Prytania Theater

Attended a screening of Wings Of The Dove here when I was student at Tulane. Without doubt, one of, if not the best venue for screening foreign and art films in the United States. The theater is intimate and comfortable. The auditorium is equipped with a small balcony and a shadow box screen. Worth the price of admission just to go in and view this marvel.
Does anyone know of any sites with interior and exterior photos of the Prytania?

The Prytania is listed in the 1945 Film Daily Yearbook with seating for 750.

I too would love to see pictures of this theatre. They don't even have one on their web site. The only one I have found is under Google Images and type in Prytania. It's not a very good picture though.

The Prytania is featured in John Kennedy Toole's "Confederacy of Dunces" as the theatre frequented by the anti-hero Ignatius J. Reilly so that he can rant at the horrors of bad taste shown in the films.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces, author John Kennedy Toole has an episode set in the Prytania. Ignatius, the central character, makes loud comments and is a frequent annoyance at the theatre. The film is a circus thriller with a bit of romance. Kids scream. Ignatius gets worse and worse. In these excerpts Toole writes:
-----------------------------
He sat at attention in the darkness of the Prytania only a few rows from the screen, his body filling the seat and protruding into the two adjoining ones. On the seat to his right he had stationed his overcoat, three Milky Ways, and two auxiliary bags of popcorn, the bags neatly rolled at the top to keep the popcorn warm and crisp. Ignatius ate his current popcorn and stared raptly at the previews of coming attractions. One of the films looked bad enough, he thought, to bring him back to the Prytania in a few days. Then the screen glowed in bright, wide technicolor, the lion roared, and the title of the excess flashed on the screen before his miraculous blue and yellow eyes. His face froze and his popcorn bag began to shake. Upon entering the theater, he had carefully buttoned the two earflaps to the top of his cap, and now the strident score of the musical assaulted his naked ears from a variety of speakers. He listened to the music, detecting two popular songs which he particularly disliked, and scrutinized the credits closely to find any names of performers who normally nauseated him.
...
He put the empty popcorn bag to his full lips, inflated it and waited, his eyes gleaming with reflected technicolor...In the darkness two trembling hands met violently. The popcorn bag exploded with a bang. The children shrieked.

"What's all that noise?" the woman at the candy counter asked the manager.

"He's here tonight," the manager told her, pointing across the theater to the hulking silhouette at the bottom of the screen. The manager walked down the aisle to the front rows, where the shrieking was growing wilder. Their fear having dissipated itself, the children were holding a competition of shrieking. Ignatius listened to the bloodcurdling little trebles and giggles and gloated in his dark lair. With a few mild threats, the manager quieted the front rows and then glanced down in the row in which the isolated figure of Ignatius rose like some great monster among the little heads.
...
"Oh my goodness!" Ignatius shouted, unable to contain himself any longer..."What degenerate produced this abortion?"

"Shut up," someone shouted behind him.
...
When a love scene appeared to be developing, he bounded up out of his seat and stomped up the aisle to the candy counter for more popcorn, but as he returned to his seat, the two pink figures were just preparing to kiss.

"They probably have halitosis," Ignatius announced over the heads of the children. "I hate to think of the obscene places that those mouths have doubtlessly been before!"

"You'll have to do something," the candy woman told the manager laconically. "He's worse than ever tonight."

The manager sighed and started dow the aisle to where Ignatius was mumbling, "Oh, my God, their tongues are all over each other's capped and rotting teeth."

Thank you, Gerald. A wonderful book, one that everyone who is interested in this incredible city should read.

Great exerpt from "A Confederacy of Dunces!" Thanks. I was in the Prytannia only once, many years ago and don't remember the film I saw. The building was certainly - uh, how to say it, simple. I remember a smallish, low ceilinged, flat-floored room with a tiny lobby and no decor at all. It is an interesting location, the only commercial property on a residential street. Clever management and shear force of will must have kept this business going. Best wishes to the management for a job well done!

The film that Ignatius is wathcing in the excerpt above is "Jumbo", staring Doris Day and released by MGM in 1961. He refers to Doris Day as his " favorite ingenue" a few times in the book. Additionaly, later in the book, Ignatius goes to the RKO Orpheum on University Place in New Orleans to see "That Touch of Mink", starring Doris Day and Cary Grant, released by Universal in 1962. This may not be quiet correct in that the Joy Theatre on Canal Street had a virtual monopoly on Universal releases up to the mid-1970's. Early on in the Book Ignatius states that he was conceived after his parents attended a screening of "Red Dust" (Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Mary Astor, MGM 1932) at the Prytania Theatre; his father never went to the movies again.

There are some photos of the Prytania Theater
here and here and another one is here.

LM, thanks for the photo links. Any ideas about the brick facade on the Prytania? I don't remember it looking like that at all, but the last time I was there was in 1989. Has this little operation been so successful that they could afford a whole new (and rather nice looking) exterior? Or is my memory lost too?

The current facade has been there since at least the mid 1970's. I started going to the Prytania at that time while attenting Tulane University.

I'm curious to see what will happen with the Prytania in the next 10 years or so, the current owner appears to be getting on in his years...

Can anyone comment on the condition of the interior of this theater? The outside appears to be modernized quite a bit. What about the interior?

