Loew's Valencia Theatre
165-11 Jamaica Avenue,
Jamaica,
NY
11432
165-11 Jamaica Avenue,
Jamaica,
NY
11432
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Showing 351 - 375 of 480 comments
RobertR… I know with great certainty that the last feature to play at the Valencia was the Muhammed Ali film “The Greatest” which opened in the late Spring of 1977 at the Criterion in Times Square and other theaters around town. It’s reasonable to assume that this movie opened fairly wide and the Valencia might even have been included in its first run bookings, but I don’t know the dates it played there.
By the way… I love the scans of those newspaper ads. I could sit up online all night and devour page after page of that sort of stuff. Thanks for sharing!
RobertR… I know with great certainty that the last feature to play at the Valencia was the Muhammed Ali film “The Greatest” which opened in the late Spring of 1977 at the Criterion in Times Square and other theaters around town. It’s reasonable to assume that this movie opened fairly wide and the Valencia might even have been included in its first run bookings, but I don’t know the dates it played there.
By the way… I love the scans of those newspaper ads. I could sit up online all night and devour page after page of that sort of stuff. Thanks for sharing!
1954 the Valencia was still on the “A” run
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The last few years of the Valencia had it playing things like this.
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It is interesting that this film opened in almost every Loew’s in Brooklyn except it’s premiere house the Metropolitan. In Queens where the Valencia ruled it has it exclusive except for the RKO Columbia which is so far away it’s almost Long Island.
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Check out this ad for Gigi when it opened wide 12/29/59
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December 17, 1976 King Kong opened at the Valencia and played until 2/10. This seems like the last first run picture that was booked. When “Car Wash” played on 2/11 it was a second run release playing all over town. They might have just stuck that in for the final weeks booking.
I am trying to find out the last features to play the Valencia, so far the last booking I can see from 2/11/77 is “Car Wash” and “Trick Baby”
May of 1972 American International had a double bill playing all over town of “Dr. Jeykll & Sister Hide” and “Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb”. Besides the Valencia it was also playing in Queens at Loews Triboro, the Arion and Laurelton.
The Loew’s Valencia Theatre was the first of the five ‘Wonder Theatres’ to open;12th January 1929
Joint 2nd and 3rd to open were;
Loew’s Kings Theatre, Brooklyn and Loew’s Paradise, Bronx, both opened;7th September 1929
4th to open was Loew’s Jersey Theatre, Jersey City, NJ, opened;28th September 1929
5th to open was Loew’s 175th Street Theatre, Manhattan, opened;12th February 1930.
Thank you, woody and Warren.
Bway and I once did similar detective work on Loew’s Hillside, an image that we thought was from November 1964 but was actually February 1961 right after the blizzard of the 4th and 5th of that month.
With the help of others on this site, we figured out that, at that time, as seen in that image, the Hillside was showing “Hell Is A City” and “Let No Man Write My Epitaph”.
the movie is “a woman of affairs” starring john gilbert, it opened in 1928
lostmemory, thanks for posting that old photo.
What can you deduce from the words on the marquee that ARE visible ? What are those words ? Would you care to post them here ?
I’ll check it out… just give me a few days until I get back to the Jersey… but I really do distinctly recall a 7-year stretch (1929-1936). However, let me do my homework. I’ll copy down everything the Jersey has for the final five weeks of the stage shows.
Vincent… the Loew’s Jersey actually held onto their Full Stage Show/Movie bill until 1936. We have plenty of records to this effect. I can grab the date of the final stage show, and I recall it being shy of the seven-year mark (of September, 1936). It might be in June, 1936 that the Loew’s Jersey stopped stage shows.
I’ll look it up next time I’m over at the Jersey.
I can tell you that the last stage show was actually a little different. It was announced as the WOR Barn Dance. I’ll copy down the final five weeks and print them here when I can.
For the fun of it, I did a database search of “the New York Times” for the term “Wonder Theaters” using the “Proquest” database service available at NYU’s Bobst Library.
What I found were mostly display ads (although there was also a brief news item about, I think, the opening of the Valencia). (I should have taken better notes!; but I didn’t think I’d find anything to really report back to Cinema Treasures.)
