Here is an article from the Harvard Crimson about the opening of the Telepix in 1939. I don’t know exactly when it became the Park Square, but it was probably 1962 or 1963. I went to a movie here (The Bicycle Thief) at the end of December, 1961 when it was the Telepix. In July of 1963 the place was showing Love at Twenty and was called the Park Square. So the name change had to have taken place within that time.
As the first Boston art house, the Fine Arts Theatre was sui generis and showed many great films during its pre-war phase. The manager during this fascinating period was George Kaska.
Eisenstein’s silent Ten Days That Shook the World was shown in 1930, around the same time that director Eisenstein spoke at Harvard University. Other Russian films, by Eisenstein and others, were regularly programmed. Eisenstein’s Potemkin and Thunder Over Mexico were screened as was the Russian documentary Soviets on Parade, the Tolstoy-based The Living Corpse, Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia and the dramatic Professor Mamlock.
Among the German-language films were Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light, Fritz Lang’s M, Wiener Blut, Beethoven’s Concerto, the Schubertian Zwei Herzen, Lehar’s operetta Friederike, Das Lied vom Leben.
Hedy Lamarr emerged from the water naked in Gustav Machaty’s Ecstasy. The French-Canadian Maria Chapdelaine played here. The British version of Jew Süss (Power) with Conrad Veidt was shown (not the notorious anti-semitic German one by Veit Harlan). Flaherty’s magnificent Man of Aran so pleased Boston audiences that it was brought back with Power on a double bill. Song of the Road, with Scotsman Harry Lauder, also played.
The difficult job of being a good usher at the University Theatre in 1937, according to a Harvard Crimson article. Favorite bit: “…whether from Sargent or Radcliffe, any group of girls is bound to mean trouble for an usher.”
In 1929, decades before the Brattle would become a cinema in 1953, there was a presentation of a locally-produced film on the History of Massachusetts. This Harvard Crimson piece notes that it would be shown here as well as at the Fine Arts Theatre in Boston.
The Italian neo-realist film masterpiece The Bicycle Thief opened here in 1950. Revenge with Anna Magnani had played in 1949 as had the “scandalous” Devil in the Flesh from France. Bitter Rice opened in 1951, Miracle in Milan and The Mill on the Po in 1952.
Some important Italian neo-realist films opened here, including Rossellini’s Paisan and Germany Year Zero as well as Outcry (Il sole sorge ancora) by Aldo Vergano in 1949-1950.
Rossellini’s Open City played here in 1946. I came across this review in the Harvard Crimson from May 7, 1946.
A search of Old South in the online Crimson archives showed these films as having been programmed in these years: 1947 – Alexander Nevsky, Carmen, Children of Paradise; 1948 – Dreams that Money Can Buy; 1949 – Grand Illusion & The Baker’s Wife, The Private Lives of Henry VIII, Top Hat. Some of these were revivals.
Here is a Harvard Crimson review from March 2, 1957 of a Trans-Lux program of a French and an Italian film: La Sorcière & Three Forbidden Tales. This may have been the typical kind of programming here during that decade, i.e., racy foreign films, but not necessarily without artistic merit. These were both very good movies.
In 1952 owner Bryant Haliday received a phone threat when he planned to convert the Brattle Theatre into a cinema, according to a pice in the Harvard Crimson.
In the second part of this 1969 Harvard Crimson article, Tim Hunter provided an interesting description of the Gary and the film Inga, which he reviewed. Student Hunter later became a Hollywood director, with films like Tex, Sylvester, River’s Edge, The Maker and many TV productions.
Here is a 1969 Harvard Crimson article about Peter Bogdanovich’s film Targets opening at this theatre, instead of at one of the top houses. The article was written by Tim Hunter, then a student and active in Harvard film societies, who went on to become a Hollywood director of considerable merit with movies like Tex, River’s Edge, Sylvester, The Maker and numerous TV films.
The building at the address now appears to be a subsidized housing unit. I could not tell whether the theatre building was gutted and converted or whether it was torn down and a new one put up. Some of the building’s features and the foundation suggest it could have been the Lee Theatre at one time. The site is located across from the beautiful old public library.
