Regency Theatre
1987 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10023
1987 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10023
10 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 79 comments found
In the 1970s they held amazing summer-long festivals. I remember at least one MGM retrospective, and at least one devoted to classic Warner Brothers films. I think Olivia deHavilland showed up at their screening of ANTHONY ADVERSE.
In the 1970s I lived on West 68th and was a regular patron of the Regency. Like MarkieS, I remember the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford festival and my friend and I would arrive an hour before showtime because of the long lines extending around the corner.
lived UWS in the 70s and 80s, loved this theatre.The revivals, the audience, all of it. Judy Garland,A Star is Born, Julie Andrews as the Star! and so many more
The site is currently occupied by an Apple Store. The Google Maps street view shows the Apple Store while still under construction…Status of the cinema needs to be changed from “Closed” to “Demolished.”
Thanks for the clarification. I must have been reading the split screen version of “The Chelsea Girls” history. There’s some site called WarholStars.org , which has the film also at a place called the Cinema Rendezvous on 12/01/66. But I think following the Regency’s run. After some deal was cut with a group called the Art Guild, who ran a small chain of theaters.
David, although “CHELSEA GIRLS” had a successful year end run at the Regency in December 1966, it had already premiered in September of that year at the Film-maker’s Cinematheque on 41st street where it showed for several weeks to great acclaim.
Well, I can’t believe that this topic never came up, but let’s give the Regency Theatre what is probably it’s most famous 15 minutes. I was watching some long documentary called “Andy Warhol’s Factory People”. Which chronicled the revolving door of characters & projects that passed through the artist’s New York loft in the `60’s. Bizarre, in-house films were apparently just one aspect of that.
Turns out Warhol’s film “The Chelsea Girls” not only played at the Regency, but premiered there as well. In the piece I caught a nighttime shot of the Regency, ablaze with that film’s title on the marquee. Perhaps Warhol’s influence or the Regency’s proximity to his loft aided in it’s use as a venue for the film.
thank you
According to the header on this theatre it would have opened in 1931.
Does anyone know what year it opened? thanks.
I remember in 1977 they featured a Bette Davis/Joan Crawford film festival that lasted several weeks. Opening night was a double feature of The Old Maid and Mildred Pierce. The line was down the block. It was so exciting.
I managed to see one program at the Regency, on 2/17/1980. It was part of the “Dancing Ladies” series, and the films were “Plisetskaya Dances” (docu about a Russian ballerina), a Martha Graham short, and one of my all-time favorites, Vanessa Redgrave in “(The Loves of) Isadora.
I traveled all the way from Baltimore to see it, and sat through everything three times. (The Redgrave flick was very rarely shown here – or anywhere.)
An interesting quirk with the Regency: you could hear the rumble of IRT express trains roaring past underneath Broadway. Added to the experience.
The Alden was already showing movies in 1934. In 1963 it switched from years of sub-runs and revivals to first-run German language films.
That experiment must have failed as the theatre was closed, remodeled, and re-opened in 1964 as the Regency, showing sub-runs and revivals until it became the city’s last surviving revival house. In 1987, responding to the newfound affluence of the upper west side, Cineplex Odeon remodeled the Regency once more and re-invented it as a first-run pseudo art house.
The Alden’s listings in Film Daily Year Books always gave an address of 1981 Broadway. I suppose the entrance could have been moved when the theatre later re-opened as the Regency…The ground site is again under re-development, following demolition of the building used by Victoria’s Secret. The new construction is from the corner of 67th Street up to the building that includes Ollie’s Restaurant.
Repertory days.
View link
Renewing link.
Thanks, Kieran. Glad to read you had such a good time there.
I used to go to this theater on my lunch breaks when I worked at Tower Records, two blocks down the street. Someone would cover for me, since I only got an hour. Sounds like I just missed the repertory screenings by a few months, but I more than made up for it by frequenting the Biograph, which I loved even more. I remember going here and seeing The Dead Pool, Everybody’s All American, Rocket Gibraltar, Gorillas in the Mist, Working Girl (or it might have been Talk Radio- one or the other). I stopped working at Tower in the Spring of 89 and I don’t remember going back to the theater until almost 10 years later to see The Opposite of Sex. I did really dig it, though.
Shoot To Kill was mentioned in the earlier comments. It ran in 70mm at the theatre. Total Recall also ran in 70mm at the theatre as a moveover.
Thanks, hardbop.
Thanks for this information, hardbop. Do you know when the Thalia Soho closed ? I think I was last there, late January 1990.
Good question, but it was around then. I haven’t found the date it closed. It opened on November 15, 1985. I remember HARVEY MILK played there for months and it was the first time I went there. HM was released in ‘84 so I don’t know if it was another theater before it was Thalia Soho.
I remember going to the Thalia Soho in late ‘89 to see THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE. In '92 it was turned into The Cinemateque and run by the woman who ran the Bleecker Street Cinema. That was its last incarmation as a movie theater.
Thanks for this information, hardbop. Do you know when the Thalia Soho closed ? I think I was last there, late January 1990.
The Regency as a revival house closed its doors on September 2, 1987, not a good year for patrons of revival houses on the Upper West Side because earlier that same year, on May 10, the Thalia also closed its doors.
I’ve been doing some research on these houses trying to figure out what films I’ve seen there (I’d love to get a look at some of the Regency’s calendars from the 1980’s).
As a home delivery subscriber to the New York Times I get access to the database and looked up the Regency and it was quite a scandal when this house closed. Cinemaplex Odeon caved and gave the keys to the Biograph on 57th Street to Frank Rowley and that venue began showing Regency-like repertory fare on February 19, 1988.
So there was about about a six-month gap between the Regency’s switching from revival to first-run and the Biograph starting its revival policy.
Best rep/classics house in New York ever, right? The hours I spent in here watching irresistible double bills programmed by Frank Rowley. Just receiving those schedules in the mail meant everything stopped while I read them, both sides, top to bottom. What great festivals!
Reading these posts brings back a flood of memories. We were young and our kids were small in the early 70’s and the Regency with its repertory format was where they learned to enjoy film. They were between 6 and 10 and soon stopped asking ‘what’s the movie going to be about?’ before our frequent forays to the Regency and joined the cheering as Groucho popped onto the screen on the front page of the Fredonia newspaper in ‘Duck Soup.’ Now if I can only ween my granddaughter away from Hannah Montana….
A few blocks up, Fiorello’s restaurant opened during the years we lived on the West Side and the first week featured a slightly looped hostess who poured wine for everyone as they walked through the door. Tomorrow I’ll go there with an out of town friend and she’ll surely comment on how pricey it is, but I remember it as a place where a waiter or chef always slipped my children free desserts.
Anyway, it’s a different world now and I do live joyfully in it, but find much comfort in the flyer on my wall for one of the Regency’s Fred Astaire retrospectives.