Boston Symphony Orchestra program booklets give a history of the hall. Included in that history is the fact that the Boston premiere of Cecil B. De Mille’s film version of Carmen, starring Geraldine Farrar, took place here in 1915.
Would it not be nice if at some point a public tour could be offered of the interior? It was done recently with the Orpheum in New Bedford. This might stir up some public support for the restoration of the building, a project that, if I gather correctly, is languishing. A web site devoted to this theatre, with photos, might be nice. Look at the Orpheum, New Bedford site put up by O.R.P.H.
In the summer of 1970 the single-screen Kent was triplexed. Its main auditorium was split in two resulting in one cinema in the front, one in the rear. A third smaller cinema was added on the right side of the building.
The Amherst Cinema Arts Center in nearby Amherst shows the same type of films as the Pleasant Street. It re-opened last year after being shut for a very long time. It has three screens. Amherst is not really walking distance from Northampton but it is a short drive.
For the opening of the theatre as the Orson Welles Cinema on April 8, 1969, Frank Rich, then a student at Harvard, wrote THIS ARTICLE for the Harvard Crimson.
An article in the New Bedford paper described the October 7, 2007 opening of the Orpheum theatre for a “rope light tour.” In it some of the history of the ownership of the Casino is referred to. READ HERE
The theatre opened on February 14, 1964, according to my private notes. It was called the Esquire then. The first film was Emile de Antonio’s documentary Point of Order! about the 1954 Senate Army-McCarthy hearings and consisted entirely of edited TV footage. I went there with two friends the following day after our dinner at Würsthaus off Harvard Square.
Many prints of classic films from past decades were saved and protected by private collectors. When studios lost copies of films or recklessly destroyed them, archives like UCLA, MoMA, George Eastman House, would often obtain them for their collections from PRIVATE COLLECTORS, as well as from donations from the studios themselves.
During televised film preservation series on TCM and AMC requests on behalf of archives routinely ask people to search their attics and garages for old films. The late film scholar William K. Everson bought and was given innumerable copies of 16mm prints from folks he knew at the studios and showewd them (always free) in his classes in New York. Studios sold huge numbers of 16mm films to TV stations in the days when that format was used for telecast. They made the first sale. And by that fact of “first sale,” every subsequent sale was legal. The same would be true of 35mm if they made the first sale, which is evidence that they did by selling blocks of movies to wholesale consolidators.
Years ago George Eastman House bought many 35mm and 16mm prints of films from me (Italian films, not Hollywood product) when I got rid of my Italian collection in favor of video and DVD a good number of years ago. Everything was legally purchased by me from from dealers in the Big Reel and other dealers and by warehouses selling the former holdings of now-defunct companies. These dealers who did not steal the huge inventories they offered and were unfraid to sell them FOR PRIVATE USE. If the studios objected, don’t you think the advertisers in The Big Reel selling 35mm and 70mm(!) prints would have had their asses sued off??? As far as studios and distributors not selling, they may say that, but in reality that is not always what they do, since it is less expensive to sell off large caches of 35mm prints after they are no longer need than to pay to destroy them as they also do.
Different studios, different distributors will have differing…and inconsistent…policies on this issue. Also, as I pointed out, storage facilities routinely sell prints when storage fees are not paid, in order to recoup their costs. Sometimes smaller film companies and distributors go out of business (common in the foreign film distribution market) and those wind up on ther for-sale lists. So you are inaccurate, very inaccurate, in saying that the only way to get 35mm film is by “takening the item,” that is by theft. These are not thefts that I am talking about! If people had 35mm collections returned to studios, it is possible that they were misusing them via paid public exhibition in violation of copyright.
This whole 35mm issue is becoming moot, given the inevitable move toward digital projection. And what will be a concomitant result? Ironically you will see more and more 35mm prints for sale to nostalgic collectors with a lot of space in their garages.
Justin, the well-known film collector magazine The Big Reel lists deals who have for decades offered 35mm prints for sale to collectors and institutions. Many of these prints were intially turned over to these dealers by studios getting rid of surplus material, by warehouses who were recouping money for defaulted storage payments. It is not true that individuals or archives or educational institutions cannot legally own 35mm prints. In fact, that is absurd! The same is true for 16mm prints, the preferred format for private film collectors before the advent of video and DVD. Many still do collect in that format. The question of rights, however, is a whole different matter. What you show privately in your home is one thing, but public showings or rentals to others for public showings can be copyright violations. If the film is in public domain, you can do anything you want with it, whether video, 16mm, or 35mm.