Looks similar to the ad I posted for the Providence Opera House showing of the Griffith film, and same $2.00 top admission, enormous for a film in 1915.
I caught a second-run showing here in July of 1982 of Francesco Rosi’s lyrical Three Brothers. At this point they were showing the occasional well-reviewed or well-performing foreign films on the smallest of their screens. The Swedish My Life as a Dog ran here also. And I just found a news blurb about a free screening in December, 1981 of François Truffaut’s 1958 The 400 Blows, part of the Kent County Mental Health Center’s series on Cinema and Mental Health: Exploring Emotional Crisis Through Film. These occasional showings of foreign-language films (there were a few others) were probably the only ones ever in the town of East Greenwich. East Greenwich currently has no movie theatres. The Showcase Warwick Cinemas effectively ended that.
PAWTUCKET – “The old LeRoy Theatre resounded last night with the cheers and laughter of a crowd that had come to save it.
“The older members of the audience appeared to delight in the parade of film clips and song and dance numbers which depicted their own lives as much as the theater’s history. And the young simply knew a good time when they saw it.
“For the most part, the crowd of about 250 dressed casually, as if they were ducking into a twin cinema for an hour or two. But once inside, their eyes kept reaching upward, past the mezzanine toward the dome, with its parade of classical sculpted figures, toward a kaledidoscope of colored lights.
“Despite peeling paint, dusty seats and the smell of stale damp air, this was still a theater with gold leaf and brass rails that could make one feel underdressed.
“Put together in only two weeks by the Leroy Center for Cultural and Performing Arts Inc., a non-profit group organized last November, the benefit show was intended to raise money to reopen the building for community use as well as for plays and movies, according to treasurer Stanley Weyman.
“He said proceeds from the show would be used by the group to help refurbish and acquire the theater, which is located at the corner of Broad and Exchange Streets.
“Taking proceeds from last night’s performance alone (at $5 a ticket, about $1,250), the organization faces an uphill climb.
“They have offered Associates Realty, a group of businessmen who own the building, $5,000 on an option to buy it and are curently making plans to lease it, according to Weyman. Estimates of the cost of refurbishing the theater range as high as $800,000.
“But most of the people who came last night were not thinking of that. For various reasons, they just wanted the Leroy to be again.
“Young people, like Missy Lewis, 16, a cast member, just wanted a pace to sing and dance.
“Some of the audience, including Mayor Henry S. Kinch, recalled going to the theater for Saturday afternoon movies.
“One Pawtucket woman said she recalled coming in at 7:15 and emerging well after 11: ‘two movies, the news and the whole bit.’ She was one of the people who stopped going to the Leroy when it was taken over a few years ago by rock promoter Frank Russo. The city closed the theater in 1979, citing safety code violations.
“Bruce Tillinghast, a member of the organization to save the Leroy, explained that it was simply wrong to tear down a building that, for financial reasons, could not be built today. He pointed to the neoclassical design and sculpted chandeliers. It cost $1 million to construct the theater in 1923.”
I’ve noted in some old copies of International Film Guide that there were at least three other Smultronstället cinemas, run by Svensk Filmindustri in Göteborg, Vasteras, and Malmo.
The magazine Entertainment Weekly has named the Cable Car Cinema one of the top ten theatres in the nation in its August 8, 2005 edition. It cites a variety of reasons. Here is a report from the Providence Journal.
Here is an article from the Harvard Crimson about the opening of the Telepix in 1939. I don’t know exactly when it became the Park Square, but it was probably 1962 or 1963. I went to a movie here (The Bicycle Thief) at the end of December, 1961 when it was the Telepix. In July of 1963 the place was showing Love at Twenty and was called the Park Square. So the name change had to have taken place within that time.
As the first Boston art house, the Fine Arts Theatre was sui generis and showed many great films during its pre-war phase. The manager during this fascinating period was George Kaska.
