The Gaiety opened on September 14, 1914. The Providence Journal reported the event:
“A most attractive little house is the Gaiety, simple in its interior design, yet having sufficient character to make it seem cosy and homelike. The walls of both balcony and orchestra floors are tinged a warm cream color and the proscenium opening is in gold and white. Tapestry hangings at either side relieve the bareness of the walls. The entire house is built of brick, steel, and cement. (…) The audience broke out in applause as the pianist took his seat and the first picture was flashed on the screen.”
Roger Brett in his book Temples of Illusion remarked:
“The Gaiety had no real stage, but unlike earlier movie houses which had been converted from existing buildings, it was a true theater. While much smaller than the other theaters erected at this time and having only 700 seats, it did boast of a balcony. Built and owned by Ottenburg and Kahan, managed by Tom Soriero, it exhibited movies pure and simple; no vaudeville acts, not even illustrated songs.”
The end comes for two venerable theatres Providence theatres: Keith’s and the Westminster. The following elegy was written by Roger Brett in his 1976 book Temples of Illusion, a history of downtown Providence theatres:
“In the late spring of 1948, the grand old theater of Westminster Street was torn down to provide space for a store. This was the theater built in 1878 as Low’s Opera House; renamed Keith’s Opera House and then Keith’s Theater. It was the house (…) whose stage had held the brightest stars of Keith vaudeville’s most brilliant day.
“Late in 1949, as winter close in once more, the next oldest theatre in the city got the crowbar and wrecking ball treatment.
The end comes for two venerable theatres Providence theatres: Keith’s and the Westminster. The following elegy was written by Roger Brett in his 1976 book Temples of Illusion, a history of downtown Providence theatres:
“In the late spring of 1948, the grand old theater of Westminster Street was torn down to provide space for a store. This was the theater built in 1878 as Low’s Opera House; renamed Keith’s Opera House and then Keith’s Theater. It was the house (…) whose stage had held the brightest stars of Keith vaudeville’s most brilliant day.
“Late in 1949, as winter close in once more, the next oldest theatre in the city got the crowbar and wrecking ball treatment.
All the city directories I’ve consulted list the address as 116 North Main Street. North Main Street in Pawtucket later became known as Roosevelt Avenue.
The Providence Journal Almanac from 1914 gives the seating capacity of this theatre as 1460. Proscenium: 36x36 feet; footlights to back wall, 60 feet; between side walls, 70 feet.
The theatre was not a great movie palace, just a well-liked and economical place to see pictures in the Clyde/Riverpoint section of West Warwick. Here is a photo of Thornton’s as it was being demolished.
Although this is listed as having been called the Palace in past decades (i.e. the 1920s and later), it never called the “Bomes Theatre,” to my knowledge. Samuel Bomes was the founder and owner, as with the Hollywood in East Providence and the Liberty in Providence. “Bomes Theatre” carved over the entrance signifies this was a Bomes Theatre.
In October of 1928 when the Frank Borzage film Street Angel , with Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor, was playing here, the Royal took out an Italian-language ad in the weekly “Eco del Rhode Island” in order to attract local Italians to the film. The silent movie is set in Naples, and Gaynor plays a “street angel,” which was a euphemism for “prostitute.” The Royal stood between two Italian enclaves in Providence: Federal Hill and Silver Lake.
Vesti la giubba!!!
An opera at a drive-in? Are you kidding? No, signore! The Pike showed Pagliacci on May 23 & 24 of 1951. This version starred Gina Lollobrigida and Tito Gobbi. An accompanying featurette was great bass-baritone Ezio Pinza in Rehearsal . The program was promoted in the R.I. Italian-American weekly “The Italian Echo” with an Italian-language ad.
On October 12 & 13 of 1951 the Cranston Auto Theatre was showing an unexpected program for a drive-in, De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief . The Italian movie had had a number of successful little runs at an art house in the area, the Avon, and the Uptown in Providence. But a drive-in? And subtitled? I don’t believe the distributor was circulating dubbed prints then or later. The program was even advertised in the Italian-American weekly “The Italian Echo.” The accompanying film on the double bill was a B-western (!) called California Passage. Certainly unusual.
Movies continued to be shown here through 1914. The theatre finally shut down on January 16 of 1915. Roger Brett writes in Temples of Illusion:
“The final performance by the Empire Stock Company had signaled the end of this large and popular theater. Old age or failing attendance were not the cause of its demise, but rather city planning.
