Pequa Theatre

I just found an ad for Star Wars playing here in 70mm.

The Pequa opened in 1964 by Prudential Theatres and operated for about 24 years. The theatre building and entrance canopy dropoff area are still evident and the raised eastern portion backwall for the big screen. In 1977, the opening of the nearby Sunrise Mall hurt this and the Amityville Theatre.

always liked this theater only saw 2 movies there but the theater HAD a good vibe now a SATURN DEALERSHIP

i wonder if this is where the massapequa drive in was...my father Jim told me tonight that that was the theater where he had his worst chinese eggroll of all time.
of course just why they sold egg rolls at a drive in theater is anyone's guess...

Nice theater. Saw "Full Metal Jacket" here in 1988 and the theater was packed. I was surprised to see it closed. When I was younger I saw "True Grit" here.

I spent 24 years living not far from the Pequa. It showed a Russ Meyer film, "Cherry, Harry & Raquel", in 1969, and the X rated Frankenstein, but never porn. It had a special section for comfy seating, at an extra charge. I saw tons of films there from the early 60s. It's now a Lexus dealership. It's the original building.

The Massapequa Drive-In was a few miles east on Sunrise Highway. There is a Sears on that site. The Massapequa Drive-In was next to my high school, Berner HS. I use cross through the drive-in to get to school, until the manager chased us with a bat. The Massapequa Zoo & Kiddie Park was next to the drive-in in the 60s. The monkey mountain was next to the ticket booth. They shot off fireworks near the 4th of July.

Don Rosen: The Pequa was always a nice theater up until it closed. Never could understand why they closed it.

As for the Massapequa Drive In, where it was they did build a Jerry Lewis Twin. Do you remember that one? It was all the way in the back. I think the building is still there but I don't know what it is now. That was the first theater that didn't have a curtain and I hated it.

The Jerry Lewis Twin (I saw Annie Hall there) was (I believe) a liquor store after the theatre closed. The Massapequa Drive-in was a tad west of there. In 1964, the drive-in's wooden marquee on Sunrise Highway burned. A new modern green and white marquee with flashing balloons atop was built and debuted with the double feature "A HARD DAY'S NIGHT" and "SIX BLACK HORSES".

On the night of November 27th, 1985 the Pequa theatre is swarmed for the opening of Rocky IV. Another cinemateasures poster, BobT attempts to open the doors to let the crowd in, but the hype is too much and the wait too long to endure for even a second more. Upon seeing this opening there is a mad rush forward. The wood door frame bends in an arc around poor BobT who only wished to make it easy for them to enter.
A group of young adults are horsing around outside, hoping to get a seat for the next show. Apparently ,one of them gets pushed and is sent through the plate glass wall of the theatre. Incredibly, he is unharmed by his encounter with the massive shards of glass and when EMS arrives he can't be found, he had fled into the darkened auditorium because didn't want to miss the movie.
The police commander arrives and says we have cars all over the place, traffic is blocked and we have created a mob scene. If we don't do something about it he might have to close us down. If we wanted to,
we could have ran the last (midnight) show, but I decided that closing
down was really a great idea, so I say close us down. The police then dispersed everyone outside.
In Rocky IV, the heathen atheist Commies make Rocky fight on Christmas day for free, in Moscow, to avenge the death of Apollo Creed who died from punches measured at 2,000 lbs because Americans might not
know what a kg is. The American boy trains in nature by dragging rocks and running around in snow while Ivan gets all the high tech cheating. The Soviet people are then all converted from a life of evil robothood by the example of the Italian American Rocky rising from Russian Ivan's slogging. The audience goes insane and they all throw their popcorn in the air at the same time when Rocky is finally winning. He beats down the Russian goliath and ends the cold war. Audience cheers like mad.

Any one remember the Midnight Shows "Pink Flamingos" in particular? I was the Manager of Pequa at that time. On one particular Midnight show (I think it was a Friday) the police showed up went through the theater looking for under age customers. They confiscated the film. I had to go befor a grand jury in mineola. The whole thing was dismissed but a wierd deal to say the least. Does anyone remember the circular staircase to the projection booth?

I remember the special lodge seating section in the rear of the theatre that was marked off with railings. Great rocking chair seats. I think "Rainman" was the Pequa's last movie.

The seat count listed is innacurate.
It was more like 599-600

The last few rows in the center were removed for the Sensuround with the movie midway the count may have been durring the removal. I do not remember if they were replaced or not. It was just to long ago.

A difference of 250 seems to be a lot. When the
rocking chairs were added the seat count must have
come down some

I was employed at the theater when it closed. UA owned it in the end (they also owned the Sunrise Mall 8). The last movie we showed was RAINMAN in 1988 and I gave the last two customers the one-sheet. I always loved that theater (still in the business). UA dumped it because single screen houses were not profitable enough, and because UA (in my opinion) was garbage. I had written (and spelled incorrectly) a farewell message on the peg board in the box office that night. It was printed in the Pequa Observer that week (local paper) - "Goodbye Farewell Amen" (stole that from MASH finale).

I vividly recall seeing Return of the Jedi here back in 1983. The line stretched around the theater and down the block, down Sunrise Highway and up Lincoln Avenue. It drizzled on and off that day, the first time I could ever remember waiting in line to see anything. The theatre was so packed I had to sit in the aisle to see. I remember wondering what the heck a "Lexus" was once the theatre shut down and turned into a car dealership...

1973
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a13/ChmnofBrd/SoundofMusic1973.jpg

Geez...are ANY of those theatres in that "Sound of Music" ad still around?

The Pequa ran "The Sound of Music" for the entire summer after it ended it's run at the Rivoli (1967?).

