Village East by Angelika
181 2nd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
181 2nd Avenue,
New York,
NY
10003
33 people
favorited this theater
Showing 76 - 100 of 165 comments
I had the pleasure of attending a midnight screening of Rocky Horror Picture show here about 14 years ago. It was a great show and also a wonderful auditorium.
I was here for the second time today,this time to see “Irrational Man”(if you like Woody Allen it’s his best in years).Last time,my movie was playing in one of the basement theatres, today I was sent upstairs to a magnificently restored auditorium. The movie was not centered correctly on the screen causing a brief interruption during which the house lights were raised. I didn’t mind because it gave me time to admire the theatre and it’s design. Upon leaving I noticed the marquee stated “Historic Auditorium Now Re-opened”. I recommend a visit to any fellow movie theatre enthusiasts.Also the Orville Redenbacher popcorn was fantastic.
Anyone know when it was turned into a 7-plex?
“The Rocketeer” showed at the [City] Village East in 70mm 6-Track Dolby Stereo SR beginning on Friday June 21, 1991 (the film’s nationwide release date).
I saw “All is Lost” here today but arrived late and didn’t have time to look around. There were curtains on the screen, something I haven’t seen in 35 years. I shall return to inspect the historic theatre and try the popcorn.
As I recall, the original projection/sound package we bought for the new 7-plex included Simplex 35/70mm machines in the main house and the largest house in the cellar, along with the 6-channel mag stereo Dolby processors, I don’t think digital had made its debut yet. The other 5 screens had Simplex 35mm machines and 4-channel Dolby processors. Plus, we got one professional grade 16mm machine with xenon lamp, I don’t recall the brand, that was set up to interface with the automation and audio systems in at least 2, if not all the screens in the cellar. Ralph Donnelly was booking the place at the time, and he made the rounds at Cannes and other prominent film festivals, and several times came back with a low-budget independent film that he thought was promising but had only 16mm prints.
I worked as a projectionist there in 1968 and 1969. They had strip shows and ran porn films in between the stage shows. They filmed “The Night They Raided Minsky’s” in 1968. In 1969, the play “Oh Calcutta” opened.
The theatre also went under the name of the Murray Schwartz Theater.
This was the location for the film-theatre sequence in “Unfaithful” (2002). (“Mr. Hulot’s Holiday” was the feature in the storyline.)
They have installed two 70mm projectors for PTA’s ‘The Master’. One of them for theater 1.
They’ve had to get a lot of parts to get these projectors up and running as they haven’t been used in 20 years.
The balconies shown in the website’s photos are still open?
We will delete the “1200 seats” from the Intro.
The Village East Cinemas website used to have a rental pricing chart which listed the seating capacity of each theatre. According to that chart, the main house has (or had, in 2003) 444 seats.
The theater’s official website has a few photographic glimpses of the original auditorium.
I’m sure this must have been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but it appears that the main room no longer seats 1200. In fact, that capacity seems to have been greatly reduced, due not only to the installation of wider, high-back seats, but the conversion of the orchestra level to stadium-style seating sloping steeply from the base of the stage right up to the facing of the old balcony.
The site notes that auditoriums range in capacity from 70 to 370 seats, and nowhere does it mention anything about having 70mm projection equipment (likely due to a general lack of demand for that kind of facility).
So, it seems Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, “The Master,” has been scheduled here for a 70mm engagement. Please tell me that the 70mm projectors are for the original 1200 seat auditorium?
By the way, the Mayfair theatre listed in the same ad later became the Mayfair Yiddish theatre and is NOT the Embassy 1, 2, 3.
Advert as the Gayety in 1966.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=E_ZDAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KLAMAAAAIBAJ&pg=2707%2C98720
I was just there in the main auditorium to see LEAVES OF GRASS. The place was clean, looked fresh, smelled good and the stars of the picture were doing a talk-back after the show. The main screen retains the decor and feeling of the 1920s while the smaller screens are simple modern screening rooms. I don’t much care for the smaller screens because they don’t have much in the way of character, but I prefer them to any screen at the Angelika—those long shoebox rooms with small screens are unappealing. I very much like going to this theatre—especially if I can sit in the main auditorium. Also the lobby is beautiful.
Man this theatre has had a lot of A.K.A. names.
Not for nothin', but isn’t that Rocky stuff getting a little old? Thirty years ago it was sort of an amusing way to spend one or two uneventful Saturday nights, but time marches on and most people grow up. Are the same ‘performers’ still ‘performing’ along with the film? Do their walkers and canes get in the way?
The big theatre here was the most PERFECT location for “Rocky Horror”!! The famous NYC cast made great use of the old boxes flanking the proscenium. I have numerous pics of the Halloween 1996 show, and someday I’ll scan them and post them on the web.
Unfortunately, “Rocky” was usually relegated to one of the teensy houses…
The stonework looks very good. It had been covered with paint long before City Cinemas renovated it into a plex. The question is: How long will it remain unpainted? The lower portions of the building were always a canvas for the local graffiti artists. Before the renovation was complete in 1990, the security shutters on the windows on the n.e. corner and the 3 storefronts on the south end were completely covered with the work of the neighborhood “artists” less than 24 hours after they were installed. At that time the neighborhood was in the process of being yuppified, but is it much better now?
The theater facade got a bit of a facelift recently; this article has a picture and a link to another one showing what it looked like before the recent work began: View link
As Ludwig Satz Yiddish Folks Theatre:
View link
John Averitt, around 1991, drew up plans for City Cinemas for a three-screen cinema to be located on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors of the former Liberty Storage Warehouse building at 43 W. 64th St. (the building that used to have the small Statue of Liberty on the roof). As I recall, 2 of the theatres were to have around 200 seats each and the third was to have around 300 to 350 seats. The name of the project was Liberty Walk. The landlord was intending to put in a passageway through to 65th Street on the ground floor, lined with restaurants and clubs, and the theatre upstairs. I don’t remember what the plan was for the upper floors of the building were. While the landlord was having studies done in regard to altering the buildings structural system to accommodate the theatre, Loews announced they had signed for a substantial number of square feet in a mixed-use high-rise development to be built on the site of a nearby post office. They were planning 10 screens for what they were, at the time, calling Loews Lincoln Metroplex. This announcement effectively put the kabash on City Cinemas 64th Street project, and the drawings just sat in the drawer at the home office for years.
Averitt died of cancer in 2004. Here’s an obituary.
John Averitt was also responsible for the catastrophic twinning of the Sutton. I didn’t know he was dead. What happened to him?