A friend commented on the above Berkeley Daily Planet article I posted:
“I heard there were several mistakes in the article, and that the Telly Rep was not such a treasure. Films were projected onto a wall and the guy sometimes left the machine running unattended while he walked down the street….”
An interesting article appeared in the 9-18-07 issue of the Berkeley Daily Planet about the founder of the Telegraph Repertory Cinema, George Pauly (1933-2007), who died on August 27. THE ARTICLE
Brucec,
To my knowledge there are almost no pictures of the interior as it was. I found just this one. I agree with you about this theatre. Trinity Rep committed a monumental act of cultural and architectural vandalism when they gutted this theatre. I remember the beauty of this place as a child and can never forget or forgive what they did, and yet they promote themselves as a great cultural institution. They are barbarians.
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco wrote of Eddie Fay and Fays Theatre:
“Just around the corner from the Biltmore Hotel was Fay’s [Fays] Theater. The owner of the popular movie house was Edward M. "Eddie” Fay. For the first 50 years of the tewntieth century, the name Eddie Fay was synonymous with music and theater in Providence. Fay was often referred to as the Dean of Rhode Island Showmen. Born in 1875, he got his start as a child prodigy playing the violin. By age 15, he was performing solos with the Providence Symphony Orchestra. By age 25, Fay was the most sought after band and orchestra conductor anywhere in the region. Around the turn of the century Fay and his brothers, James and Bernard, built their first dance pavilion at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet. People lined up to get in. In 1914, Fay constructed an even more popular dance hall, Hunts Mills, in East Providence. Hunts Mills eventually burned down, but before it did, it became one of the hottest spots in the area. The way customers paid for their fun at Hunts Mills is kind of interesting. Fay would strike up the orchestra. The dance floor would fill with people. After a minute or so the music would stop. Six collectors would move among the dancers gathering a nickel from each couple. When everyone had paid, the head collector would blow a whistle and the music and dancing would start again.
“All during this period, Eddie Fay was known as ‘The Dance King.’ Sometime after 1910, Fay began branching out into vaudeville and silent movie theaters. In 1916, Fay bought the former Union Theater and renamed it after himself. He used the Fays as the center of his ever-expanding theatrical empire and kept his office on Union Street for almost 40 years. In the mid-1920s, Fay took over five theaters in downtown Providence in a million dollar deal with the A.C. Emery entertainment chain. Included in the deal was the stately Majestic Theater on Washington Street, which today hosts the nationally renowned Trinity Repertory Company. Eddie Fay’s holdings extended far beyond the confines of Providence. He owned theaters in New York and Philadelphia and was part of a chain that controlled houses all over the eastern United States. Many of the brightest stars to shine in Providence were brought here by impresario Fay: Gentleman Jim Corbett, Harry Houdini, Sarah Bernhardt, Ed Wynn, Jack Dempsey, Ethel Barrymore, Tallulah Bankhead. One tale tells how in 1925 Fay lured English Channel swimmer Gertrude Ederle to come to Providence. Fay paid Gertrude $6,000 to swim around in circles in a water tank he built especially for the occasion. The show sold out. Fay introduced the first talking picture equipment into Providence, at the Majestic Theater. People who remember Fay report he was a friendly, generous man, who always made time for causes, whether it was selling war bonds during World War II, or raising money for the Jimmy Fund. The photographs that survive of Fay, however, show him as a rather dour looking gentleman, with a shock of white hair, wearing pince-nez glasses, holding a cigar. The Fays Theater was knocked down in 1951, putting out of work a number of individuals, including lon-term projectionist Phil Sugarman. The building was replaced by -what else? – a parking lot. After. the Fays was closed, Eddie M. moved his office up to the Majestic Theater. The final curtain came down on Eddie Fay in 1964, when he left the stage for good at age 88.”