The inside... I am pretty sure the seats are original because they can be really uncomfortable! Other than that the rest of the theater space is in good condition. There is sort of a fifties vibe to the lobby with modern inspired "floating" stairs that lead to up to the theater space covered in a worn down red carpet. Unfortunately from a design standpoint nothing else too spectacular I can recall. But it is warm and inviting, is clean and safe and is well kept. I once saw a film at the joy or lowes theater on Canal Street - and I kid you not - there was a hole in the roof where rain was dripping in. You could see outside. And a fire alarm was beeping every 30 seconds or so non-stop.

Thanks Erin. I had the pleasure of visiting the Prytania and Mr. Rene Brunet in mid-October and found him to be charming and gracious (as was everyone i encountered in New Orleans!) and so very proud of his theater. I wish we'd had more time to chat, but we did look at the many vintage photos on the lobby walls and he had a great story for almost every one of them. The theater itself has obviously been severely redecorated (inside and out) since it's inception, but through the photos Mr. Brunet was able to show me the original design. He's had such a long and storied role with so many other great New Orleans theaters. True Southern treasures: the Prytania AND Mr. Brunet!

According to this December 02. 2006 article, the Prytania was built in 1915.

This is a 12/1/2006 article about the Prytania Theater.

"New Orleans' last single-screen theater keeps on going.

Source: The America's Intelligence Wire
Byline: Mary Foster

Theaters once dotted almost every neighborhood in this city.

It's where families went, where mothers sent their kids for the Saturday matinees, where young men wooed future wives and teenage girls giggled over Hollywood heartthrobs.

RenA Brunet remembers all of them. He worked at most of them. He still runs one of them.

"It's all I've ever known," Brunet said. "I've only worked at single screen theaters, but I worked in a bunch of those."

It was a love affair and a vocation started as a child. Brunet's father was a theater manager. His mother was working at the refreshment stand when she met his father and married him. Brunet met his wife when he hired her to work at a theater he was running.

And at 85, Brunet is still operating a single-screen theater _ the last neighborhood theater left in Louisiana and one of only about 1,680 in the nation, down from 2,280 in 2001, according to the National Association of Theater Owners.

"There aren't a lot left," said John Fithian, president of the national group. "The ones that are successful have found a special niche of some sort and filled it. But they can have very loyal customers."

At one time there were about 15,000 single-screen theaters in the United States, ranging from the opulent movie palaces to the modest neighborhood sites. At various times between the beginning of the 20th century and World War II, New Orleans had more than 100 movie theaters scattered throughout it's neighborhoods. Families gathered nightly at show places with names like the Famous, the Circle, the Carver, the Aereon and the Pitt.

Three of the city's grandest movie palaces _ the 2,200-seat Orpheum, the 3,500-seat Loews and the 4,000-seat Saenger _ all opened during the 1920s in the city's Central Business District. Each remains shuttered following the flooding of Hurricane Katrina.

The Prytania, built in 1915, has been rebuilt at least twice after disasters. The present structure dates to the 1930s, although the brick facade was added later.

Brunet took over the Prytania in 1997, one step ahead of the wrecking ball. The theater had closed the year before and was slated for demolition. With the world racing toward concrete palaces in sprawling suburban parking lots, Brunet wanted a chance to hang on to one theater from the old days. To him, the best days.

"This theater is friendly," Brunet said. "We know our customers and they know us. We still have people that walk from their houses here. What other theater can say that now?"

Looking back Brunet feels like he spent a lifetime closing down theaters. One by one he shut down the projectors and turned off the lights as the city's taste changed. With people moving to the suburbs, television taking over and multiplexes springing up, he watched the beloved movie houses turn into furniture stores, derelict buildings, parking lots.

The changing movie market has created challenges in securing first-run movies for the 300-seat theater.

"One of the problems is that distributors want their pictures to run for 10 weeks," Brunet said. "They can do that in a multiplex, but there's no way I can. All my customers will have seen it after three weeks."

To get movies Brunet must pay a fee upfront, then hope to earn it back. To get "Star Wars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith" he ponied up $25,000 (A18,939) and had to install a new sound system. To get "Flags of Our Fathers" Brunet paid $10,000 (A7,576).

Hurricane Katrina gouged a hole in the roof, dumped water inside and started mold growth on the walls, but Brunet was ready to reopen when the electricity was restored. It didn't take long for business to pick up.

"It was about the only thing to do for a long time," Brunet remembers.

As much as he loves the old theater, Brunet works hard to keep it modern in many respects _ the projector, the sound system. He hopes to have new seats installed by the first of the year and a new screen next year.

The Prytania makes a modest profit, Brunet said. Tickets cost $7 (A5.30) for adults, $6 (A4.50) for senior citizens and students, and $5 (A4) for children, below the prices of many suburban multiplex theaters. That's enough to allow him to cancel a Sunday matinee so a Catholic church can hold mass there and screen a special movie, enough so that he could show four movies on Halloween and not charge admission.

"I'm not getting rich," he said. "But I love every minute of it. I'm happy the whole time I'm here".

Look for an updated article on the Prytania Theater and its remodeling in the October issue of Box Office Magazine.

A Hillgreen-Lane theater organ opus 567 size 2/9 was installed in the Prytania Theater in 1920. In 1927 that organ was replaced with a Hillgreen-Lane opus 891 size 2/5 theater organ.

This is a city archive photo from April 11, 1968 of firefightere fighting a fire at the theatre.
http://www.gno.lib.la.us/~nopl/photos/firedept/pd215.htm