RKO Dyker Theatre
525 86th Street,
Brooklyn,
NY
11209
525 86th Street,
Brooklyn,
NY
11209
3 people
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OOpps, sorry, here is that last photo link again:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencta/21103549/
Four photographs I took in June 2006 of the RKO Dyker Theater:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencta/211033531/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencta/211034337/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencta/211034756/
http;//www.flickr.com/photos/kencta/211035349/
The RKO Dyker Theatre opened on Nov. 26, 1926.
How much VM? Plenty, evidently, all over the RKO circuit. But tell me: what was Howard Keel doing on second-billing at the Albee? The date was early summer, 1959; but the NY Times doesn’t list “Floods of Fear” at all in its Directory. Leonard Maltin identifies the film as a “British” release. We don’t need to worry about hyper-Demetrification at RKO: Lana and Keel likely kicked VM off the nabe screens a week or two later.
To promote his new film “The Ladies Man,” Jerry Lewis appeared on stage at this theater on July 13, 1961.
The domed ceiling is in the Modell’s Sporting Goods Store. Go upstairs and you will be able to see it, as well as part of the original proscenium, that you would never have been able to see so close up.
By the way Modell’s also occupies another former RKO Brooklyn Theatre, The RKO Kenmore on Church Avenue.
When I was a youngster, I remember that the Dyker theater always showed what the Benson was playing.Since neither my parents or myself ever liked going to the Benson, we would go to the Dyker instead.Parking was fairly easy back then- not the nightmare it is in Bay Ridge now,so we always got a spot near the theater. I also remember the police station right next to the theater.This was a clean and well maintained theater. There was no seperate entrance from the lobby to the orchestra, and there was also a balcony that was usually closed except for Friday and Saturday night.There was a domed celing and a fireplace near the top entrance to the balcony wich was done in marble.I remember seeing “The Fabulous World of Jules Verne' there with my mother. This was a teriffic movie that combined animation, graphics, painted sets, model work and live actors in a unique visual style. It still is one of my all time favorites.I also remember seeing the great Kaiju{ Japanese Monster Movie} "King Kong VS Godzilla” with my father and younger brother. I got to go there quite frequently and saw many fine films here including “From Russia With Love”,“Father Goose”, “How to Murder Your Wife”, “The Battle of the Bulge”, Bonnie and Clyde" with “Bullitt” and more monster movies that I can shake a stick at. The theater started to go downhill in the early 70s. When I went to see “Carwash” here I knew that pretty soon it would close.The building still exists today and although I have never been inside any of the stores that occupy it. I understand that the domed celing still exists. Maybe someday when I have nothing better to do….
Warren—
Thanks for the post in response to my comments about “Laffzapoppin” on the NYC Strand page.
This film opened at the Rivoli on Christmas Day, 1941, with special showing for Servicemen-and-women that cheerless holiday season. At the time I was in the oven, so to speak. But seven or so years later, the RKO circuit offered a revival of “Hellzapoppin” with an on-stage appearances of Olsen and Johnson which my folks took me to at the Dyker. It must have been a repeat of the “Stage Party” mentioned in your ad. The date might have coincided with publicity for O&J’s “Laffzapoppin,” which opened on 30 June ‘49 at Madison Sq Garden with “twenty horses, seventy-five dead ducks, a gorilla, a stork, and a polar bear” and which played in a truncated version at the Strand the following November.
We sat close to the front for the “Party” and I remember it as a silly affair in which O&J invited audience members on to the stage and challenged them to do crazy things such as chase screeching chickens and swallow live goldfish (I recall that distinctly, I think). Advance word assured my parents that children could take part in the shenanagans, too, but when we got there, management invoked a state law prohibiting children below a certain age from stepping on stage.
My dad joined a long line of adults willing to submit to the clowning (he was always game for that sort of thing), but after a few rounds of participation by others, the show ended and he returned to his seat without a chance to perform. The “Party” was a big disappointment. And I don’t remember the film being as funny as my folks had said it would be.
A photo of the site of the RKO Dyker was posted today on the Bay Ridge Blog, www.bayridgebrooklyn.blogspot.com
I believe I read someplace that Bob Hope played vaudeville at the Dyker before he hit it big on Broadway. frankie from Brooklyn
Warren— thanks a million for those photos. I thought I’d never see the interior of the Dyker again! The left-hand side of the auditorium shown constituted the Children’s Section, where I held forth on many a Saturday afternoon in the early ‘50s (Wednesday afternoons in the summer).
The exterior photo clearly dates from after the ‘73 Academy Awards presentation in March '74. I’d guess that the interior photo predates the summer of 1951. In my post of 10 March '05 above, I tried to describe the “modernization” that took place around that time. I recall that the drapery came down and the walls were repainted in lime green. Or so I believe. What’s the source for the latter photo?
Yes, the side wall did sacrifice commercial space. But the busiest section of 86 Street was (and remains with increasing intensity) between 4th and 5th Avenues, with the old RKO Shore Road smack in the middle (perhaps another reason why that theater was profitably sold and converted to retail space). Activity tapered off east of 5th Avenue. Fifth Avenue, in any case, sustained tha major commerce as it rain from Downtown to 86 Street, diminishing after that.
Thanks again
This double bill seems so raunchy, but I guess now it would be rated PG.
View link
I recall seeing The Way We Were at the Dyker with my girlfriend at the time. It was a nice clean theatre,as were all the theatres in Bay Ridge at that time. I also liked the Harbor on 4th Ave. I was so saddened whenever I heard of one of them closing. It seems a pity todays kids can’t see all these great movie houses of our day.
Here’s a photo of the Dyker in 1971. It comes from Brian Merlis and Lee A. Rosenzweig, “Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton: A Photographic Journey†(Brooklyn: Israelowitz Publishing, 2000), p. 155.
