Listed as the Grand Theatre on page 126 of the 1917 Trenton City Directory under “Moving Pictures”. Address is given as 181 S. Broad.
By the time the 1923 Trenton City Directory was published, it was called Reade’s Palace.
In the 1917 Trenton City Directory, page 126 under “Moving Pictures”, a theater named Crescent Theatre is listed at S. Broad & Hudson. Is this a previous name for the Victory?
Listed on page 126 of the 1917 Trenton City Directory under “Moving Pictures”. Address is give as West End av cor Hermitage Av. Interesting that West End is listed first. Perhaps the original entrance was located on that side of the building???
I attended the 5:30pm show yesterday. The staff is very enthusiastic, although some still appear to be in training. Theater 1 has stadium seating. Each row in the stadium section is a separate “box” separated by iron railing. Excellent leg room, which can’t be taken away by someone in front of you leaning back. If you are tall, don’t lean too far back or you’ll get a bit of iron to the back of the head like I did! Fresh paint and good sound. The drop ceiling hides any splendor of the past. Ample free parking 1 block west of the theater. Overall a very pleasant experience. I wish them the best of luck.
Remaking a classic after 8 decades
A vintage theater makes debuts again
Sunday, May 28, 2006
BY MIKE FRASSINELLI
Star-Ledger Staff
Paying 15 cents for orchestra seats, 20 cents more for the loge, patrons sporting bowler hats and English umbrellas could experience anything from a silent film to a vaudeville act to a midget circus featuring a trio of jumbo elephants.
The 20s were still roaring when the Washington Theatre opened on Route 57 in Warren County, operated by a husband-and-wife team who previously traveled by horse and carriage to exhibit their films.
Like many 79-year-olds, the Washington has had to reinvent it self to survive nearly eight decades of changes in America.
By the time Marco Matteo was growing up in the 1980s, the Washington had become a twin movie theater and a popular venue for 3-D films. Matteo taped the plastic glasses onto his own spectacles when watching such thrillers as “Jaws 3-D” in the downtown Washington Borough theater with dated red carpets and floors sticky from Milk Duds.
By the summer of 2001, the one time theatrical crown jewel with the 32-foot-wide dome ceiling was shuttered.
Matteo, now 35, is trying to rescue the theater at the intersection of Routes 31 and 57 by mixing a little of the old with a little of the new.
A former manager with Regal Cinemas, who as a projectionist used roller blades to hurry from screen to screen, he is bringing first-run movies to the refurbished downtown theater where he en joyed so many days of his youth. (“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” and “The Natural” were favorites).
But in homage to the past, he is trying to keep as many of the old fixtures as possible, from the organ pipes, to the vaudeville dressing rooms, to the plaque cards for old acts such as “Baboona” and “The Showboat Minstrel Follies.”
The theater reopened Friday with a matinee showing of animated family flick “Over the Hedge,” and films will run every day at 3:30, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. in Warren County’s only downtown theater still used for movies.
An added Memorial Day weekend showing of “Over the Hedge” is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. today and tomorrow.
Next month, movies will be added to a second screen, and a game room will be built.
Movie prices are $5 for all matinee seats (before 6 p.m.), $6.50 for high school students after 6 p.m. and $7.50 for adults after 6 p.m. Candy prices range between $1.50 and $2.50.
Matteo considers himself a “caretaker” of the building.
“As humans, we die, we have a life expectancy,” he said. “But buildings like this are immortal.”
Matteo wrote a business plan at Warren County Community College and won approval of a $150,000 loan from the Skylands Small Business Development Center.
He couldn’t believe how badly the building, erected four months before Charles Lindbergh made the first solo nonstop Trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris, had fallen into disrepair.
The roof was leaking. The plas ter walls were crumbling onto the theater seats.
“I felt like the theater was cry ing inside,” Matteo said. “I felt it reaching out to me when I walked through here.”
Matteo had to spend $20,000 to get the fire alarm system up to code. Best friend Todd Harrington, his main contractor, and electrician Hank Pfister have gotten the place in shape to open.
“My job is to continue this legacy this theater has held,” Matteo said during a harried afternoon last week, as artists Victoria Eveleth and Shawn Geiger painted theater doors and Chris Felici hurried to get the building ready for an inspection.
