Eagle Theater

The Earle is on the south side of Astoria Blvd around 90th Street in the Jackson Heights/East Elmhurst area.

The Earle/Eagle Theatre is located at 73-07 37th Road.

The theatre on Astoria Boulevard is the Fair Theatre, so-named because it opened around the time of the 1939 New York World's Fair.

I lived in the apt. bldg. behind this theatre when the Indians were fixing it up and getting ready to open. The unusual art deco light fixtures that had been intact in the lobby were taken down, broken up and thrown in the trash. All they really needed was a good cleaning. They were replaced with glitzy brass-and-glass fixtures from the nearby Home Depot - I guess it was assumed they would make the place look classy.....

We (my wife, son and me) always go watch Indian movies in the Eagle Movie Theatre - not because it is clean and fancy but because we live right down the block from the movie theatre and it is very convenient for us.

We always buy tickets for adults only and never had any problem until last summer when we went to watch Shahrukh Khan's movie "Main ho na". On that evening too, as usual I bought the tickets for my wife and me and as we were proceeding, the very young person with attitude who was collecting the tickets refused to let my son of 4yrs enter the theater without ticket. I said to him we always come to watch movie here and never had to buy ticket for my son and even told him that he is only 4yrs old. He said it might be somebody else, when I am here you can't take your kid without ticket. Concerning the prevailing attitude we returned the tickets (saved money) and went back home.

I am not posting this message expecting apology from the Eagle Movie Theatre. I am just letting everybody know how we are being treated in our own community and please if possible folks please do not patronize it. I would gladly buy ticket for my son should there be a sign saying something similar like " KIDS OVER 3 1/2 YRS OLD MUST PURCHASE TICKET BEFORE ENTERING THE THEATRE".

To the poster who wants to get his child in the theatre for free: Your 4-year-old kid has no business at a night screening. We adults enjoy visiting the theatre to get away from crying, talking, and generally disruptive 4-year-olds. C'mon! Either shell out the money, or take your child to a more kid-friendly destination--not a 4-hour night screening where adults are attending with their husbands/wives/dates/friends.

There is a photo of the Eagle Theater here:
http://www.nyindia.us/entertainment.html

Here is an article about the Eagle Theater.

The top feature would probably start a riot if shown at the current Eagle:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/140-4060_IMG.jpg

I don't know which looks worse, the white marquee or this.

Here is another view of the Eagle marquee.

To add to Lost's list of photos, here's another photo of the Eagle:
Fourth photo down on this page:
http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/queens/jacksonheights/37thrd/

What exactly is the Eagle being used for. From the posts above it appears to show foreign or Indian films? Does it show normal movies too? What is the condition of the inside?

"Normal" movies?

I didn't think it was possible, but the Bollywood operators have made it look worse than it was when it was a run-down porno joint.

Why would anyone in their right mind put one sheets on a marquee?

Sounds like some of you would be better off going to see a Merchant Ivory film in the Hamptons!

The place looks like a mess, but it blends in with the rest of the neighborhood, which is a bigger mess.

Calling this a cinema treasure is a stretch. This theatre is an eyesore and a blight on the community. It looks like it belongs in a third world country.

I'm disgusted by the racist comments here. I went to the Eagle on Friday and the theater is extremely clean and the seats are new and comfortable. The staff is very friendly and they let me take a free poster off the wall after the movie. The movie was only $8 compared to $10.75 in Manhattan. As for the Art Deco details - a lot of it is still intact inside the theater. They took down some of the Deco fixtures in the lobby, yes - but it was only second-rate Art Deco decor anyway. It's not like they tore down the Chrysler Building - get over it, fools!

Does anyone know a website that lists Bollywood Cinemas across America, web links, movies and showtimes? A Moviefone.com for Bollywood Cinemas? Especially the Eagle Cinema ( 73-07 37th Rd.,73rd St. 718-205-2800, but where's the website?), but also others across the land. Thanks!

The following is quoted from the June 29th issue of the weekly Queens Chronicle: "The art deco Eagle Theater, a popular venue for Bollywood fans due to its proximity to the subway station, shows the latest Hindi movies released on the same day as in India. Last October, superstar Shah Rukh Khan visited the theater amid a huge throng of fans. The manager of the theater, Saqib Hussain, said that most of his business comes from non-Indians. 'Most of my regulars are Nepalis, Bangladeshis and a few American. Indians usually don't watch every movie that is released, it's usually the big stars that draw them to the theatre,' he said. Hussain attributes Bollywood's growing popularity among non-Indians to the fact that almost all the films shown in the theatre now have English subtitles, which was only available for a few films in the beginning."

