Loew's State Theatre
1540 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10036
1540 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10036
39 people
favorited this theater
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There is some beautiful film footage of the marquee and elaborate decorations of Loew’s State for the 1948 premiere of EASTER PARADE in the documentary accompanying the new DVD release of this Astaire-Garland MGM musical.
There is a great shot of the marquee from 1950 in Ken Bloom’s BROADWAY: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA . Joel McCrea’s The Outriders featured. The Loew Building, Brook’s, Bulova Watches can be seen to the left of the theater. Jerry
The theatre you saw ‘High Fidelity’ at, Harper, was the Criterion Center, between 44th and 45th Streets on Broadway, which closed in April of 2000, and the auditorium you saw it in was the former balcony (one of seven auditoriums at the Criterion; the other six resided within a left/right split of the former orchestra and four carved out of the one-time lounge/basement area). The total space of the movie side of the Criterion (there was also a separate entity two-stage Criterion Center performing arts space located next door, to the left) was gutted later that summer and, along with most of the remainder of the building, now serves as home to Toys ‘R Us.
Can someone tell me when Loews State closed for good? I have a vivid memory of being seeing “High Fidelity” in a grand but slightly shabby theatre on the east side of Broadway in the forties in either 2OOO or early 2001. It fits the description I am reading of Loews State in that it was twinned but I only saw the upstairs theatre. It was very spacious and there was a low balcony or mezzanine in the back from which you could see the screen at exact eye level. I have tried to find the theatre since, but it seems to have vanished. If Loews State closed before this film came out, can anyone tell me what theatre it would have been? (It was definitely not the one in the basement of the Virgin Megastore!).
True — Yet at peak times, usually close to holidays, roadshow theaters often added public screenings in the morning and around 5 pm (if the film’s length permitted that screening between matinee and evening performances). I saw “The Ten Commandments” at the Criterion at 9 am because the price was right for my skinny wallet (and have recounted that disasterous experience on this site’s page for the Criterion).
There might have been yet another scale for 9 am Saturday screenings at reduced rates. At the time, I was volunteering as a Big Brother in a Harlem neighborhood, and the director got a hold of a dozen or so tickets to chaperone that number of kids to a morning show. I jumped at the opportunity, and on a cold December dawn in ‘59 travelled from Brooklyn to Harlem to pick up the kids. Naturally, there was a lot of confusion and no-shows, and we finally arrived at the State after the picture had begun, the dozen of us slinking into balcony seats during the dark nativity scene. The kids loved the picture, and sat throughout the 212 minutes totally transfixed. I remember dozing off from time to time.
Someone in the NYC area may know the explaination to this. The original projection booth at the balcony top was built facing about 15 degees to the left.I was in the State the first time in 1962, about 3 years after they did the remodel putting the new 70MM booth in the balcony front when I first noticed the original booth at that weird angle.
Around 1970 – after the upstairs was twinned off- they used the original booth for the the upstairs house (#2). I was in the booth
and the 3 Century 70mm machines had to face 15 degees to the right.
Did this have something to do with the land plot or building structure?
I was in the booth in the Summer- the booth had no air conditioning- and both operators (it was still a 2 man operation)were working in their underwear. If my memory is correct, one of the operators was the son of Harry Garfman who I think was the Business Agent of the
Brooklyn Local.
I have 4 1960 BEN-HUR theatre tickets and my husband said I should sell them on E-Bay, Does anyone know if they are even worth any money? I have had them for years and never thought anything about it I am just curious if they would be worth anything. thanks
With regard to that great list of movies (several posts back) that played at the Loew’s State 1 & 2, a double bill of Bullit & Bonnie and Clyde played at the Loew’s State 2 in 1969.
Here are some more picture of the State and other New York City-area theatres.
View link
As far as twins go the State was one of the better jobs. The upstairs theatre was still a palace.
Gee Warren for those of us who only knew it as a twin it looks magnificent. The twinning was truely ghastly. Now I finally know what it looked like as a roadshow house from Ben to Dolittle. Too bad there isn’t also a photo with the curtain open so we can see the size of the 70mm screen in relation to the auditorium.
Maybe somebody has various pictures of the interior before ‘59?
Check out the great pictures of the State on this site
http://www.moviepalaces.net/
WHO WAS MARCUS LOEW?