The legacy began on Jan. 24, 1927, by John and Clara Howell of Dover, who previously traveled by horse and carriage to show their films to a public hungry to see moving images.
Opening night, which featured four vaudeville acts, attracted 1,500 people — 500 had to be turned away. The first silent film shown was “The Music Master” by David Belasco.
Clara Howell helped decorate the building. John Howell, who bought the second automobile ever delivered to Dover, died of heart complications just a year and a half after the theater opened.
Matteo, who took an interest in Howell’s life, visiting his grave at Locust Hill Cemetery in Dover, said, “I feel like his whole story went untold.”
So did that of the late George Miller, the original projectionist, who once had Matteo to his home for a two-hour show about vaudevillians.
“I sat there for two hours and I was transfixed into this time period of the 1920s,” Matteo recalled. “At that moment, I felt like I was brought back into the past. Ever since I saw that, I always felt differently about the theater. I feel like I’ve been handed a torch that I can carry on.”
Eventually, Matteo hopes to build a temporary stage for concerts by local musical acts and comedy shows.
Alvin Sloan wishes him luck.
A 95-year-old Washington Borough institution who was town mayor in the 1930s and has had a road named after him, Sloan was manager of the Washington in 1928.
He remembered the popular vaudeville shows on Saturdays and chuckled over the bad timing of the old Washington Theatre.
“That theater never had the right picture at the right time,” he said. “Every other theater in the country had it before we got it.”
Sloan, a show-business-crazy Montclair native who went on to run 14 theaters in Hunterdon, Sus sex and Warren counties, said Mat teo faces the same problem today that other proprietors have: A lack of on-site parking.
But he is rooting for Matteo. “I’d like the theater to be successful,” he said.
Standing inside the red-brick structure, designed by architect James Lyons, Matteo thought of the possibilities for the place where he watched slashers Freddy Krueger and Jason, where he memorized lines from “City Slickers,” where he stayed in his seat for the more than three hours of “Dances With Wolves.”
“When this place closed, I realized at that moment that I have as much say-so about the future of that place as the next guy,” he said. “It’s our theater. It’s the people’s theater.”
For more information, visit the washingtontheatre.com or phone (908) 689-0899.
Mike Frassinelli covers Warren County. He may be reached at mfras or (908) 475-1218.
Before it disappears:
Multiculturalism in a palatial venue
Sunday, May 21, 2006
By JIM BECKERMAN
Last September, some 2,000 people waited in line at the historic Ritz Theatre in Elizabeth for a live appearance by one of the biggest names in America.
Beyonce? 50 Cent? Paris Hilton?
Actually, it was Alvaro Uribe, president of Colombia.
Hey, we didn’t say which America.
“He was answering questions from the audience,” says Carolina Gil, the house manager and executive director for the Ritz Theatre.
“They were asking about the legalization for Colombians living in this country, about the violence in the country that’s making people leave,” she says.
That’s one of the more unusual events sponsored by the Ritz, one of New Jersey’s most unusual performing arts centers.
It’s not so unusual because of its large size (2,700 seats), or the lavishness of its interior (marble, gold leaf, Ionic columns and murals), its acoustics (voted the best in the area in a number of polls), or an old-fashioned marquee that was striking enough to be featured in a Woody Allen movie, “Sweet and Lowdown.”
Nor is it unusual because it is a former vaudeville and movie palace converted into a performing arts center. That’s the story of many Jersey venues, including the State Theatre in New Brunswick, the Union County Arts Center in Rahway, the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank and bergenPAC in Englewood.
What’s unusual is the audience.
“This is like a multicultural theater,” Gil says. “We get events that are different from NJPAC or PNC Bank Arts Center or the State Theatre.”
The Ritz Theatre caters to an area of central Jersey that is notable for its large emigre population: not only Colombians, Cubans, Dominicans, Peruvians, and other Latin groups, but also Indians and Pakistanis.
It follows that the headliners who sell out the theater — there have been lines around the block on a number of occasions — are not necessarily the ones that play other theaters in New Jersey.
Rosio Durcal, Paulina Rubio and the late Celia Cruz are some of the top-drawing stars who have brought out droves of people dressed, as per Latin etiquette, in their Sunday best.
“No sneakers, no jeans,” Gil says. “They come very nice, dress up for the event.”