"With traffic increasing as autos outnumbered horses, it was discovered that the city lacked a broad cross-town thoroughfare to link Washington, Westminster,and Weybosset Streets…"
"The Empire Theater facing Westminster Street, Central Baptist Church facing Weybosset Street and Warner’s Lane, which meandered along side them, was exactly where the highway department proposed to establish this link in the city’s traffic system.”
This photo shows the front of the Empire and, drawn in, the path that the Empire Street extension would take and result in the theatre’s destruction in 1915.
It must be! Many thanks. A while after it had opened in New York in August of 1947, Vittorio De Sica’s film Shoe Shine played at the Little and was in its sixth week at the time of publication of the 1948 Film Daily Yearbook where I saw a distributor ad (Lopert Films) which mentioned this theatre and others where that film had been booked. That shattering neo-realist movie was about the aftermath of World War II and a juvenile prison in Rome. I’m very much interested in the history of “early” exhibition of foreign-language films in the U.S. and older, often forgotten, art houses.
Yes, the Empire did run movies, but not for very long. Roger Brett in his book Temples of Illusion wrote:
“The Empire had a summer stock company for ten of its fifteen year existence, the exceptions being the summer of 1910 when the theater played its only season of vaudeville, and its final summer of 1914 when movies were exhibited.”
The Empire had been built in 1899 and was demolished around 1914 to make way for an extension of Empire Street.
The Italian film Anna also played here in that “final” April of 1953. It starred the luscious Silvana Mangano of Bitter Rice fame. Here she played a woman with a tainted past who decides to become a nun. There is a famous song/dance scene in the movie when Mangano sings “"El negro Zumbon,” a ‘bajon’ sung in Spanish. It became a popular song hit even in America. The movie was dubbed for wider release, and appeared in that version here.
The Italian film Anna played here in May of 1953. It starred the luscious Silvana Mangano of Bitter Rice fame. Here she played a woman with a tainted past who decides to become a nun. There is a famous song/dance scene in the movie when Mangano sings “"El negro Zumbon,” a ‘bajon’ sung in Spanish that became a popular song hit even in America. The movie was dubbed for wider release, especially for drive-in showings such as this one. It had played the now-closed Carlton in Providence about a month earlier.
In his book Temples of Illusion Roger Brett writes of the Imperial’s history:
“The Imperial Theater was large, handsome and well designed. It was one of the best ever built in town and it opened [September 22, 1902] with none other than The Four Cohans (including George M.) in their hit musical comedy The Governor’s Son. Its beginnings could not have been more promising, yet it was born under a hex and, despite several fresh starts, could not escape its fate. Like a high-born derelict, it wound up on skid row as E. M. Loew’s Capitol Theater, a ‘scratch-house’ if there ever was one….
“Impressive as it was on the inside, the Imperial was decidedly unimperial on the Cathedral Square façade. Above the lobby and two flanking shops, were the bachelor apartments, completely separated from the auditorium by a fire wall. They rose five floors high and because they were apartments, they were provided with fire escapes. The entire front of this building was, in all probability, the largest jungle of fire escapes and ladders that have ever defaced the streets of Providence. They looked as if they had been erected by a demented crew of iron workers who didn’t know when to stop.”
Federico Fellini’s then-scandalous La Dolce Vita had its first R.I. showings here starting in September of 1961. It seems to have done very well, and the booking of a foreign-film in its original language version with subtitles was unusual for the place (although there was some history of the theatre occasionally presenting Italian-language films on slow nights for the Italian-speaking community.) Another Mastroianni film, Casanova ‘70, also later played here in a subtitled version sometime in 1965.
Actually, the theatre lingered on until the very end of the month with The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima and a double bill of The Mummy and The Mummy’s Curse. Peter Pan was announced for a return visit, but no ads appeared beginning around May 1st. The theatre had closed for good.
In The Saturday Evening Post of June 23, 1945 there was a long and fascinating article that discussed vaudeville at the Park and its owner/impresario Arthur Darman, dubbed “little Napoleon.” The article is entitled “Book me at Woonsocket,” by T. E. Murphy. It was subtitled “One man’s curious passion for making pets of vaudevillians has transformed yesterday’s ‘stinkeroo’ into a paradise for performers.”
The piece paints a picture of Mr. Darman as a generous, strong-willed, civic minded person, who had spent great sums ($150,000) to beautify the Park and the backstage areas used by performers. He would wine and dine then, do all he could to get them to like the Park and want to return, despite the fact that vaudeville at this time, the mid-‘40s, was not a real passion for citizens of Woonsocket.