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco gives a thumbnail history of Loew’s State Theatre:
“To understand the history of Loew’s State Theater, now the Providence Performing Arts Center, at 220 Weybosset Street, you have to go back to the first decade of the twentieth century, to one of the early moguls of the American film industry, Marcus Loew. Loew got started in 1905 running peep shows in penny arcades. He began buying up vaudeville halls, and by the end of World War I, he controlled approximately 60 silent movie theaters. Not satisfied merely to exhibit films, he wanted to produce them too. In the early 1920s, Marcus Loew purchased two struggling businesses, the Metro Picture Company and the Goldwyn Picture Company. He merged the pair and hired a gentleman named Louis B. Mayer to oversee making the films, and, voilà – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, MGM, was born. MGM cranked out the pictures, which were then shown in Loew’s theaters from coast to coast. In time, Loew’s Theaters became one of the largest movie house chains in the United States with over 300 locations. In the mid-1920s, Loew’s company decided to construct a huge theater in Providence on Weybosset Street. On opening day, October 6, 1928, over 14,000 people jammed the building to marvel at the eye-popping opulence, and to see the film Excess Baggage starring William Haines. The fans were led to their seats by 50 uniformed ushers, past perches in the lobby holding talking parrots. For the next 40 years, Loew’s State Theater, with its seating capacity of 3,200, was Providence’s premier motion picture palace.
“Arthur P. Slater was the State Theater’s chief projectionist for 40 years. The State’s final manager was M.J. Cullen. One of the major attractions of Loew’s State was always the Mighty Wurlitzer Theater Organ. On opening night, in 1928, the organ rose dramatically out of the orchestra pit, and was played by Joseph Stover, imported all the way from Paris. (The Wurlitzer can still be heard at free concerts presented to the public by the theater every summer.) In the ‘50s the organist was a very popular gentleman named Maurice Cook, who was tragically killed in an automobile accident in 1954.
(…)
"Skip ahead 20 years to the 1970s and things don’t look too bright for Loew’s State. The theater was suffering from that potentially fatal disease – empty seats. The parking lot developers who had a field day with downtown Providence in the 1970s started to eye the building, circling like vultures in the sky above a stumbling old lion. In steped downtown entrepreneur B.A. Dario. Dario purchased Loew’s State in 1971 and he and his family ran it for a few years as an arena for boxing matches and rock musical shows. But even that didn’t work, and in the mid-1970s, Dario announced his intention to tear down the building. [His RKO Albee a block over on Westminster Street was torn down in 1970 after having acquired that. ~GD] According to one account, when Dario’s wife Sylvia heard her husband’s demolition plans, she burst into tears. Those tears marked the beginning of the salvation of one of Providence’s most glamorous structures. Thank you, Mrs. Dario. In 1977 Dario sold Loew’s State to a consortium of preservationist-minded businessmen, led by the head of the Outlet Company, Bruce Sundlun. The group, aided by the city and Mayor Vincent "Buddy” Cianci, Jr., refurbished the building, and to universal acclamation, held a grand re-opening on the evening of October 6, 1978, fifty years to the day from the theater’s original start. Thousands packed the aisles to watch Ethel Merman lead a night of lively entertainment. Since then the Providence Performing Arts Center has enriched our community far more than words can ever tell, with an endless procession across its stage of musical performances and cultural events."
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco gave the following thumbnail history of the Majestic Theatre:
“The story of the Majestic Theater at Washington and Empire Street begins around 1915 when two brothers, Allen and Burton Emery, decided to build the most elegant theater in Providence. The Emerys were already in the entertainment business; they owned vaudeville halls, bowling alleys, and billiard parlors in the downtown. Their creation on upper Washington Street was ostentatiously grand. Shiny marble at every turn; terra cotta reliefs on the walls and ceilings; plush private boxes along the sides, loges running around the front of the balcony; and a seating capacity of 3,000 people. The Emery brothers were proud; so proud they had transcribed in gold letters above the three story high entrance arch – Emery’s Majestic. The letters are still there. On opening night, April 9, 1917, the evening’s fare involved five short live performances, inclusing Amelia Bingham and Company in "Big Moments from Great Plays.” A silent movie was also shown; White Raven starring Ethel Barrymore. Many of the state’s elite were in the audience, including Providence’s mayor Gainer, and Rhode Island’s Governor Beckman. Before long, the great stars of the era were performing on the Majestic’s stage: Vamp Theda Bara, John Philip Sousa’s Band, Anna Pavlova and the Russian Ballet, John Barrymore, Jascha Heifetz, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and of course Providence’s own George M. Cohan. In 1923, the Majestic moved away from live performances and became strictly a silent movie house. The first full length silent feature film shown in the theater was called Jazzmania. In 1926, Eddie Fay…purchased the Majestic from the Emerys. Providence audiences were first introduced to talking pictures in 1928 when Fay presented Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer at the Majestic. After Jolson came Bette Davis, Shirley Temple, Edward G. Robinson, Erol Flynn, and the popular World War II feature This is the Army. In 1953, when the movie about the birth of Christianity, The Robe, premiered at the Majestic, the theater was packed with dignitaries and bright spotlights swept the sky. [introduction of CinemaScope to Providence. ~GD]
Throughout the 1950s, the manager of the Majestic was named Al Clark, a nephew of Eddie Fay’s. During this period one of the most striking physical aspects of the theater was the gigantic upright sign out in front ovber Washington Street which contained over 2,300 light bulbs and was the home of countless pigeons and sparrows. The sign was replaced in 1959 with a horizontal marquee. In 1956, Eddie Fay sold the Majestic to the giant Warner Brothers Management Company. Warner ran things during the difficult 1960s and finally closed the theater in 1970. Soon thereafter the property was purchased by the Trinity Square Repertory Company, which renovated the building and took up residence there. A generous contributor to the restoration* was the Benjamin B. Lederer family, in whose name the new Lederer Theater was dedicated in 1973. Trinity Rep has been bringing glory to Washington Street and providence ever since."
