Astor Theatre

in an old book I have called The New York Times Goes To The Movies, it shows Gone With The Wind opened here and the Capital on Dec 19, 1939. The Astor had reserved seats and the Capitol didn’t. Other films were
The Apartment-June 15, 1960 (Also at the Plaza)
The Best Years of Our Lives – Nov 22, 1946
The Champ- Nov 10, 1931
Dr. No- May 29, 1963 (Also at the Murray Hill)
Dinner At 8- World Premiere Aug 23, 1933
Grand Hotel- April 13, 1932
The Great Dictator-Oct 16 1940 Also at the Capital. The Astor had reserved seats and the Capitol didn't
A Hard Days Night-August 12, 1964 (Also at the Trans Lux East)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame- Sept 3, 1923
On The Beach- Dec 18, 1959
On The Waterfront-July 28, 1954
The Phantom Of The Opera- Sept 7, 1925
Rebel Without A Cause- Oct 26, 1955
Sergeant York-Jul 2, 1941
The date may be slightly off. i took the date from the NY Times review.

I doubt if a list of all the movies that played the Astor has ever been published. You would probably have to do some arduous research by going through the bound volumes of New York Times movie reviews, year by year, starting from 1925, when the Astor switched from stage plays to movies. You could also do it by going through the grosses reported for NYC theatres in weekly Variety, but that would be just as time consuming. But is this really necessary? Why do we need to know every movie shown at the Astor? If they weren’t shown there, they would have been shown somewhere else.

Thanks, Warrenâ€"that’s a terrific book. The billboards at the Astor and Victoria were magnificent in the late 40s and early 50s. For the most part, they used bulb-lit block majuscules with a few minimally painted figures behind them. At the Astor, I remember “Enchantment” (Dec. ’47) spelled out three times and blinking on and off in dizzying combinations (at the age of five, I didn’t know what the word meant); “Harvey” (Dec. ’50) spelled out to the right of a thirty-foot representation of James Stewart and the bunny; and “Limelight” (Nov. ’52) spelled out beneath the face of an old, wistful Charles Chaplin. At the Victoria, I recall “The Third Man” (Feb. ’50) spelled out to the right of Orson Welles’s hulking shadow; and a near-copy of the latter for “The Man Between” (Dec. ’53) with a neon-circling bicycle substituting for Welles. The most elaborate one was for “Quo Vadis” at the Astor (Nov. ’51), with a forty-foot high representation of Deborah Kerr tied to a circus stake left of the title, a smaller Peter Ustinov plucking his lyre right of it, and a top and bottom border of flickering neon flames as Rome burned. Nearly as elaborate was one for “Joan of Arc” at the Victoria (Nov. ’48), with the facial representation of an armour-clad Ingrid Bergman calling for infantry over her shoulder, to the left of the title. If I’m right, the much duller block-long painted-ad sign first advertised an automobile trade-show at the Colosseum in Fall, ’55. BTW, “Times Square Style” provides a rare color photo of a stage show at the Roxy, on page 35, upper right, with sixteen Roxyettes balancing themselves on beach balls, while a jazz band (Louis Armstrong?) plays behind them; as a kid, I had a post-card of that image, which identified it as a Roxy performance.

The two Gaiety’s are the same in name only. The present one, located above Howard Johnson’s restaurant, was never a playhouse or moviehouse, to my knowledge.

Bryan and Vincent-
Thanks for the cross-references. Am I right that Minsky’s B'que played at the Gaiety—or did it play at the former Gotham a block north on W 47? As a movie theater, the Victoria held a distinguished record. It underwent renovations in the 40s that used the former stage space for seating and brok e through the rear wall to add an extension to the building. Shimmering steel medalions covered the red-velvet walls. CinemaScope required further modification of the narrow proscenium to accommodate the screen. From the late-40s through the mid-60s films included Joan of Arc, Born Yesterday, A Star Is Born (day-dating at the Paramount), Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove—no mean listof goodies. Box Office Biill.

The Victoria was originally the Gaiety which lives on today as the Gaiety male burlesque house(I am not making this up) across the street.

“Lost Broadway Theatres,” by Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, has B&W photos of the original and 1959 “modernized” interiors.

The Astor’s close relationship with Loew’s-MGM started in the late 1920s and ended in 1946, when Loew’s State, directly opposite the Astor on Broadway, dropped vaudeville and started showing many of the major MGM releases that were previously showcased at the Astor. Probably the most famous MGM release to premiere at the Astor was “Gone With the Wind,” which was shown there on a two-a-day reserved seat policy simultaneously with continuous run showings at the much larger Capitol Theatre at Broadway & 51st Street…The Astor was also noted for the huge billboard space above its entrance and marquee, which always advertised its current movie. When the theatre was modernized in 1959, the advertising space was expanded to include the similar space above the adjacent Victoria Theatre, starting with the dual engagement of “The Vikings.” The sign was as wide as that entire block of Broadway between 45th & 46th Streets.