When Julio Iglesias, long in semi-retirement, looked for a venue to stage his sole North American appearance in 2004, he chose the Ritz Theatre. Needless to say, it sold out. “We had 300 people outside without tickets,” Gil says.
Nor are Latin audiences the only ones served. A “Tribute to Bollywood” event in April, one of six or so a year that cater to the area’s burgeoning Indian population, brought a capacity audience. “It’s very exciting when you have an Indian event and you see 2,700 Indians coming from Edison, North Bergen, places like that,” Gil says.
If the season schedule didn’t tip you off that the Ritz was catering to a specialized audience, there are other giveaways.
The murals running along the proscenium arch, for one thing — part of a $3 million restoration project, between 1994 and 2005, that has brought the theater back to something like its splendor during the 1920s and ‘30s, when Cab Calloway and the Marx Brothers used to make personal appearances.
“Art, a Vision of Paradise” is the name of the murals, painted by Colombian-born artist Jorge Posada, that turn the interior of the theater into a faux-Renaissance palace, with winged angels descending from on high to hobnob with pipe-playing, lute-strumming musicians.
“It looks very nice, and it goes with the decor of the theater,” Gil says.
Then, too, the promotional strategy is very different from, say, New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.
Most of the advertising budget for Ritz shows is spent not on radio, TV or Web advertising, but on old-fashioned posters.
For a big show, $5,000 or more goes into the colorful posters, stapled to utility poles, and billboards, that trumpet to the Spanish-speaking world: “Ritz Theatre presenta. … ”
“The marketing is a very different formula,” Gil says. “At NJPAC, they don’t put posters out on the street. For Spanish audiences, you have to do the posters. In New Jersey, you have towns like Elizabeth and Perth Amboy where the Latin community lives, where these kinds of people concentrate and have businesses. They don’t have time for radio and TV. So posters and fliers is where the promotional money goes to.”
The 146-year-old Ritz has been through many changes since its first flowering as an opera house in post-Civil War Elizabeth.
It was a vaudeville theater for many years, then a movie palace, then a Spanish Pentecostal church. In the 1970s and ‘80s it became a more conventional performing arts venue where Tom Jones, Styx and Frank Sinatra played to largely English-speaking audiences.
It began its new lease on life when George Castro, originally from Colombia, came to Elizabeth in 1985, got a real estate license and made the proverbial killing in the growing Latino market (half of Elizabeth’s population of 125,000 is Spanish-speaking). In 1994, he and his brother Maurice bought the dilapidated theater and began the long process of restoration.
Gil, only 22 and herself a Colombia native, has seen her fortunes rise along with the theater — she worked her way up from box office attendant to executive director in only three years.
What impresses her most, she says, is the diversity of the Ritz audience: a forecast, perhaps, of a new and more multicultural America that is just around the corner.
“Even when we had an Indian event, we had Latin people coming to see it,” she says.
Theater hopes to celebrate old Hollywood roots
Sunday, May 07, 2006
BY KEVIN C. DILWORTH
Star-Ledger Staff
Operators of East Orange’s Hollywood Cinemas, where a May 16 celebrity Walk of Fame ceremony is planned, want to spice up the event by finding and showing a reel-to-reel copy of a Spencer Tracy film that had its world premiere there 61 years ago to the day and rare television footage that captured that red-carpet event.
It’s an attempt to match the glitter, glamour, movie magic and excitement featured at the then Hollywood Theatre, where Tracy and co-star Rita Johnson participated in a three-day celebration surrounding the film “Edison the Man,” said Richard Einiger, a theater associate.
“The ‘Edison the Man’ world premiere may well have been one of the first, or the first, televised movie opening,” said Frank Bruno, a former West Orange resident who’s now a television producer and videotape editor living in Santa Clarita, Calif.
The public is invited to attend the 11:30 a.m. Walk of Fame event, at Hollywood Cinemas, 634 Central Ave. If the original film and vintage television coverage from six decades ago are secured, the public will be treated to watch it afterward, Einiger said.
Bruno made that discovery about the world premiere after spotting in the July 31, 2005’s Star-Ledger a photo from May 16, 1940, showing throngs of people, police and musicians waiting outside Hollywood Theatre in a rainstorm to attend the “Edison the Man” premiere.
