show.
There was a taint of the forbidden associated with the cinema at that time, because a number of the films that played there were “condemned” by the Catholic Legion of Decency, which were often films of international acclaim. When I was in the seminary, we were expresssly forbidden from attending the Avon during our breaks because of this reputation it had. But many of us went anyway, and so did priests! The quality of the films shown back then was very high. It still is now, pretty much, though sometimes there is daydating with the Showcase Seekonk Route 6. In its heyday, the Avon ran programs that were exclusive to the area and would play almost nowhere else in Rhode Island.
Times have changed. They have a hard time getting large audiences for anything at the Avon any more, though the size is decent on many shows. It may be heresy, but this is a theatre I think would benefit from multiplexing (or add-ons of small auditoriums up top) with three or four smaller cinemas. They could increase their boxoffice, provide a wider variety of films. Many films that we see trailers or posters for never show up. Others remain far too long. Still, it is an indispensable place for many.
That exterior display shows a wonderful kind of showmanship that has long disappeared from film exhibition.
I saw Anthony Mann’s The Tin Star, with Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins, at the Paramount on a trip up from Providence on November 16, 1957.
In his satiric 1990 novel A Tenured Professor, John Kenneth Galbraith described a visit by one of his characters to what is clearly the Harvard Square Theatre:
“Walking across the Yard in front of the Widener Library and then along beside Massachusetts Hall, the oldest of Harvard buildings, which now houses the office of the president, he made his way through the traffic in the upper part of Harvard Square. Glancing around out of habit to see that he was unnoticed, he went into the recently refurbished movie theatre. Once one great hall for the display and breathless admiration of Pickford, Chaplin, Swanson, Grant, Cooper and Bacall, it was now divided into five anonymous cubicles, each with its equally anonymous offering. Professor McCrimmon chose one at random and settled down for the afternoon.”
Review of opening night with Bernadette Peters.
The theatre re-opened on Friday, March 14th in a gala evening show. Article in Boston Globe.
Alan,
Those are very interesting recollections. You should post the comments on their appropriate individual pages as well, such as the above story about the Embassy, which could be added to the Embassy page. As far as photos go, use a photo server such as Photobucket.com and link to them on the appropriate Cinema Treasures pages. It is unlikely that you will soon have any opportunity to post them here directly.
In his book A Life in the 20th Century, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. writes a chapter on what he enjoyed while at Harvard in the 1930s. In this quoted paragraph, he mentions seeing movies at the University Theatre in Cambridge and then goes on about the Fine Arts Theatre in Boston:
“Came the talkies. The University Theater in Harvard Square was a constant refuge. So was George Krasna’s Fine Arts Theater, near Symphony Hall in Boston. Here one saw the great UFA movies from Germany – von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Die Frau im Mond (By Rocket to the Moon, both feeding my fascination with the future, and his powerful and scary M, with Peter Lorre as the child murderer. Here too one saw lighthearted German musicals like Erik Charrell’s Congress Dances and William Thiele’s Die Drei von der Tankstelle, where I acquired an early enthusiasm for the ravishing Lilian Harvey, English by birth but a great favorite in pre-Hitler Germany.”
In his book A Life in the 20th Century, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. writes a chapter on what he enjoyed while at Harvard in the 1930s. In this quoted paragraph, he tells of seeing movies at the University Theater in Cambridge and the Fine Arts Theatre in Boston:
“Came the talkies. The University Theater in Harvard Square was a constant refuge. So was George Krasna’s Fine Arts Theater, near Symphony Hall in Boston. Here one saw the great UFA movies from Germany – von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Die Frau im Mond (By Rocket to the Moon, both feeding my fascination with the future, and his powerful and scary M, with Peter Lorre as the child murderer. Here too one saw lighthearted German musicals like Erik Charrell’s Congress Dances and William Thiele’s Die Drei von der Tankstelle, where I acquired an early enthusiasm for the ravishing Lilian Harvey, English by birth but a great favorite in pre-Hitler Germany.”
Warren, no. Just Flickr. Flickr offers several options. You can link to the entire page (with space for viewer comments) or else to the image itself inder “all sizes.” I prefer direct linkage to the image in a specific size. Dec. 18 is an example of the whole page. Today I linked directly to the image, a procedure which nobody else seems to have trouble linking to. I’ve tested it after logging off CT and entering it anonymously, also at the public library yesterday. I will ask other people to try it. I prefer doing it that way because it desn’t make my 5,000+ photos and images (family, friends, travel, etc.) instantly available to folks who just came to see the one picture and not my family and personal history. If you have further trouble, just bookmark my Flickr account to find anything you may have missed, though most is not earth-shattering:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/italiangerry/
You can even perform an internal search for anything I have, since I tag everything profusely. Most of my posts will deal with Italian cinema publicity. That, and the movies themselves, have been a lifelong passion, as well as RI theatres. I have Flickr sets that are representative of those topics.
The 1965 film about the life of Pope John XXIII, And There Came a Man, directed by Ermanno Olmi and starring Rod Steiger, opened here in April 1968.
American premiere of Gillo Pontecorvo’s Kapo 1964.
Films about classical composers as well as opera films were very popular here in the 1940s and 1950s especially. Here is a DOUBLE BILL of Lucia di Lamermoor and Rossini scheduled for November 1949, after a revival run of the Marx Brothers' duo Animal Crackers and Duck Soup.
A very hairy lady was the subject of Marco Ferreri’s The Ape Woman, shown here in 1964.
Belated American premiere of a French and Italian film on the same 1965 program. Rouch and Fellini.
In 1963 you could see this double bill of dubbed Italian films, both actually considered very good. They were: On Any Street / La notte brava, Mauro Bolognini, from material by Pier Paolo Pasolini & Mill of the Stone People / Mill of the Stone Women / Il mulino delle donne di pietra, Giorgio Ferroni, 1960. Sexy Elsa Martinelli was a considerable draw at the time.
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1967 Oedipus Rex didn’t have its New York commercial first run and American premiere until 1984 here at the Public. Fabiano Canosa often dug up unseen important films such as THIS ONE.
No, Warren. The images work for others. And they worked for me when I went into CT anonymously at the library computer yesterday. I cannot understand the problem you are having. But here is a page link.
The second little theatre at the Carnegie Hall Cinema, the tiny Carnegie Hall Screening Room, was leased by SACIS of Italy and opened a series of Italian films in the late 1980s under the heading of “Cinema Italia – Roberto Rossellini.” In 1987, they played the uncut 4-hour version of Visconti’s 1972 Ludwig. Here is the Variety ad announcing that run. Many other fine Italian films, mostly recent first-runs, played here at that time.
Here is a postcard ad promoting the opening of Lina Wertmüller’s Summer Night at Cinema II in June 1987.