The film Never on Sunday with Melina Mercouri, played here in September, 1961. It had already appeared before that at the Academy and was now doing a grind run here with six showings between noon to 9:27 P.M. Ads even appeared in the Newport Daily News.
A couple of tidbits about the Paramount follow. The gentleman at the Newport Historical Society told me that on the opening day (August 10, 1929) one of the patrons was Gladys Szechenyi, the grand-daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who had the great mansion “The Breakers” built. In later years she came to the Society to find out what had been playing on that day. It was Charming Sinners with Ruth Chatterton.
The Paramount closed at the end of April, 1961. Its last shows were either on Saturday, April 29, or Sunday, April 30. The last newspaper ad in the Newport Daily News appeared on that Saturday. The paper was not published on Sunday. No ad appeared on Monday or in succeeding weeks and months. The last film was The Absent-Minded Professsor with Fred MacMurray and Nancy Olson. It played along with the Disney short Islands of the Sea.
An on-site inspection of the address revealed a relatively low building housing vacant shops. This building may have replaced the theatre building. Or else, given a change of numbering, the building next door at 1227, now a R.I. Registry of Motor Vehicles facility, looks like it could have been have been a theatre at one time.
The interior, though very large, was extremely barren and plain, like an immense barn. It had no charm. The theatre was unable to successfully book major Hollywood films in first-run, and they all went to the Albee, Loew’s State, the Strand, and the Majestic. Some success was seen with touring Broadway shows, symphony concerts, operatic performances, but there were times when the place remained dark for some time between engagements. Roger Brett talks about this theatre extensively in his book Temples of Illusion. In fact he had worked here as a young stage hand for a time. The theatre was the failed brain child of Jacob Conn, who also built the Olympia Theatre in the Olneyville district of the city. The Metropolitan opened in 1932, closed in 1954, was demolished in 1961.
Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan premiered in Providence at this enormous house in March of 1949. That’s the kind of film that would normally have opened at the art-house Avon. It must have done reasonably well, because it appeared here and there at various second run theatres, even drive-ins. The Providence Journal review by Bradford F. Swan was ecstatic.
By some kind of mysterious confluence, Rossellini’s Europe ‘51, under the title of The Greatest Love, would play here in April of 1955. Although it starred Ingrid Bergman, you can be sure this ahead-of-its-time mystical-visionary piece was met with antipathy and snores.
In late April of 1949 this theatre was showing the Roberto Rossellini war-in-Italy film Paisan, which had premiered at the Metropolitan a month before. The theatre was then known as the Victory. The other theatre known as the Victory for a time was Low’s-Keith’s-Victory-Empire, which had closed a year before and had been located at 260 Westminster Street.
In his book Federal Hill for the “Images of America” series, Joe Fuoco notes, “Federal Hill had a picture theatre in the 1920s called Teatro La Serena. Located on Atwells Avenue, it was the scene of much laughter and many tears over the years.”
There is a photo of a 1921 flyer in Italian advertising a live variety show there that was a fund-raiser for the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti.
In November of 1946, when this theatre was called the Empire, one of the films shown in second-run was Roberto Rossellini’s Open City, which had played to great acclaim at the East Side’s Avon Cinema two months earlier. It was about as different a kind of program as had ever played here, theatrical or cinematic. It was paired, incongruously, with the Bob Steele Cinecolor B-Western Northwest Trail. In eighteen months the theatre would be gone.
The Union Theatre was built in 1911 by Charles Allen, who had had some success in recent years with the Scenic Temple on Mathewson Street. He would later be responsible for the great building fiasco of the Hippodrome, which was never fully completed but which opened anyway in 1915 and closed for good a year later. In his volume Temples of Illusion Roger Brett gives a short history of the Union Theatre, later know as Fays. (never with an apostrophe, by the way.) Here it in, in synthesis:
“It was nothing unusual either in looks or size and the original 2159 seats were crowded. The stucco exterior and plaster interior walls were equally plain. Green was apparently one of Allen’s favorite colors and the Union’s curtain and grand drape were of this hue. Ed Fay must have had similar tastes because green remained the predominant color of the theater’s decor throughout his ownership too.