Thank you for posting that, Warren! Very interesting info.

Queens Tribune 1995

"The notorious Earle Theatre, a Jackson Heights porn palace, was shut down. The City Health Department closed down the Earle Theatre in Jackson Heights, a porn theatre that the City said allowed unsafe sexual practices and numerous health code violations".

Here is a recent photo of the Eagle Theater.

The "G" stands out like a bad penny on the marquee. All the other letters are the original design. Perhaps the owners were too cheap to spend extra money to have the "G" match their curvature.

This is a 2007 view of the marquee. It looks like the letter "A" is missing.

I'd say at this point, having the "G" match the other letters is the least of their problems.

I'd wager they changed the name to put their mark on the place. So they bought a "G" to replace the "R" on each marquee face. I don't think it was cheapness. I just don't think it would enter their minds in a million years. To them, being ordinary businessmen with no interest in history, it probably gets the job done just fine.

It looks a little better from this angle. Not alot better though.

They changed the name to erase memories of the Earle's sordid history as a porno venue. "Eagle" was an easy choice because it required changing only one letter of the name on the marquee.

Here is another photo of the Eagle Theater.

Boy...that just looks worse all the time!

Its ugly, but its still open. Thats about all it has going for it.

This is a more recent photo and it's still ugly.

No A? A!

The second photo is even more interesting. "Call 205-2800"? Must be the Bollywood version of "Dial M for Murder" -- or, more likely, "Transylvania 6-3000".

The rival Fair Theatre on Astoria Boulevard in the outskirts of Jackson Heights has resumed display advertising in The Village Voice. The Fair is currently running a "Bollywood Film Festival," with new programs every Thursday and Sunday. "Heroes," starring Salman Khan, opens today, and director Subhash Ghai's "Yuvvraaj" this Sunday. The Fair's listing at CT has been closed now for a year. Isn't it about time for a re-opening?

A recent view of the Eagle's marquee can be seen near the end of this new article about the lengthy Queens street called Broadway:
http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET%20SCENES/broadway.queens/broadway.queens.html

The rival Fair Theatre in East Elmhurst has switched from Bollywood films to Kung Fu, and now has its own website. I wonder if the Fair's listing at Cinema Treasures will ever be re-opened? http://www.fairtheatre.com/?sys_sOption=article&sys_sTask=detail&id=13

It appears from the Fair's website that they haven't so much switched from Bollywood to Kung Fu, as added Kung Fu while continuing with Bollywood (in addition, I assume, to their adult fare?)

XXX
http://americanclassicimages.com/Default.aspx?tabid=141&txtSearch=CATAdvancedSearch1%2c32%2c3%2c-1&catpageindex=95&ProductID=30836

Here is a photo of the Eagle today, May 3rd, 2009. It is quite closed, though a friend told me there is a "Bollywood Strke," so it may open again. Still, it looks like it is in horrible shape. Friends who saw a film there only a few weeks ago say the interior is old and stripped of whatever Art Deco glory it once had. At least it is in operation. The neighborhood is really improving near by. This would be a prime old theater to fix up and make viable again.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaeldj/3498753402/

Actually, it looks better abandoned today than it did in the 1987 photo Robert posted!
The status should be changed to "closed" above though.

Scratch that, it may be too soon to say it's permanently closed.

It's a crisis situation here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/nyregion/27bollywood.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Eagle%20Theatre&st=cse

NY Times 5/26/09

A surge at the box office has made this spring a surprisingly happy one for the movie business. And as the big summer films arrive, Americans are expected to pile into theaters in even greater numbers.


Yet at one little cinema in Jackson Heights, Queens, the plot line is not so happy. The Eagle Theater is shut tight, its steel burglar gate pulled down and its marquee blank, battered and dark.

The cause of the theater’s untimely closing — like many things that happen in this bustling immigrant neighborhood — lies not in New York but clear on the other side of the planet.


In Mumbai, India, a seven-week-old strike by film producers has brought Bollywood, that country’s multibillion-dollar film industry, to a halt. The Eagle specializes in first-run Bollywood movies, and without a supply of new films, theaters like it around the world have had to screen old ones, dip into the pricier Hollywood and European film catalogs — or shut down.


