Plaza Theatre
42 East 58th Street,
New York,
NY
10022
42 East 58th Street,
New York,
NY
10022
13 people
favorited this theater
The Plaza Theatre opened in September 1929 and was designed in a Tudor style. This theatre later had a modern style that somewhat mirrored the Beekman Theatre with it’s rising balcony toward the back. It had a decent sized screen and sound. The curtains closed after every presentation. I saw “Crossing Delancey” there, and a year before it closed I saw the indie film “Straight Outta Brooklyn” there. It was on a side street and was hard to find. It’s amazing how that theatre stayed in business.
It closed in January 1996 and became some kind of tourist attraction showing films about New York like the old New York Experience used to do in Rockefeller Center. That later stopped and now it’s home to an Asian sushi restuarant named Tao.
Contributed by
jamal p. Savage
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Recent comments (view all 115 comments)
Hector, Thanks for your comments; missing a beautiful theatre; valuing meaningful / beautiful buildings & adding to the list of unusual films. I agree, all the Rugoff-Cinema 5 theatres were comfortable, classy and beautiful. I forget the ones downtown. I only worked the upper East Side. I think the Kips Bay, Murray Hill and Grammacy were Cinema 5. I think there was one in the Village too (The Art?). Oh, “The man with one red shoe” & “Gimme Shelter” played at the Plaza. Someone should write a book about this; ie: the history of the Plaza; the history of Rugoff-Cinema 5; The society that first builds and then throws away magnificent structures, etc. OR a book called: “The Theatre Moguls”. Cinema 5 was also a film distributer, ie: “released by Cinema 5”. I have some memoribilia from the Plaza. I saw about a dozen really famous people while I was there. Plus two or three in the neighborhood; Plus more when I worked in a health club on 59th St. It was really fun working there in those days.
The American Musical at the Plaza.
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I really enjoyed reading this thread. The Plaza was one of my favorite NY cinemas. I saw “Diva” there about 20 times, I think it ran for close to a year. I think Nagisa Oshima’s “In the Realm of the Senses” played there as well. In the mid-late 70s I used to call the theater just to hear that wonderful woman’s voice on the recording. She was so theatrical, she had a British accent. “Thank you for calling the Plaza Theater, located on 58th Street east of Madison Avenue…” As for the small theater that was located inside the Plaza Hotel, that was the Cinema 3. I remember seeing Carlos Saura’s “Cria!” there, with Geraldine Chaplin.
The Plaza Theater on 58th St. was a great cinema, one of the irreplaceable ones. I grew up in Westchester and I went there in 1965 at age 15 on my very first date to NYC. We ate at Reuben’s (just down 58th street a block or so, and another lost landmark), and then to the Plaza to see The Knack…And How To Get It. These places were really classic places, and I remember them like it was yesterday.
Thanks johnjohn.
Thanks Al for the reference to the American Musical schedule in 1974. Going through the pages of that VV edition, the head spins at the humber of summer film festivals, including the Carnegie Hall Cineam & Cinema Studio. In addition to the art house fare, you could catch a double feature of Bananas & Sleeper for a buck. So much for technological progress with Netflicks & On Demand.
Is “Vinnie P” still reading? I’d love to know if you remember Robbie.
…if you worked there in the 60s, you should! Please read my earlier posts and see if you remember me! We lived next door.
In June, 1939, during the first season of the NY World’s Fair, Leo Brecher announced that he had renewed his operating lease on the Plaza Theatre, which had developed a following as “Smarter New York’s Favorite Movie.” To mark the event, Brecher adopted a new and reduced price scale: 40 cents from noon opening to 6:00pm on weekdays, and 60 cents at night and all day on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. Bookings of sub-run single features would continue, starting with a two-day engagement of “Pygmalion,” with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. Comparatively speaking, the Plaza’s prices were still high for 1939. For example, you could attend a brand-new movie, plus stage show, at the Roxy Theatre for 25 cents until 1:00pm on any day of the week.
The last big engagement at the theatre (before it became a move-over house) was David O. Russell’s Spanking The Monkey, which had a long run from July to September 1994.