Stamford Theatre

The Stamford Theatre was located at 307 Atlantic Street and it seated 1186 people.

The Stamford Theatre first opened in 1915, and had James C. Green as architect.

Part of Cinema Circuit & still open as a movie theater as of 4/30/79 per the attached newspaper ad:
http://www.vasulka.org/archive/LyndaMiscTHREE/lynda/AdInVV.pdf

This is supposed to be a 1913 photo, but I would put it in the 1920s:
http://tinyurl.com/rl2sd

This theater was replaced by the Rich Forum approx. 20 years ago. The decorative arch was transferred into the lobby of the new theater. I saw my first movie in the mid-50's at this theater..."Song of the South" by Walt Disney.
I'll never understand why the original theater was demolished, only to build a new theater of the same size in the same spot. The interior was unique. Can anybody spell "restoration"? I'm still angry they did that. I can remember seeing "Love Story" and The Posiedian Adventure" there in the 70's. The SCA had both this theater and the Palace...they saved one and not the other. Go figure.

It was built by Emily Wakeman Hartley in 1914 to encourage pre-broadway tryouts for plays. This was according to "Stamford: An Illustrated History" by Feinstein.

First listed in the 1915 Stamford City Directory at 307 Atlantic Street. In 1929, the Weiss Amusement Corp (props, etc.) moves into the theatre building until 1930. In 1982's listing it changes to SCA.

Here is a 1948 photo from a new collection of Life Magazine photos on Google:
http://tinyurl.com/6rpvms

The link to the Life magazine photo was originally found by another member named "misterboo". Your thanks should go to "misterboo" for the photo.

Ken, "Lost Memory" seems to be extremely miffed that you got there before him with the Life/Google partnership, which was just announced to the public this week. Keep up the good work! It's puzzling that he knocks you for not mentioning "misterboo," when Lo Mem himself never credits the owners of the scrapbooks that he poaches from on a frequent basis.

Your reading comprehension is still poor "Warren".

This has nothing to do with giving credit to the photographer or owner of the photo. Let me put it to you this way. If you found the source for those photos and I came along and started linking to them, you would not like it. I'm sure that you would be very vocal about your objection to me using those links. Why should it be okay to take the source for the photos away from a new member? Does a new member deserve less respect or courtesy than other people here? Is it any wonder that new people come to this site and many of them never return? Are we sending new people a message saying "Thanks for the photo source but we'll take over now"? At the very least, the photo links could state: Thanks to "misterboo" for finding the Life Magazine link.

Thanks, Warren. What's interesting is that Google mentions a million photos, but each category seems to be capped out at 200. There must be a trick to accessing the rest of the photos that I haven't figured out yet.

I hope that you eventually find that memory, wherever you lost it. You're just not making sense.

Birds of a feather....

Ken, during Life's history, I must have read every issue published, and I don't recall that many photographs showing theatres, even in the backgrounds. The most famous was probably the color shot of Gloria Swanson standing in the ruins of the Roxy Theatre.

Photos that were shot and cataloged but never selected for actual publication? I have to figure that Life photographers took many more photos than those that actually made it into the magazine pages.

Who the heck is "misterboo"? I've never heard of him, and never seen a single post from him. If he's so concerned about getting credit for the photos he has supposedly found why doesn't he speak for himself, and why does "lost memory" think it's his job to defend him?

I'm making it my job "ziggy". Do you have a problem with that? "misterboo" is or was a new member. You might now have seen many posts from him because he didn't get a chance to post the photos that HE found!

To date, "misterboo" seems to have made exactly one post to Cinema Treasures, a link to a Life/Yahoo photo of the Brentwood Theatre(at listing #2367). While his contribution is certainly most welcome, I don't understand why "Lost Memory" believes that other members must genuflect to "misterboo" whenever they post a link to Life/Yahoo photos. By the time that "misterboo" posted on 11/20/08 at 6:47pm, the Life/Yahoo archive was common knowledge, widely reported in the news media. "Misterboo" just happened to be the first CT member to take advantage ot it. Bravo to him, and let's move on!

Common knowledge to who? No one else posted a link to those photos until AFTER he posted the first link. No one else was probably aware of that source or they would have linked to those photos. If you were aware of that source I'm sure that you would have linked to it also.

Ease up Lost Memory. No one needs you to be the photo credit police, and "misterboo" is certainly welcome to make his own case.

The link was on Google that morning, but since I was in the middle of a trial the judge would have frowned on me playing with my laptop. In any event, we shouldn't waste more space on this issue. We're going to post the photos, which are all interesting, and you can credit whomever you want. I really don't care one way or the other.

Why would "misterboo" want to come back here? He has already been ripped off once. Why run that risk again? And I will continue to give him credit for those photo links.

That's my point exactly. Give him the credit if it means that much to you, and everyone stop beating the dead horse. Not worth the time.

I can agree with that. But the person posting the link should give him credit for the link so I won't have to go around this site doing it.

Since the whole credit thing is based on your rather dubious premise, if you want misterboo to get his just rewards you'll just have to be extra vigilant.

Why? Is it too much work to add "Thanks to misterboo for the link". I prefer not to follow people posting that message, but I will if it is too much work for you to do.

Because I don't agree with you. If you think you're right, please continue, but no one else is going to do it for you. That's the last comment from me on this page.

Cut it out guys. I just checked my email account an found a mountain of comment notifications. My two cents says that misterboo should defend himself, and that he really doesn't care about being cited. I know I would not care about being cited. But if you want to continue the debate I respectfully ask that you do so privately.

I agree, but it's impossible to conduct discussions privately when some members conceal their identities and e-mail addresses.

I hear where you are coming from on this. I, for one, don't list my contact info because I used to get into fights with Paul Warshauer, and other people like that, on this site all the time. I don't want people who I view as genuinely unscrupulous having my contact info. That doesn't happen anymore. But the Internet is still a big, strange place.

Even if you don't want to share your info, you can go to this web address and set up a personal blog. Then you can talk privately all you want:

http://www.blogger.com/create-blog.g

Okay folks, wrap up the squabbling. I'm in a comment deletion mood today and will start doing that for any and all antagonistic comments. This is a page for the Stamford Theatre -- not for conflict.

If you posted a comment over the past few days and it's gone now, that's why. Have a good weekend ...

Ross

It looks like all hell broke loose on this, of all pages. All I have to say is I'm thrilled with the Life picture. It's great! That's the marquee I remember as a little boy in the late 50's.

Here is a 1967 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/o4wzge