Biograph Theatre
2819 M Street NW,
Washington,
DC
20007
2819 M Street NW,
Washington,
DC
20007
6 people
favorited this theater
The Biograph Theater was a repertory movie house, built inside the shell of an old auto dealership. It opened September 30, 1967 and closed in 1996, being replaced by a CVS drugstore.
An old photo of the theater hangs in the store’s window, but it only adds to the misery of those who loved this Georgetown favorite.
Contributed by
Ross Melnick
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Recent comments (view all 16 comments)
I took a few photographs of the Biograph in the 80’s. Those photos can now be found at the Theater Historical Society in Elmhurst, IL.
September 30th, 1967 grand opening ad in photo section
I so remember this theater from the late 1960s. My father used to take me there. This is where I was introduced to the Marx Brothers and WC Fields. Great days. I specifically recall there was a beautiful hand cranked move camera on a tripod by the candy stand. I was intrigued with it as a child. What a great theater….
Oh man- so painful to read this! The Biograph was literally my film education in the 1980s before I went to college!
I saw a few films here. The one that stands out is called The Moneytree-a “fictional” film about a mountain pot grower. I really like the movie. The filmmakers/actors were waiting in the lobby when the film let out. Irony: I was too high to talk to them…
I worked there as a relief projectionist from 1969 – 1972. The owners knew so little about theater operations that when they built it they put the projection booth in the corner at a 45 degree angle to the screen. It had to be hurriedly extended. The booth had a pair of broken down Simplex with no magazines. One day I came in to work and found them running nitrate film !!! The speakers behind the screen were Radio Shack metal horns. The place was often packed. It was difficult to do a changeover without getting high from the smoke wafting in through the port windows….
In 1983 I saw double features there of: King Kong (1933) and The Most Dangerous Game Fort Apache and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon
I loved the Biograph in the 90s…..they regularly screened cult and foreign genre films that nobody else was showing, like A CHINESE GHOST STORY, Peter Jackson’s MEET THE FEEBLES, midnight shows of John Waters’s PINK FLAMINGOS, and so on.
Biograph lobby mural now on display at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring Maryland. Photo added credit Allyn Johnson courtesy the Old Time D.C. Facebook page.
Washington Post article about the mural.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/