“You get more frustrated when you have no say in it,” said Mohammad Asif, a Pakistani businessman who helps to manage the 500-seat Eagle, nestled in the heart of a neighborhood thick with immigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and shops selling products from South Asia. “We’re not part of their problem, but we’re affected.”


Bollywood producers began striking in early April, after the owners of India’s multiplexes rejected their demand for a larger share of the theaters’ profits. The Eagle, owned by a Pakistani business associate of Mr. Asif’s, closed soon afterward.


Mr. Asif said business had also been “pretty bad” at the movie house he owned, the Bombay Theater in Fresh Meadows, Queens. It remains open, though just barely, and is screening a recently released Punjabi film whose distribution was not affected by the dispute in Mumbai.


He and his business associate, Amjad Khawaja, bought their theaters 15 years ago, converting them from pornographic movie houses. And Mr. Asif said the Eagle would reopen as soon as the strike ended and new films were finished.

In fact, the temporary ravages of the strike, he said, are minor compared with a longer-term scourge that threatens scores of small ethnic movie houses like his across the country: film piracy.


As illegal versions of new films — including those from the vibrant Bollywood and Latino film industries — have proliferated farther and faster around the world, especially through file-sharing Web sites, box office revenue has fallen at small theaters that build their programming around new releases, industry experts say.


A year and a half ago, Mr. Asif said, the Eagle welcomed about 1,000 customers a week. By this spring, before the strike, that number had fallen to about 400.


“To be perfectly honest,” he said, “the last two years have been tough. A year ago was very tough. The last six months? Tough, tough and tough.”


“We can go dry for a month, six weeks, no big deal. But piracy. ...” His voice trailed off. “The slow, poisonous effect of piracy,” he muttered.


Patrick Corcoran, a spokesman for the National Association of Theater Owners, a trade organization based in Washington, said that according to a study commissioned by the Motion Picture Association of America, pirated films cost American movie theaters about $700 million in lost revenue in 2005. Market experts believe that the annual losses have only mounted since then.


“If you talk to the studios, they’ll tell you that keeping a film off the Internet or off the streets for a week will mean tens of millions of dollars to them,” Mr. Corcoran said.


Theaters that specialize in films from developing countries can be hurt even more by slow distribution networks. The longer a new foreign film has been in release abroad, Mr. Corcoran said, the better the chances that it will be pirated and illegally distributed in the United States.


In the South Asian community of Jackson Heights, the Eagle’s closing has left some moviegoers feeling bereft.


Seema Kapoor, 51, an Indian-American who lives in nearby Woodside and works as a saleswoman at a duty-free shop in La Guardia Airport, said she used to go to the Eagle at least once a month, with her sister, who visits frequently from Philadelphia, or a group of about 15 female co-workers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.


“We’d say, ‘Let’s go to do some shopping in Jackson Heights,’ and we used to make a plan to go see a movie,” Ms. Kapoor said, adding that the theater’s proximity to her house — within walking distance — made the experience that much better.


The Eagle Theater has been closed since a strike brought film production in India to a halt.


Employees at a video and music store next to the shuttered theater said their business had suffered since the Eagle closed because there was less foot traffic on the block.


Still, on a recent afternoon, customers streamed in and out of the store, which specializes in South Asian films and music. An Indian customer at the counter asked for a film called “Gumnaam: The Mystery.” The clerk pulled the DVD from a shelf and handed it to him, but the man seemed unsatisfied.


“Do you have the cheaper one?” the man asked, using code for a pirated version. The clerk demurred, yet the man asked again. The clerk, a college student from Pakistan, just shook his head.


The customer turned to this reporter and smiled somewhat sheepishly. He said he lived in both Mumbai and New York and used to see movies at the Eagle frequently. “Every movie,” he said. “For years now.”


Asked what he did for a living, the man paused. Suddenly the woman next to him whirled around and blurted: “He’s a movie producer! His nieces are the biggest stars in India.” She pointed at the DVD in his hand and exclaimed, “That’s his!”


He was Shubir Mukerji, managing director of Filmalaya, a Bollywood film production company. The woman was his wife, Melissa. She said she had grown tired of watching him perform his undercover investigations to see whether his film, which was released in December, had already fallen into the stream of the American street piracy market.



“He was acting,” she said. “Doing a bad job.”


Mr. Mukerji explained that he was on an unplanned vacation in the United States because of the strike; he was supposed to have been shooting his next film in Frankfurt and London.