On page 33 of the March 4, 1930 issue of “the New York Times” there is a display ad that says the following: Loew’s ‘BIG 5’ Wonder Theatres [i’ve copied the capitalization and punctuation that was in the ad]. Below this headline they’ve listed five theaters: 175th St., Paradise, Valencia, the Pitkin and the King’s.
So, to be fair to Ben Hall, there was a legitimate reason for him to include the Pitkin and exclude the Jersey in that original photo caption! (Of course, it also makes sense for Loew’s not to include the Jersey in a display ad published in a New York City newspaper — especially in the late 1920s when Jersey City was probably less of a “satellite” of NYC and more of an economically independent city than it is today. It’s my guess that in those days it have been considered a poor use of advertising funds to advertise the Jersey in a NYC newspaper.)
I also looked at some of the later ads as the year went on. It seems that a number of the theaters were dropped out of the Wonder Theater group advertisements. I didn’t note the dates or the theaters, but at first I think the group went down to three and then down to two (the Paradise and Valencia). I didn’t check all the advertisements on the page to see how the “dropped” theaters were advertised — perhaps they had separate ads that also used the term “Wonder Theater” but were advertised separately because they were showing a different show.
Towards the end of the year only the Valencia and the Paradise were grouped together in the same Wonder Theaters ad (again, possibly, because these two were the only two with the same show).
By the way, both of these theaters, and some others too I think, advertised midnight showings on Saturday night! Fascinating to think that in 1930 this was a profitable thing to do in Jamaica, Long Island (which is the way the ads identify the Valencia’s location) and the upper Grand Concourse!
I think the ads also mention something about de lux shows. But I’m not sure what they mean by this — or even it this applies to any of the Loew’s theaters. (I found the ads a bit confusing as the ads seem to me to kind of run together.)
By the way, I wonder if the reason the management of the Valencia, and presumably other theaters too, used usherettes rather than ushers to screen patrons who had loge tickets was based on a variation of the “good cop, bad cop” idea.
This is what I suspect management was thinking:
We’ll have a lady (it could be either a pretty, young one, or a motherly or grandmotherly type) screen those going into the loge seats. This will make most people think twice about trying to “beat the system.” (“Don’t want to upset the pretty young thing, or make ‘mom’ or that nice little old lady cross with us.”) And for those who have no shame, the usherette can always call for one of the big guns (a bouncer-like usher) if they persist and continue to be a problem.
But if we start off with the guy ushers 1) it becomes more of a challenge for certain kind of people to try and beat the system and 2) we would have already used up one of our big guns at the very beginning, so where would we go from there? But with a sweet young thing, or a “mom” or granny “authority figure” followed by a “now we’re getting down to business” hulk, we really have an effective “one, two” punch that will wear down most people who might try and beat the system.
Better that we start out “small” and move on up from that level, then start out “big” and wind up with a big argument/fight on our hands.
Thanks BoxOfficeBill and Warren for the terrific information!
Of course, my gut feeling was that the Valencia was in Jamaica, but I was also curious as to what the exact boundary line between Jamaica and Hollis was — in part, I guess, to figure out how the author could have made such a “weird” mistake. (To give an example of how such a mistake can be seen to be somewhat sensible: the Manhattan apartment I once lived in was officially part of one post office (same zip code), had mail delivered from a different post office (where my mail carrier was actually based), and was actually physically closest to yet a third post office (where I went to buy stamps, etc.)!
So I think the author’s mistake would have been more understandable if, for example, the official boundaries of Jamaica ended at say, 167th St. or 168th St., even though the activities of “downtown” Jamaica might have in reality “spilled” over to the next “town,” Hollis. But given that the boundary is, if I understand Bill’s post correctly, about 15 blocks away it’s hard to understand how in the world the author came up with a Hollis location for the Valencia.
And I was also curious as to what the publishing “history” of this book was like. So it’s very interesting to find out that this mistake was in the original edition, the publishers were contacted and yet did nothing about it.