“I noticed a truck parked on the left side of the theater,” Bruno recalled. “I could not believe that it was an early RCA television mobile unit. I immediately went to my reference books to check it out. And yes. It was.”
Meanwhile, the Walk of Fame ceremony — co-sponsored by Hollywood Cinemas and the city — will salute four living and four deceased entertainers from East Orange.
The living honorees are singer-entertainer Dionne Warwick, actor Derek Luke, musician Slide Hampton and actress-singer Queen Latifah, whose real name is Dana Owens.
The deceased entertainers being paid tribute are blind musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk, jazz drummer Cozy Cole, pop/country singer Eddie Rabbitt and jazz musician Walter Davis Jr.
Although the world’s first public television broadcast happened on April 30, 1939, when then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address to a small audience at the opening of the New York World’s Fair in Queens, there’s no question that the Garden State was featured in early broadcast television a year later, Bruno said.
From May 14 to 16 in 1940, then fledgling NBC sent a television news crew — to East Orange, Orange and West Orange — to cover a three-day celebration around the life of the famed late inventor Thomas Edison and the “Edison the Man” premiere.
The television archives department at the University of California in Los Angeles has a copy of that NBC coverage, and Robert Grimes, another Hollywood Cinemas associate, is trying to get access to it, Einiger said.
The archival footage from May 14, 1940, shows scenes outside the West Orange Municipal Building, where more than 12,000 people converged on Main Street and Mount Pleasant Avenue to see the unveiling of the world’s largest illuminated photograph — a two-story-high one of Thomas Edison lit by a 55,000-watt ray of light.
The next day’s footage captured glimpses of Tracy, his co-star, then-Gov. A. Harry Moore and local winners of a talent contest connected to the film, attending the charity Edison Premier Ball at the then-Orange Armory, 261 William St., at North Center Street. More than 2,000 people attended that event.
The television footage concluded on May 16, when more than 5,000 people — wearing their finest garb covered by raincoats and carrying umbrellas — converged on the Hollywood Theatre to partake in a glittering and glamorous ceremony that preceded the “Edison the Man” premier.
Braving the heavy downpour that evening, Tracy and Johnson dashed into the then-1,629-seat movie palace to meet and greet those who came to see them and the film.
Television was just in its infancy back then, said Bruno, the West Coast video editor and film buff.
Research on the history of television notes that only about 1,000 well-to-do people, within a 50-mile radius of NBC’s transmitter atop the Empire State Building, even owned one of the very small screen television sets that cost about $600.
Sounds like a great event, especially if they show the original film.
“Park Performing Arts Center Located at 560 32nd Street, the Center was built in 1931 by the German congregation of a Catholic parish to house their cultural and educational programs. Its most outstanding feature is the Park Theater, which seats 1,400 people. It belongs to Holy Family Church and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, and was incorporated in 1983 as a non-profit arts center dedicated to presenting and producing programs for the surrounding communities. It is identified as "the only institution in the County solely dedicated to the performing arts” by the Hudson County Urban Complex Strategic Revitalization Plan. It has featured performers such as Johnny Cash and George Carlin. One of the most noteworthy events to have taken place at Park Theater occurred in 1986 when Aerosmith and Run DMC filmed their groundbreaking video for their single “Walk This Way.” The theater is currently administered by Father Kevin Ashe. An addition was built to the theater in 2000. The theater’s two most well-known events are the annual Multi-Arts Festival and the annual Passion play.“ from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_City%2C_NJ
Their homepage now lists two screens. Anyone know when this happened? The history tab doesn’t offer any information. Last time that I was there in 2004 it only had one screen.
Listed as the Grand Theatre on page 126 of the 1917 Trenton City Directory under “Moving Pictures”. Address is given as 181 S. Broad.
By the time the 1923 Trenton City Directory was published, it was called Reade’s Palace.
Listed on page 1072 of the 1936 Trenton City Directory under “Theatres and Moving Picture Houses”. Address is given as 1060 Greenwood Avenue.
In the 1917 Trenton City Directory, page 126 under “Moving Pictures”, a theater named Crescent Theatre is listed at S. Broad & Hudson. Is this a previous name for the Victory?
Listed on page 66 of the 1913 Trenton City Directory under “Amusements”.
Listed on page 66 of the 1913 Trenton City Directory under “Amusements”.
