Bijou Theatre

Opened as D. W. Griffith on October 14th, 1962. Grand opening ad posted.

Uploaded the theatre card for Mummenschanz referred to above.

As I posted nine years ago (omg!), I saw Freaks here about 1970 when I was a young teenager. My girlfriend and I came in more than half-way through the film, and the movie freaked us out so much (one of us, one of us…) that we fled at intermission. It was years later that I finally had the nerve to watch it again, and it was as distrubing as I remembered it. A weird little theater perfect for such a weird little movie.

Came upon a theatre card for Mummenchanz at a garage sale. Had to have it as Bijou memorabilia even though, in black, white and orange (and not glossy) it’s not much to look at.

Images of the Bijou can be found here;

http://www.ibdb.com/VenueImages.asp?Id=1065

I was at the closing night of the Toho Cinema. The film they showed was Kurosawa’s Ikiru…To Live…with Takashi Shimura. A clerk finds out he is dying of cancer and builds a children’s park, to give something back. The movie ends with him on a swing in his park, humming a sad little tune, accompanied by the sobbing of 600 people in the theater, myself included. In the lobby were posters of the great Kurosawa films they had shown. The entire staff of the theater was in Japanese ceremonial dress. They thanked each person individually for attending. Auld Lang Syne was played over the loudspeaker. People were literally staggering, blinded by tears, clutching onto walls and railings. Years later I met someone who had been at the same performance. We agreed that seldom in our lives did we feel as close to suicide.

In 1975 showing three Woody Allen films for $1
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I wonder in general how many prints an individual theater with a long booking would use. In this case, The Red Shoes is so lovely in Technicolor I would hate to think of seeing it with scratches, splices, fading, or any of the other wear and tear problems that come with frequent unspooling.

Caro: Thanks for the confirmation on “Mummenschanz,” especially the specific date.

Re: faded beauty of Broadway area theaters

There was a time when it seemed most legit Broadway houses had, like you say, a very faded beauty — even without peeling paint, etc. I think one reason for this is that a lot of theater owners seemed to paint over all the decorative low-relief plaster work — with some kind of non-descript grey, or light blue paint. It was kind of reminiscent to me of the look of the hallway in a run down Bronx apartment house (I’m from the Bronx), but minus the circular florescent light fixtures. Two theaters that particularly come to mind are the Eugene O'Neil (where I saw “She Loves Me”) and the Broadway (“My Fair Lady,” “Purlie,” and the “Wiz”), both of which I vaguely remember as being disappointly very drab. (Please don’t hold me to all of this, since I’m talking about ages ago — but these were my impressions.) If I remember the correctly, the Broadway had actually been renovated in the late 1950s early 1960s, and even so the interior of the auditorium was drab (although the lobby areas were a bit more glamorous).

I think the Shubert Theatre Organization (the owner of the most theaters in the area, although I’m not sure if they own either the Eugene O'Neil or Broadway) more recently went through an enlightened renovation policy, where they actually hired interior decorators to redo their theaters (including the auditoriums) right.

My Great Aunt Amelia swilley Bingham was supposedly the manager of the Bijou Theater in it’s early days. Can anyone give me any info regarding her affiliation with the theater and the Shuberts?
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Thanks Bryan for the wonderful little history of this “mystery” theater. I use to go to the theater district a lot in the early 1960s (and vaguely remember it as a theater with Japanese films), but I could never quite figure this theater out. I’ve seen it mentioned in books about the history of theaters (like Mary Henderson’s) but the theater they described didn’t seem to be the same theater that I remember, which appeared from the outside (never went inside) to be wierdly tiny for a theater in the Times Sq. area. (Actually, in some ways it reminded me of the Guild in Rockefeller Center, another small theater that seemed “mysterious” to me.)

The fact that the Astor’s remodeling cut into the original auditorium explains a lot. I think they also remodeled the outside a bit, too (and painted the whole front white?). And, if I remember correctly, one of the wierd things about it was that its facade didn’t even look like a theater facade.

By the way, I think sometime during the early 1960s, it was used for a bit as some kind of TV facility — to preview video tapes (?) of new TV shows? If I remember correctly, there used to be these guys (college students?) who would be handing out these free tickets for TV shows, and some of them would be for this theater. (I think they wouldn’t give one to me or my friends because you had to be accompanied by someone over 18.)

Also, I believe one of the live shows to appear there was a show called “Mummenschanz” (which sounds German, but I asked a German speaking friend about it, and he said the name didn’t mean anything to him). I believe “Mummenschanz” was a dance/revue without words, and the dancers/actors would wear black tights with large, crazy, puppet-like masks and contort themselves into unusual shapes.

Did the Bijou have a retrospective screening of Todd Browning’s Freaks in the late 60’s? I remember the weird movie but very little of the venue.

The Toho Cinema phase was certainly unusual. The theater exhibited the entire spectrum of Toho Studio films, which stretched from high art to ultra-cheeze. Some films, like “High and Low” were exactly what you would expect to find in a prestige exclusive-engagement, midtown Manhattan theater. But can you imagine dressing up, having a fine dinner, and then seeing “Matango, Fungus of Death” or “Atoragon the Flying Sub”? These flicks also played the Toho. And this was long before they would have been considered to be campy fun.