Loew's Valencia Theatre

Ed Solero on July 11, 2005 at 7:55 pm

RobertR… I know with great certainty that the last feature to play at the Valencia was the Muhammed Ali film “The Greatest” which opened in the late Spring of 1977 at the Criterion in Times Square and other theaters around town. It’s reasonable to assume that this movie opened fairly wide and the Valencia might even have been included in its first run bookings, but I don’t know the dates it played there.

By the way… I love the scans of those newspaper ads. I could sit up online all night and devour page after page of that sort of stuff. Thanks for sharing!

RobertR on July 4, 2005 at 4:06 pm

The last few years of the Valencia had it playing things like this.
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RobertR on June 23, 2005 at 10:36 am

Check out this ad for Gigi when it opened wide 12/29/59

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RobertR on June 13, 2005 at 6:39 am

I am trying to find out the last features to play the Valencia, so far the last booking I can see from 2/11/77 is “Car Wash” and “Trick Baby”

Ken Roe on April 25, 2005 at 9:18 am

The Loew’s Valencia Theatre was the first of the five ‘Wonder Theatres’ to open;12th January 1929
Joint 2nd and 3rd to open were;
Loew’s Kings Theatre, Brooklyn and Loew’s Paradise, Bronx, both opened;7th September 1929
4th to open was Loew’s Jersey Theatre, Jersey City, NJ, opened;28th September 1929
5th to open was Loew’s 175th Street Theatre, Manhattan, opened;12th February 1930.

woody on March 16, 2005 at 10:03 am

the movie is “a woman of affairs” starring john gilbert, it opened in 1928

mahermusic on March 7, 2005 at 8:10 pm

I’ll check it out… just give me a few days until I get back to the Jersey… but I really do distinctly recall a 7-year stretch (1929-1936). However, let me do my homework. I’ll copy down everything the Jersey has for the final five weeks of the stage shows.

Benjamin on February 21, 2005 at 10:03 pm

For the fun of it, I did a database search of “the New York Times” for the term “Wonder Theaters” using the “Proquest” database service available at NYU’s Bobst Library.

What I found were mostly display ads (although there was also a brief news item about, I think, the opening of the Valencia). (I should have taken better notes!; but I didn’t think I’d find anything to really report back to Cinema Treasures.)

On page 33 of the March 4, 1930 issue of “the New York Times” there is a display ad that says the following: Loew’s ‘BIG 5’ Wonder Theatres [i’ve copied the capitalization and punctuation that was in the ad]. Below this headline they’ve listed five theaters: 175th St., Paradise, Valencia, the Pitkin and the King’s.

So, to be fair to Ben Hall, there was a legitimate reason for him to include the Pitkin and exclude the Jersey in that original photo caption! (Of course, it also makes sense for Loew’s not to include the Jersey in a display ad published in a New York City newspaper — especially in the late 1920s when Jersey City was probably less of a “satellite” of NYC and more of an economically independent city than it is today. It’s my guess that in those days it have been considered a poor use of advertising funds to advertise the Jersey in a NYC newspaper.)

I also looked at some of the later ads as the year went on. It seems that a number of the theaters were dropped out of the Wonder Theater group advertisements. I didn’t note the dates or the theaters, but at first I think the group went down to three and then down to two (the Paradise and Valencia). I didn’t check all the advertisements on the page to see how the “dropped” theaters were advertised — perhaps they had separate ads that also used the term “Wonder Theater” but were advertised separately because they were showing a different show.

Towards the end of the year only the Valencia and the Paradise were grouped together in the same Wonder Theaters ad (again, possibly, because these two were the only two with the same show).

By the way, both of these theaters, and some others too I think, advertised midnight showings on Saturday night! Fascinating to think that in 1930 this was a profitable thing to do in Jamaica, Long Island (which is the way the ads identify the Valencia’s location) and the upper Grand Concourse!

I think the ads also mention something about de lux shows. But I’m not sure what they mean by this — or even it this applies to any of the Loew’s theaters. (I found the ads a bit confusing as the ads seem to me to kind of run together.)

Benjamin on February 19, 2005 at 11:57 am

Thanks BoxOfficeBill and Warren for the terrific information!

Of course, my gut feeling was that the Valencia was in Jamaica, but I was also curious as to what the exact boundary line between Jamaica and Hollis was — in part, I guess, to figure out how the author could have made such a “weird” mistake. (To give an example of how such a mistake can be seen to be somewhat sensible: the Manhattan apartment I once lived in was officially part of one post office (same zip code), had mail delivered from a different post office (where my mail carrier was actually based), and was actually physically closest to yet a third post office (where I went to buy stamps, etc.)!

So I think the author’s mistake would have been more understandable if, for example, the official boundaries of Jamaica ended at say, 167th St. or 168th St., even though the activities of “downtown” Jamaica might have in reality “spilled” over to the next “town,” Hollis. But given that the boundary is, if I understand Bill’s post correctly, about 15 blocks away it’s hard to understand how in the world the author came up with a Hollis location for the Valencia.

