This theatre is mentioned in the biography of writer Truman Capote (Capote) by Gerald Clarke. Clarke discusses the period of Truman’s childhood when the boy lived on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. He tells of one of Truman’s teachers at Trinity School:
“The teacher would sometimes walk him home, Truman said, stopping on the way at a movie theater, the Olympia, on upper Broadway. They would sit in the privacy of the back row, and while the teacher fondled him, Truman would masturbate the teacher. What effect that tawdry little scene had on a boy like Truman is impossible to say, but it was, at the very least, a sorry initiation into the mysteries of sex.”
Locals who have been attempting to restore and re-open as a cultural facility the historic Pastime Theatre are not giving up and are fighting the town of Bristol. With a deadline for mortgage payment approaching, members of the Bristol Pastime Theatre Foundation are organizing and attempting to garner support to reverse the Bristol Town Council’s recent decision to lease the old theater to the Bristol Warren Regional School District for use as a school. In the most recent development the Pastime Theatre received a $200,000 federal grant. The Bristol Pastime Theatre Foundation is going to use the money to purchase the theatre from the town, but still needs to raise $141,000 to do it. And they have a very short timeframe, by December 3rd, in which to accomplish this. Yet none of this guarantees that the town will not take over the theatre by eminent domain.
Some of the newer films shown here from time to time represent the only public RI showings. For example, the upcoming A State of Mind, a fabulous documentary about the mind-boggling North Korean “Mass Games,” has not been shown in the area and is worth going out of your way for. The coffee served here is excellent and can be had in real ceramic cups! Remember those?
I went back to the Greenwich last night, my first visit in over twenty years since it became a live-act theatre. The occasion was the R.I. Jewish Film Festival’s showing here of King of the Corner by and with Peter Riegert. I used this opportunity to see what the interior of the theatre was like. I had all but forgotten.
I suspected that probably the showing would be a DVD projection since I guessed also that the 35mm equipment and large screen that used to be here were long ago removed. I wasn’t wrong. A rather tiny screen was set up in the middle of the stage and the DVD was shown by rear-projection. I must say I enjoyed the film, which also stars Eli Wallach and Isabella Rossellini, though disappointed at the limitations of its presentation. But then this place does not normally show movies any more in any format and was simply rented for that purpose by the Jewish festival group.
The original projection booth still stands, but I was unable to detect any equipment behind the portholes. I was amazed at the width of the stage, which runs the whole front of the theatre, minus the two exit-door areas. It must be forty feet wide or more. A fire notice says the theatre’s capacity is 541 persons. The walls of the theatre were painted a light yellow and were peeling in spots. I seem to recall a darker wall motif in the theatre’s movie days. The seats, survivors of many decades, were generally tattered and weatherbeaten. There was a large comfortable amount of leg room between rows. I think the rows may have been re-spaced when the theatre stopped showing movies. There are added platforms with stage-lighting equipment.
The look of the theatre’s interior is essentially bland and banal, with no distinguishing decorative features of any kind. The exterior of the theatre, on the other hand, is appealing in a classically simple way, with a handsome brick fronting and an attractive canopy over the entrance, beneath a small marquee. The entrance area, where the ticket window is, is an inviting place and is lined with autographed photos and posters of previous performers here, including Claire Bloom. In one nook, a poster/flyer survives and promotes the movies of a week long ago in 1935 when one of the films was Mutiny on the Bounty.
Yesterday I went to see Zathura here. The house lights dimmed, the previews of coming attractions came on, but the pre-film music that accompanies the “slide show” was still continuing to play and didn’t seem about to stop. I complained at the ticket booth, a phone call was made to the projectionist. The problem was corrected by the time I got back. Then, the feature came on, and the house lights came back on! Furious, I complained again, asking if I could catch the film at another of their auditoriums instead. Another showing was scheduled for twenty minues later. I asked, “Doesn’t anybody pay attention to what is going on in the auditoriums?” The girl answered snootily, “Well we have ONE person who is responsible for TWELVE theatres!” “That’s no excuse,” I said.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1955 film Killer’s Kiss available on a nice DVD, there are extended night scenes of the Times Square area and its theatres. One gets clear views of the Victoria with a large display for The Man Between, the Astor with Queen of Sheba, and the Embassy Newsreel Theatre. There are snippets of more. That part must have been shot around November of 1953.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1955 film Killer’s Kiss available on a nice DVD, there are extended night scenes of the Times Square area and its theatres. One gets clear views of the Victoria with a large display for The Man Between, the Astor with Queen of Sheba, and the Embassy Newsreel Theatre. There are snippets of more. That part must have been shot around November of 1953.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1955 film Killer’s Kiss available on a nice DVD, there are extended night scenes of the Times Square area and its theatres. One gets clear views of the Victoria with a large display for The Man Between, the Astor with Queen of Sheba, and the Embassy Newsreel Theatre. There are snippets of more. That part must have been shot around November of 1953.