Listed on page 126 of the 1917 Trenton City Directory under “Moving Pictures”. Address is give as West End av cor Hermitage Av. Interesting that West End is listed first. Perhaps the original entrance was located on that side of the building???
Listed on page 126 of the 1917 Trenton City Directory under “Moving Pictures”. Listed as the State Street Theatre.
Listed on page 126 of the 1917 Trenton City Directory under “Moving Pictures”. Address is given as 148 N. Broad.
Sorry, last comment should read “1917 Trenton City Directory”.
Listed on page 126 of the 1917 Trenton City Directory under “Moving Pictures”. Address is given as 422 Centre Street.
Listed on page 126 of the Trenton City Directory under “Moving Pictures”. Address is given as S. Clinton av cor Woodland Ave.
Listed as the B&B Theatre in the 1917 Trenton City directory, page 126, under “Moving Pictures”. Address is given as 721 Chestnut Avenue.
I attended the 5:30pm show yesterday. The staff is very enthusiastic, although some still appear to be in training. Theater 1 has stadium seating. Each row in the stadium section is a separate “box” separated by iron railing. Excellent leg room, which can’t be taken away by someone in front of you leaning back. If you are tall, don’t lean too far back or you’ll get a bit of iron to the back of the head like I did! Fresh paint and good sound. The drop ceiling hides any splendor of the past. Ample free parking 1 block west of the theater. Overall a very pleasant experience. I wish them the best of luck.
Remaking a classic after 8 decades
A vintage theater makes debuts again
Sunday, May 28, 2006
BY MIKE FRASSINELLI
Star-Ledger Staff
Paying 15 cents for orchestra seats, 20 cents more for the loge, patrons sporting bowler hats and English umbrellas could experience anything from a silent film to a vaudeville act to a midget circus featuring a trio of jumbo elephants.
The 20s were still roaring when the Washington Theatre opened on Route 57 in Warren County, operated by a husband-and-wife team who previously traveled by horse and carriage to exhibit their films.
Like many 79-year-olds, the Washington has had to reinvent it self to survive nearly eight decades of changes in America.
By the time Marco Matteo was growing up in the 1980s, the Washington had become a twin movie theater and a popular venue for 3-D films. Matteo taped the plastic glasses onto his own spectacles when watching such thrillers as “Jaws 3-D” in the downtown Washington Borough theater with dated red carpets and floors sticky from Milk Duds.
By the summer of 2001, the one time theatrical crown jewel with the 32-foot-wide dome ceiling was shuttered.
Matteo, now 35, is trying to rescue the theater at the intersection of Routes 31 and 57 by mixing a little of the old with a little of the new.
A former manager with Regal Cinemas, who as a projectionist used roller blades to hurry from screen to screen, he is bringing first-run movies to the refurbished downtown theater where he en joyed so many days of his youth. (“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” and “The Natural” were favorites).
But in homage to the past, he is trying to keep as many of the old fixtures as possible, from the organ pipes, to the vaudeville dressing rooms, to the plaque cards for old acts such as “Baboona” and “The Showboat Minstrel Follies.”
The theater reopened Friday with a matinee showing of animated family flick “Over the Hedge,” and films will run every day at 3:30, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. in Warren County’s only downtown theater still used for movies.
An added Memorial Day weekend showing of “Over the Hedge” is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. today and tomorrow.
Next month, movies will be added to a second screen, and a game room will be built.
Movie prices are $5 for all matinee seats (before 6 p.m.), $6.50 for high school students after 6 p.m. and $7.50 for adults after 6 p.m. Candy prices range between $1.50 and $2.50.
Matteo considers himself a “caretaker” of the building.
“As humans, we die, we have a life expectancy,” he said. “But buildings like this are immortal.”
Matteo wrote a business plan at Warren County Community College and won approval of a $150,000 loan from the Skylands Small Business Development Center.
He couldn’t believe how badly the building, erected four months before Charles Lindbergh made the first solo nonstop Trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris, had fallen into disrepair.
The roof was leaking. The plas ter walls were crumbling onto the theater seats.
“I felt like the theater was cry ing inside,” Matteo said. “I felt it reaching out to me when I walked through here.”
Matteo had to spend $20,000 to get the fire alarm system up to code. Best friend Todd Harrington, his main contractor, and electrician Hank Pfister have gotten the place in shape to open.
