Symphony Space/Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre

My Mother would take me to the Thalia, in the late 1950s I was maybe 10 or 11 yrs old I remember all the movies we saw the Blue Angel with May Britt, Anna Lucasta with Eartha Kitt, La Strada, Rififi, how many of them were actually at the Thalia I don’t remember BUT I remember the #1 local to I guess 96 th St? And I remember a hill, AND I do remember that I loved reading sub-titles unlike my siblings who couldn’t care less, I LOVED the movies..still do, always will..so my fondest memories are of accompanying her to Centre St someplace to get her Cabaret Card..the cops would issue them, and you couldn’t work without one, and then Chinese food or movies ..or BOTH..sometimes Times Sq..the Empire, or one of the big movie houses or UP to the Thalia..New York was like Hollywood to me..great place to be a kid….

I’ve just published a book on the repertory movie theaters in NYC, 1960-94. One of the chapters is devoted to the Thalia under Martin and Ursula Lewis. Thanks to their children—John and Tom Lewis and Deborah Sutherland—who gave me a copy of Mrs. Lewis’s unpublished memoir and photos of the two, I was able to fill in huge gaps in their histories as well as the history of the Thalia. The book, Repertory Movie Theaters of New York City: Havens for Revivals, Indies and the Avant-Garde, 1960-1994, was published by McFarland Publishers, mcfarlandpub.com, and can be obtained through their website or Amazon.

debsutherland: Do you have a copy of the summer movie list from the 50’s/early 60’s. It had wonderful double features of the best movies ever. It was printed on large heavy paper that was folded into a compact size. If you do I would love to see a copy of the same. Bob OBrien. I can be reached at; Thanks.

I was 14, and the world was 1957, when I saw my first Janus film – Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet – and the logo of the two-faced Roman god is forever twinned for me with the experience of sitting in the small Thalia Theater on Manhattan’s West 95th Street. For some reason, perhaps to do with the underlying geology, the floor of the Thalia slanted upward toward the screen, in direct contradiction of every other movie theater in the world. With that extra pressure on our backs, the audience at the Thalia was poised, like the crew aboard a rocket ship, to take off into another world. The flickering appearance of Janus was the countdown to launch.
              
                   My neighborhood theater, the Nemo, at 110th street and Broadway, showed the usual twice-weekly double-bills coming out of Hollywood. I went there often enough, especially when I was younger, for the Saturday showings of serials, cartoons, and newsreels presided over by stern matrons with flashlights for billy-sticks.
              
                   My reactions to the movies I saw at the Nemo were like my feelings about the weather, or landscapes glimpsed from a train: I liked some of them, and was disappointed, mystified or oppressed by others. But strange to say, I never thought of those films as the result of human effort: like any natural phenomena, they simply were and could not be otherwise.
              
                   Films with the Janus logo, however, began to awake something else in me which I couldn’t put my finger on, but over and over again they drew me back to the Thalia. Finally, in 1958, I saw Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and things fell into place. Bergman’s vision was so distinctive that I left the theater shaken by the self-evident realization:  somebody made that film. Intellectually, of course, I had been vaguely aware of this, but now it hit me emotionally. with full force. I still can recall that twenty-block walk back home to 119th and Riverside, dazedly repeating: somebody made that film.
              
                   The unspoken corollary was that if somebody made a film, I could make a film. The Thalia had provided the crack in the cosmic egg through which I might be able to squeeze. But the idea was too much for a fifteen year-old with no family connections to the film industry, and so it lay dormant for a number of years until finally erupting.
                

I was wondering if anyone has an old Thalia Theater program that can be scanned and emailed to me. Thanks

Two exterior photos from July 2010.

That would be wonderful! If you can scan it and email it to me I would be most appreciative. My email address is Happy New Year!

I remember it well. I saw all of them since they were played every year, however, if I have any Programs(s) at all, I’m not hopeful that it would go back to ‘65. Keep in touch…..

No luck yet. I asked my Mother who also worked the Box Office on occasion and she hasn’t got anything. I’ll try a few more places. I’m anxious to find something also. It would bring back some fond memories. I’ll keep in touch if I find something.

I believe I might! I’ll have to go through some boxes over the next week or so. Please remind me if you don’t hear from me by mid-month. Regards…

My Grandmother, Gladys DiPillo, managed the Thalia for 20 years. In the late 60’s and early 70’s I ushered there in the Summer and changed the marquee every night for the Summer Film Festival. She was delighted because I wouldn’t misspell anything as others had done in the past to her great embarrassment as it would stay up there all day! When she played Fellini’s “8 ½” the marquee would read “812” since she didn’t have a “½”. I couldn’t stand for that so I fashioned a “½” by sawing other pieces and gluing them together. It looked great! She loved it. As an Usher I remember having to urge patrons only to smoke in the last 10 rows which was the smoking section. Making them either put the cigarette out or making them move to the back didn’t win me any popularity contests. I have such stories of the place and really miss it. It’s nice that so many of you feel the same. If you have any questions, I would be happy to try to answer them.

By the way Robert, Cinema 16 was a club that screened films at different venues all over Manhattan. “Pandora’s Box” may well have shown at the Thalia through Cinema 16 in the fifties and sixties.