Jim, almost all these theatres you mention have pages here on Cinema Treasures. You should post your valuable memories for each of those places. I am very interested.
The Majestic ended its days as a movie theatre on May 17, 1971. At least that was the last day a newspaper ad appeared. The last films shown were a double bill of Patton and Mash. After that the theatre, having been sold to Trinity Repertory Company, was gutted and restructured, leaving almost nothing of its original interior architectural magnificence.
The Cinerama Theatre was twinned in 1974 and after twinning re-opened on Wednesday, June 26, 1974. The features first shown as a twin theatre were Chinatown and Claudine.
This theatre opened as the Showcase Cinemas 1-2-3 on Friday, June 28, 1974. The features on the three screens were The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and Lucille Ball in Mame. Over the years it kept growing, subdividing, stadiumizing.
I didn’t know where to make this query, but I just found a reference to a Third Avenue theatre called the Modern Playhouse. A 1937 review of the Hungarian film Aranyember talks of “a smoothly running and engaging picture in ‘Man of Gold,’ now at the Modern Playhouse in Third Avenue.” Where on Third Avenue was this theatre and did it have other names? I couldn’t find it listed.
The Honeymoon Killers, which I recently re-saw on DVD, really is a great, if queasy-making, film. It is absolutely not trash as one could easily assume. French director François Truffaut called it his favorite American movie ever. The DVD features fascinating extras including an interview with one-time director Leonard Kastle, who was a serious composer, including of opera. The use of Gustav Mahler’s symnphonic music as background in the film is both eerie and inspired. Performers Shirley Stoler and a sleazy-issimo Tony Lo Bianco are perfection. If you’ve never seen this movie, rent it or buy it. You’ll never forget it.
John Ford’s The Quiet Man opened at the Capitol Theatre on August 21, 1952 and was reviewed the following day in the New York Times. I just found the review and it indicates the Capitol Theatre.
I’m also sick of the idiot “trivia slides” you have to put up with before the show, films that start 15 minutes after the announced times, and four or more previews of coming attractions, but then, it’s not only here, is it?
This theatre is mentioned in the biography of writer Truman Capote (Capote) by Gerald Clarke. Clarke discusses the period of Truman’s childhood when the boy lived on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. He tells of one of Truman’s teachers at Trinity School:
“The teacher would sometimes walk him home, Truman said, stopping on the way at a movie theater, the Olympia, on upper Broadway. They would sit in the privacy of the back row, and while the teacher fondled him, Truman would masturbate the teacher. What effect that tawdry little scene had on a boy like Truman is impossible to say, but it was, at the very least, a sorry initiation into the mysteries of sex.”
Locals who have been attempting to restore and re-open as a cultural facility the historic Pastime Theatre are not giving up and are fighting the town of Bristol. With a deadline for mortgage payment approaching, members of the Bristol Pastime Theatre Foundation are organizing and attempting to garner support to reverse the Bristol Town Council’s recent decision to lease the old theater to the Bristol Warren Regional School District for use as a school. In the most recent development the Pastime Theatre received a $200,000 federal grant. The Bristol Pastime Theatre Foundation is going to use the money to purchase the theatre from the town, but still needs to raise $141,000 to do it. And they have a very short timeframe, by December 3rd, in which to accomplish this. Yet none of this guarantees that the town will not take over the theatre by eminent domain.
I don’t know the answer to those questions except that it never had a balcony in its previous theatre days.
Rhode Island has another cinema-café, the Revival House in Westerly. While it doesn’t have theatre-type seating (or couches!) and employs DVD projection rather than 35mm like the Cable Car, it does have wider-ranging programs of new, old, and harder-to-see films. Check the Revival House page and their website.
Some of the newer films shown here from time to time represent the only public RI showings. For example, the upcoming A State of Mind, a fabulous documentary about the mind-boggling North Korean “Mass Games,” has not been shown in the area and is worth going out of your way for. The coffee served here is excellent and can be had in real ceramic cups! Remember those?
Here is a photo of the Wellesley Community Playhouse from 1981.
I went back to the Greenwich last night, my first visit in over twenty years since it became a live-act theatre. The occasion was the R.I. Jewish Film Festival’s showing here of King of the Corner by and with Peter Riegert. I used this opportunity to see what the interior of the theatre was like. I had all but forgotten.
I suspected that probably the showing would be a DVD projection since I guessed also that the 35mm equipment and large screen that used to be here were long ago removed. I wasn’t wrong. A rather tiny screen was set up in the middle of the stage and the DVD was shown by rear-projection. I must say I enjoyed the film, which also stars Eli Wallach and Isabella Rossellini, though disappointed at the limitations of its presentation. But then this place does not normally show movies any more in any format and was simply rented for that purpose by the Jewish festival group.