“My job is to continue this legacy this theater has held,” Matteo said during a harried afternoon last week, as artists Victoria Eveleth and Shawn Geiger painted theater doors and Chris Felici hurried to get the building ready for an inspection.
The legacy began on Jan. 24, 1927, by John and Clara Howell of Dover, who previously traveled by horse and carriage to show their films to a public hungry to see moving images.
Opening night, which featured four vaudeville acts, attracted 1,500 people — 500 had to be turned away. The first silent film shown was “The Music Master” by David Belasco.
Clara Howell helped decorate the building. John Howell, who bought the second automobile ever delivered to Dover, died of heart complications just a year and a half after the theater opened.
Matteo, who took an interest in Howell’s life, visiting his grave at Locust Hill Cemetery in Dover, said, “I feel like his whole story went untold.”
So did that of the late George Miller, the original projectionist, who once had Matteo to his home for a two-hour show about vaudevillians.
“I sat there for two hours and I was transfixed into this time period of the 1920s,” Matteo recalled. “At that moment, I felt like I was brought back into the past. Ever since I saw that, I always felt differently about the theater. I feel like I’ve been handed a torch that I can carry on.”
Eventually, Matteo hopes to build a temporary stage for concerts by local musical acts and comedy shows.
Alvin Sloan wishes him luck.
A 95-year-old Washington Borough institution who was town mayor in the 1930s and has had a road named after him, Sloan was manager of the Washington in 1928.
He remembered the popular vaudeville shows on Saturdays and chuckled over the bad timing of the old Washington Theatre.
“That theater never had the right picture at the right time,” he said. “Every other theater in the country had it before we got it.”
Sloan, a show-business-crazy Montclair native who went on to run 14 theaters in Hunterdon, Sus sex and Warren counties, said Mat teo faces the same problem today that other proprietors have: A lack of on-site parking.
But he is rooting for Matteo. “I’d like the theater to be successful,” he said.
Standing inside the red-brick structure, designed by architect James Lyons, Matteo thought of the possibilities for the place where he watched slashers Freddy Krueger and Jason, where he memorized lines from “City Slickers,” where he stayed in his seat for the more than three hours of “Dances With Wolves.”
“When this place closed, I realized at that moment that I have as much say-so about the future of that place as the next guy,” he said. “It’s our theater. It’s the people’s theater.”
For more information, visit the washingtontheatre.com or phone (908) 689-0899.
Mike Frassinelli covers Warren County. He may be reached at mfras or (908) 475-1218.
Before it disappears:
Multiculturalism in a palatial venue
Sunday, May 21, 2006
By JIM BECKERMAN
Last September, some 2,000 people waited in line at the historic Ritz Theatre in Elizabeth for a live appearance by one of the biggest names in America.
Beyonce? 50 Cent? Paris Hilton?
Actually, it was Alvaro Uribe, president of Colombia.
Hey, we didn’t say which America.
“He was answering questions from the audience,” says Carolina Gil, the house manager and executive director for the Ritz Theatre.
“They were asking about the legalization for Colombians living in this country, about the violence in the country that’s making people leave,” she says.
That’s one of the more unusual events sponsored by the Ritz, one of New Jersey’s most unusual performing arts centers.
It’s not so unusual because of its large size (2,700 seats), or the lavishness of its interior (marble, gold leaf, Ionic columns and murals), its acoustics (voted the best in the area in a number of polls), or an old-fashioned marquee that was striking enough to be featured in a Woody Allen movie, “Sweet and Lowdown.”
Nor is it unusual because it is a former vaudeville and movie palace converted into a performing arts center. That’s the story of many Jersey venues, including the State Theatre in New Brunswick, the Union County Arts Center in Rahway, the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank and bergenPAC in Englewood.
What’s unusual is the audience.
“This is like a multicultural theater,” Gil says. “We get events that are different from NJPAC or PNC Bank Arts Center or the State Theatre.”
The Ritz Theatre caters to an area of central Jersey that is notable for its large emigre population: not only Colombians, Cubans, Dominicans, Peruvians, and other Latin groups, but also Indians and Pakistanis.
It follows that the headliners who sell out the theater — there have been lines around the block on a number of occasions — are not necessarily the ones that play other theaters in New Jersey.
