Playhouse
104 Middle Neck Road,
Great Neck,
NY
11021
104 Middle Neck Road,
Great Neck,
NY
11021
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when ua ran playhouse and squire…you were manager of both..
had to have run times like a twin…
1 3 5 7 9
2 4 6 8 10…
this was so you could move your staff around…
yes, not a story a manager did hang himself…he was found by
a person when they were very young…hint see squire..
had a great stage and a flying screen..
by the way apts were always there..playhouse was behinde them..
if you see amy k….say hello
wally 1975
RobertR… I remember the Syosset. Wasn’t it called Syosset Cinema 150? I thought that was a D-150 house rather than a proper Cinerama facility. I saw “Titanic” there as well as a pair of Schwarzenegger films, “True Lies” and “Terminator 2” (though not on the same bill). I remember thinking what a great Cinerama revival house it would have made if it had the proper equipment. This place was always packed whenever I attended. I think the owners just opted to cash-out of the place for retail development.
Anyway… was michaelweinstein mistaken in his post of Nov 8 about Cinerama at the Playhouse in Great Neck?
This theater presented 3 strip Cinerama?!? I didn’t think that format ever crossed the East River out of Manhattan in the NY Metro area. Can someone confirm which features played here in that format and when? Was the curved screen maintained until the bitter end?
posted by EdSolero on Dec 7, 2005 at 2:20pm
The late great Syosset played many Cinerama engagements both single and three strip.
This theater presented 3 strip Cinerama?!? I didn’t think that format ever crossed the East River out of Manhattan in the NY Metro area. Can someone confirm which features played here in that format and when? Was the curved screen maintained until the bitter end?
It is too bad an innovative management couldn’t make a success of
the Playhouse as a performing arts center. It was such an attractive theatre with a long history.
The Playhouse (and the Squire across the street) was no stranger to a racy film. I recall “Fritz the Cat” playing there, and Warhol’s “Frankenstein” appeared at one of the two theatres in Great Neck. Sometimes, a film would “cross the street” if they wanted a bigger audience at the Squire. “Towering Inferno” did that. It was in GN for MONTHS on end.
I remember the Playhouse. It even ran Cinerama both on the original 3 projector/3 screen system and on the later single projector anamorphic system. It was a beautiful old theater.
Hard to believe the Playhouse could run something like this.
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This was the only theatre in my childhood that ever had double features. Two memorable double bills—“Escape from the Planet of the Apes” and Nicolas Roeg’s “Walkabout,” (1973) and “Carrie” and “Burnt Offerings,” (1978ish). Back then our parents dropped us off there by ourselves and never worried at all.
I posted a “new listing” for this… not realizing the theatre was already listed.
I worked there as a cashier in the ‘70s. There was a rumor that the theater was haunted because some long-ago manager had hung himself from the rafters backstage. Dunno if it was true or not, but it sure was dark and spooky back there.
This was a gorgeous old theater, with a sloped balcony, that i worked at in its last years as a movie house. (I think its last film was “Four Friends”, or “Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip.”)
It was originally a live theater, where the freakin' MARX BROTHERS!!! supposedly performed either “Cocoanuts” and/or “Animal Crackers” in a pre-Broadway tryout in the 1920s, as Groucho had a house nearby. (Great Neck was “the Hamptons of the 1920s”.) When it stopped showing films around 1983/84, i volunteered to spruce it up for its re-debut as a performing arts theater, and i walked onstage behind the movie screen, and saw old theater flats from some forgotten show STILL HANGING FROM THE CEILING!!
Alas, it didn’t last as a performing arts theater, and it closed and became condominiums apartments and retail stores at its base. But, God, what history!