Angelika 57

Right On, Warren! I’ve also found the recent postings here stupid and pointless, and I’ve seen this happen before with this crew. Bryan Killian and his merry band of girlfriend pranksters descended on the message board of my boyfriend’s dog grooming website. They degraded everyone, including my boyfriend’s shitzu. My boyfriend was in tears for a week! Apparently, they get their kicks spreading their lame brand of absurdist humor. The sooner we, as right-thinking members, shun these cretins, the sooner we can get back to trusting the veracity of what we read on the internet. And by the way, you’re not boring, Warren. You’re completely delightful, Darling.

I must agree with you, Frederique. I loved their comments here. Wanda Hickey’s first contribution, the meditation on the Lincoln Art and the past, was poetic and spoke more eloquently than Warren and all his dreary facts ever could. God help us if we leave the determination of what is acceptable discourse on this site to Warren and his “moderator” storm troopers.

Illegal? Ohmygosh, Linsey, we better get a good lawyer. What are you wearing to the trial? What Linsey said is true, we’re two very different women, but we both dislike supercilious prigs.

Now with that properly dispatched, I’d like to expand Bryan’s plaintive search for the Lincoln Art’s bust of Lincoln with a shout-out to see if anyone knows what happened to the paper towel dispenser from the ladies room? (It’s just a joke, Warren. You must know what tongue-in-cheek means, my dear.)

The hobgoblin of little minds, “Wanda.”

How dare you wave your movie-going credentials at me! I’ll have you know Bryan and I saw “Let’s Scare Jessica To Death” in a 1966 Buick at the Bay Shore Drive-In. Top that, Jerry. And another thing, why don’t you call that pencil-neck administrator and give him a piece of your mind. You do have the power, it’s called a backbone emboldened by the righteousness and integrity of your work! Get on it! To quote the late great Shep, “Excelcior, you fathead!” (That’s for you, Wanda.) And another thing, we all know The Lincoln Art Theatre went through a degrading period where it was a venue for porn, but do we really have to keep reminding ourselves of this ignominious period with tacky comments like the one above me?

LynnZZZ, request an administrator to change the name. I have no such power. It was always the Lincoln Art to me too since I went there in the 1960s and after to see films like Luciano Salce’s The Fascist and Jiri Weiss' Sweet Light in a Dark Room and Fellini’s The Clowns.

Let me jump in here, Lynn, before you scare any more readers. Your tongue-in-cheek sarcasm isn’t translating well as written website comments. Fellow readers, she’s writing with a wink and a smile, solely intended to yank my crank. She’s a complete jerk for inserting my last name, but not as evil or glum as she sounds. “Wanda,” appreciate your username and “analysis,” also taken in good humor, I think. Anyway, please call, to catch up. “West” the same, how r ya?

OK, aside from the existential essays, I’m still interested in what happened to the bust of Lincoln from this theatre, anyone know? Not a life-or-death inquest, just idle curiosity.

Blathering on about meaningless pieces of the past is just misplaced anxiety about our own mortality. That’s all this website represents, just nostalgia run amok. Even the “great” Bryan Killian, in his heart of hearts, knows this truth. By the way, Bryan’s favorite film isn’t any of that Chaplin garbage, it’s “Cinema Paradiso.” Yeah, about an old Italian movie theater that gets demo’d. So typical. Hey, Bryan, maybe they never removed the Lincoln statue and it remains where it stood, now in the supermarket which replaced the Lincoln Art. Check isle 5 behind the Doritos and the Captain Crunch. Look! There he is! And with the 1969 Milk Duds still stuck to his head! Happy now? “Life is the temporary victory over the causes which induce death.” Maybe there are more important things to attend in the short time we’re here, Bry?

I was friends with Bryan Killian when I was a kid—from Long Island and St. Mary’s—that Bryan Killian? Yeah Lynn, a panick. Funny, cause we went to this theater together with his grandmother in the late 60s or early 70s-we were kids out on the big town! I remember he told me that the statue was Lincoln’s actual head which they removed after his death and cast in iron. I was impressed. Funny he’s thinking about that statue all thse years later, but I guess I am too. So what did happen to it? ( a la Maltese Falcon). If it’s found with petrified candy stuck to it, I must confess, Bryan and I dropped a barrage of half- melted Milk Duds from the balcony staircase which wrapped around poor old Abe.

The Lincoln Art Theatre was the Manhattan venue for the theatrical re-release of Charlie Chaplin’s greatest films in the early 1970’s. Chaplin’s films, such as “The Kid,” “City Lights,” “Modern Times,” and “The Great Dictator,” were very popular at the Lincoln Art. The interest generated by these film showings helped pave the way for Chaplin’s return to the United States in 1972, after many years of exile in Switzerland. Chaplin was honored in Hollywood with a special Academy Award, and here in Manhattan at Lincoln Center, but it was the Lincoln Art Theatre which honored Chaplin best by extensively showing his great films.

One question: Does anyone know what has happened to the bust of Lincoln prominently displayed in the Lincoln Art’s lobby?

You can view some nice images of movie material here. Most are souvnir programs. You
http://s110.photobucket.com/albums/n94/irajoel/

you can also view my entire inventory for sale at
www.cinemagebooks.com
email me at

Thanks, Warren. I was in this one, I keep records, so I know where I was, but my recollection as to the news article could be inaccurate. I didn’t save the article. The suggestion of a stage may have been enough to, ah, suggest a stage to me.

I was never in the Little Carnegie or in the screens in the basement of Carnegie Hall.

How do you know who built it, who the architect was, etc? If you have news articles, I see some people typed them on the site, or scanned them & linked them from another site. I recently copied the opening movie review for Lamb designed Hollywood Theatre onto this site after finding the same movie on a historic photo of the Boyd. Regardless, thanks for your research.

Davebozooka, this theater had a balcony. When I saw a movie in 1997, the management intended the balcony to be closed, but I asked if I could sit in it, and they quickly said ok.

When it closed later in 1997, I recall reading a news article saying it opened in the 1920’s.

I have a 556 seat count, but that could be inaccurate. My seat totals may not add up, but in the balcony, I counted 7 rows of 4 seats, then 12, then 7. There was a wood rail there. I record that the orchestra had 2 sections, one of 24 rows of 11, and one of 13 rows of 5, and that the seats were numbered and red. There was a stage. There was no use of a curtain. There were no slides. I estimated the screen at about 25 feet wide, and believed it to be very well placed in the auditorium so there was a great view from the balcony. There was an old chandelier in the lobby. There was a metal stairway with a pattern that I drew looking like a cross going into a circle.

The news article indicated it had ALWAYS been a cinema since the 1920’s.