Born May 7, 1870 to immigrants from Germany and Austria, Loew’s childhood was mired in the same poverty that gripped most of the community around him in New York’s Lower East Side. His father’s income as a waiter could not adequately support the family so at the age of six years old, Marcus began working selling lemons and newspapers.
At the age of nine, he quit school and held various jobs until he opened his own company at the age of 18, buying and selling pelts. Unfortunately, Loew’s new business was destroyed in less than a year, with $1,800 left in outstanding debt. Loew paid back the debt by becoming a fur salesman, a position he later held with Herman Baehr. Under Baehr, Loew made frequent trips around the country, including several in the Midwest where he met two other furriers, Adolph Zukor and Morris Kohn. Loew and Zukor soon became lifelong friends.
In 1903, Zukor and Kohn joined forces with penny arcade operator Mitchell Mark and opened Automatic Vaudeville, a penny arcade on 14th Street in New York City near Loew and Zukor’s fur businesses. The venture was an immediate success and when Automatic Vaudeville decided to expand to other cities, Loew and his friend David Warfield purchased a single $20,000 share in the company.
Loew and Warfield sold their stake in Automatic Vaudeville in 1904 and founded the People’s Vaudeville Company. With $100,000 invested in the business, Loew opened his first arcade at 172 West 23rd Street near 8th Avenue.
Loew opened three more arcades in New York and another arcade in Cincinnati, Ohio. On a trip to visit his Cincinnati location, the Penny Hippodrome, Loew was invited to visit nearby Covington, Kentucky where he witnessed his first motion picture show in a converted arcade. Loew immediately decided to open up a similar venue on the second floor of his Penny Hippodrome and the 110-seat venue attracted 5,000 patrons in its first day alone. Following its success, Loew returned to New York and converted his arcades to nickelodeons.
In April 1907, Loew purchased a disreputable Brooklyn burlesque house, known as Watson’s Cosy Corner, and after refurbishing it, reopened it as the Royal Theatre for vaudeville and motion pictures, a combination exhibition policy that dominated the company’s venues through the 1920s. By mixing lower priced vaudeville with the growing popularity of the movies, Loew was able to attract a wider audience than either format could draw alone.
In 1910, Loew’s first newly built theater, Loew’s National in the Bronx, opened with a seating capacity of 2,397 patrons at a cost of roughly $400,000. Meanwhile his Marcus Loew Booking Agency, which booked vaudeville artists into theaters across the country, was also yielding a tremendous profit.
By the end of the decade, Loew formed a new corporation for all of his many companies, Loew’s, Inc., valued at $100 million. In 1920, 80 million patrons had visited Loew’s 150,000 seats in theaters across North America.
With the development of Paramount and First National as vertically integrated companies, Loew could see that access to product and talent was becoming more and more critical to his future success. In January 1920, Loew purchased the Metro Pictures Corporation and began his foray into the production, distribution, and exhibition of motion pictures. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was an early success and movies now became the primary source of amusement in his theaters, with vaudeville taking second place in importance.
By 1921, Loew’s unveiled the first of many movie palaces to be built around the country during the 1920s. Loew also ventured into radio, taking over WHN in New York, which broadcasted out of the newly opened Loew’s State building at 45th & Broadway.
As Loew continued to open more and more theaters, he quickly found himself needing more and more films to fill the screens of his theaters. In April 1924, Loew solved this last piece of the Loew’s puzzle when he created Metro-Goldwyn, a $65,000,000 merger of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and the Louis B. Mayer Company. The merger with Goldwyn Pictures not only brought with it the studio in Culver City, as well as the production company and its assets, but also a group of theaters including the 5,300-seat Capitol Theatre in New York City, and other theaters in the Midwest, the Rockies, and California.
At the peak of his power, just as MGM was in its formation and the Loew’s chain was expanding, Loew’s health began to fail him. In 1924, he gave up the day-to-day operations of Loew’s, Inc. to longtime general Nicholas Schenck and sought rest, primarily on his sprawling Pembroke Estate on Long Island.
On August 12, 1926, Loew was honored by the Consul General of France with France’s Legion of Honor for his contribution to film production and exhibition.
On September 5, 1927, Marcus Loew, after a long period of illness, had a heart attack and died in his Pembroke Estate. Variety wrote famously at the time, “Show business is prostrated, in sackcloth and ashes”.
