Audubon Theatre
3950 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10032
3950 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10032
1 person
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 35 comments found
Here’s a 1980s tax photo showing the now demolished auditorium portion of the building: lunaimaging
Click here for an exterior view of the Fox Audubon Theatre in 1929.
Pretty much the same as them ‘jabbering away’ in English to many of us.
During its Hispanic phase as the San Juan Theatre, this often presented double features of Hollywood hits in their dubbed Spanish versions. For example, opening for a week on August 12th, 1949, were MGM’s “Le Luz Que Agonize” (“Gaslight”) and “Perdidos En Un Harem” (“Lost In a Harem”). Can you imagine Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten, Abbott & Costello, and all the other actors jabbering away in Spanish for well over three hours, and probably not even hearing their actual voices? Might have been bliss for patrons who didn’t understand English, but torture (and unintended hilarity) for everyone else.
Why is this listed as the Audubon Theatre & Ballroom? They were separate and distinct enterprises— the Audubon Theatre and the Audubon Ballroom. The listing should be as Audubon Theatre only.
any photos of the theater in its early years as the Audubon?
for instance when “Down To The Sea In Ships” played a neighborhood
engagement after an exclusive 3 month run in Times Square?
Here’s an exterior photo as the San Juan: View link
The change back to the original name is greatly appreciated, but I don’t think that “Ballroom” is required here. They did share the same building, but were always separate business enterprises. One was named and promoted as the Audubon Theatre, and the other as the Audubon Ballroom. The latter served as a dance hall and also rented out for social functions. Similarly, the Alhambra Theatre in Harlem had an Alhambra Ballroom as part of the building, but the CT listing is only as the Alhambra Theatre.
It’s a shame that this now has to be listed under its final name as the San Juan, by which time it was a shabby and decrepit shadow of one of Thomas W. Lamb’s first masterworks as a theatre architect. All histories of Lamb’s career report it as the Audubon, not as the San Juan. Couldn’t that be the main entry name, with San Juan in smaller type along with other names? It would be a showing of respect to Lamb as well as to the theatre’s namesake, the revered American naturalist, John James Audubon.
I believe the reluctance by CT editors to list the aka names (Beverly Hills, San Juan) may come from the fact that these theatre names co-existed with the Audubon ballroom and that the San Juan theatre was reportedly demolished while the ballroom was not.
Please note from the introduction that the ballroom on the northern upstairs end of the building where Malcolm X was shot was a separate entity from the Fox theatre on the southern downstairs end and that the eventual demolition was only a partial remodel of a wrapped building housing both.
While the Audubon Ballroom still stands in some form, the cinema end, the Fox Audubon (Beverly Hills, San Juan) theatre listed here, is for all practical purposes, demolished.
Here’s a rare individual ad for the Audubon from November, 1948. “Zelane” was a psychic who made frequent tours of neighborhood theatres, advising patrons individually in a section of the lounge and not from the stage: View link
My mistake, LM, it is 1968, but that still maps near Lincoln Center.
The Hudson is also listed in 1935 with an address of 1968 Amsterdam Avenue.
The 1940 Film Daily lists a Hudson Theater at 1968 Amsterdam Avenue.
Does anyone have any knowledge of a HUDSON theatre in north Manhattan?
It appears in the 1934 Film Daily Year Book as located at 1268 Amsterdam Avenue but newspaper ads in 1921-22 place it close to Audubon Avenue and 167th street.
It must have been a slow night with 800 people.
Here is a January 19, 1927 article about a fire in the Audubon:
http://tinyurl.com/5dw9gx
Here is some architectural detail:
http://tinyurl.com/2kwk8j
A Moller theater organ opus 2015 size 3/24 was installed in the Audubon Theater in 1915.
The Audubon first started showing Spanish-language films (but not exclusively) in December, 1943, while under Brandt management. In August, 1948, Moe Goldman and Gilbert Josephson acquired the lease and re-named the theatre the San Juan, which remained for the rest of its life as a cinema. All of the movies were now in Spanish (usually without English subtitles) and imports from Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Argentina, and other countries. To fill the gaps, the San Juan sometimes ran revivals of Hollywood films dubbed into Spanish, which could be rented cheaply from the foreign departments of the major distributors. Here’s an ad for one such booking in August, 1949. Even if you didn’t understand the language, it might have been worth a visit just to hear Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Abbott & Costello speaking in Spanish, and probably not in their actual voices: www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/sanjuan849.jpg
This theatre is mentioned in Rogelio Agrasanchez, Jr.’s excellent book MEXICAN MOVIES I N THE UNITED STATES.
The Audubon as the SAN JUAN ran Spanish Language films when the going got tough in the late forties often playing day and date with the flasgship PUERTO RICO in the South Bronx.
San Juan should be added as an alternate name here.
This website has some history of the Audubon Theater.
Post the same ad in many theatres. Cool idea. Thanx.
In May, 1923, Fox’s Audubon was part of a 30-theatre city-wide engagement of “Down to the Sea in Ships” after the epic ended an exclusive three-month run on Broadway:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/downtosea.jpg
The project that became the Audubon was first reported in The New York Times on January 14, 1912. A second report on March 3, 1912, suggests that William Fox and Thomas Lamb later changed some of the original design to save on construction costs:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/audbon1.jpg
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/audbon2.jpg