Rosio Durcal, Paulina Rubio and the late Celia Cruz are some of the top-drawing stars who have brought out droves of people dressed, as per Latin etiquette, in their Sunday best.
“No sneakers, no jeans,” Gil says. “They come very nice, dress up for the event.”
When Julio Iglesias, long in semi-retirement, looked for a venue to stage his sole North American appearance in 2004, he chose the Ritz Theatre. Needless to say, it sold out. “We had 300 people outside without tickets,” Gil says.
Nor are Latin audiences the only ones served. A “Tribute to Bollywood” event in April, one of six or so a year that cater to the area’s burgeoning Indian population, brought a capacity audience. “It’s very exciting when you have an Indian event and you see 2,700 Indians coming from Edison, North Bergen, places like that,” Gil says.
If the season schedule didn’t tip you off that the Ritz was catering to a specialized audience, there are other giveaways.
The murals running along the proscenium arch, for one thing — part of a $3 million restoration project, between 1994 and 2005, that has brought the theater back to something like its splendor during the 1920s and ‘30s, when Cab Calloway and the Marx Brothers used to make personal appearances.
“Art, a Vision of Paradise” is the name of the murals, painted by Colombian-born artist Jorge Posada, that turn the interior of the theater into a faux-Renaissance palace, with winged angels descending from on high to hobnob with pipe-playing, lute-strumming musicians.
“It looks very nice, and it goes with the decor of the theater,” Gil says.
Then, too, the promotional strategy is very different from, say, New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.
Most of the advertising budget for Ritz shows is spent not on radio, TV or Web advertising, but on old-fashioned posters.
For a big show, $5,000 or more goes into the colorful posters, stapled to utility poles, and billboards, that trumpet to the Spanish-speaking world: “Ritz Theatre presenta. … ”
“The marketing is a very different formula,” Gil says. “At NJPAC, they don’t put posters out on the street. For Spanish audiences, you have to do the posters. In New Jersey, you have towns like Elizabeth and Perth Amboy where the Latin community lives, where these kinds of people concentrate and have businesses. They don’t have time for radio and TV. So posters and fliers is where the promotional money goes to.”
The 146-year-old Ritz has been through many changes since its first flowering as an opera house in post-Civil War Elizabeth.
It was a vaudeville theater for many years, then a movie palace, then a Spanish Pentecostal church. In the 1970s and ‘80s it became a more conventional performing arts venue where Tom Jones, Styx and Frank Sinatra played to largely English-speaking audiences.
It began its new lease on life when George Castro, originally from Colombia, came to Elizabeth in 1985, got a real estate license and made the proverbial killing in the growing Latino market (half of Elizabeth’s population of 125,000 is Spanish-speaking). In 1994, he and his brother Maurice bought the dilapidated theater and began the long process of restoration.
Gil, only 22 and herself a Colombia native, has seen her fortunes rise along with the theater — she worked her way up from box office attendant to executive director in only three years.
What impresses her most, she says, is the diversity of the Ritz audience: a forecast, perhaps, of a new and more multicultural America that is just around the corner.
“Even when we had an Indian event, we had Latin people coming to see it,” she says.
On the Web:
ritztheatre.net
E-mail:
1924 program:
View link
1961 lobby card:
View link
Old postcard:
View link
1960 program:
View link
Theater hopes to celebrate old Hollywood roots
Sunday, May 07, 2006
BY KEVIN C. DILWORTH
Star-Ledger Staff
Operators of East Orange’s Hollywood Cinemas, where a May 16 celebrity Walk of Fame ceremony is planned, want to spice up the event by finding and showing a reel-to-reel copy of a Spencer Tracy film that had its world premiere there 61 years ago to the day and rare television footage that captured that red-carpet event.
It’s an attempt to match the glitter, glamour, movie magic and excitement featured at the then Hollywood Theatre, where Tracy and co-star Rita Johnson participated in a three-day celebration surrounding the film “Edison the Man,” said Richard Einiger, a theater associate.
“The ‘Edison the Man’ world premiere may well have been one of the first, or the first, televised movie opening,” said Frank Bruno, a former West Orange resident who’s now a television producer and videotape editor living in Santa Clarita, Calif.
