West End Pussycat Cinema
75 Causeway Street,
Boston,
MA
02114
75 Causeway Street,
Boston,
MA
02114
2 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 50 of 51 comments
The North Station cinemas which Ron Newman mentions were store-front operations, similar to ancient store-front nickleodeons of the 1905-era. They operated in the 1980 period. I went into one of them once and it was definitely a XXX venue.
The Boston & Maine RR Historical Society recently ran a long time-line of events in B&M history spread over a number of issues of its magazine. If it had mentioned a cinema being built within the North Station, I would have instantly noticed, that’s for sure!
Funk & Wilcox were the architects of the entire Boston Garden/North Station complex (1928-1998).
Up until some time in the 1980s there was a very strange ‘North Station Cinema’ triplex, with two screens on one street and the third on a parallel street. (I think Friend and Portland streets?) All of the screens were porn theatres by the late 1970s, and I doubt they ever were anything else, but I could be wrong.
I’ve found a reference to a Massachusetts corporation called the North Station Theatre Company being dissolved in 1934. The fact that the company had existed doesn’t indicate that they ever actually got their theater open, of course, or that they didn’t. If they did get the place open, it might have continued operating under other management even after the original company was dissolved, or it might have just been closed down after only a year or two of operation.
The thing that most interested me about the Bridgemen’s magazine item was that the theater was to be designed by Funk & Wilcox. I was searching the Internet to see if there were any theaters the firm had designed in addition to the five currently attributed to them at Cinema Treasures, and the North Station project was the only one I found.
If the magazine’s report that the theater was to cost $150,000 was correct it would have been a fairly large building, if built at 1932 prices. The reported cost might have been a mistake, though. If it was to be only a small theater inside the station, maybe the cost was supposed to be $15,000. Those old magazines are full of typos.
I wonder if it was actually built. The new (at the time) North Station dates to about 1927 or so. It had a long concourse, as Ian states, which went clear westward to the Manger (Madison) Hotel. I was in this station in the 1940s and especially the 1950s, often, and there was no movie theater there then. It probably would have been a “newsreel” theater, similar to the South Station Theatre. I have no memory of it, nor do I recall reading about it in any of the local “railfan” publications. I think that if there had been a little theater in there that it would have been mentioned in Donald King’s book (he passed through North Station often in the 1930s and 1940s.) As Ian says, when they removed about half of the tracks on the west side of the station circa-1960, the west half of the station concourse was removed also.
I’ve no real idea, but I’d imagine it was gone by the 50’s and certainly by the time the B&M RR cut the number of tracks in half at North Station and gave over much of the outside platform areas to parking lots. The old North Station (from the 20’s to the 50’s) had quite an extensive concourse, with various shops, waiting rooms, restaurants, etc. and most of these were closed off to the public or significantly reduced after B&M inter-city rail ceased in the 60’s.
I would guess that the cinema was probably reconfigured into retail space or other uses so long ago that there would have been no trace of it in the station in the years I went there (80’s-90’s.)
Ian, where was it in the old North Station, and what was it used for by the time the station (and Boston Garden) were demolished?
Joe, that was a little cinema that was actually IN the North Station building. Like the South Station Theatre, it was a smallish space that catered to the throngs of railway riders.
The original owner of the Lancaster Theatre was a 1900 Harvard graduate named Kenneth Sherburne. In a 1921 volume containing autobiographical material from the class of 1900’s members, Sherburne’s section includes these lines: “…in 1916 I built and am still operating the Lancaster Theatre in Boston. It has not been a howling success financially so far, but is coming along as well as could be expected. It keeps me busy seven days a week, and is the best fun I have ever had.”
This Lancaster’s age precludes it from being the proposed theater mentioned in a 1932 issue of The Bridgemen’s Magazine, a trades union journal. The item said “Boston — North Station Theatre Co., c/o Boston & Maine Ry. Co., North Station, bids in April, 1 story, brick theatre, at end of concourse at North Station, Causeway St. $150000. Funk & Wilcox, 26 Pemberton Sq., archts.“ Does anyone know if this theater was built, and if so what it was called? It would have been in the same neighborhood as the West End Cinema, which was about two blocks from North Station.
A list of around 50 Pussycat Theaters was published today on the San Diego Reader site – View link
The West End Pussycat and its Boston sister Stuart theater were run by reputed mob boss Mickey Zaffarano of the NYC/Times Square Pussycat. Reciting from the U.S. Department of Justice Report “Organized Crime Involvement in Pornography†(June 8, 1977), “Major pornography figure Michael Zaffarano is said to have connections with the pornography business in Boston. His brother-in-law, Anthony Carl Mascolo, received financial backing from Zaffarano in January 1976 in order to open two pornographic theaters in Boston. They are known as the Pussycat Cinema 1 and the Pussycat West End Cinema.â€
“During a raid at the West End Cinema in January 1977, detectives found secret records in a hidden compartment reflecting that part of the gross receipts were being skimmed. As a result of the raids, Mascolo had been arrested twice and charged with violations of state obscenity statutes…Joseph Paladino allegedly receives a part of the gross of both Pussycat Cinemas.â€
Item from Boxoffice magazine, November 11, 1963, announcing the opening of the West End Cinema.
View link
(Article on lower right.)
Here is a June 1973 item from Boxoffice magazine:
http://tinyurl.com/yfy26bf
As the Lancaster Theatre, this house had an ad in the Boston Globe during Christmas week in 1921. Shows were continuous from 11 AM to 1050PM with double features which changed on Thursdays, i.e. 2 movies Mon-Wed, and 2 more on Thurs-Sat. Their motto was “The Best Picture House in Town”.