So far, the most disturbing (“biggest”) mistake I’ve found in the book (and although I’ll still buy it, I could only skim it last night) was that it says that “What’s My Line” (which, I’m pretty sure was a CBS show done from the theater that later became Studio 54) was done in the NBC studios at Rockefeller Center. (And “What’s My Line” is not a trivial show. I believe it sets records for both being a top rated show and for overall longevity.) And while this could be seen, in a sense, as a trivial mistake, especially since TV shows are understandably an afterthought in a book about movie making, what really makes this mistake “serious” in my eyes is that the author also does a profile of the Studio 54 theater (which might have actually been CBS Studio 52?) and never mentions, if I recall correctly, anything about any CBS shows, let alone “What’s My Line,” being broadcast from there! (In fact, the entry seemed solely a brief history of the disco and the movie celebrities who went there.)
And I also saw some other “facts” that seem to be in error, which I’ll also have to check out some day. It seemed to me that the book was really best when in looked at the “big” picture — explaining, for example, why “Splendor in the Grass” and other films were / were not actually filmed in NYC rather than Hollywood or on location (in the case of “Splendor in the Grass,” Elia Kazan, the esteemed director didn’t want to leave his sickly father’s side).
So, it seems to me that one has to take the info in this book with more than a grain of salt! (A “pinch”?; a teaspoon?; a tablespoon?)
Which brings up the topic of Loew’s “Wonder Theaters” again. If I understand Alleman correctly, he says that the theaters were Wonder
Theaters because they all contained Robert Morton “Wonder” organs. I get the sense that besides providing a glowing nickname for this model of a Robert Morton organ, “Wonder” was in a sense a brand name — like “Wonder-bread” or “Miracle” Whip. So, if Alleman is to be believed, the five Loew’s “Wonder Theaters” were billed as they were because they contained identical models of the “Wonder” line of Robert Morton organs — which, to be fair to Alleman, seems to be the same thing that Ben Hall is saying in the caption in “Best Remaining Seats” that we’ve been discussing. In fact, his explanation seems to make the caption a little clearer to me than it first was when I read it.
However, I still like Ziggy’s explanation, and I suspect the “real” explanation is probably a combination of the two of them — as that’s the way things seem to actually work in the real world (i.e., one thing feeds off of another and the final event is a product of many “coincidences”).
According to the venerable Hagstrom’s map (1961 edition), the boundary between eastern Jamaica (postal zones 32, 33, and 35) and western Hollis (postal zone 23) is 180 Street running north to south from Hillside Avenue to the Murdock Avenue spur off Linden Boulevard, then eastward along Hillside Avenue to 188 Street so that the northern sector belongs to Jamaica and the southern to Hollis, then north along 188 Street to 80 Road just south of Union turnpike, which constitutes the northern border of Jamaica (complicated somewhat on the western end when 80 Road disappears on that side of St. John’s University, and challenged not the least by my own map which is missing a crucial page at the the northern end of Hollis). Does my explanation make sense?
I was just at the Virgin Mega Store on Union Sq. and noticed a new book (official publishing date, Feb. 1, 2005) that I think will be of interest to posters at Cinema Treasures: “New York: The Movie Lover’s Guide: The Ultimate Insider tour of Movie New York.” There is also a Los Angeles version, also having a Feb. 1 publishing date. (I just skimmed the New York book, but I get the feeling that both the L.A. and N.Y. books are revised and expanded versions of books that the author, Richard Alleman, originally wrote in the 1980s, or so.)
Mainly the book is a listing of movie/TV locations, places where movie/TV people lived or grew up, location and history of New York movie/TV studios, movie star grave sites, etc. But it also includes info about movie (and “legit”) theaters, including the Loew’s Valencia, the Stanley and Loew’s Jersey, Moss Colony, Cadillac Winter Garden, etc. In fact it has a “rare” photo of the interior (stage, east wall of the “courtyard” and part of the balcony)of the Loew’s Valencia. I suspect it is a photo taken in the theater’s last days as a theater, but before the church took it over, because the “sky” seems to have a few patches of water damage and falling plaster.
While the book seems to be pretty good, I did notice a number of things that seemed to me to be really glaring errors. Now, in a book containing so many facts, I suppose this is to be expected. But it’ll be interesting to investigate to see how error prone this book is.