View link
The theater closed exactly twenty-eight years ago.
The sounds of construction also interfered with my viewing of a double-bill comprising “Titanic†and “Destination Gobi†on the last day of its run in Summer ’53. I quickly deduced, however, that they came from backstage as builders were mounting a new Miracle Mirror wide screen. Since that prospect pleased me, I didn’t complain. Instead, I kept peering at glimmers of light from beneath the old screen for hints about how big the new screen might be. The next day I returned for the opening of a 3-D schlocker, “The Maze,†and registered profound disappointment at how small it had turned out. I had all along wanted Cinerama to come to Bay Ridge, and now had to settle for a viewing surface that didn’t even fill the proscenium. How could the newspaper ads lie as they did?
My attendance at the Dyker dropped off dramatically when, thanks to subway tokens, I grew wings and began searching the metropolitan area for more sophisticated fare than RKO offered. I believe the last film I saw there might have been “The Bad Seed†in Fall ’56. Advertised as “For Mature Audiences Only; No One under 16 Admitted,†it prompted me at the age of fourteen to darken the hair (the single one) on my upper lip and on my sideburns (irregular at best) and to drop my voice an octave before buying a ticket (I might’ve looked like Salvador Dali). I then proceeded to the balcony beneath the theater’s recessed dome to smoke cigarettes in the glow of the screen. I see from the post by Jody527 that the Dyker closed for good on the night of my thirty-fifth birthday. By then I was too busy raising a family to notice.
I believe I first attended the RKO Dyker in early spring, 1946, when my maternal grandmother and one of my aunts took me to see “The Bells of St. Mary’s.†I was approaching my fourth birthday. A few months earlier, my grandfather had shepherded my mom and me to see that picture at Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas show. As generous as he was gregarious, he was also something of a self-styled socialist who thought it good to avoid corporate middlemen at all costs. Accordingly, he brought us to the side doors of RCMH on E 51 Street, timing our arrival to occur during a break in the show, whence he slipped a white-gloved usher a five spot that took us directly into the Grand Foyer. (Considering prices in those days, he could have gotten us in through the box office with something less than three dollars, no?) His word of mouth about the film no doubt prompted my grandmother and aunt to take me to see it at the Dyker during its run there.
I remember two things about the event that supplemented my yet more vivid recall of the show at RCMH. First, I wondered whether Bing Crosby spent his entire life acting out the same words behind screens at different theaters for our viewing pleasure, and how did it happen that he and the rest of the cast looked black-and-white instead of normal? And second, I wondered why all those women in the picture wore dark robes with such oddly starched headdresses, a feature that had evidently escaped my attention at the Showplace of the Nation. Some years later, I would get in thick with the nuns who taught me at St. Anselm’s School a few blocks away, and who told me that I would lose my soul if I continued to patronize such Legion of Decency Class II (Objectionable in Part) movies as “The Greatest Show on Earth†and “Singin’ in the Rain.â€
That visit to the Dyker initiated a childhood pattern of re-seeing certain films that I had already seen at first-run Manhattan theaters. My parents enjoyed moviesâ€"my dad went for comedies and historical spectacles with heroes clad in tights or togas and my mom for musicals and serious drama with academy awards displayed in the adsâ€"and took me frequently to mid-town to see the latest stuff (it helped that a family friend could provide passes for the State, Capitol, Criterion, and all MGM openers). Someone else would take me a second time to see a film that had particularly enthralled me (“Joan of Arc†had sparked my unquenchable interest in the fifteenth century). My parents often took me to the Dyker to ferret out the rest. I remember enjoying there “Sinbad the Sailor,†“Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House,†“Gentleman’s Agreement,†“Humoresque,†and Hitchcock’s “Under Capricorn†(the last of which so deeply compelled me with its gothic obsessions that the family began to tisk-tisk).
The Dyker managed to keep itself looking spiffy and well-run during those years, with several state-of-the-art facelifts. I remember that its earlier cream-colored traveler curtain soon gave way to a billowing green traveler curtain that opened with impressive effect. The cream-colored plaster walls came also to be repainted in pale green, which sounds awful but somehow complemented the auditorium’s spare Palladian design. In the late ‘40s and throughout the Korean War years, performances began with an image of the American flag waving in the breeze, accompanied by a rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner†for which the audience stood (an echo, perhaps, of live London theater through the 1960s when curtain calls ended with cast and patrons singing “God Save the Queenâ€). By the entrance, a small table offered blue-paper programs with the cast and credits of both features, studio photos of the movie stars, and publicity about coming attractions. At some point in early summer ’51, the big old white-letters-on-black-background marquee, framed with blinking yellow lights, was replaced by a sleek black-letters-on-white marquee, framed with red and blue neon tubing. The various display cases were modernized and enlarged, and the box-office was moved from the lobby (where it had resembled box-offices on legit B’way) to a street-side glass-fronted cubicle. If I’m correct, this happened when a Loretta Young-Joseph Cotton froth called “Half Angel†played there. I remember the sounds of construction interfering with the movie.
Correction the last movie ever to play at the RKO Dyker was not Telefon it was the Domino Principle. The date and time was Tuesday April 26, 1977 at 10:00pm. We bought the last three tickets ever sold at the RKO Dyker which I still have. Admission price was $3.50. We waited outside the ticket office till about 10:10pm, at that point we were told to advance to the window beacuse they were closing the ticket office. We also bought the last two tickets to the Harbor theatre, the date and time was Tuesday June 26, 1979 at 8:00pm the movie was Norma Rae.
The last movie shown was Telefon. They had a non-Disney fairy tale cartoon for the matinee, and Telefon was shown that evening.
The RKO Dyker Theatre’s address is 525 86th Street and it seated 2142 people.