The original projection booth still stands, but I was unable to detect any equipment behind the portholes. I was amazed at the width of the stage, which runs the whole front of the theatre, minus the two exit-door areas. It must be forty feet wide or more. A fire notice says the theatre’s capacity is 541 persons. The walls of the theatre were painted a light yellow and were peeling in spots. I seem to recall a darker wall motif in the theatre’s movie days. The seats, survivors of many decades, were generally tattered and weatherbeaten. There was a large comfortable amount of leg room between rows. I think the rows may have been re-spaced when the theatre stopped showing movies. There are added platforms with stage-lighting equipment.
The look of the theatre’s interior is essentially bland and banal, with no distinguishing decorative features of any kind. The exterior of the theatre, on the other hand, is appealing in a classically simple way, with a handsome brick fronting and an attractive canopy over the entrance, beneath a small marquee. The entrance area, where the ticket window is, is an inviting place and is lined with autographed photos and posters of previous performers here, including Claire Bloom. In one nook, a poster/flyer survives and promotes the movies of a week long ago in 1935 when one of the films was Mutiny on the Bounty.
Yesterday I went to see Zathura here. The house lights dimmed, the previews of coming attractions came on, but the pre-film music that accompanies the “slide show” was still continuing to play and didn’t seem about to stop. I complained at the ticket booth, a phone call was made to the projectionist. The problem was corrected by the time I got back. Then, the feature came on, and the house lights came back on! Furious, I complained again, asking if I could catch the film at another of their auditoriums instead. Another showing was scheduled for twenty minues later. I asked, “Doesn’t anybody pay attention to what is going on in the auditoriums?” The girl answered snootily, “Well we have ONE person who is responsible for TWELVE theatres!” “That’s no excuse,” I said.
The building opened as a skating rink in 1884 and was converted to a theatre in 1885.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1955 film Killer’s Kiss available on a nice DVD, there are extended night scenes of the Times Square area and its theatres. One gets clear views of the Victoria with a large display for The Man Between, the Astor with Queen of Sheba, and the Embassy Newsreel Theatre. There are snippets of more. That part must have been shot around November of 1953.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1955 film Killer’s Kiss available on a nice DVD, there are extended night scenes of the Times Square area and its theatres. One gets clear views of the Victoria with a large display for The Man Between, the Astor with Queen of Sheba, and the Embassy Newsreel Theatre. There are snippets of more. That part must have been shot around November of 1953.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1955 film Killer’s Kiss available on a nice DVD, there are extended night scenes of the Times Square area and its theatres. One gets clear views of the Victoria with a large display for The Man Between, the Astor with Queen of Sheba, and the Embassy Newsreel Theatre. There are snippets of more. That part must have been shot around November of 1953.
Jim, almost all these theatres you mention have pages here on Cinema Treasures. You should post your valuable memories for each of those places. I am very interested.
Jim, you should post what you remember about Woonsocket Cinemas on its page here.
The Majestic ended its days as a movie theatre on May 17, 1971. At least that was the last day a newspaper ad appeared. The last films shown were a double bill of Patton and Mash. After that the theatre, having been sold to Trinity Repertory Company, was gutted and restructured, leaving almost nothing of its original interior architectural magnificence.
The Cinerama Theatre was twinned in 1974 and after twinning re-opened on Wednesday, June 26, 1974. The features first shown as a twin theatre were Chinatown and Claudine.
This theatre opened as the Showcase Cinemas 1-2-3 on Friday, June 28, 1974. The features on the three screens were The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and Lucille Ball in Mame. Over the years it kept growing, subdividing, stadiumizing.
I didn’t know where to make this query, but I just found a reference to a Third Avenue theatre called the Modern Playhouse. A 1937 review of the Hungarian film Aranyember talks of “a smoothly running and engaging picture in ‘Man of Gold,’ now at the Modern Playhouse in Third Avenue.” Where on Third Avenue was this theatre and did it have other names? I couldn’t find it listed.
Vito, it’s Martin Scorsese.
Veyoung, it’s Martin Scorsese.
The Honeymoon Killers, which I recently re-saw on DVD, really is a great, if queasy-making, film. It is absolutely not trash as one could easily assume. French director François Truffaut called it his favorite American movie ever. The DVD features fascinating extras including an interview with one-time director Leonard Kastle, who was a serious composer, including of opera. The use of Gustav Mahler’s symnphonic music as background in the film is both eerie and inspired. Performers Shirley Stoler and a sleazy-issimo Tony Lo Bianco are perfection. If you’ve never seen this movie, rent it or buy it. You’ll never forget it.
Martin Scorsese.
Here is a link to the Warwick Mall Cinemas that used to exist at the other end of the mall, adjacent to Bald Hill Road, until 1999.
John Ford’s The Quiet Man opened at the Capitol Theatre on August 21, 1952 and was reviewed the following day in the New York Times. I just found the review and it indicates the Capitol Theatre.
I’m also sick of the idiot “trivia slides” you have to put up with before the show, films that start 15 minutes after the announced times, and four or more previews of coming attractions, but then, it’s not only here, is it?