“From the very first day, the Union played six acts of vaudeville, four or five short movies, and illustrated songs. The shows were as unspectacular as the house itself, but with a low overhead, they made money. (…)
“Ed Fay, through his Arcadia Amusement Company, bought…Allen’s Union Theater. By then it was no longer playing vaudeville.
“Fay continued the movie policy, originally renaming the theatre Fays Photoplays, and it opened with this euphonious appellation on November 17, 1916. Ed soon changed to a more down-to-earth sounding Fays Theater, but didn’t book the vaudeville he later became famous for until the season of 1917-18….
“Fays always looked a little too much like a side street vaudeville house, which, of course, it was…
“Fays continued with plain old-fashioned vaudeville: jugglers, singers, acrobatic dancers, and comedians, year after year, but beginning in 1931, bookings were eliminated in the summer months.
“In April, 1947, Fay, in an interview published by the Providence Journal said, regarding television: ‘I don’t think it will compete with the movies or with radio in the home. Commercially, I can’t see it at all. It’s all right for a championship prize fight or a football game, but that’s about all. I can’t see it.’
“Badly mauled at the boxoffice by a medium [television] relying heavily on vaudeville acts, Fays Theatre was the first to give up the ghost. Fays, the last old-style vaudeville house in the nation, went dark in the spring of 1951 and was demolished that summer.”
In fact the buildings in the area all seem to be ancillary medical facilities associated with the hospital. The residential character of the neighborhood has all but vanished, although the theatre itself had to have disappeared eons ago. This may have been South Providence’s only movie theatre ever. The Liberty Theatre/Art Cinema sits in the Elmwood district, on the fringes of South Providence. South Providence, incidentally, is a neighborhood of Providence, not a separate entity as with North Providence or East Providence. There is no such place known as West Providence. South Providence was home to lower working class rsidents, often Irish immigrants in the early decades of the 20th Century. Afro-Americans and Latinos predominate in the area now.
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.
The film Never on Sunday with Melina Mercouri, played here in September, 1961. It had already appeared before that at the Academy and was now doing a grind run here with six showings between noon to 9:27 P.M. Ads even appeared in the Newport Daily News.
The Colonial opened on February 4, 1911, according to a card-file note at the Newport Historical Society.
A couple of tidbits about the Paramount follow. The gentleman at the Newport Historical Society told me that on the opening day (August 10, 1929) one of the patrons was Gladys Szechenyi, the grand-daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who had the great mansion “The Breakers” built. In later years she came to the Society to find out what had been playing on that day. It was Charming Sinners with Ruth Chatterton.
The Paramount closed at the end of April, 1961. Its last shows were either on Saturday, April 29, or Sunday, April 30. The last newspaper ad in the Newport Daily News appeared on that Saturday. The paper was not published on Sunday. No ad appeared on Monday or in succeeding weeks and months. The last film was The Absent-Minded Professsor with Fred MacMurray and Nancy Olson. It played along with the Disney short Islands of the Sea.
An on-site inspection of the address revealed a relatively low building housing vacant shops. This building may have replaced the theatre building. Or else, given a change of numbering, the building next door at 1227, now a R.I. Registry of Motor Vehicles facility, looks like it could have been have been a theatre at one time.
Here are two photos of the Westminster/Bijou, a.k.a. “The Sink.”
ENTRANCE (expand image for clearer resolution)
INTERIOR – stage area being readied for demolition.
The interior, though very large, was extremely barren and plain, like an immense barn. It had no charm. The theatre was unable to successfully book major Hollywood films in first-run, and they all went to the Albee, Loew’s State, the Strand, and the Majestic. Some success was seen with touring Broadway shows, symphony concerts, operatic performances, but there were times when the place remained dark for some time between engagements. Roger Brett talks about this theatre extensively in his book Temples of Illusion. In fact he had worked here as a young stage hand for a time. The theatre was the failed brain child of Jacob Conn, who also built the Olympia Theatre in the Olneyville district of the city. The Metropolitan opened in 1932, closed in 1954, was demolished in 1961.
Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan premiered in Providence at this enormous house in March of 1949. That’s the kind of film that would normally have opened at the art-house Avon. It must have done reasonably well, because it appeared here and there at various second run theatres, even drive-ins. The Providence Journal review by Bradford F. Swan was ecstatic.