[*I cannot agree that what was done was in any sense a “restoration”…far from it, since virtually the entire interior was stripped and gutted, leaving next to nothing of its original architectural brilliance. ~GD]
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco gives this thumbnail history of the Strand:
“When the Strand Theatre at 85 Washington Street opened in June 1915, it unabashedly advertised itself to the public as a ‘wonderful, big, beautiful place – and the shows presented will be fine always.’ The Strand’s first evening of entertainment included four silent features: The Shooting of Dan McGrew starring Edmund Breese; a comedy entitled The House of a Thousand Relations, and two dramas, The Struggle and Memory Tree. Like most of the other theaters built in downtown Providence in the early 20th century, the Strand was colossal in size, with seats for approximately 2,200 people (that’s eight to ten times larger than the theaters we sit in today at the malls.) In the early days, especially before the advent of television, the Strand didn’t have much trouble filling all those seats. Even in the 1950s and early 1960s – a period in which the Strand’s manager was Stanley Sheen – big blockbuster movies still filled the house; films like Samson and Delilah (1951), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Ten Commandments (1957)… By the early 1970s, however, the public’s viewing habits had changed; big crowds just weren’t coming downtown to see movies anymore. The last legitimate film shown at the Strand was in March 1973; a comedy entitled Shamus starring Burt Reynolds and Dyan Cannon. For a while after that the Strand ran as an X-rated movie house, but that didn’t last too long. In 1978, the Strand Theater closed. Since then the building has been renovated, and in recent years the Strand has become a hot spot for the young kids, mostly by showcasing up-and-comoing, local rock music bands.”
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco recollects the Albee:
“When the tore down the RKO Albee Theater next to Grace Church in 1970, more than one stroller along the Mall stopped near the demolition site and stood for a moment, quietly, remembering the good times they had at the grand old theater. The Albee was hard to forget. For one thing, the building had a five storey high facade to which was attached a gigantic vertical marquee which glowed like a torch visible all up and down Westminster Street. Opened in 1919 on the site of a long line of entertainment enterprises, including the well-known Nickel Theater, the Albee originally offered live performances played to full houses. By the 1930s, the Albee was part of the large RKO Theater chain, and hereafter was known primarily as a motion picture house. By the ‘60s, like most of the downtown movie palaces, the Albee was having problems filling its nearly 2,300 seats. In 1965, the downtown developer B.A. Dario purchased the building. Dario attempted to convert the theater into a performing arts center. The idea never panned out. The wreckers eventually came in to do their work and today the site is a parking lot. There’s a little plaque on the sidewalk indicating where the proud Albee Theater once stood.”
Yes, sure is still there, as an Express store. I used to go there when it was Newberry’s and the interior still had some things, if you looked closely, that suggested a former movie theatre, something evident now only from the outside rear and side.
New Bedfordians have already saved the splendid Zeiterion (State) Theatre of the whaling city, and it is now a thriving performing arts center. Lovely as the Zeiterion is, it pales in comparison with the wondrous Orpheum, slumbering in a forgotten dream, like a dusty shadow, eager to be given new life, real life.
The second floor auditorium seems to have existed long before the space was leased for cinema use. It might have been an all-purpose hall, for meetings, socials, dances. The floor is hardwood and flat. I should have enquired.
Boston Symphony Orchestra program booklets give a history of the hall. Included in that history is the fact that the Boston premiere of Cecil B. De Mille’s film version of Carmen, starring Geraldine Farrar, took place here in 1915.
