Eagle Theater

warrendewey on February 21, 2010 at 6:09 am

Hey I did mess up! I hate this! try—

here

Scroll down for this one— to Feb 12 2010

here

NativeForestHiller on February 4, 2010 at 9:25 am

I searched on Proquest, and came across the NY Times article, “Deals On Long Island – New Theatre Is Planned For Jackson Heights” dated Jun 1, 1937, Page 38. It reads:

The Queens Seventy-third Street Corporation, Sam Minskoff, president, will erect a motion-picture theatre at the northeast corner of Seventy-third Street and Albemarle Terrace, in Jackson Heights, as a result of a lease for the proposed building made by the Brandt theatre circuit, headed by Harry Brandt and Dave Weinstock. The total rental under the lease is said to be about $250,000.

Plans for the new building are being prepared by John Eberson. It will seat about 600 persons. David Berk & J. Krumbold were the brokers in the deal.

NativeForestHiller on February 4, 2010 at 7:51 am

Does anyone have leads on any historic resources for the Eagle Theatre, formerly known as the Earle Theatre?

NativeForestHiller on December 7, 2009 at 10:14 am

P.S. Does anyone have vintage photos of this theater?

NativeForestHiller on November 20, 2009 at 1:59 am

Can someone please take a few up to date photos of the theater? I am seeking photos of the following:

1. The Art Deco facade, including the marquee and entrance pavilion. 2. Some close-ups boasting its Art Deco details.
2. A wide-angle of the block consisting of the theater as a central unit of an Art Deco commercial strip.
3. Any building components that are not viewable from the frontage on 37th Rd.
4. Interior photos
5. Any vintage photos in existence.

Please e-mail me at I will give you a photo credit, since I may be interested in featuring them in a few places as part of a preservation & revitalization campaign. Thank you!

NativeForestHiller on November 20, 2009 at 1:44 am

Daily News Nov 17, 2009 Article

Bollywood strike, rent hikes lead to loss of classic Jackson Heights movie houses

View link

I hope the Eagle/Earle Theatre reopens as a movie theater, while the new owners respect and restore its Art Deco architectural features. It is a “diamond in the rough” with so many theaters demolished and shuttered today, and Queens cannot afford to lose anymore. Preservation-minded parties should contact Michael Perlman, Four Borough Preservation Alliance Corp Queens VP at and I will provide advice on how to restore the theater (funding opportunities) and make it viable. This approach has been successful for numerous theaters countrywide.

dave-bronx™ on July 28, 2009 at 6:27 pm

Renewing link.

Mike (saps) on May 28, 2009 at 4:29 pm

NY Times 5/26/09

A surge at the box office has made this spring a surprisingly happy one for the movie business. And as the big summer films arrive, Americans are expected to pile into theaters in even greater numbers.

Yet at one little cinema in Jackson Heights, Queens, the plot line is not so happy. The Eagle Theater is shut tight, its steel burglar gate pulled down and its marquee blank, battered and dark.

The cause of the theater’s untimely closing â€" like many things that happen in this bustling immigrant neighborhood â€" lies not in New York but clear on the other side of the planet.

In Mumbai, India, a seven-week-old strike by film producers has brought Bollywood, that country’s multibillion-dollar film industry, to a halt. The Eagle specializes in first-run Bollywood movies, and without a supply of new films, theaters like it around the world have had to screen old ones, dip into the pricier Hollywood and European film catalogs â€" or shut down.

“You get more frustrated when you have no say in it,” said Mohammad Asif, a Pakistani businessman who helps to manage the 500-seat Eagle, nestled in the heart of a neighborhood thick with immigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and shops selling products from South Asia. “We’re not part of their problem, but we’re affected.”

Bollywood producers began striking in early April, after the owners of India’s multiplexes rejected their demand for a larger share of the theaters’ profits. The Eagle, owned by a Pakistani business associate of Mr. Asif’s, closed soon afterward.

Mr. Asif said business had also been “pretty bad” at the movie house he owned, the Bombay Theater in Fresh Meadows, Queens. It remains open, though just barely, and is screening a recently released Punjabi film whose distribution was not affected by the dispute in Mumbai.

He and his business associate, Amjad Khawaja, bought their theaters 15 years ago, converting them from pornographic movie houses. And Mr. Asif said the Eagle would reopen as soon as the strike ended and new films were finished.

In fact, the temporary ravages of the strike, he said, are minor compared with a longer-term scourge that threatens scores of small ethnic movie houses like his across the country: film piracy.