Eisenstein’s silent Ten Days That Shook the World was shown in 1930, around the same time that director Eisenstein spoke at Harvard University. Other Russian films, by Eisenstein and others, were regularly programmed. Eisenstein’s Potemkin and Thunder Over Mexico were screened as was the Russian documentary Soviets on Parade, the Tolstoy-based The Living Corpse, Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia and the dramatic Professor Mamlock.
René Clair’s A nous la liberté was one of the big successes here during the 1930s and his Sous les toits de Paris also played. Duvivier’s Un carnet de bal made an appearance.
Among the German-language films were Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light, Fritz Lang’s M, Wiener Blut, Beethoven’s Concerto, the Schubertian Zwei Herzen, Lehar’s operetta Friederike, Das Lied vom Leben.
Hedy Lamarr emerged from the water naked in Gustav Machaty’s Ecstasy. The French-Canadian Maria Chapdelaine played here. The British version of Jew Süss (Power) with Conrad Veidt was shown (not the notorious anti-semitic German one by Veit Harlan). Flaherty’s magnificent Man of Aran so pleased Boston audiences that it was brought back with Power on a double bill. Song of the Road, with Scotsman Harry Lauder, also played.
The difficult job of being a good usher at the University Theatre in 1937, according to a Harvard Crimson article. Favorite bit: “…whether from Sargent or Radcliffe, any group of girls is bound to mean trouble for an usher.”
In 1929, decades before the Brattle would become a cinema in 1953, there was a presentation of a locally-produced film on the History of Massachusetts. This Harvard Crimson piece notes that it would be shown here as well as at the Fine Arts Theatre in Boston.
Here’s another brief Harvard Crimson piece about the announced opening of the Esquire Theatre in 1964.
The Italian neo-realist film masterpiece The Bicycle Thief opened here in 1950. Revenge with Anna Magnani had played in 1949 as had the “scandalous” Devil in the Flesh from France. Bitter Rice opened in 1951, Miracle in Milan and The Mill on the Po in 1952.
Some important Italian neo-realist films opened here, including Rossellini’s Paisan and Germany Year Zero as well as Outcry (Il sole sorge ancora) by Aldo Vergano in 1949-1950.
I think the University Theatre was referred to as the “U.T.” in this 1948 review of To Live in Peace from the Harvard Crimson.
Here is a 1968 Harvard Crimson article about the sex film venues on Washington Street. The writer discusses the Pilgrim, the Mayflower, and the State.
Here is a 1968 Harvard Crimson article about the sex film venues on Washington Street. The writer discusses the Pilgrim, the Mayflower, and the State.
Here is a 1968 Harvard Crimson article about the sex film venues on Washington Street. The writer discusses the Pilgrim, the Mayflower, and the State.
Rossellini’s Open City played here in 1946. I came across this review in the Harvard Crimson from May 7, 1946.
A search of Old South in the online Crimson archives showed these films as having been programmed in these years: 1947 – Alexander Nevsky, Carmen, Children of Paradise; 1948 – Dreams that Money Can Buy; 1949 – Grand Illusion & The Baker’s Wife, The Private Lives of Henry VIII, Top Hat. Some of these were revivals.
Here is a Harvard Crimson review from March 2, 1957 of a Trans-Lux program of a French and an Italian film: La Sorcière & Three Forbidden Tales. This may have been the typical kind of programming here during that decade, i.e., racy foreign films, but not necessarily without artistic merit. These were both very good movies.
In 1952 owner Bryant Haliday received a phone threat when he planned to convert the Brattle Theatre into a cinema, according to a pice in the Harvard Crimson.
Here is a Harvard Crimson review of the first film to play at the Brattle when it opened in 1953: the 1931 German film The Captain from Koepenick.
In the second part of this 1969 Harvard Crimson article, Tim Hunter provided an interesting description of the Gary and the film Inga, which he reviewed. Student Hunter later became a Hollywood director, with films like Tex, Sylvester, River’s Edge, The Maker and many TV productions.