As part of this effort, I have a question. One — very minor — thing that struck me as an error (or sloppy writing) is that the author says the Valencia is in Hollis (not Jamaica) Queens. Although I grew up in Jamaica, I’m not exactly clear where the boundary between Hollis and Jamaica is located. But, it seems to me that the Valencia is in Jamaica as much as anything else (including the rather substantial Jamaica post office only a block or two away) is in Jamaica.
Does anyone know the “official” boundaries of Jamaica and Hollis, and whether the Valencia is “officially” in Jamaica or Hollis? (I assume, but I’m only guessing, that ever since Queens became part of NYC in 1898, the “official” boundaries for “town” names were in fact the postal district boundaries.)
In response to a comment I made on the Roxy page regarding pricing policies for “neighborhood” theaters like the Valencia, Warren posted some very interesting info on that page. Thanks Warren! Since I’m particularly interested in the scale of prices at the Valencia, however, I thought I’d reprint parts of Warren’s original post here, and then ask Warren or other posters about the pricing policy at the Valencia (in, say, 1960).
Here are the relevant parts of Warren’s Roxy post:
“In the ‘old days,’ movie theatres, regardless of rank, always had a sliding scale of admission prices. From opening until 5 or 6PM, it would be cheaper than in the evening. Weekday performances were cheaper than those on weekends. On Saturday night, and all of Sunday and holidays, the highest prices prevailed. Children under 12 usually paid half the adult price. There were no discounts for seniors.
Movie theatres with balconies often had a segregated section at the front called the ‘loge’ where seats were bigger and wider spaced. Loge tickets were always priced higher than general admission, from maybe 25 to 50 cents or even $1, depending upon time of day."
When I went to the Valencia in the 1950s and 1960s I was a kid, so I really didn’t pay that much attention to prices. (My recollections are probably from the daytime and pretty simple: $1.00 for adults, $.50 for kids, if I remember correctly.) So I’m wondering what the full price scale for the Valencia would be in, say 1960, if one went on a Saturday evening, Sunday or holiday (when the prices would be highest).
In particular I’m wondering if (in 1960) they charged more for seats in the loge and/or balcony and, if so, how did they “enforce” it? Did the patrons get specific reserved seats (which, I believe, are referred to as “hard tickets”) in the higher priced sections? Or were ushers stationed at strategic spots to screen out those with the less expensive tickets?
Since I think it would really be interesting to see what the “top” prices for various forms of entertainment were across the board (for example, non-“hard ticket” Times Sq. theaters, “hard ticket” Times Sq. theaters, Radio City Music Hall, and Broadway plays and musicals), I’m not as much interested in weekday prices or daytime Saturday prices. (Actually, it would be interesting. But since it makes everything so complicated, it seems too much to ask!) But it would be interesting to know what the top ticket prices were in 1960 for a neighborhood theater like the Valencia in order to see how they compare with the top prices for other forms of entertainment at that time. (I think it would also be interesting to find out the pricing policies for other Queens theaters, like the Alden, Merrick, RKO Keith’s, Triboro — but only if they had pricing policies that differed from the one that the Valencia had for Saturday nights, Sundays and holidays.)
Thanks in advance for any info that anyone has!
You’re right, of course, Ziggy, since from about 900 miles away my acquaintance with NYC geography is sketchy. Maybe someday I will get there to see things firsthand.
Bob’s comment about the PITKIN now being an ‘atmospheric’ of the original kind, is too well taken, of course. There were lots of open air theatres in the early years aside from drive-ins, but they were designed that way!
Umm, speaking of anyone can make a mistake (including yours truly)….Jim, you probably don’t realize that in your last post you moved the 72nd Street theatre 100 blocks uptown.
And with it’s recently collapsed roof in the auditorium, Loew’s Pitkin is the first true atmospheric!
Well, I still say that the Pitkin is not one of the “wonder theatres”, and the Jersey is, by virtue of the original ads put out by Loew’s themselves. I’ve made mention of them in a previous post. Now, we can agree that the Pitkin is one of the wonder-ful theatres.