As illegal versions of new films â€" including those from the vibrant Bollywood and Latino film industries â€" have proliferated farther and faster around the world, especially through file-sharing Web sites, box office revenue has fallen at small theaters that build their programming around new releases, industry experts say.

A year and a half ago, Mr. Asif said, the Eagle welcomed about 1,000 customers a week. By this spring, before the strike, that number had fallen to about 400.

“To be perfectly honest,” he said, “the last two years have been tough. A year ago was very tough. The last six months? Tough, tough and tough.”

“We can go dry for a month, six weeks, no big deal. But piracy. …” His voice trailed off. “The slow, poisonous effect of piracy,” he muttered.

Patrick Corcoran, a spokesman for the National Association of Theater Owners, a trade organization based in Washington, said that according to a study commissioned by the Motion Picture Association of America, pirated films cost American movie theaters about $700 million in lost revenue in 2005. Market experts believe that the annual losses have only mounted since then.

“If you talk to the studios, they’ll tell you that keeping a film off the Internet or off the streets for a week will mean tens of millions of dollars to them,” Mr. Corcoran said.

Theaters that specialize in films from developing countries can be hurt even more by slow distribution networks. The longer a new foreign film has been in release abroad, Mr. Corcoran said, the better the chances that it will be pirated and illegally distributed in the United States.

In the South Asian community of Jackson Heights, the Eagle’s closing has left some moviegoers feeling bereft.

Seema Kapoor, 51, an Indian-American who lives in nearby Woodside and works as a saleswoman at a duty-free shop in La Guardia Airport, said she used to go to the Eagle at least once a month, with her sister, who visits frequently from Philadelphia, or a group of about 15 female co-workers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

“We’d say, ‘Let’s go to do some shopping in Jackson Heights,’ and we used to make a plan to go see a movie,” Ms. Kapoor said, adding that the theater’s proximity to her house â€" within walking distance â€" made the experience that much better.

The Eagle Theater has been closed since a strike brought film production in India to a halt.

Employees at a video and music store next to the shuttered theater said their business had suffered since the Eagle closed because there was less foot traffic on the block.

Still, on a recent afternoon, customers streamed in and out of the store, which specializes in South Asian films and music. An Indian customer at the counter asked for a film called “Gumnaam: The Mystery.” The clerk pulled the DVD from a shelf and handed it to him, but the man seemed unsatisfied.

“Do you have the cheaper one?” the man asked, using code for a pirated version. The clerk demurred, yet the man asked again. The clerk, a college student from Pakistan, just shook his head.

The customer turned to this reporter and smiled somewhat sheepishly. He said he lived in both Mumbai and New York and used to see movies at the Eagle frequently. “Every movie,” he said. “For years now.”

Asked what he did for a living, the man paused. Suddenly the woman next to him whirled around and blurted: “He’s a movie producer! His nieces are the biggest stars in India.” She pointed at the DVD in his hand and exclaimed, “That’s his!”

He was Shubir Mukerji, managing director of Filmalaya, a Bollywood film production company. The woman was his wife, Melissa. She said she had grown tired of watching him perform his undercover investigations to see whether his film, which was released in December, had already fallen into the stream of the American street piracy market.

“He was acting,” she said. “Doing a bad job.”

Mr. Mukerji explained that he was on an unplanned vacation in the United States because of the strike; he was supposed to have been shooting his next film in Frankfurt and London.

He was hopeful, he said, that the strike would end soon: The Bollywood producers were waiting for a reply to their latest settlement proposal. “We offered them a good deal,” he said. “We hope they’ll accept it.”

With that, he paid $15 for an authentic DVD of “Gumnaam: The Mystery” and, with his wife and young daughter in tow, disappeared into the pedestrian bustle of Jackson Heights.

Bway on May 18, 2009 at 4:19 pm

Actually, it looks better abandoned today than it did in the 1987 photo Robert posted!
The status should be changed to “closed” above though.

RobertR on April 17, 2009 at 6:23 pm

XXX
View link

Jeffrey1955 on September 9, 2008 at 3:36 am

No A? A!

The second photo is even more interesting. “Call 205-2800”? Must be the Bollywood version of “Dial M for Murder” — or, more likely, “Transylvania 6-3000”.

Life's Too Short on July 13, 2007 at 4:22 am

I’d wager they changed the name to put their mark on the place. So they bought a “G” to replace the “R” on each marquee face. I don’t think it was cheapness. I just don’t think it would enter their minds in a million years. To them, being ordinary businessmen with no interest in history, it probably gets the job done just fine.

GlennB on July 5, 2006 at 10:04 pm

Thank you for posting that, Warren! Very interesting info.