The public is invited to attend the 11:30 a.m. Walk of Fame event, at Hollywood Cinemas, 634 Central Ave. If the original film and vintage television coverage from six decades ago are secured, the public will be treated to watch it afterward, Einiger said.
Bruno made that discovery about the world premiere after spotting in the July 31, 2005’s Star-Ledger a photo from May 16, 1940, showing throngs of people, police and musicians waiting outside Hollywood Theatre in a rainstorm to attend the “Edison the Man” premiere.
“I noticed a truck parked on the left side of the theater,” Bruno recalled. “I could not believe that it was an early RCA television mobile unit. I immediately went to my reference books to check it out. And yes. It was.”
Meanwhile, the Walk of Fame ceremony — co-sponsored by Hollywood Cinemas and the city — will salute four living and four deceased entertainers from East Orange.
The living honorees are singer-entertainer Dionne Warwick, actor Derek Luke, musician Slide Hampton and actress-singer Queen Latifah, whose real name is Dana Owens.
The deceased entertainers being paid tribute are blind musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk, jazz drummer Cozy Cole, pop/country singer Eddie Rabbitt and jazz musician Walter Davis Jr.
Although the world’s first public television broadcast happened on April 30, 1939, when then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address to a small audience at the opening of the New York World’s Fair in Queens, there’s no question that the Garden State was featured in early broadcast television a year later, Bruno said.
From May 14 to 16 in 1940, then fledgling NBC sent a television news crew — to East Orange, Orange and West Orange — to cover a three-day celebration around the life of the famed late inventor Thomas Edison and the “Edison the Man” premiere.
The television archives department at the University of California in Los Angeles has a copy of that NBC coverage, and Robert Grimes, another Hollywood Cinemas associate, is trying to get access to it, Einiger said.
The archival footage from May 14, 1940, shows scenes outside the West Orange Municipal Building, where more than 12,000 people converged on Main Street and Mount Pleasant Avenue to see the unveiling of the world’s largest illuminated photograph — a two-story-high one of Thomas Edison lit by a 55,000-watt ray of light.
The next day’s footage captured glimpses of Tracy, his co-star, then-Gov. A. Harry Moore and local winners of a talent contest connected to the film, attending the charity Edison Premier Ball at the then-Orange Armory, 261 William St., at North Center Street. More than 2,000 people attended that event.
The television footage concluded on May 16, when more than 5,000 people — wearing their finest garb covered by raincoats and carrying umbrellas — converged on the Hollywood Theatre to partake in a glittering and glamorous ceremony that preceded the “Edison the Man” premier.
Braving the heavy downpour that evening, Tracy and Johnson dashed into the then-1,629-seat movie palace to meet and greet those who came to see them and the film.
Television was just in its infancy back then, said Bruno, the West Coast video editor and film buff.
Research on the history of television notes that only about 1,000 well-to-do people, within a 50-mile radius of NBC’s transmitter atop the Empire State Building, even owned one of the very small screen television sets that cost about $600.
Sounds like a great event, especially if they show the original film.
Additional information and photo:
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“Park Performing Arts Center Located at 560 32nd Street, the Center was built in 1931 by the German congregation of a Catholic parish to house their cultural and educational programs. Its most outstanding feature is the Park Theater, which seats 1,400 people. It belongs to Holy Family Church and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, and was incorporated in 1983 as a non-profit arts center dedicated to presenting and producing programs for the surrounding communities. It is identified as "the only institution in the County solely dedicated to the performing arts” by the Hudson County Urban Complex Strategic Revitalization Plan. It has featured performers such as Johnny Cash and George Carlin. One of the most noteworthy events to have taken place at Park Theater occurred in 1986 when Aerosmith and Run DMC filmed their groundbreaking video for their single “Walk This Way.” The theater is currently administered by Father Kevin Ashe. An addition was built to the theater in 2000. The theater’s two most well-known events are the annual Multi-Arts Festival and the annual Passion play.“ from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_City%2C_NJ
I like this guy’s work – great photos:
http://www.robbender.com/gallery/islandroxy
Their homepage now lists two screens. Anyone know when this happened? The history tab doesn’t offer any information. Last time that I was there in 2004 it only had one screen.
If you go to eBay and type in “Stanley Theatre” in the search box you’ll find 7 vintage promotional photos. Hope this link works:
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