RKO 86th Street Theatre

Fifty years ago this weekend, Hollywood sexpot Jayne Mansfield made a three-day tour of twenty RKO theatres in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Westchester to promote the current engagement of “The George Raft Story,” in which she portrayed a fictional composite of some of his celebrated Hollywood conquests. The RKO 86th Street was Mansfield’s last stop on the first night. She made a brief stage appearance at each theatre, with radio disc jockey Murray the “K” as emcee. Ray Danton played the title role in the B&W biopic, which was running on the RKO circuit with the B&W “Look In Any Window” as the supporting feature.

Anyone remember the old RKO on 58 St-3 Ave acroos from Alexanders

Here’s a link to some unnarrated newsreel coverage of an invitational screening of the Rock Hudson starrer, “Battle Hymn,” at the RKO 86th Street in 1956: View link

WOW that first one jogged my memory!!! Thanks for the link! What a shame to demolish that beautiful theater and replace it with that awful Gimbels East building. Everything for the almighty dollar.

It’s a sketch for the corner vertical sign which is shown here and dates back to at least 1947, when the photo was taken:
View link

On Friday January 26, 1962, the Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly-Joe DeRita) embarked on a three day promotional tour for their latest feature film, THE THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES. They were accompanied by “The Herculean Giant” (almost 8 foot tall Dave Ballard) and popular DJ Clay Cole, who was one of the stars of the co-feature, TWIST AROUND THE CLOCK.

On Saturday January 27, they appeared at the RKO 86th Street at 4:55 PM.

In July, 1959, RKO Theatres, by then a subsidiary of Glen Alden Corporation, sold the 86th Street and four other large theatres to a real estate syndicate called Theatre Realty Company Partnership, according to reports in The New York Times and Variety. No purchase prices were disclosed, but as part of the deal, RKO leased back the operation of the five theatres for a term of 25 years, with options to renew. In addition to the 86th Street, the theatres sold were the Fordham in the Bronx, the Albee in Brooklyn, and the Madison and Keith’s Flushing in Queens.

At the age of ten I saw William Castle’s “Mr Sardonicus” at this theater. Near the end of the film, the lights came up and Mr. Castle walked out onto the stage. He asked the Saturday matinee crowd of screaming kid’s to hold our glow in the dark thumb cards up or down to decide the fate of the villain.
Mr Sardonicus died.
Mr. Castle signed autographs on the thumb cards in the lobby afterward.
I wish I still had mine.
He was a ten year old’s Hitchcock.

After Marquee published the above photos, someone wrote to the editor that the photo of the mezzanine promenade is from the RKO Proctor’s New Rochelle, and not from the 86th Street. Both theatres were built around the same time, so it seems possible that the photos got confused. I don’t recall if Marquee printed a correction or not.

Consumer fraud? In October, 1960, RKO and other nabes ran these two “foreign” features with the dialogue dubbed into English, but failed to mention it in advertising:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/rko60.jpg

When “Godfather II” opened in ‘74, I hadda depend on the subway to whisk me to the RKO 86th in record time. I mean, with a 200 minute running time, you don’t want to get shut out for the next performance. I ran like a track star and made it!

A very worthy sequel to the original, some of which I saw filmed on 5th and 51st back in March, ‘71, when I worked at Rockefeller Center. (More on that when I post about “The Godfather” which ran at NY’s State Theater – at Broadway and 45th? – in '72.)

To promote his new film “The Ladies Man,” Jerry Lewis appeared on stage at this theater on July 12, 1961.