When Naples Sings at the Belmont circa 1931.
PUBLICITY FLYER.
Would it not be nice if at some point a public tour could be offered of the interior? It was done recently with the Orpheum in New Bedford. This might stir up some public support for the restoration of the building, a project that, if I gather correctly, is languishing. A web site devoted to this theatre, with photos, might be nice. Look at the Orpheum, New Bedford site put up by O.R.P.H.
On July 20, 1970 I noted in my log that I had seen Robert Aldrich’s Too Late the Hero at Cine 1.
In the summer of 1970 the single-screen Kent was triplexed. Its main auditorium was split in two resulting in one cinema in the front, one in the rear. A third smaller cinema was added on the right side of the building.
The Amherst Cinema Arts Center in nearby Amherst shows the same type of films as the Pleasant Street. It re-opened last year after being shut for a very long time. It has three screens. Amherst is not really walking distance from Northampton but it is a short drive.
“Salute to Italian Films Week,” October 1952.
PRINTED PROGRAM FLYER
For the opening of the theatre as the Orson Welles Cinema on April 8, 1969, Frank Rich, then a student at Harvard, wrote THIS ARTICLE for the Harvard Crimson.
An article in the New Bedford paper described the October 7, 2007 opening of the Orpheum theatre for a “rope light tour.” In it some of the history of the ownership of the Casino is referred to.
READ HERE
An article in the New Bedford paper described the October 7, 2007 opening of the theatre for a “rope light tour.”
READ HERE
The theatre opened on February 14, 1964, according to my private notes. It was called the Esquire then. The first film was Emile de Antonio’s documentary Point of Order! about the 1954 Senate Army-McCarthy hearings and consisted entirely of edited TV footage. I went there with two friends the following day after our dinner at Würsthaus off Harvard Square.
Many prints of classic films from past decades were saved and protected by private collectors. When studios lost copies of films or recklessly destroyed them, archives like UCLA, MoMA, George Eastman House, would often obtain them for their collections from PRIVATE COLLECTORS, as well as from donations from the studios themselves.
During televised film preservation series on TCM and AMC requests on behalf of archives routinely ask people to search their attics and garages for old films. The late film scholar William K. Everson bought and was given innumerable copies of 16mm prints from folks he knew at the studios and showewd them (always free) in his classes in New York. Studios sold huge numbers of 16mm films to TV stations in the days when that format was used for telecast. They made the first sale. And by that fact of “first sale,” every subsequent sale was legal. The same would be true of 35mm if they made the first sale, which is evidence that they did by selling blocks of movies to wholesale consolidators.
Years ago George Eastman House bought many 35mm and 16mm prints of films from me (Italian films, not Hollywood product) when I got rid of my Italian collection in favor of video and DVD a good number of years ago. Everything was legally purchased by me from from dealers in the Big Reel and other dealers and by warehouses selling the former holdings of now-defunct companies. These dealers who did not steal the huge inventories they offered and were unfraid to sell them FOR PRIVATE USE. If the studios objected, don’t you think the advertisers in The Big Reel selling 35mm and 70mm(!) prints would have had their asses sued off??? As far as studios and distributors not selling, they may say that, but in reality that is not always what they do, since it is less expensive to sell off large caches of 35mm prints after they are no longer need than to pay to destroy them as they also do.
Different studios, different distributors will have differing…and inconsistent…policies on this issue. Also, as I pointed out, storage facilities routinely sell prints when storage fees are not paid, in order to recoup their costs. Sometimes smaller film companies and distributors go out of business (common in the foreign film distribution market) and those wind up on ther for-sale lists. So you are inaccurate, very inaccurate, in saying that the only way to get 35mm film is by “takening the item,” that is by theft. These are not thefts that I am talking about! If people had 35mm collections returned to studios, it is possible that they were misusing them via paid public exhibition in violation of copyright.
This whole 35mm issue is becoming moot, given the inevitable move toward digital projection. And what will be a concomitant result? Ironically you will see more and more 35mm prints for sale to nostalgic collectors with a lot of space in their garages.
Justin, the well-known film collector magazine The Big Reel lists deals who have for decades offered 35mm prints for sale to collectors and institutions. Many of these prints were intially turned over to these dealers by studios getting rid of surplus material, by warehouses who were recouping money for defaulted storage payments. It is not true that individuals or archives or educational institutions cannot legally own 35mm prints. In fact, that is absurd! The same is true for 16mm prints, the preferred format for private film collectors before the advent of video and DVD. Many still do collect in that format. The question of rights, however, is a whole different matter. What you show privately in your home is one thing, but public showings or rentals to others for public showings can be copyright violations. If the film is in public domain, you can do anything you want with it, whether video, 16mm, or 35mm.