Although Loew died at the age of 57, he had already been working for more than five decades and in that time had helped elevate movies from their early position as a crude form of entertainment to become both a respected art form and one of the most powerful industries in the country.
A position, thanks to 100 years in the movie business, Marcus Loew and the company he founded have helped maintain to this day.
—from the Loews website
On Easter Sunday 1959, My uncle took me to the New Loew’s State for the opening day showing of Some Like It Hot, which as a 12 year old I loved. The theatre was beautiful, loved the display boxes, the signs, the seats etc. I had been to the state several times before the renovation (I remember Party Girl & I think Sign Of The Pagan.)But the new state was a beaut. As a teenager I also saw Ben-Hur, Mutiny On The Bounty,Hole in the Head, Career.The state was the height of late 50’s theatre design.
Some post-twinning exterior and interior shots of the Loew’s State can be found via the following URL: View link
Wednesday December 3, 1958 the State opened a show called “The Jewel Box Revue”, billed as starring the worlds greatest femme (thats the word) impersonators. It was 2 hours and used the words…..Beauty, Music, Spectacle, Laughs. On the screen (and advertised in much smaller print) was The First NY Showing of Victor Mature in “China Doll” a United Artists release.
I saw the movie “Splash” the Tom Hanks/Darryl Hannah movie and there’s a scene and it’s quite brief where he and Darryl Hannah are walking through Times Sq and they pass a movie theatre now they didn’t show the marquee but they showed the entrance and ticket booth maybe a quick glimpse of the lobby, now in the movie by ticket booth stated that this was the Loew’s Astor Plaza I think it mentiond it was a twin. but this can only be the Loew’s State when the movie came out like 1984/85 that was the only Loew’s twin that I knew of in times sq. and I know that lobby even at a glimpse as this was one of my favorite Times Sq theatres. can anyone out there that saw the movie confirm this please, but I’m pretty sure that this is the Loew’s State that Hanks/Hannah are walking in front of. not the Astor Plz as featured in the movie.
I have a question for William. State 1 opened with Oliver on hard ticket. In Vincent Canby’s review in the Times he notes that the screen was the same size as before it was twinned. I remember being dissappointed by the size of the screen in relation to a theater of 1,200 seats. Is this the case? Was it the same size as when the State was a single roadshow house? 48ft seems to me rather small when you think this was a 2,000 seat road show house showing movies like Ben Hur, King of Kings, Mutiny on the Bounty and The Bible.
The Colisuem orchestra was never used as a seperate theatre. They were also able to close the main entrance because the theatre had a seperate balcony entrance. I checked with some neighborhood people about that.
I forgot to mention the Kingsway and the Oceana in brooklyn that used this method also for adding auditorioms in an existing theatre building.
Your right Bill I remember those giant tassles when the curtains were closed I think they were brown. And Warren you are right about the false celings in theatres that are usually twinned or even quadded. vertically (up/down).The ceiling becomes a sort of stage for the upstairs auditoriumms, examples of which were the National, the former Orphuem, Rivoli,Strand(warner,cinerama), and the Waverly twins in Manhattan the Duffield and Commodore twins the Kenmore,Marboro,Metropolitan, Fortway, Quads and the Oriental triplex in Brooklyn the former Astoria six, the Elmwood triplex and the Plaza twin in Queens. the Colisuem former twin now Quad in upper manhattan uses the same method but the orchestra level is used for retail. This method was popular in the 70’s and 80’s giving birth to now saturated multiplexes. I wonder if the Colisuem orchestra level was ever used as a seperate auditorium before it was made retail would anyone know? .Also was the Loew’s State the first theatre in N.Y.C to make the conversion to a twin being twinned in 1968?
Maybe William would know for sure, but I remember giant tassels on the sides of the screen in the State 2 when the curtains were closed – unless I’m only imagining them. It was a long time ago. I saw “The Godfather” there in its opening week in 1972.
That was the color design back in 1969 when they remodeled the theatre. They might have redraped the theatre later. The State 1 had a traveler type curtain.
I remember seeing a rerelease of Grease in 70mm and For Your Eyes Only in the downstairs and Enter The Dragon in the upstairs thetaer. The drapes upstairs opened up and down instead of across. I think the downstairs drapes were blue.