Among the man’s eccentricities: he built an expensive vent system to drive the smell of popcorn away from the seating area, and he kept a cooled downstairs vault for chocolate so that it wouldn’t melt. Several color photos appear in the article, but mostly of performers and one of Mr. Darman at. There are no shots of the auditorum or theatre exterior.
Clarification. In an earlier entry I note that this had been called the “Bomes Theatre” at one time. I no longer believe so. The “Bomes Theatre” inscription above the theatre front refers to the original builder/owner Samuel Bomes. Like his Liberty on Broad Street in Providence, this was simply a Bomes Theatre. As far as I have been able to determine, it had always been called the Hollywood up to its 1959 closing. A January 1996 article in the Providence newspaper talks about how the empty house had been deteriorating for 15 years. It continues to remain closed, minus the marquee that had stayed attached for a time. It used to be used as a furniture warehouse by the owner, Henry Rose, owner of Rose Furniture Company in East Providence.
No, the Star under Mr. Allen’s tutelage was a place in Hoyle Square, Providence, at Westminster and Dean Streets. It had a fire in 1899, and had nothing to do with movies, not yet arrived. Besides the Star in Cranston and the one in Providence, there were theatres of that name in Natick and Pascoag and Pawtucket.
The Gaiety opened on September 14, 1914. The Providence Journal reported the event:
“A most attractive little house is the Gaiety, simple in its interior design, yet having sufficient character to make it seem cosy and homelike. The walls of both balcony and orchestra floors are tinged a warm cream color and the proscenium opening is in gold and white. Tapestry hangings at either side relieve the bareness of the walls. The entire house is built of brick, steel, and cement. (…) The audience broke out in applause as the pianist took his seat and the first picture was flashed on the screen.”
Roger Brett in his book Temples of Illusion remarked:
“The Gaiety had no real stage, but unlike earlier movie houses which had been converted from existing buildings, it was a true theater. While much smaller than the other theaters erected at this time and having only 700 seats, it did boast of a balcony. Built and owned by Ottenburg and Kahan, managed by Tom Soriero, it exhibited movies pure and simple; no vaudeville acts, not even illustrated songs.”
The end comes for two venerable theatres Providence theatres: Keith’s and the Westminster. The following elegy was written by Roger Brett in his 1976 book Temples of Illusion, a history of downtown Providence theatres:
“In the late spring of 1948, the grand old theater of Westminster Street was torn down to provide space for a store. This was the theater built in 1878 as Low’s Opera House; renamed Keith’s Opera House and then Keith’s Theater. It was the house (…) whose stage had held the brightest stars of Keith vaudeville’s most brilliant day.
“Late in 1949, as winter close in once more, the next oldest theatre in the city got the crowbar and wrecking ball treatment.
“The gaudy old house that had opened as the Westminster Musée and Menagerie with variety acts, animals, and freaks on display in 1886, and had become known as the Sink, the city’s most famous burlesque house, made way for a parking lot.
“In their last years when they were known as the Empire and the Bijou, the two houses had shown second-run and reissued films, usually with no more than a handful of old derelicts in attendance. Unlike today, there was no great interest in old movies and it is doubtful that more than a few dozen classic film fans like myself went in these theaters for any other reason than to escape the cold or to sleep. However, it was in the Empire (née Keith’s) that I was first introduced to the Little Caesar of Edward G. Robinson, and The Prisoner of Zenda of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Ronald Colman. And it was at the Bijou (née Westminster and Sink) that I was exposed to Eddie Cantor and a bevy of platinum blondes in The Kid from Spain, and to Boris Karloff in the original Frankenstein of 1931. Now, it was no longer possible for a downtown movie theatre to pay its own way if it were anything less than first run, and so, down they came.”
The end comes for two venerable theatres Providence theatres: Keith’s and the Westminster. The following elegy was written by Roger Brett in his 1976 book Temples of Illusion, a history of downtown Providence theatres:
“In the late spring of 1948, the grand old theater of Westminster Street was torn down to provide space for a store. This was the theater built in 1878 as Low’s Opera House; renamed Keith’s Opera House and then Keith’s Theater. It was the house (…) whose stage had held the brightest stars of Keith vaudeville’s most brilliant day.
“Late in 1949, as winter close in once more, the next oldest theatre in the city got the crowbar and wrecking ball treatment.
“The gaudy old house that had opened as the Westminster Musée and Menagerie with variety acts, animals, and freaks on display in 1886, and had become known as the Sink, the city’s most famous burlesque house, made way for a parking lot.