Here is a 1969 Harvard Crimson article about Peter Bogdanovich’s film Targets opening at this theatre, instead of at one of the top houses. The article was written by Tim Hunter, then a student and active in Harvard film societies, who went on to become a Hollywood director of considerable merit with movies like Tex, River’s Edge, Sylvester, The Maker and numerous TV films.
The building at the address now appears to be a subsidized housing unit. I could not tell whether the theatre building was gutted and converted or whether it was torn down and a new one put up. Some of the building’s features and the foundation suggest it could have been the Lee Theatre at one time. The site is located across from the beautiful old public library.
Looks similar to the ad I posted for the Providence Opera House showing of the Griffith film, and same $2.00 top admission, enormous for a film in 1915.
I caught a second-run showing here in July of 1982 of Francesco Rosi’s lyrical Three Brothers. At this point they were showing the occasional well-reviewed or well-performing foreign films on the smallest of their screens. The Swedish My Life as a Dog ran here also. And I just found a news blurb about a free screening in December, 1981 of François Truffaut’s 1958 The 400 Blows, part of the Kent County Mental Health Center’s series on Cinema and Mental Health: Exploring Emotional Crisis Through Film. These occasional showings of foreign-language films (there were a few others) were probably the only ones ever in the town of East Greenwich. East Greenwich currently has no movie theatres. The Showcase Warwick Cinemas effectively ended that.
Article in The Providence Journal, June 21, 1982:
Leroy Theatre show recalls its glory days
By M.J. Andersen
PAWTUCKET – “The old LeRoy Theatre resounded last night with the cheers and laughter of a crowd that had come to save it.
“The older members of the audience appeared to delight in the parade of film clips and song and dance numbers which depicted their own lives as much as the theater’s history. And the young simply knew a good time when they saw it.
“For the most part, the crowd of about 250 dressed casually, as if they were ducking into a twin cinema for an hour or two. But once inside, their eyes kept reaching upward, past the mezzanine toward the dome, with its parade of classical sculpted figures, toward a kaledidoscope of colored lights.
“Despite peeling paint, dusty seats and the smell of stale damp air, this was still a theater with gold leaf and brass rails that could make one feel underdressed.
“Put together in only two weeks by the Leroy Center for Cultural and Performing Arts Inc., a non-profit group organized last November, the benefit show was intended to raise money to reopen the building for community use as well as for plays and movies, according to treasurer Stanley Weyman.
“He said proceeds from the show would be used by the group to help refurbish and acquire the theater, which is located at the corner of Broad and Exchange Streets.
“Taking proceeds from last night’s performance alone (at $5 a ticket, about $1,250), the organization faces an uphill climb.
“They have offered Associates Realty, a group of businessmen who own the building, $5,000 on an option to buy it and are curently making plans to lease it, according to Weyman. Estimates of the cost of refurbishing the theater range as high as $800,000.
“But most of the people who came last night were not thinking of that. For various reasons, they just wanted the Leroy to be again.
“Young people, like Missy Lewis, 16, a cast member, just wanted a pace to sing and dance.
“Some of the audience, including Mayor Henry S. Kinch, recalled going to the theater for Saturday afternoon movies.
“One Pawtucket woman said she recalled coming in at 7:15 and emerging well after 11: ‘two movies, the news and the whole bit.’ She was one of the people who stopped going to the Leroy when it was taken over a few years ago by rock promoter Frank Russo. The city closed the theater in 1979, citing safety code violations.
“Bruce Tillinghast, a member of the organization to save the Leroy, explained that it was simply wrong to tear down a building that, for financial reasons, could not be built today. He pointed to the neoclassical design and sculpted chandeliers. It cost $1 million to construct the theater in 1923.”
And a post-closing photo here., possibly from the 1960s.
Here is a photo of the interior from the 1970s.
I’ve noted in some old copies of International Film Guide that there were at least three other Smultronstället cinemas, run by Svensk Filmindustri in Göteborg, Vasteras, and Malmo.
The magazine Entertainment Weekly has named the Cable Car Cinema one of the top ten theatres in the nation in its August 8, 2005 edition. It cites a variety of reasons. Here is a report from the Providence Journal.