A friend commented on the above Berkeley Daily Planet article I posted:
“I heard there were several mistakes in the article, and that the Telly Rep was not such a treasure. Films were projected onto a wall and the guy sometimes left the machine running unattended while he walked down the street….”
An interesting article appeared in the 9-18-07 issue of the Berkeley Daily Planet about the founder of the Telegraph Repertory Cinema, George Pauly (1933-2007), who died on August 27.
THE ARTICLE
Brucec,
To my knowledge there are almost no pictures of the interior as it was. I found just this one. I agree with you about this theatre. Trinity Rep committed a monumental act of cultural and architectural vandalism when they gutted this theatre. I remember the beauty of this place as a child and can never forget or forgive what they did, and yet they promote themselves as a great cultural institution. They are barbarians.
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco wrote of Eddie Fay and Fays Theatre:
“Just around the corner from the Biltmore Hotel was Fay’s [Fays] Theater. The owner of the popular movie house was Edward M. "Eddie” Fay. For the first 50 years of the tewntieth century, the name Eddie Fay was synonymous with music and theater in Providence. Fay was often referred to as the Dean of Rhode Island Showmen. Born in 1875, he got his start as a child prodigy playing the violin. By age 15, he was performing solos with the Providence Symphony Orchestra. By age 25, Fay was the most sought after band and orchestra conductor anywhere in the region. Around the turn of the century Fay and his brothers, James and Bernard, built their first dance pavilion at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet. People lined up to get in. In 1914, Fay constructed an even more popular dance hall, Hunts Mills, in East Providence. Hunts Mills eventually burned down, but before it did, it became one of the hottest spots in the area. The way customers paid for their fun at Hunts Mills is kind of interesting. Fay would strike up the orchestra. The dance floor would fill with people. After a minute or so the music would stop. Six collectors would move among the dancers gathering a nickel from each couple. When everyone had paid, the head collector would blow a whistle and the music and dancing would start again.
“All during this period, Eddie Fay was known as ‘The Dance King.’ Sometime after 1910, Fay began branching out into vaudeville and silent movie theaters. In 1916, Fay bought the former Union Theater and renamed it after himself. He used the Fays as the center of his ever-expanding theatrical empire and kept his office on Union Street for almost 40 years. In the mid-1920s, Fay took over five theaters in downtown Providence in a million dollar deal with the A.C. Emery entertainment chain. Included in the deal was the stately Majestic Theater on Washington Street, which today hosts the nationally renowned Trinity Repertory Company. Eddie Fay’s holdings extended far beyond the confines of Providence. He owned theaters in New York and Philadelphia and was part of a chain that controlled houses all over the eastern United States. Many of the brightest stars to shine in Providence were brought here by impresario Fay: Gentleman Jim Corbett, Harry Houdini, Sarah Bernhardt, Ed Wynn, Jack Dempsey, Ethel Barrymore, Tallulah Bankhead. One tale tells how in 1925 Fay lured English Channel swimmer Gertrude Ederle to come to Providence. Fay paid Gertrude $6,000 to swim around in circles in a water tank he built especially for the occasion. The show sold out. Fay introduced the first talking picture equipment into Providence, at the Majestic Theater. People who remember Fay report he was a friendly, generous man, who always made time for causes, whether it was selling war bonds during World War II, or raising money for the Jimmy Fund. The photographs that survive of Fay, however, show him as a rather dour looking gentleman, with a shock of white hair, wearing pince-nez glasses, holding a cigar. The Fays Theater was knocked down in 1951, putting out of work a number of individuals, including lon-term projectionist Phil Sugarman. The building was replaced by -what else? – a parking lot. After. the Fays was closed, Eddie M. moved his office up to the Majestic Theater. The final curtain came down on Eddie Fay in 1964, when he left the stage for good at age 88.”