He was hopeful, he said, that the strike would end soon: The Bollywood producers were waiting for a reply to their latest settlement proposal. “We offered them a good deal,” he said. “We hope they’ll accept it.”


With that, he paid $15 for an authentic DVD of “Gumnaam: The Mystery” and, with his wife and young daughter in tow, disappeared into the pedestrian bustle of Jackson Heights.

If you thought that the marquee couldn't get any uglier, you were mistaken. Here is a recent photo.

Wow, it sure is getting worse...

Renewing link.

Is Lost Memory's pic of Queens or the slums of Mumbai?

Unfortunately it's a photo of a theater in Queens. I wonder if the Department of Buildings has checked the marquee recently to see if it was safe.

Daily News Nov 17, 2009 Article

Bollywood strike, rent hikes lead to loss of classic Jackson Heights movie houses

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2009/11/17/2009-11-17_bollywood_strike_rent_hikes_lead_to_loss_of_classic_jackson_heights_movie_houses.html

I hope the Eagle/Earle Theatre reopens as a movie theater, while the new owners respect and restore its Art Deco architectural features. It is a "diamond in the rough" with so many theaters demolished and shuttered today, and Queens cannot afford to lose anymore. Preservation-minded parties should contact Michael Perlman, Four Borough Preservation Alliance Corp Queens VP at unlockthevault@hotmail.com and I will provide advice on how to restore the theater (funding opportunities) and make it viable. This approach has been successful for numerous theaters countrywide.

I forgot to mention that the Eagle/Earle Theatre was designed by a well-know architect, responsible for at least 127 theaters throughout the country; some of which are demolished since no one with a sense of history, community, and a plan came forward. Do not let this happen here. This is an opportunity to grasp, if done right!

Fixing the marquee might be a good place to start.

Can someone please take a few up to date photos of the theater? I am seeking photos of the following:

1. The Art Deco facade, including the marquee and entrance pavilion. 2. Some close-ups boasting its Art Deco details.
3. A wide-angle of the block consisting of the theater as a central unit of an Art Deco commercial strip.
4. Any building components that are not viewable from the frontage on 37th Rd.
5. Interior photos
6. Any vintage photos in existence.

Please e-mail me at unlockthevault@hotmail.com I will give you a photo credit, since I may be interested in featuring them in a few places as part of a preservation & revitalization campaign. Thank you!

Lost Memory et al: There are programs such as the State & National Register of Historic Places, which is part of the NY State Historic Preservation Office, which would likely address such preservation-minded repairs, if the theater is nominated and determined eligible.

P.S. Does anyone have vintage photos of this theater?

As part of a preservation and revitalize campaign, can some of my fellow theater enthusiasts assist me? I would appreciate high-quality exterior and interior photos, which illustrate the Italian Renaissance style of the Jackson Triplex, and Art Deco style of the Eagle/Earle Theatre. Photos of the streetscape which show them as a central unit of a commercial complex, and wide-angles and details of the facades would be great, as I'd like to feature them on flickr and give you credit.

Also, any historic photos and newspaper clippings, which would strengthen our preservation cause, would be much-appreciated. Please e-mail me at unlockthevault@hotmail.com

Thank you,
Michael Perlman
Four Borough Preservation Alliance Corp, Queens VP
Rego-Forest Preservation Council, Chair

Does anyone have leads on any historic resources for the Eagle Theatre, formerly known as the Earle Theatre?

This is the Eagle/Earle Theatre flickr photoset, which will be useful in the theater's preservation campaign, and will be updated periodically:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8095451@N08/sets/72157623223500497/

Please e-mail Michael Perlman of the Four Borough Preservation Alliance and Queens Preservation Council at unlockthevault@hotmail.com with any memorabilia that may merit inclusion. Credit will be granted. Thank you!

I searched on Proquest, and came across the NY Times article, "Deals On Long Island - New Theatre Is Planned For Jackson Heights" dated Jun 1, 1937, Page 38. It reads:

The Queens Seventy-third Street Corporation, Sam Minskoff, president, will erect a motion-picture theatre at the northeast corner of Seventy-third Street and Albemarle Terrace, in Jackson Heights, as a result of a lease for the proposed building made by the Brandt theatre circuit, headed by Harry Brandt and Dave Weinstock. The total rental under the lease is said to be about $250,000.

Plans for the new building are being prepared by John Eberson. It will seat about 600 persons. David Berk & J. Krumbold were the brokers in the deal.