Angelika 57
225 West 57th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
225 West 57th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
5 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 77 comments found
The only memory I have of this theater is when i was 18 and it was a porno theater and me being a dumb nieve teenage got pickpocketed by the guy sitting next to me.
The opening ad as the Lincoln Art;
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New Carnegie needs to be added as an aka name and the map link now goes to Queens.
Renewing link.
That’s funny. “near Broadway” should be removed from the address.
The map link above goes to Brooklyn.
I’ve been doing some research on the revival houses in New York City and remember this one’s opening weekend well. The repertory programming under Frank Rowley’s direction begain on February 19, 1988 and continued until Cinemaplex Odeon pulled the plug on September 21, 1991. I remember people importuning me to sign petitions on the sidewalk after the theater closed. The era of the private art house was coming to an end. Rowley resurfaced in 1993 when he attempted to turn the Gramercy Theater on 23rd Street into a revival house, but that lasted less than a year.
In any event, I remember being here on the opening weekend. The Biograph kicked things off by showing 10 films with a “New York City” theme on Friday and Saturday and then on Sunday they started running a 34-film Myrna Loy/William Powell retrospective. I remember that because I was there Sunday night, with Myrna Loy in the house as a special guest, when THE THIN MAN screened.
I vaguely remember being here at the end too, but can’t remember which films played the last weekend. My research will continue.
I’d love to see some schedules for this place. How I wish I had saved them!
I believe the Biograph was closed for a couple of years before Joe Saleh ran the place as the Angelika 57 until it closed for good and became a very pricey supermarket.
I was delighted when the ubiquitous Frank Rowley began programming this theater with classics and disheartened when his era ended here, as it had at the Regency. What a loss!
A very hairy lady was the subject of Marco Ferreri’s The Ape Woman, shown here in 1964.
Thanks, Joe. By the way, you rabble still have to pay for access to NYT articles published prior to 1981.
Now that the New York Times has opened much of its archives to us non-paying rabble, a July, 1997 article on the occasion of the closing of the Angelika 57 is available right here. (The Times may still require free registration at their site before you can see the article- I’m not sure.)
The article gives the opening date of the Lincoln Art Theatre as July 21, 1964, and the seating capacity as 572.
In addition to its incarnations as the Bombay Cinema (1976-1985) and Cineplex Odeon’s Biograph (February 1988-September 1991), there was a period in between when it was called the New Carnegie Theater, a resurrection of the former Little Carnegie Theater which had been demolished in 1982.
The house became the Angelika 57 in 1993, and closed forever on July 10, 1997.
The Lincoln Art Theatre was built and owned by Meyer Ackerman and his then partner, Robert Ferman. After the project was announced, Joseph E. Levine became interested and bought the operating lease. Construction began in September, 1963. The 57th Street entrance and lobby area were built in space that had previously been a Roger Kent clothing store. The auditorium was built on undeveloped land on West 58th Street that had served as a parking lot for decades…In 1970, Levine decided to withdraw from running theatres and bought his way out of the lease. Owner Ackerman took over the Lincoln Art’s management, starting on September 21st with the American premiere engagement of Luis Bunuel’s “Tristana.” At that time, Ackerman also operated the Cinema 57 Rendezvous, the 68th Street Playhouse, and six suburban theatres in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, according to reportage in Variety and other trade journals.
I discovered the Biograph almost by accident in the Fall of 1988 when some friends and I went to see a revival of my all-time favorite film, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. I remember thinking that it was revival theaters like this that made Manhattan great! Too bad something that special was not meant to last.
The Biograph Theater was also inspirational to me in that when writing a couple of my screenplays, I created a ficticious revival movie theater in several scenes that take place in small coastal towns.
Yes, Wanda. Zed signifies “The End.” Music swells, fade to black. House lights come up, and we wonder what did it all means.
Thanks for attempting to move the conversational ball down the field, Gerry/Warren. It’s all up to you now. Your 1965 opening night, the tony Lincoln Art Theatre, the Lincoln statue in the Lobby, the Maltese Falcon, the little tramp, the moving shadows on the wall, the past itself, these are the elusive things of which dreams are made. Pleasant dreams, Bryan K, my dear old friend! Zeddy?
In June 1965 the Lincoln Art Theatre held the American premiere of this fine 1961 commedia all'italiana, The Fascist/Il federale, unfortunately all but forgotten today.
Let’s get something clear, Warren. We’re not interested in the Lincoln Art’s shameful descent as a palace of porno perversions. If you have a interest in gay porn, I suggest you confine those proclivities elsewhere. Let’s revel in the Lincoln Art’s glory as a purveyer of fine films with artistic merit.
Perhaps one of the “ladies” who’ve just joined us as obvious experts on the history of the Lincoln Art could tell us the name used during the period when the theatre presented male “XXX” fare. I don’t think it was a newly-coined name. The management just kept the previous name, which had been either Bombay or Biograph.
Don’t flatter yourself, Warren. I’ve heard Bryan Krefft call you a fathead many times.
Yes, fairytail. “Warren” and “Zeddy” seem to be the same silly person in conversation with him/her/itself. Could the moderator please intervene? I understand it’s “illegal” to post here under more than one signature at a time, “Warren,” if that’s your real name. (Warren dear, read this in your best Paul Lynde voice.)
Oh my what a bunch of nonsense. This person Zeddy joined Cinema Treasures on March 31, 2007 and the one and only message was an ass kissing message to Warren. Talk about stupid and pointless messages! You are both guilty of this crime. I will pray for both Warren and Zeddy.
Right On, Warren! I’ve also found the recent postings here stupid and pointless, and I’ve seen this happen before with this crew. Bryan Killian and his merry band of girlfriend pranksters descended on the message board of my boyfriend’s dog grooming website. They degraded everyone, including my boyfriend’s shitzu. My boyfriend was in tears for a week! Apparently, they get their kicks spreading their lame brand of absurdist humor. The sooner we, as right-thinking members, shun these cretins, the sooner we can get back to trusting the veracity of what we read on the internet. And by the way, you’re not boring, Warren. You’re completely delightful, Darling.
I must apologize for misspelling the name of Bryan Krefft and also for suspecting that he was the same person signing himself “Bryan K.” “Bryan K” may be the signature for Bryan Killian (if there’s such a person), who has been mentioned in off-topic postings here for the past week or so. For all I know, “Bryan,” “Wanda,” and “Lynn” could be the very same person, trying to be camp and funny, but just proving a boring nuisance.
Methinks the ladies and/or gents have adopted even more aliases to stir up the pot. New York theatres are one of my special interests, but advising me to leave them “to those of us who appreciate free, raucous, and diverse thoughts” is tantamount to forcing me to resign from Cinema Treasures.“ And who is Bryan K? Is that the same person as our own Bryan Kerft? I don’t think that our Bryan would address any member, even me,as "Fathead.”
LynnZZZ and Wanda Hickey are two separate and distinct women I know well. I don’t understand the actions taken by Warren to remove them, even if he thought they were the same person. Their contributions here added solely needed humor and energy to the depressing topic of demolished movie theatres. I strongly urge the moderator to reinstate them, but I guess we’ll see the Lincoln Art Theatre rebuilt before that happens.
Warren, enjoy the site, but maybe you should confine yourself to the pages of some nice mid-western, red-state movie theaters, where the range of thought is limited. Leave the New York theatres to those of us who appreciate free, raucous, and diverse thoughts, well expressed. “Excelsior, You Fathead!”