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco gives a thumbnail history of Loew’s State Theatre:
“To understand the history of Loew’s State Theater, now the Providence Performing Arts Center, at 220 Weybosset Street, you have to go back to the first decade of the twentieth century, to one of the early moguls of the American film industry, Marcus Loew. Loew got started in 1905 running peep shows in penny arcades. He began buying up vaudeville halls, and by the end of World War I, he controlled approximately 60 silent movie theaters. Not satisfied merely to exhibit films, he wanted to produce them too. In the early 1920s, Marcus Loew purchased two struggling businesses, the Metro Picture Company and the Goldwyn Picture Company. He merged the pair and hired a gentleman named Louis B. Mayer to oversee making the films, and, voilà – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, MGM, was born. MGM cranked out the pictures, which were then shown in Loew’s theaters from coast to coast. In time, Loew’s Theaters became one of the largest movie house chains in the United States with over 300 locations. In the mid-1920s, Loew’s company decided to construct a huge theater in Providence on Weybosset Street. On opening day, October 6, 1928, over 14,000 people jammed the building to marvel at the eye-popping opulence, and to see the film Excess Baggage starring William Haines. The fans were led to their seats by 50 uniformed ushers, past perches in the lobby holding talking parrots. For the next 40 years, Loew’s State Theater, with its seating capacity of 3,200, was Providence’s premier motion picture palace.
“Arthur P. Slater was the State Theater’s chief projectionist for 40 years. The State’s final manager was M.J. Cullen. One of the major attractions of Loew’s State was always the Mighty Wurlitzer Theater Organ. On opening night, in 1928, the organ rose dramatically out of the orchestra pit, and was played by Joseph Stover, imported all the way from Paris. (The Wurlitzer can still be heard at free concerts presented to the public by the theater every summer.) In the ‘50s the organist was a very popular gentleman named Maurice Cook, who was tragically killed in an automobile accident in 1954.
(…)
"Skip ahead 20 years to the 1970s and things don’t look too bright for Loew’s State. The theater was suffering from that potentially fatal disease – empty seats. The parking lot developers who had a field day with downtown Providence in the 1970s started to eye the building, circling like vultures in the sky above a stumbling old lion. In steped downtown entrepreneur B.A. Dario. Dario purchased Loew’s State in 1971 and he and his family ran it for a few years as an arena for boxing matches and rock musical shows. But even that didn’t work, and in the mid-1970s, Dario announced his intention to tear down the building. [His RKO Albee a block over on Westminster Street was torn down in 1970 after having acquired that. ~GD] According to one account, when Dario’s wife Sylvia heard her husband’s demolition plans, she burst into tears. Those tears marked the beginning of the salvation of one of Providence’s most glamorous structures. Thank you, Mrs. Dario. In 1977 Dario sold Loew’s State to a consortium of preservationist-minded businessmen, led by the head of the Outlet Company, Bruce Sundlun. The group, aided by the city and Mayor Vincent "Buddy” Cianci, Jr., refurbished the building, and to universal acclamation, held a grand re-opening on the evening of October 6, 1978, fifty years to the day from the theater’s original start. Thousands packed the aisles to watch Ethel Merman lead a night of lively entertainment. Since then the Providence Performing Arts Center has enriched our community far more than words can ever tell, with an endless procession across its stage of musical performances and cultural events."
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco gave the following thumbnail history of the Majestic Theatre:
“The story of the Majestic Theater at Washington and Empire Street begins around 1915 when two brothers, Allen and Burton Emery, decided to build the most elegant theater in Providence. The Emerys were already in the entertainment business; they owned vaudeville halls, bowling alleys, and billiard parlors in the downtown. Their creation on upper Washington Street was ostentatiously grand. Shiny marble at every turn; terra cotta reliefs on the walls and ceilings; plush private boxes along the sides, loges running around the front of the balcony; and a seating capacity of 3,000 people. The Emery brothers were proud; so proud they had transcribed in gold letters above the three story high entrance arch – Emery’s Majestic. The letters are still there. On opening night, April 9, 1917, the evening’s fare involved five short live performances, inclusing Amelia Bingham and Company in "Big Moments from Great Plays.” A silent movie was also shown; White Raven starring Ethel Barrymore. Many of the state’s elite were in the audience, including Providence’s mayor Gainer, and Rhode Island’s Governor Beckman. Before long, the great stars of the era were performing on the Majestic’s stage: Vamp Theda Bara, John Philip Sousa’s Band, Anna Pavlova and the Russian Ballet, John Barrymore, Jascha Heifetz, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and of course Providence’s own George M. Cohan. In 1923, the Majestic moved away from live performances and became strictly a silent movie house. The first full length silent feature film shown in the theater was called Jazzmania. In 1926, Eddie Fay…purchased the Majestic from the Emerys. Providence audiences were first introduced to talking pictures in 1928 when Fay presented Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer at the Majestic. After Jolson came Bette Davis, Shirley Temple, Edward G. Robinson, Erol Flynn, and the popular World War II feature This is the Army. In 1953, when the movie about the birth of Christianity, The Robe, premiered at the Majestic, the theater was packed with dignitaries and bright spotlights swept the sky. [introduction of CinemaScope to Providence. ~GD]
Throughout the 1950s, the manager of the Majestic was named Al Clark, a nephew of Eddie Fay’s. During this period one of the most striking physical aspects of the theater was the gigantic upright sign out in front ovber Washington Street which contained over 2,300 light bulbs and was the home of countless pigeons and sparrows. The sign was replaced in 1959 with a horizontal marquee. In 1956, Eddie Fay sold the Majestic to the giant Warner Brothers Management Company. Warner ran things during the difficult 1960s and finally closed the theater in 1970. Soon thereafter the property was purchased by the Trinity Square Repertory Company, which renovated the building and took up residence there. A generous contributor to the restoration* was the Benjamin B. Lederer family, in whose name the new Lederer Theater was dedicated in 1973. Trinity Rep has been bringing glory to Washington Street and providence ever since."
