Calderone Theater
145 N. Franklin Street,
Hempstead,
NY
11550
145 N. Franklin Street,
Hempstead,
NY
11550
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Described in this 1949 trade article: boxofficemagazine
@robboehn One of the pictures shows the front all draped for the wide Cinemascope screen
From the photo above it would seem that the screen must have been very small in the beginning. Since the proscenium was very small what did they do to accommodate CinemaScope and the like?
Before wide-screen, movies tended to appear lost in the vastness of the new Calderone Theatre: boxofficemagazine
When the Skouras Calderone had its grand opening on the night of June 21, 1949, Newsday described it as “America’s largest postwar theater,” with a construction cost of about $1,350,000. Proceeds from that night’s gala were contributed to the Hempstead Community Chest. 20th Century-Fox, which had a corporate connection to Skouras Theatres, provided a sneak preview of its Technicolor musical, “You’re My Everything,” which was due to open later that summer in NYC at the Roxy Theatre. The Calderone opened to the public the next day, with a double feature of MGM’s “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” a Technicolor musical with Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, and Screen Guild’s B&W “I Shot Jesse James.”
used to go there in the 50s, brings back memories.
in 1979 I appeared in a live stage show here. It was sort of odd being on the stage after having seen movies here
It was cheap carpet too.
If the floors were carpeted, that might have been the reason, rather than cheap construction of the building. It could have been the carpeting or padding underneath it.
Never was in the theatre but went for a job interview in office space which was included in the theatre complex. I was negatively impressed by the apparently cheap construction. The floors in the hallways actually moved underfoot.
There are a plethora of images of the Calderone Theatre (as well as other Long Island theatres built by the Calderones) on the excellent Long Island Library Resources Council’s Long Island Memories website – where a sample of photographic collections from various regional libraries have been digitized for easy access. Among the collections is one that focuses on the Calderones from the Hofstra University Library’s archives.
This image of the Calderone’s auditorium under construction starts off the series of images pertaining particularly to this theatre. You may click anywhere on the image to zoom in for a closer look. Click on the thumbnail image to move the “red box” around and change the area of detail viewed in the larger image. You may advance to the next image by clicking “Next” in the upper right side of the page header.
Excellent images well worth spending the time to peruse. And once you move past the Calderone Theatre itself, a number of other Calderone projects may be found, including the Mineola Theatre, the Cove Theatre, the Hempstead Theatre and others.
What was the name of the opening band for Hot Tuna on May 4, 1975?
According to an article in the August 26, 1949 Newsday, the opening night proceeds of $ 3,568 were turned over to the local Community Chest by the Skouras Theatre Corp.
The pictures you have are of the Rivoli Theater which was located just up the block from the Calderone. The Rivoli was know as the Calderone 2 for a period to try to change the bad image it had for may years. It did not work… The theater has been demolished.
They are definitely not pictures of either the Calderone or the Hempstead theater.
Are these pictures the Calderone?
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That date I was doing the renovating in was 1997, not 2007, my mistake.
The Calderone was never intended to be more than a cinema, which is why the stage facilities were virtually non-existent.
I was helping renovate the theater in 2007. It had already been split into several small theaters. But the upstairs projection booth was old as the hills, and it had a locker that featured stickers promoting the various films shown there as well as the various rock groups that played there. Stickers for Prudence and the Pill. And then rock promotion for Ten Years Later (formally Ten Years After). They had a ton of Carbon Arcs in the basement. The theater was down again by ‘99. It’s one huge church now…
Here is a photo of the Calderone as a church.
Here are new links to images described above on 7/27/05 and 9/3/05:
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Saw Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush May 28, 1978 there. Have a picture of the marquis, which included Stanley Clarke June 13 and Patti Smith June 14. Sound was great in every seat in the house. Great lobby and huge bathrooms.
Another great venue was My Father’s Place in Roslyn. Saw an old Stephan Grappelli play with Les Paul.
Both shows kicked ass.
Too bad we don’t have these “stylish” venues on L.I. anymore.
Saw Stanley Clarke here, he recorded a live album there.
I was a kid in Hempstead in the sixties and I saw many a movie at the Calderone. Back in those days a nine-year-old kid could walk by himself, as I did, through downtown Hempstead and go to movies without much fear. I remember seeing “You Only Live Twice” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” at the Calderone when they first opened on Long Island there. My favorite though was “Planet of the Apes,” which I first saw at the Wantagh and Levittown theatres in 1968, but saw again at the Calderone during the Memorial Day weekend of 1969 when it was double featured with “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines.” I also recall seeing a re-issue of “The Longest Day” at the Calderone. It was a nice, big theatre, but one thing I didn’t like about it was that if you were a kid alone they made you sit in the “unaccompanied children” section on the right. I liked to sit in the center of the theatre and so I hated that, and I recall being turned away from the theatre once, I think for the John Wayne movie “The Undefeated,” because the kid’s usher took a sick day or something. Man, was I pissed! The last movie I saw at the Calderone before my family moved off the Island was “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” in late June 1970.
Rockville Twin should be reopened