Embassy Cinema
125 Park Avenue,
New York,
NY
10017
125 Park Avenue,
New York,
NY
10017
1 person
favorited this theater
Located at Park Avenue on the south side of 42nd Street, opposite Grand Central Station, this theatre advertised in 1949 its showing of the British film “The Facts of Love”.
Recollections of this theatre would be appreciated.
Contributed by
Gerald A. DeLuca
Want to be emailed when a new comment is posted about this theater?
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater
Recent comments (view all 18 comments)
The address for the Embassy Newsreel Theatre was 74 East 42nd Street, and it contained 527 seats, according to the 1945 edition of the Motion Picture Theatre Directory published by the New York Film Board of Trade.
In 1952, this was apparently known as Brandt’s Murray Hill and running double-bills of foreign imports and Hollywood reissues:
www.i8.photobucket.com/albums/a18/Warrengwhiz/parkmurray.jpg
Renewing link.
This is listed as the AIR LINES theatre in the 1942 Film daily Year Book.
The 1943 Film Daily Year Book lists a Newsreel Theatre at 74 E. 42nd street as well as the aforementioned Air Lines theatre at 42nd and Park.
Does anyone know if all three theatres were the same?
The cinema can be seen to the extreme right of this view of the Airlines Terminal building. Instead of a marquee, the Embassy had an attraction board over the entrance. This photo also suggests that there was no entrance to the cinema on the Park Avenue side of the terminal building.
View link
The Airlines name makes even more sense now. Seating and location all match although the mailing address was once on 42nd street. This theatre opened on October 18, 1940 as the Airlines Newsreel and had the same publicity agent as the Grand central Newsreel inside the terminal.
From 1949 it was a late run double feature house. In February 1951, after the Loew’s 42nd Street (aka Murray Hill) had closed, this became Brandt’s Murray Hill.
Airlines and Murray Hill should be added as aka names.
Seventy-one years ago today, this had its grand opening as the Embassy Newsreel Theatre, which suggests that the Embassy chain had replaced the original management. The advertised address was the Airline Terminal on the south side of 42nd Street at Park Avenue. The theatre’s policy was “1 hour of latest world-wide news events, finest shorts & Embassy exclusives.” Programs changed every Tuesday and Thursday at 6:00 PM. If you arrived at 5:00 PM on those days, you could see two shows for the price of one.
I’ve displayed an enlarged portion of this NYPL photo, which is dated March, 1941, and taken about six months before the Embassy take-over:nypl
The introduction is confusing and needs to be re-written. The cinema was across the street from Grand Central Station, which had a newsreel theatre of its own within. And, ironically, that newsreeler is NOT listed in the Embassy’s “Nearby Theatres”: cinematreasures