Cinema Kings Highway
711 Kings Highway,
Brooklyn,
NY
11223
711 Kings Highway,
Brooklyn,
NY
11223
7 people
favorited this theater
The Jewel Theatre, which stands a few blocks west of the Kingway Theatre, was opened in 1936. It later became a foreign film house until it was damaged by fire in the 1960’s.
It was completed renovated and reopened as the Cinema Kings Highway with an exclusive Brooklyn showing of "Thoroughly Modern Millie." But in the late 1960’s, the owner found he could make a lot more money running XXX and played "He and She" there for over a year.
The story goes that he ran off with all of the profits and the theatre fell into a dispute over the ownership. Before video shut it down, it was split into two theatres, with regular porn running downstairs and gay porn running in the small balcony. It reopened as a triplex, featuring XXX straight porn in one theatre, gay porn in the second, and obscure foreign classics in the third. This is basically the programming policy today.
Contributed by
philipgoldberg
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Recent comments (view all 187 comments)
saps, thanks for that link. OMG, what an Art Deco jewel (no pun intended)!
Here’s an activated link. I don’t know why this still doesn’t happen automatically like it used to in the original version of Cinema Treasures, but it doesn’t: cinematour
I don’t know (or remember) how to hyperlink.
Providing a hyperlink is not important. All one has to do is copy the link and then paste it; it’s no big deal. It doesn’t involve any strenuous exertion or sweat, lol.
Here’s a 1980s tax photo of the exterior: lunaimaging
A negative report in this current article: villagevoice
Excerpt from Village Voice article:
Speaking of “social” moviegoing—in an abandoned-looking building next to the Kosher Hut in Gravesend lurks Brooklyn’s last living porno theater, the Kings Highway Cinema (711 Kings Highway, Brooklyn). Marquees and poster displays blacked out, the only clue to the theater’s ongoing operation is a computer printout in the window that reads “Box Office Inside.”
Paying $12 in a small lobby decorated with decoy posters of art house titles, the curious pass through an ominous turnstile and into history. Thanks to the 1995 zoning law that requires purveyors of XXX to devote 60 percent of their floor space to nonpornographic material, the two larger theaters, both empty and reeking like humidors, were playing a biopic of French gangster Jacques Mesrine and a Two and a Half Men.
The big houses are flanked by two theaters of some 15 seats each, screening, respectively, gay and straight hardcore. These are linked by a back passageway that’s a hive of private booths, an intermediary zone suggesting a fluid sexuality—though given the age of most of the patronage, sex might be purely theoretical.
The most off-putting element here: the concession area, which consists of hot-water carafes, Styrofoam cups, and a sign reading “Ask Cashier for Hot Chocolate Package.” Before its Deco interior was gutted by a fire in the 1960s, the Kings Highway was—as the Jewel Theatre—one of Brooklyn’s first art houses, frequented by a young Woody Allen.
I’ve just added two B&W images of the original Jewel auditorium to the Photos Section.
If anyone has any stories about going to/ working at this threatre in its adult days, I would love to hear them. I am chronicling the histories of adult theatres in the US. Please contact me at Thanks!
I added some new photos I took this evening. I want to go back with my camera and take better pics.