Heights Theater

My brother and friends would sometimes go to the Heights Theatre in the mid-late 1960s primarily BECAUSE it generally showed foreign films. That was a time when onscreen nudity was very scarce, unless you were old enough to see an “adult” film, but very often an “artistic” foreign film gave a young teenage boy an eyeful! Nowadays, of course, nudity in a PG film is no big deal, but let’s not forget what things were like 45 years ago!

Thanks for your honesty, Gary27. So many on this forum have denied the sex angle of fifties and sixties ‘art house’ success.

The November 15, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World gave the opening date of the Heights Theatre as October 11. The house was fitted with a Hope-Jones unit orchestra.

I remember the Heights from 1951 and it was still there in 1957. I saw “Anna Karenina” with Greta Garbo there, and a documentary about Ireland.

A brief item from the July 1, 1916, issue of the entertainment industry journal The New York Clipper discussed two large new theaters proposed for the Washington Heights district, and added the editorial opinion that the neighborhood already had enough theaters to satisfy local demand. The final line said: “The Wadsworth, at One Hundred and Eighty-first Street and Wadsworth Avenue, could not pay with any policy, so a bit of advice, don’t be hasty and overdo it.”

As this house opened as the Heights Theatre in 1913, either there must have been another theater at or near this intersection, or the Heights used the name Wadsworth at some point in its early history. Advertisements or theater listings from the period 1913-1916 should reveal which of those was the case. If the Heights and the Wadsworth were the same house, it would have been closed for some time in the first half of 1916.

Here is the complete item (which I cited in a previous comment) about the opening of the Heights Theatre, as reported in the November 15, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World:

“Heights Theater.

“The L. & B. Amusement Company opened a new picture theater at Wadsworth Avenue and 181st Street, New York City, on Saturday evening, October 11, to a large patronage and is enjoying a steady patronage of the most satisfactory character. W. A. Landau, formerly proprietor of the Audubon Theater, in 181st Street, is president of the company, and S. G. Bock, who was connected with the St. Nicholas Theater, in the same neighborhood, is secretary and treasurer. The new house is of regular theater construction, seats 600 persons and has twelve exits. The construction is fireproof throughout. Two Standard projecting machines and a mercury arc rectifier have been installed, providing a fine picture at a throw of no feet. The chairs are from the American Seating Company. An indirect lighting system and large exhaust fans for ventilating complete an up-to-date equipment. Retiring rooms for men and women insure the comfort of the patrons. A Hope-Jones unit orchestra provides music for the pictures.”