“In their last years when they were known as the Empire and the Bijou, the two houses had shown second-run and reissued films, usually with no more than a handful of old derelicts in attendance. Unlike today, there was no great interest in old movies and it is doubtful that more than a few dozen classic film fans like myself went in these theaters for any other reason than to escape the cold or to sleep. However, it was in the Empire (née Keith’s) that I was first introduced to the Little Caesar of Edward G. Robinson, and The Prisoner of Zenda of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Ronald Colman. And it was at the Bijou (née Westminster and Sink) that I was exposed to Eddie Cantor and a bevy of platinum blondes in The Kid from Spain, and to Boris Karloff in the original Frankenstein of 1931. Now, it was no longer possible for a downtown movie theatre to pay its own way if it were anything less than first run, and so, down they came.”
The 1919 R.I. directory lists a Bijou Theatre for Manville but no address. I do not know if it was the same theatre as this one.
A 1919 Pawtucket city directory lists a theatre at this address called the Scenic Theatre.
All the city directories I’ve consulted list the address as 116 North Main Street. North Main Street in Pawtucket later became known as Roosevelt Avenue.
The Providence Journal Almanac from 1914 gives the seating capacity of this theatre as 1460. Proscenium: 36x36 feet; footlights to back wall, 60 feet; between side walls, 70 feet.
The theatre was not a great movie palace, just a well-liked and economical place to see pictures in the Clyde/Riverpoint section of West Warwick. Here is a photo of Thornton’s as it was being demolished.
Although this is listed as having been called the Palace in past decades (i.e. the 1920s and later), it never called the “Bomes Theatre,” to my knowledge. Samuel Bomes was the founder and owner, as with the Hollywood in East Providence and the Liberty in Providence. “Bomes Theatre” carved over the entrance signifies this was a Bomes Theatre.
The exact address of the Gaiety was 226 Weybosset Street.
In October of 1928 when the Frank Borzage film Street Angel , with Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor, was playing here, the Royal took out an Italian-language ad in the weekly “Eco del Rhode Island” in order to attract local Italians to the film. The silent movie is set in Naples, and Gaynor plays a “street angel,” which was a euphemism for “prostitute.” The Royal stood between two Italian enclaves in Providence: Federal Hill and Silver Lake.
Vesti la giubba!!!
An opera at a drive-in? Are you kidding? No, signore! The Pike showed Pagliacci on May 23 & 24 of 1951. This version starred Gina Lollobrigida and Tito Gobbi. An accompanying featurette was great bass-baritone Ezio Pinza in Rehearsal . The program was promoted in the R.I. Italian-American weekly “The Italian Echo” with an Italian-language ad.
On October 12 & 13 of 1951 the Cranston Auto Theatre was showing an unexpected program for a drive-in, De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief . The Italian movie had had a number of successful little runs at an art house in the area, the Avon, and the Uptown in Providence. But a drive-in? And subtitled? I don’t believe the distributor was circulating dubbed prints then or later. The program was even advertised in the Italian-American weekly “The Italian Echo.” The accompanying film on the double bill was a B-western (!) called California Passage. Certainly unusual.
Movies continued to be shown here through 1914. The theatre finally shut down on January 16 of 1915. Roger Brett writes in Temples of Illusion:
“The final performance by the Empire Stock Company had signaled the end of this large and popular theater. Old age or failing attendance were not the cause of its demise, but rather city planning.
"With traffic increasing as autos outnumbered horses, it was discovered that the city lacked a broad cross-town thoroughfare to link Washington, Westminster,and Weybosset Streets…"
"The Empire Theater facing Westminster Street, Central Baptist Church facing Weybosset Street and Warner’s Lane, which meandered along side them, was exactly where the highway department proposed to establish this link in the city’s traffic system.”
This photo shows the front of the Empire and, drawn in, the path that the Empire Street extension would take and result in the theatre’s destruction in 1915.
It must be! Many thanks. A while after it had opened in New York in August of 1947, Vittorio De Sica’s film Shoe Shine played at the Little and was in its sixth week at the time of publication of the 1948 Film Daily Yearbook where I saw a distributor ad (Lopert Films) which mentioned this theatre and others where that film had been booked. That shattering neo-realist movie was about the aftermath of World War II and a juvenile prison in Rome. I’m very much interested in the history of “early” exhibition of foreign-language films in the U.S. and older, often forgotten, art houses.
Yes, the Empire did run movies, but not for very long. Roger Brett in his book Temples of Illusion wrote:
“The Empire had a summer stock company for ten of its fifteen year existence, the exceptions being the summer of 1910 when the theater played its only season of vaudeville, and its final summer of 1914 when movies were exhibited.”
The Empire had been built in 1899 and was demolished around 1914 to make way for an extension of Empire Street.