The only one left is the Mid Island

Could my post about Star Wars be removed? It seems to cause people to make snide and rude comments on the site.

No, it seems to cause people to come to the realization that you are not a reliable source of information.

From what I have read, RobertR has supplied a valuable wealth of information to this site. Keep it coming.

I'll be in Massapequa in a week. I'll stop by the Pequa, uh excuse me, the Lexus dealership and take a walk around inside. Just for the memories.

Just to correct every one (grin).....Pequa theater became and still is an Infiniti Dealership. I saw Rain Man on the last night of operation unbeknownst to me at the time. The next day the marquee read "CLOSED". I dont recall the MASH reference on the marquee. I distinctly remember observing that the theater that night was quite messy (popcorn and garbage all over the place). The theater had always been well kept up until that point. I realized why the next day!! I will never forget when I was a kid my friends father rented out Pequa theater for his birthday and we saw the Poseidon Adventure. I will never forget that feeling as a kid having the theater all to ourselves...there had to be less than 20 of us. I also saw Battlestar Galactica there in SENSAROUND!!! They marketed the TV pilot as a feature film.

When did the Bar Harbour theater come on line? I remember riding our bikes to either the Pequa or Bar Harbour every Saturday for such classic matinees as,..."The Creature from the Black Lagoon,....'Godzilla', all the horror classics. Agreed though,..nothing compared to The Pequa! The glass,..spiral staircase, rockers,Classic! Too bad "Walmart Cinemination" killed it and the DriveIns! I've since moved to Florida and the only Drive In is 50 miles away,...really miss those DriveIns! Be back in 5 years again, for good!

The Bar Harbour Theatre opened as a stand alone A.I.T. house in the Bar Harbour Shopping Center in the early 60s. It was the area's first art house. I remember "The Mark" played there for 3 months! Unheard of back in 1963, when movies changed once or twice a week.

You're right, the Pequa was great...and those 6 cent prizel sticks!

I can pretty much concur that "Rainman" was the last movie shown there. I worked there one night but quit because my back couldn't take standing all those hours. I used to clean the parking lot and cut the lawn there previous to that. The theater is now an Infiniti dealership. One fact not many people know about the theater is that 10 years before filmong began in Texas for "Born on The Fourth of July", several scenes were shot outside the Pequa theater. The original roll went to Al Pacino, I beleive. I had or still have black & white newspaper photos from the local paper showing Pacino in a wheelchair outside the theater. I'll try to search for them at my parents house this week.

...also, I'm a little fuzzy on this memory but I could have sworn as a kid that the Pequa ran a James Bond marathon for like 8 hrs once and I was there...at least for some of the films that day. I remember seeing "Billy Jack" at the Bar Harbour theater.

Anybody remember Steve Napoli, the projectionist there? He is a great guy.

Saps-
I haven't seen Steve in years. Yeah, he is a great guy. I think his dad used to work the booth down at the Mall. I also liked Barbara: I'm sure running this theater was a picnic for her, compared to the rougher crowd she was used to over in Brentwood. I think Clayton M. worked the booth here also, at times, though his regular shift was at the Mall. Everyone that I ever met from 640 were quality people.
JP

Saw many movies here at the Pequa growing up. It was next to an sorta-upscale restaurant THE SEA CREST.

I think the last film I saw here was Hitchcock's last, FAMILY PLOT in 1976.

As a lad I saw FINIAN'S RAINBOW here is '68. Used the water fountain and somehow got burned from it. The manager gave me some free passes. Sweet!

When the theatre opened they listed it as being "fascinating". I guess they were referring to the design. You never really expected the auditorium to be where it was when you entered.

This house was open before 1964, and had a smaller seating capacity than is currently listed. The Pequa Theatre had recently opened when it was featured in an article in the May 8, 1961, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The architect was Maurice D. Sornik, and the seating capacity was 600. The Prudential Theatres house featured a glass-walled facade, a two story lobby and lounge, a stainless steel and plastic marquee, and terrazzo flooring in the entry and parts of the lobby.

The auditorium featured aluminum panels on the side walls, a wall-to-wall screen, and exposed ceiling joists to which tubular downlights were attached. The color scheme was red, green, and gold. There was a railed-in loge-smoking area at the rear of the center section of seats, accessed by a truncated center aisle.

One of the photos shows a spiral staircase rising from a planter in the indoor ticket foyer. Though this feature isn't mentioned in the text, I'd presume that it led to the projection booth.

Additional info: The January 16, 1961, issue of Boxoffice has a brief item saying that the Pequa Theatre was opened to the public for the first time on Christmas Eve, so that gives an opening date of December 24, 1960.

Your the second person to mention that the seat count should be around 600. Maybe now it will be updated.

Correction on the opening date: The Boxoffice item says it was opened on Christmas Night, not Christmas Eve, so that's an opening date of December 25, 1960.

The photos in Boxoffice show that the auditorium was too small to have held 850 seats. The 600 seats cited in the article is probably the correct number. It was only a two-aisle theater (if you don't count the dead-end center aisle which served only the loge smoking section), and it had only a few more than 20 rows.

I was mgr there '81...showed horrible films...leftovers from the Sunrise Mall... I left and Harrison Ford saved the day with Raiders of the Lost Ark...showing that the theatre could do the business..nice place to work

Anyone remember when the Pequa showed "A Hard Day's Night"? There was a huge crowd waiting. My dad had dropped my sisters and I off to go see it. Then they announced the theater was filled. Some people went nuts and there was a mini riot. Some glass was broken. Luckily my dad had waited around. We came back for the 6 or 6:30 show and there was hardly anyone there.