And I was also curious as to what the publishing “history” of this book was like. So it’s very interesting to find out that this mistake was in the original edition, the publishers were contacted and yet did nothing about it.

So far, the most disturbing (“biggest”) mistake I’ve found in the book (and although I’ll still buy it, I could only skim it last night) was that it says that “What’s My Line” (which, I’m pretty sure was a CBS show done from the theater that later became Studio 54) was done in the NBC studios at Rockefeller Center. (And “What’s My Line” is not a trivial show. I believe it sets records for both being a top rated show and for overall longevity.) And while this could be seen, in a sense, as a trivial mistake, especially since TV shows are understandably an afterthought in a book about movie making, what really makes this mistake “serious” in my eyes is that the author also does a profile of the Studio 54 theater (which might have actually been CBS Studio 52?) and never mentions, if I recall correctly, anything about any CBS shows, let alone “What’s My Line,” being broadcast from there! (In fact, the entry seemed solely a brief history of the disco and the movie celebrities who went there.)

And I also saw some other “facts” that seem to be in error, which I’ll also have to check out some day. It seemed to me that the book was really best when in looked at the “big” picture — explaining, for example, why “Splendor in the Grass” and other films were / were not actually filmed in NYC rather than Hollywood or on location (in the case of “Splendor in the Grass,” Elia Kazan, the esteemed director didn’t want to leave his sickly father’s side).

So, it seems to me that one has to take the info in this book with more than a grain of salt! (A “pinch”?; a teaspoon?; a tablespoon?)

Which brings up the topic of Loew’s “Wonder Theaters” again. If I understand Alleman correctly, he says that the theaters were Wonder
Theaters because they all contained Robert Morton “Wonder” organs. I get the sense that besides providing a glowing nickname for this model of a Robert Morton organ, “Wonder” was in a sense a brand name — like “Wonder-bread” or “Miracle” Whip. So, if Alleman is to be believed, the five Loew’s “Wonder Theaters” were billed as they were because they contained identical models of the “Wonder” line of Robert Morton organs — which, to be fair to Alleman, seems to be the same thing that Ben Hall is saying in the caption in “Best Remaining Seats” that we’ve been discussing. In fact, his explanation seems to make the caption a little clearer to me than it first was when I read it.

However, I still like Ziggy’s explanation, and I suspect the “real” explanation is probably a combination of the two of them — as that’s the way things seem to actually work in the real world (i.e., one thing feeds off of another and the final event is a product of many “coincidences”).

Benjamin on February 18, 2005 at 9:52 pm

I was just at the Virgin Mega Store on Union Sq. and noticed a new book (official publishing date, Feb. 1, 2005) that I think will be of interest to posters at Cinema Treasures: “New York: The Movie Lover’s Guide: The Ultimate Insider tour of Movie New York.” There is also a Los Angeles version, also having a Feb. 1 publishing date. (I just skimmed the New York book, but I get the feeling that both the L.A. and N.Y. books are revised and expanded versions of books that the author, Richard Alleman, originally wrote in the 1980s, or so.)

Mainly the book is a listing of movie/TV locations, places where movie/TV people lived or grew up, location and history of New York movie/TV studios, movie star grave sites, etc. But it also includes info about movie (and “legit”) theaters, including the Loew’s Valencia, the Stanley and Loew’s Jersey, Moss Colony, Cadillac Winter Garden, etc. In fact it has a “rare” photo of the interior (stage, east wall of the “courtyard” and part of the balcony)of the Loew’s Valencia. I suspect it is a photo taken in the theater’s last days as a theater, but before the church took it over, because the “sky” seems to have a few patches of water damage and falling plaster.

While the book seems to be pretty good, I did notice a number of things that seemed to me to be really glaring errors. Now, in a book containing so many facts, I suppose this is to be expected. But it’ll be interesting to investigate to see how error prone this book is.

As part of this effort, I have a question. One — very minor — thing that struck me as an error (or sloppy writing) is that the author says the Valencia is in Hollis (not Jamaica) Queens. Although I grew up in Jamaica, I’m not exactly clear where the boundary between Hollis and Jamaica is located. But, it seems to me that the Valencia is in Jamaica as much as anything else (including the rather substantial Jamaica post office only a block or two away) is in Jamaica.

Does anyone know the “official” boundaries of Jamaica and Hollis, and whether the Valencia is “officially” in Jamaica or Hollis? (I assume, but I’m only guessing, that ever since Queens became part of NYC in 1898, the “official” boundaries for “town” names were in fact the postal district boundaries.)

JimRankin on February 11, 2005 at 2:02 am

You’re right, of course, Ziggy, since from about 900 miles away my acquaintance with NYC geography is sketchy. Maybe someday I will get there to see things firsthand.

Bob’s comment about the PITKIN now being an ‘atmospheric’ of the original kind, is too well taken, of course. There were lots of open air theatres in the early years aside from drive-ins, but they were designed that way!

BobFurmanek on February 10, 2005 at 3:57 pm

And with it’s recently collapsed roof in the auditorium, Loew’s Pitkin is the first true atmospheric!