The manager told me that singer Jerry Vale was in the audience for the Buddy premiere. He had sung in a concert at the theatre a good number of years before.
Ads for the theatre often said “next to Public Market.” The building that was Public Market had contained, on the second floor, the concert hall called Music Hall. Music Hall shut after a 1905 fire. The market survived, after some building modifications, until 1955 when it was demolished.
Last night the Columbus Theatre, playing host to the Rhode Island International Film Festival, premiered the documentary film Buddy, by Cherry Arnold. The movie is about former Providence Major Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci, Jr., now serving time in prison on a criminal racketeering conviction. Ironically, when Cianci was mayor, he had tried to shut down the Columbus Theatre, which was then a porno house, and wanted to turn it into a high school for the performing arts. Here is a Providence Journal article reporting on the premiere.
March of the Penguins has been here for over three weeks now. Films play one, two, three weeks usually and there are generally two different films with separate admissions. No more repertory. Revivals are extremely rare, except sometimes for the weekend midnight shows. After movies leave here, they often play at the Cable Car Cinema on South Main Street. The Cable Car is pretty much a move-over house but with occasional exclusive first-runs, like the French Happily Ever After which is there now. Some of the Avon movies do play elsewhere in Rhode Island, usually at the Jane Pickens Theatre in Newport. It too is an art house, and some of their shows are simultaneous with the ones at the Avon.
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.
The manager told me that singer Jerry Vale was in the audience for the Buddy premiere. He had sung in a concert at the theatre a good number of years before.
When this was the Burrillville Theatre, a revival run of Gone With the Wind began here on Thanksgiving Day in 1969.
Ads for the theatre often said “next to Public Market.” The building that was Public Market had contained, on the second floor, the concert hall called Music Hall. Music Hall shut after a 1905 fire. The market survived, after some building modifications, until 1955 when it was demolished.
Last night the Columbus Theatre, playing host to the Rhode Island International Film Festival, premiered the documentary film Buddy, by Cherry Arnold. The movie is about former Providence Major Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci, Jr., now serving time in prison on a criminal racketeering conviction. Ironically, when Cianci was mayor, he had tried to shut down the Columbus Theatre, which was then a porno house, and wanted to turn it into a high school for the performing arts. Here is a Providence Journal article reporting on the premiere.
March of the Penguins has been here for over three weeks now. Films play one, two, three weeks usually and there are generally two different films with separate admissions. No more repertory. Revivals are extremely rare, except sometimes for the weekend midnight shows. After movies leave here, they often play at the Cable Car Cinema on South Main Street. The Cable Car is pretty much a move-over house but with occasional exclusive first-runs, like the French Happily Ever After which is there now. Some of the Avon movies do play elsewhere in Rhode Island, usually at the Jane Pickens Theatre in Newport. It too is an art house, and some of their shows are simultaneous with the ones at the Avon.
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.