Orson Welles Cinema

Here’s another brief Harvard Crimson piece about the announced opening of the Esquire Theatre in 1964.

The documentary MIDNIGHT MOVIES that is playing on the ENCORE/STARZ network has several bits on the ORSON WELLES CINEMA and their showing of THE HARDER THEY COME, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and other midnight shows.
Also, ran across this archived HARVARD CRIMSON article on the Welles' opening in 1969: View link

RE: “Did this marathon perhaps begin with a Year Zero?"
posted by Ron Newman on Jun 28, 2005 at 11:17am

No, there wasn’t a Year Zero (but there WAS a ‘Panic in Year Zero’ (THAT movie has been part of a marathon :) ). Seriously, though, a many point to the Orson Welles Cinema’s showing of classic films, including double-bills of Classic SF films as the kernal which eventually popped into the full blown Marathon in 1976. So, you were on to something.

Again, I am here to applaud Larry Jackson, but, I must sincerely correct him. I have the programs for ALL 30 years of the Marathon.

Year ONE was 1976. And, year TWO (the year the STAR WARS reel was shown was in 1977 (February 20th & 21st, to be exact. And we all know that STAR WARS was released in May, 1977. Pull out your Perpetual Years calendar to confirm). Indeed, right in the Year TWO program, there’s the following note: “Plus more treats including scenes from soon to be released STAR WARS and Ralph Bakshi’s WAR WIZARDS” (later simply WIZARDS). Further, as 2005 was the 30th year of the event, with NEVER a missed year – Well, you can do the math. The Marathon began on February 15th and 16th, 1976 (again, consult your perpetual years calendar to confirm that this was the Sunday and Monday of President’s Day weekend).

My point is not to nitpick, but to just correct the historical record and to point out that since 1977 was only the 2nd year of the event, it was far from becoming stale and full of repeated movies.

This Boston Phoenix article shows a photo of the Orson Welles, whose marquee advertises “Gone With the Wind”, “The Producers”, “Hi Mom”, and “Une Partie De Plaisir”.

I still miss the Orson Welles Theater. I lived around the corner from it and saw so many unusual, fun movies—some of the memorable ones: The Brother from Another Planet, Liquid Sky, Fanny and Alexander, Repo Man…. It was a terrible loss when the building burned. I moved to New York years ago and I know Cambridge has changed a lot, but it still holds fond memories for me.

The Jacks-Uncle Bunny’s building was replaced with new high-rise development, but the Orson Welles just became a row of small retail stores; it wasn’t really redeveloped.

I never knew that you or other employees were sued. I would have written about it for some newspaper had I known about it. Who were the building owners?

I recall another fire across the street from the Welles that destroyed Jack’s nightclub and Uncle Bunny’s ice cream parlor.

It was a very special time in history we all shared then. Sadly, it seems likely that no later generation will ever love or experience cinema in quite that way again.

They were the happiest days of my life I’d say now (undoubtedly to the chagrin of both women who were married to me). I was the Managing Director of the Welles from 1971-1978, and it was the theater version of what Orson said about filmmaking while directing KANE with no strings attached: “The greatest electric train set a boy ever had!”

Anybody remember that in the 24-hour Sci-Fi Marathon (which I began in the early Seventies on President’s Day Weekend to fill the theater on a weekend the audience often took out of town for vacation) that in 1977 we had the first public showing anywhere of a reel of preview footage from STAR WARS?! The marathon was getting a little creaky with little new material to offer and many favorites repeating ad infinitum, so I asked around for ideas from friends in the biz. Gary Meyer in Berkeley said “You know I hear George has a clip reel from this new picture of his Fox is supposed to release called STAR WARS, but they seem to be just sitting on it. Maybe you could get that.” So I called the branch manager of Fox in Boston, Marty Berman, and asked him. He said he knew they had this picture in the line-up that they referred to as some silly sort of sci-fi/western, but it wasn’t scheduled yet and they weren’t saying too much about it, but he’d ask “the guys on the Coast.” He called back the next day to say Fox HQ said “OK” after he suggested that this theater famous for its wacky college audience might shed some light into how people reacted to the film they didn’t want to expose yet. A week or so later we got the reel, about 10 minutes long, I think, all clips, and three of us looked at it one morning in Cinema 1 with our mouths agape. Needless to say it went into the marathon program and was bicycled between both Cinema 1 and 2. The audience went nuts, especially in the clip (completely out of context) when R2D2 does a face plant like Arte Johnson on Laugh-In. On Tues. I called Marty Berman. He asked how it played to “the kids.” “Pretty good, pretty good, Marty,” I said. “By the way, what are you doing for first run Boston area on it?” He told me they had no plans yet because sci-fi had been out of favor since SPACE ODYSSEY and westerns hadn’t been popular since THE WILD BUNCH. The studio had no hopes for it and was even thinking about not releasing it to save embarrassment. I told him I wanted it for the Welles, even though we didn’t play first run studio films. We’d even put up an advance guarantee. He agreed to see it he could get the bosses to go along and maybe let the college kids set the compass for the release. Again, next day he called back and said he was sorry but “The Coast” decided they could not vary from a normal first-run theater pattern, because this guy Lucas was a big shot since AMERICAN GRAFFITI and they might get sued for messing his film up if they got creative in marketing. They would just put it in a couple of the usual first run houses and let it die of its own merits in May. I knew he was powerless, so I thanked him, went to the Coolidge Bank in Harvard Square, withdrew my entire $1500 savings and bought Fox stock at about 4 bucks a share. After the picture opened in May I sold it at $47 a share.

One last anecdote: Anyone remember the very first House Manager of the Welles? Tommy Lee Jones in spring of his senior year at Harvard.

I’d love to be in touch with some of the old gang from those days. I’m releasing films now from a base in Northampton, MA, after 22 strange years in Hollywierd. (Current pic is “DON’T MOVE.) You can reach me at

Cheers,

Larry Jackson

We’ve got a listing for the Fine Arts. Check it out.

At various times, I think the Paris, Kenmore Square, and Park Square were also part of the Esquire ‘chain’. What’s now the Boston University (Huntington) Theatre was also called the Esquire when it was a movie theatre, so I wonder if it too was affiliated.

In response to Ron’s post, just copying in my comment from my previous post, re adding Cinema 3:

“At some point between 1972 and 1973, we expanded to three cinemas, and parked "The Harder They Come” in Cinema 3 for the duration."

Cinema 2 was already there when I got there.

The Orson Welles was destroyed by fire on Saturday, May 24, 1986. The fire started when cooking oil in a popcorn machine ignited around 2 pm.

According to a Boston Globe article published the next day, about 50 movie patrons were evacuated from the theatre unharmed, along with about 35 people in the adjoining Chi-Chi’s restaurant and 10 in the basement Videosmith video-rental store.

The previous November, 200 people had demonstrated in front of the theatre to protest its showing of Jean-Luc Godard’s Hail Mary. The film was booked into the Welles after Sack Theatres suddenly cancelled its plans to premiere it at the Paris Cinema in Boston.

For some time, a group was trying to open a new Orson Welles Cinema at One Kendall Square. It never happened, but eventually Landmark opened their Kendall Square Cinema in the same complex. It occupies roughly the same niche that the Welles once did.