The Italian film Anna also played here in that “final” April of 1953. It starred the luscious Silvana Mangano of Bitter Rice fame. Here she played a woman with a tainted past who decides to become a nun. There is a famous song/dance scene in the movie when Mangano sings “"El negro Zumbon,” a ‘bajon’ sung in Spanish. It became a popular song hit even in America. The movie was dubbed for wider release, and appeared in that version here.
The Italian film Anna played here in May of 1953. It starred the luscious Silvana Mangano of Bitter Rice fame. Here she played a woman with a tainted past who decides to become a nun. There is a famous song/dance scene in the movie when Mangano sings “"El negro Zumbon,” a ‘bajon’ sung in Spanish that became a popular song hit even in America. The movie was dubbed for wider release, especially for drive-in showings such as this one. It had played the now-closed Carlton in Providence about a month earlier.
In his book Temples of Illusion Roger Brett writes of the Imperial’s history:
“The Imperial Theater was large, handsome and well designed. It was one of the best ever built in town and it opened [September 22, 1902] with none other than The Four Cohans (including George M.) in their hit musical comedy The Governor’s Son. Its beginnings could not have been more promising, yet it was born under a hex and, despite several fresh starts, could not escape its fate. Like a high-born derelict, it wound up on skid row as E. M. Loew’s Capitol Theater, a ‘scratch-house’ if there ever was one….
“Impressive as it was on the inside, the Imperial was decidedly unimperial on the Cathedral Square façade. Above the lobby and two flanking shops, were the bachelor apartments, completely separated from the auditorium by a fire wall. They rose five floors high and because they were apartments, they were provided with fire escapes. The entire front of this building was, in all probability, the largest jungle of fire escapes and ladders that have ever defaced the streets of Providence. They looked as if they had been erected by a demented crew of iron workers who didn’t know when to stop.”
Federico Fellini’s then-scandalous La Dolce Vita had its first R.I. showings here starting in September of 1961. It seems to have done very well, and the booking of a foreign-film in its original language version with subtitles was unusual for the place (although there was some history of the theatre occasionally presenting Italian-language films on slow nights for the Italian-speaking community.) Another Mastroianni film, Casanova ‘70, also later played here in a subtitled version sometime in 1965.
Actually, the theatre lingered on until the very end of the month with The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima and a double bill of The Mummy and The Mummy’s Curse. Peter Pan was announced for a return visit, but no ads appeared beginning around May 1st. The theatre had closed for good.
In The Saturday Evening Post of June 23, 1945 there was a long and fascinating article that discussed vaudeville at the Park and its owner/impresario Arthur Darman, dubbed “little Napoleon.” The article is entitled “Book me at Woonsocket,” by T. E. Murphy. It was subtitled “One man’s curious passion for making pets of vaudevillians has transformed yesterday’s ‘stinkeroo’ into a paradise for performers.”
The piece paints a picture of Mr. Darman as a generous, strong-willed, civic minded person, who had spent great sums ($150,000) to beautify the Park and the backstage areas used by performers. He would wine and dine then, do all he could to get them to like the Park and want to return, despite the fact that vaudeville at this time, the mid-‘40s, was not a real passion for citizens of Woonsocket.
Among the man’s eccentricities: he built an expensive vent system to drive the smell of popcorn away from the seating area, and he kept a cooled downstairs vault for chocolate so that it wouldn’t melt. Several color photos appear in the article, but mostly of performers and one of Mr. Darman at. There are no shots of the auditorum or theatre exterior.
Clarification. In an earlier entry I note that this had been called the “Bomes Theatre” at one time. I no longer believe so. The “Bomes Theatre” inscription above the theatre front refers to the original builder/owner Samuel Bomes. Like his Liberty on Broad Street in Providence, this was simply a Bomes Theatre. As far as I have been able to determine, it had always been called the Hollywood up to its 1959 closing. A January 1996 article in the Providence newspaper talks about how the empty house had been deteriorating for 15 years. It continues to remain closed, minus the marquee that had stayed attached for a time. It used to be used as a furniture warehouse by the owner, Henry Rose, owner of Rose Furniture Company in East Providence.
Alas, I can’t yet ascertain whether this theatre, which came down in the 1910s to make way for a street extension, ever showed movies or not.
No, the Star under Mr. Allen’s tutelage was a place in Hoyle Square, Providence, at Westminster and Dean Streets. It had a fire in 1899, and had nothing to do with movies, not yet arrived. Besides the Star in Cranston and the one in Providence, there were theatres of that name in Natick and Pascoag and Pawtucket.