Publix Theatre
659-65 Washington Street,
Boston,
MA
02201
659-65 Washington Street,
Boston,
MA
02201
11 people
favorited this theater
A grind-run theatre on the lower end of Washington Street. This one seemed to specialize to a great degree in programs of westerns.
Contributed by
Gerald A. DeLuca
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Recent comments (view all 202 comments)
I moved to Boston in 1967 and lived there til I went off to college in 1972. Not knowing anything about “the combat zone” or what was or wasn’t a good section of town or a bad one, I thought nothing of going to the Publix or the Center theatres on a regular basis – 50 or 75 cents admission and it was always a decent double feature. After a couple of years of doing this , I came home one night and my parents who knew where I had been were very upset, they had heard that the Publix was arun down filthy movie theatre with a “bad element”. I told them that it was a bit run down but they had double features and the price was right. They then forbade me to go there again – not explainging why. Of course the next time they had a double feature that I wanted to see I went, but now that they had told me it had a bad element, that was all that I could see – the audience was kind of grungy and the seats were broken and the restrooms had an element of danger. I didn’t feel safe. My rose colored glasses were off. `and while the Center was a rather utilitarian theatre, the Publix and the Paramount were clearly once very classy places fallen on hard times.
I went to the Publix many times and never felt any danger in there. But I stopped going around 1968 and am not familiar with it after that. It wasn’t that grungy then. There were fairly large audiences, mostly all male. I never went there at night; always during the day. There were 2 feature films, fairly recent, plus shorts. And the price was well under $1. I don’t think that the area was called the “Combat Zone” until the 1970s when Billinuk was a patron.
I remember seeing several movies (rather poor-quality R-rated ones mainly of the B and C grade, but cheap and appealing to a 16/17-year-old)) in the Publix circa 1976-1977. By this time it was really in pretty bad shape, visibly deteriorating due to lack of maintenance. Neverthless, while it was certainly seedy, I never sensed any “danger” there, perhaps because I always assumed that the “raincoat crowd” and others of that ilk were to be found elsewhere in the X-rated joints. Which, I was soon to find out after I turned 18 and went to see a flick at the Pilgrim, was the absolute truth. Suffice it to say that my visit to the Pilgrim lasted only long enough to get one look (an exceedingly brief one) at the Sodom-and-Gomorrah that was the ill-famed men’s room, after which I almost literally ran out of the place.
The Publix, by comparison, was almost sedate. To its credit, it never quite sank to the level of showing X-rated fare.
If any one wanted a sleezy theatre they should have gone to the Stuart St theatre. The only movie theatre I ever went to that the Projection Booth had to shoot at such an angle around a pole holding up the booth. The only other theatre I have ever been in that hjad a worse Keystone was The RKO Keiths in downtown D.C. There booth was so high and far away that it shot down a very steep angle.
The map and street view do not currently show the correct location for this theatre. It should be about ¾ miles south of what the map shows, at the corner of Washington and Lagrange streets.
I haven’t visited Cinema Treasures in quite some time. I’m shocked to see the extensive posts that documented the attempts to save this theater are, like the venue itself, gone. Anyway, the Publix Gaiety, had superb acoustics, was located in the Theater District, an area which had at one time had special zoning considerations. Whether or not it could have survived economically as a theater, I don’t know. Its demolition was an architectural loss.
The posts are not gone. There are 198 comments on this theatre going back to 2004.
hey Dick I remember the stuart theater very well!! cheap dbl features (50 cents!) and all the sex ya wanted if sat on the left hand side lol but yes the projection was terrible and anytime new people walked in you had a bright spot on the screen! Still would not have traded that time for anything!!
I walked by the site of the Publix yesterday and there finally is some activity there. Looks like site prep for a foundation. They have fenced off the alley which ran along the theater’s right (north) side so that it’s not part of the construction activity.
Woops….sorry Ron. I hadn’t fully figured out how the new format worked and failed to see the button that accesses the earlier comments.
Kind thanks to nvargelis for the link to the images.