[*I cannot agree that what was done was in any sense a “restoration”…far from it, since virtually the entire interior was stripped and gutted, leaving next to nothing of its original architectural brilliance. ~GD]
The Majestic Theatre can be seen in this 1956 photo.
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco gives this thumbnail history of the Strand:
“When the Strand Theatre at 85 Washington Street opened in June 1915, it unabashedly advertised itself to the public as a ‘wonderful, big, beautiful place – and the shows presented will be fine always.’ The Strand’s first evening of entertainment included four silent features: The Shooting of Dan McGrew starring Edmund Breese; a comedy entitled The House of a Thousand Relations, and two dramas, The Struggle and Memory Tree. Like most of the other theaters built in downtown Providence in the early 20th century, the Strand was colossal in size, with seats for approximately 2,200 people (that’s eight to ten times larger than the theaters we sit in today at the malls.) In the early days, especially before the advent of television, the Strand didn’t have much trouble filling all those seats. Even in the 1950s and early 1960s – a period in which the Strand’s manager was Stanley Sheen – big blockbuster movies still filled the house; films like Samson and Delilah (1951), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Ten Commandments (1957)… By the early 1970s, however, the public’s viewing habits had changed; big crowds just weren’t coming downtown to see movies anymore. The last legitimate film shown at the Strand was in March 1973; a comedy entitled Shamus starring Burt Reynolds and Dyan Cannon. For a while after that the Strand ran as an X-rated movie house, but that didn’t last too long. In 1978, the Strand Theater closed. Since then the building has been renovated, and in recent years the Strand has become a hot spot for the young kids, mostly by showcasing up-and-comoing, local rock music bands.”
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco recollects the Albee:
“When the tore down the RKO Albee Theater next to Grace Church in 1970, more than one stroller along the Mall stopped near the demolition site and stood for a moment, quietly, remembering the good times they had at the grand old theater. The Albee was hard to forget. For one thing, the building had a five storey high facade to which was attached a gigantic vertical marquee which glowed like a torch visible all up and down Westminster Street. Opened in 1919 on the site of a long line of entertainment enterprises, including the well-known Nickel Theater, the Albee originally offered live performances played to full houses. By the 1930s, the Albee was part of the large RKO Theater chain, and hereafter was known primarily as a motion picture house. By the ‘60s, like most of the downtown movie palaces, the Albee was having problems filling its nearly 2,300 seats. In 1965, the downtown developer B.A. Dario purchased the building. Dario attempted to convert the theater into a performing arts center. The idea never panned out. The wreckers eventually came in to do their work and today the site is a parking lot. There’s a little plaque on the sidewalk indicating where the proud Albee Theater once stood.”
Yes, sure is still there, as an Express store. I used to go there when it was Newberry’s and the interior still had some things, if you looked closely, that suggested a former movie theatre, something evident now only from the outside rear and side.
New Bedfordians have already saved the splendid Zeiterion (State) Theatre of the whaling city, and it is now a thriving performing arts center. Lovely as the Zeiterion is, it pales in comparison with the wondrous Orpheum, slumbering in a forgotten dream, like a dusty shadow, eager to be given new life, real life.
The second floor auditorium seems to have existed long before the space was leased for cinema use. It might have been an all-purpose hall, for meetings, socials, dances. The floor is hardwood and flat. I should have enquired.