Hampton Arts Cinema

robboehm on November 25, 2010 at 10:47 am

Well, at least during the summer there was a sign saying the marquee was being repaired. But the last time I went by the sign was down. Perhaps in prep for the new marquee?

robboehm on October 21, 2010 at 3:35 pm

In a continued effort to upgrade the theatre the old marquee has been removed. I’m curious to see what will cover the gaping hole in the front of the building. I would presume they would then address the box office, refreshment stand area.

ptk1071 on November 12, 2008 at 4:10 pm

Hello I am writting a paper about this area at the turn of the century to about 1925 and I am particullary interested in the Hampton Arts building and the bulding that is now the westhampton steak house. If anyone has any images of these buildings during this time period I would greatly appreciate and e-mail
I would galdly give credit for any images provided.

Eric Friedmann on September 25, 2007 at 11:40 am

The theatre IS open. It has never closed.

Eric Friedmann on May 3, 2007 at 9:41 am

Chelydra, I remember Scarlett’s. I was a semi-regular there in the late ‘80’s before eventually switching to Marikesh on Main Street. That building (Scarlett’s) is now Westhampton Steakhouse. I still have yet to go there.

ericscrow2002 on April 6, 2006 at 5:46 am

I live in the West Hampton Beach area, and I am doing some reserch on the theatre too, and this information has been very helpful. To clear up some missing information:
The theatre has 2 screens now, and since the Synagogue has taken over the building, everything (Unless otherwise marked on the package) is kosher. The popcorn is great, matinee shows are 6 dollars, after 6PM the shows are 9 dollars, and tuesdays are 4 dollars for every show.
We expect renovation to happen soon (Possibly within this year, I hope :) ) and some ideas include adding 2 more screens, a downstairs bathroom, new seats, new walls (Because the old ones in the theatres are ripped) and a new candy stand/ticket booth. I’m not an offical spokesperson for this theatre, so what I say may change.
If any other reserchers need some info, or would like to give me some, please contact me at

Thanks everyone!

chelydra on November 9, 2004 at 8:08 am

But when Ritchie Wesley was running the place in the 1970s, there were plenty of sold-out nights, even in a huge single-screen auditorium in the dead of winter, and with his relatively adventurous movies. There were packed midnight shows (Rocky Horror mostly, but also some ancient scary movies). When Cineplex Odeon closed its doors – I think it was 2002 or early 2003, about a decade or so after they bought it – Wesley remarked that they hadn’t given much thought to the local residents' taste in movies, and just showed whatever came along.
Before Wesley’s renovations started (and before the arrival of cats), the place was kind of a disaster zone, with a terrible sound system echoing off cement walls, cold drafts in winter, and reports of rats scurrying around underfoot. By the late 1970s, it was pretty classy, with good free coffee and real butter on excellent fresh popcorn.
There was also a hippie bar next door, The Long Island Potato, with good live music. Together these places made Six Corners into a sort of cultural mecca (by Westhampton’s modest strandards).

chelydra on October 15, 2004 at 9:59 pm

I worked at the Hampton Arts for a year or so 1974-75, during one of its periodic renovations. The place had quite a unique history. Before the Hampton Arts went up, circa 1925-1930, movies were shown around the corner at Mechanics' Hall (later the Masonic Hall, then a nightclub called Scarlett’s). The original owner had no insurance, and not much money, so when it burned down, he rebuilt it himself! It was home-made, with all sorts of strange little nooks and crannies where you could see the chicken-wire-and-cement structure. While he was rebuilding, circa 1937, the new Main Street Theater opened (a modest mini-palace now known at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center) – and the Hampton Arts couldn’t compete, particularly in such a small town.

I think the place was abandoned for about fifteen years, then in the early 1950s it opened as a live summer stock theater called the Hampton Star, which lasted for a few seasons. After that, irt became a struggling movie house again – at which point it was rechristened the Hampton Arts (the most economical name change available, not requiring any new letters on the sign).

Around 1958, the place was bought by Joe Puma, an impressive old guy who also had something to do with the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and other such sophisticated and cosmopolitan enterprises.
When Joe Puma was running the place, it showed almost exclusively foreign films – Fellini, Bardot, and all that – with predictably tiny audiences, and with plenty of hostility from the very conservative and provincial year-round community, who thought it was undermining local morals. There were even art shows in the lobby, as well as free coffee.

After Puma died, around 170, his widow and stepson took over, and they managed to turn it into a semi-mainstream moviehouse – but it still retained its old eccentricity. They had to work hard to compete with the United Artists chain and were involved in a big lawsuit to break UA’s monopoly on movie distribution. Their usually low-budget renovations were done by local characters who had their own odd ideas about interior paneling and exterior clapboard siding. The one big extravagance was antique cast-iron seats, incredibly heavy, with deep red plush cushions – the balcony groaned under their weight and sagged a few inches, and there was a visible crack. But like everything else, it somehow held up – the original owner’s reconstruction may have been crude but nothing ever actually collapsed. The people who worked there tended to keep cats in the theater, and I used to let in anyone I knew for free on winter evenings when no one else was around. Our wages were abysmal; I survived on peanut M&M’s. The projectionist and I enjoyed blasting the soundtrack to The Harder They Come before every movie. Several of our local loonies used to hang out, stay warm, and help me change the marquee letters. My work there ended after my boss (the stepson, an entertainingly Napoleonic character) changed his mind every evening for about four weeks running about what color spots he wanted beaming down onto the screen between shows – each change of bulbs meant another trip carrying dozens of bulbs down a narrow catwalk with no headroom, and nothing but flimsey ceiling panels between me and the cast iron seats fifty feet below.

The place was “twinned” around 1980, and then sold to a big chain (Cineplex Odeon, I think), who predictably gave up on it a few years later. (I adopted one of the stray cats and named her Puma in honor of the late Joe. The best of the murals I’d painted for the walls were looted.) The last I heard, the Hampton Synagogue had taken over the property.