By some kind of mysterious confluence, Rossellini’s Europe ‘51, under the title of The Greatest Love, would play here in April of 1955. Although it starred Ingrid Bergman, you can be sure this ahead-of-its-time mystical-visionary piece was met with antipathy and snores.
In May of 1950, they had shown Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan. A neo-realist masterpiece is not what one would associate with a drive-in.
In late April of 1949 this theatre was showing the Roberto Rossellini war-in-Italy film Paisan, which had premiered at the Metropolitan a month before. The theatre was then known as the Victory. The other theatre known as the Victory for a time was Low’s-Keith’s-Victory-Empire, which had closed a year before and had been located at 260 Westminster Street.
In his book Federal Hill for the “Images of America” series, Joe Fuoco notes, “Federal Hill had a picture theatre in the 1920s called Teatro La Serena. Located on Atwells Avenue, it was the scene of much laughter and many tears over the years.”
There is a photo of a 1921 flyer in Italian advertising a live variety show there that was a fund-raiser for the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti.
In November of 1946, when this theatre was called the Empire, one of the films shown in second-run was Roberto Rossellini’s Open City, which had played to great acclaim at the East Side’s Avon Cinema two months earlier. It was about as different a kind of program as had ever played here, theatrical or cinematic. It was paired, incongruously, with the Bob Steele Cinecolor B-Western Northwest Trail. In eighteen months the theatre would be gone.
The Union Theatre was built in 1911 by Charles Allen, who had had some success in recent years with the Scenic Temple on Mathewson Street. He would later be responsible for the great building fiasco of the Hippodrome, which was never fully completed but which opened anyway in 1915 and closed for good a year later. In his volume Temples of Illusion Roger Brett gives a short history of the Union Theatre, later know as Fays. (never with an apostrophe, by the way.) Here it in, in synthesis:
“It was nothing unusual either in looks or size and the original 2159 seats were crowded. The stucco exterior and plaster interior walls were equally plain. Green was apparently one of Allen’s favorite colors and the Union’s curtain and grand drape were of this hue. Ed Fay must have had similar tastes because green remained the predominant color of the theater’s decor throughout his ownership too.
“From the very first day, the Union played six acts of vaudeville, four or five short movies, and illustrated songs. The shows were as unspectacular as the house itself, but with a low overhead, they made money. (…)
“Ed Fay, through his Arcadia Amusement Company, bought…Allen’s Union Theater. By then it was no longer playing vaudeville.
“Fay continued the movie policy, originally renaming the theatre Fays Photoplays, and it opened with this euphonious appellation on November 17, 1916. Ed soon changed to a more down-to-earth sounding Fays Theater, but didn’t book the vaudeville he later became famous for until the season of 1917-18….
“Fays always looked a little too much like a side street vaudeville house, which, of course, it was…
“Fays continued with plain old-fashioned vaudeville: jugglers, singers, acrobatic dancers, and comedians, year after year, but beginning in 1931, bookings were eliminated in the summer months.
“In April, 1947, Fay, in an interview published by the Providence Journal said, regarding television: ‘I don’t think it will compete with the movies or with radio in the home. Commercially, I can’t see it at all. It’s all right for a championship prize fight or a football game, but that’s about all. I can’t see it.’
“Badly mauled at the boxoffice by a medium [television] relying heavily on vaudeville acts, Fays Theatre was the first to give up the ghost. Fays, the last old-style vaudeville house in the nation, went dark in the spring of 1951 and was demolished that summer.”
Two photos of Fays:
OUTSIDE
INSIDE
In fact the buildings in the area all seem to be ancillary medical facilities associated with the hospital. The residential character of the neighborhood has all but vanished, although the theatre itself had to have disappeared eons ago. This may have been South Providence’s only movie theatre ever. The Liberty Theatre/Art Cinema sits in the Elmwood district, on the fringes of South Providence. South Providence, incidentally, is a neighborhood of Providence, not a separate entity as with North Providence or East Providence. There is no such place known as West Providence. South Providence was home to lower working class rsidents, often Irish immigrants in the early decades of the 20th Century. Afro-Americans and Latinos predominate in the area now.
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.