The Lancaster Theatre is visible on this 1928 map. It is on Lancaster Street, near the top right of the map.
(the map is quite large, so you may not want to click that link if you’re on a dialup connection.)
Around 1980 or 1981 a youngster who worked part-time in the mail room at my office told me that the previous Saturday night he and a friend had gone to an event at the Boston Garden which had been cancelled at the last minute. So they decided to go down the street to the West End Pussycat. He was astonished to find that the theatre was so full that they had to take seperate seats; moreover, most of the patrons there seemed to be couples on dates which further astonished him as he did not think that the Pussycat was a proper place to escort a young lady !
I went into this house around 1960 or so; it was still the Lancaster then. It was on the south side of Causeway St. with the entrance a few steps from the corner of Lancaster St. The right side of the auditorium was on Lancaster St. and was concrete or stucco, with some exit doors. It had a balcony and a rather shallow stage. The marquee definitely had an upright for the elevated trolley structure passing right thru it ! (Much like the Thompson Square Theatre not far away in Charlestown.) When the facade was rebuilt, it was an amazing transformation— it went from a plug-ugly nabe into a very contempo, sleek look. I went in there at least once after it became the West End Pussycat. They got good houses in there when first opened. The MGM Theatre Photograph and Report form for the Lancaster has a photo taken in May 1941. My Xerox copy is washed-out but you can see a plain brick facade with at least 2 floors of windows above; a store to the right; the elevated railway structure passing thru the east side of the marquee and “House Party Friday night” on both the marquee and a sign below the ticket booth. The Report says the house has been playing MGM product for over 10 years, the house is in Poor condition, and that it has 700 seats on the main floor and 550 in the balcony, total: 1250 seats. The February 1990 demolition date mentioned above sounds about right to me. I went by there during the demo process. The theatre had, at stage-left, a garage-type door on the sidewalk; similar to the same type of door at stage-right of the Strand in Quincy.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Lancaster Theatre opened on February 17, 1917. It was operated by E.M. Loew and “for most of its life was a late-run film house, ideal for travelers waiting for trains.”
King say that the elevated trolley tracks on Causeway Street “passed through a portion of its marquee”, but unfortunately he provides no photo.
In 1963, Loew gutted the Lancaster, demolished its lobby building, and constructed “a 30-foot-high all-glass entrance…in anticipation of the elevated train structure being demolished.” The new entrance “presented a view of a big abstract mural, designed by Normal Ives, which reflected the colors used in the interior’s black ceiling, white walls, and scarlet carpet.” The theatre got a new name, the West End Cinema.
In retrospect, this all seems like a grave miscalculation. E.M. Loew expected the elevated tracks to come down by 1965, but in fact they were not demolished until 2004. He renamed his theatre the West End, but by then West End neighborhood no longer existed; an “urban renewal” project had utterly obliterated it.
By the time I arrived in Boston in 1975, E.M. Loew’s West End Cinema was an X-rated movie house. I believe it became the West End Pussycat a couple of years later.
Demolished in February 1990, according to a Boston Globe article from March 18, 1990.
This neighborhood is nearly unrecognizable today, even to someone who last saw it a year ago. The Green Line elevated is totally gone, and so is the elevated I-93.
Sadly, the West End/Pussycat was demolished for a development that was supposed to happen a decade ago, and never did. The site is currently a parking lot. As the Big Dig winds down, I expect this and other small parking lots to become hot sites for new development.
Gerald—Sad to hear that the West End is gone. As you observe, significant changes for that area, and not all to the good. The Swedish films had an impact in their day.
I remember I, A Woman (the original) having a very long run there in the mid-60’s. Russ Meyer’s Vixen also played there for ages. I was too young to see these films but was aware of this ‘forbidden fruit’. I saw some porn filx there in the late 70’s when it was the Pussycat.
In July of 1969, according to newspaper ads, the E.M. Loew’s West End Cinema was showing I, A WOMAN PART II. This was a Swedish sex film of the kind very popular at the time. It was rated X. Reflecting the tastes of the moment, on that same date I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW), another Swedish sex film, was playing at the Symphony Cinemas I & II across town in Back Bay. The West End was located opposite the Hotel Madison at North Station. The whole area, near the terminus of the Big Dig traffic artery, continues to be completely restructured, and many of the buildings that were originally there are now gone, including this theatre.
I would love to see a list of all The Pussycat Cinemas it must have been a huge chain at one time. I rmember NY had a bunch of them.
Yes, the West End ended its days as the ‘West End Pussycat’. The Stuart Theater, on Washington Street, also was a Pussycat in its final years. (Was this a national chain of adult theaters?)
I saw some great movies there for the first time: Mastroianni in FAMILY DIARY, Teshigahara’s WOMAN IN THE DUNES and THE INSECT WOMAN,
the film about the Rome Olympics THE GRAND OLYMPICS. I remember that the angle of projection from the top of a high balcony was so steep that it caused “keystoning”, a noticeably trapezoidal image on the screen. It was, however, a refurbished, clean and characterful theatre. I remember a funny story as well. Once, before a showing of Ferreri’s THE CONJUGAL BED, a woman complained to the cashier when she found out that the Italian movie was going to have subtitles. “What do you mean, it’s in Italian. This is America. We speak English. Why do you show movies like that?”