Kenmore Square Cinema
660 Beacon Street,
Boston,
MA
02215
660 Beacon Street,
Boston,
MA
02215
1 person
favorited this theater
A small first-run art house right in Kenmore Square, built to replace the Kenmore Theatre when that was displaced by the Massachusetts Turnpike. It was built into a piece of a building in the early 1960s. It no longer exists as a movie theatre although the building it was built into is still there.
Contributed by
Gerald A. DeLuca
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Recent comments (view all 30 comments)
Hi Ron.
Yes, the BU Barnes & Noble occupies the old Kenmore Square Cinema site. The original Kenmore Theater was at the other address cited earlier. It had been torn down many years before, as you know.
I think my old Park Square Cinema is just office or retail space now.
Justin Freed
Hi Justin!
I have so many fond memories of the Park Square Cinema, especially the Marx Brothers double features. Packed houses, rocking with laughter. My favorite moment at the movies ever was at a screening of “At the Circus†at PSC. At the point when Kenny Baker begins singing “Two Blind Loves†(always a dreaded moment in an MGM Marx Brother film and this, the worst of all of those moments), an audience member in the rear began singing along. One by one, others began to join in (for as much as we hate this song, weâ€\ve seen the picture so many times itâ€\s committed to memory). By the end of the song, the entire audience was singing and when it was done, the theater erupted into thunderous applause. A truly Zen moment. Only at a theater like PSC would one find an audience as cool as that. Thank you for the love and laughter, Justin, and for introducing me to the Marx Brothers in the way they were meant to be seen.
Another great memory from PSC was the wonderful monthly calendar that you put together. Any chance you may have a scan of one of them that you could send to a nostalgic former patron?
Charlie King email:
To Charlie:
When I get back to Boston in late May I will send some scans to this web site if they will accept them.
Again:
Thanks for your remembrances. It was a magical time for all of us. The sense of community, the suggestion book entries that taught me so much.
Other memories from the Park Square:
Ruth Gordon talking about “Harold and Maude” which we made into a cult film in Boston.
Before I
took it over, “8 ½” premiered there.( I was a friend of the owner and that’s what led to me taking it over.)
The memory is that there was a display of the black hat that Fellini’s character wore.
I am reading a bio of Fellini by Tullio Kezich that describes Fellini’s creative process and the unbelievable dynamics on the set. Great stuff.
Another image: customers exiting the Park Square from Astaire/Rogers films dancing down the marble floor of the Park Square Building. Among them, dance enthusiast Jane Goldberg.
Any other memories of the Park, Kenmore or Coolidge Corner?
Justin Freed
Fellini’s 8 ½ program booklet from its showings at the Park Square and Kenmore Square Cinemas. It was eight pages of blurbs and reviews and I saved it.
Justin, I’d love to see some of those old schedules. We used to put them up on the wall every month at the MIT coop house I lived in (at 111 Bay State Road, a block from this theatre)
Thanks, Justin! I’ll look forward to those scans later in the Spring—my office wall has a perfect spot for one.
I’m sure I was one of those people dancing out of the theater after “Swing Time”. Good times.
Charlie
I used to love going to the Kenmore and Park Sq. theaters, and the program posters were amazing! Let’s see, I remember lots of people in the audience crying at the end of Wuthering Heights, people falling out of the seats laughing during The Producers, (or was it just me doing those things?) seeing first showings I think of Monty Python and Kentucky Fried Movie. Wasn’t there another small cinema on Boylston, around where Pall’s Mall and the Jazz Workshop were? I might be getting that one mixed up with the Park, but one of those premiered The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant.
I also worked at Century III Productions in 1984-5, but it then was diagonally across the street, not at the theater space anymore.
The theatre you are thinking of was the Cinema 733, which indeed shared a building with Paul’s Mall and the Jazz Workshop.
Justin, I projected at the kenmore Sq in the 60’s also the Coolidge and the Orson Welles and many others in Boston, I liked the midnight shows and the Staff, Roger and Jeff and great chinese dinners into the wee hrs, best to you
Waked by there last week on a BU memory lane tour. When I was a BU resident at Myles Standish Hall in the 60s I remember going to see Polanski’s creepy “Repulsion” there with the then young and beautiful Catherine Deneuve. Think her “Umbrellas of Cherbourg” played there as well.