I’m hearing through the grapevine that at least one of the BEEKMAN signatures was salvaged and is being restored, and will soon be installed in the lobby of the Greenport Theatre out on Long Island. If we have any Cinema Treasures fans here who are near the Greenport, could you keep an eye on it and let us know if it happens?
The sax player is a caricature of Jack Leonard? I don’t know… but then, I never saw him in dark glasses…
I would love to be able to get the original GCC Feature Presentation, too – the one that goes with the music file up near the beginning of this thread.
BTW, to those concerned, I am going to have to find a place video place in Manhattan to put the Loews jingle and feature presentation on a cd-rom for me – I’ve searched all over the place and can’t find the proper cables to do it myself.
A satelite view of the Lincoln Square – the roof of the Imax auditorium is on the right side of the high-rise apartment section of the building. View link
RobertR posted to the Loew’s State [NYC] page on this site a newspaper ad dated 1/28/1943. Mixed in among the ads is a small ad for Bette Davis in “Now Voyager” at the 68th Street Playhouse. View link
I hadn’t realized the place was that old – even though I worked there – I thought it had been converted to a theatre in the early 1950’s.
I think Joe Masher is correct and I’m confused. I remember going here when I worked for GCC in the late 1970s, and it was fairly new, inside of a mall, not free-standing. The marquee in the mall had a 1-2-3-4 title board and the word ‘CINEMA’ in small letters, sideways, on the #1 section of the sign. I was visiting from the midwest and not familiar with the area, and I wasn’t the one driving so I didn’t know where the hell we were. Since I’ve been in NYC for a while now I thought “The Westchester” and “Westchester Mall” were one-and-the-same. To further complicate matters, a recently-found list of all of GCC’s theatres in 1983 lists Westchester Mall Cinema I-IV in Mohegon Lake, and White Plains Cinema I & II in White Plains. The exact addresses are not listed.
One of the partners in City Cinemas at the time bought out a production company called M-Square Productions, and they held the lease on this theatre and the Minetta Lane Theater, an off-Broadway house over near the Waverly. When we first went in there to look around, the cellar was literally stuffed with everything imaginable that could be used for stage shows – furniture, costumes, every kind of prop you could think of, light fixtures and cables for the stage. It was offered to other production companies but nobody wanted it, so it was trashed.
They had archetectural plans drawn up to have the Minetta Lane Theater converted to a cinema. Another of the partners, in the meantime, hired someone to operate and book (or whatever you have to do to get shows into a stage theater). It was making money, so the conversion was never done.
Somewhere along the way City Cinemas also aquired the little Orpheum at 2 av & St Marks mentioned above, but we (the cinema group) had less to do with that one than we did with the Minetta. I’m emailing a friend to refresh my memory as to whether it was part of the same deal with M-Square.
Since I haven’t been associated with City Cinemas since sometime in the late 20th century (back when they were into movie theatres, not real estate development) I don’t know if they still have any involvment with the Minetta or little Orpheum.
If they close it they need to get that recently-installed chandelier from the Loew’s Capitol in NYC and donate it to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens – don’t let it get lost….
Unfortunately the Keith’s is gone and we might as well get used to it. Even if it was to be 100% restored, those who remember what it was are no longer welcome in this area of Flushing anyway, given the fact that virtually all the businesses in the area have all the signage in Chinese and Korean – no English to be seen. It’s subtle, not overt, but if Americans were welcome there the signs would have some English on them. Sorry for not being PC – but everyone concerned about the restoration or redevelopment of this once-grand movie palace both here on this board and in civic circles have been dancing around this 800 pound gorilla in the middle of the room for 20 years. Those who occupy the area now couldn’t care less about the place, they just want it out of the way so they can have more retail space and more ridiculously priced apartments. The architecture is simply not valued by those who would use it – 4 walls and a roof is all that is needed.
Patsy, when the Palace closed in 1969 the marquee was torn down and the front entrance was boarded up. The theatre has been restored for quite a few years now, and only in the last several years have they finally installed a new marquee. I’ve seen photos of it but can’t seem to locate any right now. It is a half-circle of steel and glass, with no attraction board like a movie theatre would have – basically just a canopy. It is similar to the new marquee of the Allen theatre, just down the block from the Palace. That marquee can be seen at the sign companys website at the following link: http://www.wagnersign.com/allen01.html
I seem to remember seeing a photo of the Palace when it opened in 1922, but I can’t remember what the original marquee looked like.
At the time it reopened after the collapse, the place was a dump. We tried to make what was there presentable and clean, but not a lot of money was spent because it was only supposed to be open for six weeks. We had to show ticket sales reciepts to prove to the city that it was operating, in order to maintain its ‘special occupancy’ status. If a theatre is closed for more than 2 years, it loses that status, and the owner has to jump through all kinds of flaming hoops with the city bureaucracy to regain it. The building and property were owned by an affiliate of Pacific Theatres, Almi Group held a lease and by that time Cineplex Odeon was involved with a booking arrangement. Everybody was suing everybody else due to the collapse, but they all agreed to get it open, since each thought they would prevail in court and finally end up with place. Nobodys name, Pacific, City Cinemas, Almi, RKO or Cineplex was put on it in any advertising or the signage, since it was a strained partnership, not to mention an embarrassment. I had to call in figures at night to both City Cinemas and Cineplex Odeon. In the beginning I argued that it be booked sub-run and charge a reduced price, because I knew the place was was not up to anybody’s standards for a first-run theatre, and predicted the complaints we received. But I was overruled by the powers that be.
Wow, Warren, where did you find that? That is the old Hill alright, I can tell by the peaked roof set back from the edge, and the marquee is the same as it was, though with smaller signage. When Rugoff took it over in the 1950s and turned it into the cinema that it was before 1990, he stripped the cornice off, bricked up the windows and put white stucco on the facade. When I worked there we could see the bricked-up windows on the inside, in the ancient stairway leading up to the old horseshoe balconies. By the time it closed for quadding, the stucco was deteriorating on the outside and you could make out the shape of the windows behind the stucco. Rugoff kept that marquee, but put slightly larger attraction boards on the east, west AND north sides. The vertical blade sign had been removed. Above the east and west attraction boards were the letters spelling out MURRAY HILL, each one standing up on a stem.
Yes, the 57th Street playhouse had a flat marquee, and just an awning over the sidewalk. When I worked there in the early 90s we had a blue flag on the pole with silver letters spelling out ‘57th St. Playhouse’. The Festival never had a marquee either, and no awning, only a sign in the window of the upstairs lobby.
Around 1992 or 93 this place was being robbed frequently, sometimes twice a week. The NYPD set up an operation where they had several undercover officers in the lobby as customers and another in the managers office. Sure enough, the robbers showed up and this time fired at the undercover “manager” when he refused to open the safe – fire was returned, resulting in one perp assuming room temperature in the lobby and the other was chased down 56th Street and captured at 6th Ave.
Who owned the Hipp (the business, not the property) towards the end? And after all those years there, what did Silverthorn do after it closed – I don’t think he was retiring age at the time of the closing. Didn’t he pass away fairly recently?
I was passing through the neighborhood and got off the bus to snoop around at the old RKO Chester. First, the ‘hot sheets’ hotel, referred to above, has been renovated, inside and out, into a new Howard Johnsons hotel. The exterior renovations are only on the hotel section of the building. The other storefronts including what was at one time the lobby entrance to the theatre are still run down and closed. Then, if you go around on the West Farms Rd. side of the building, there is a muffler and tune-up shop. If you go into the shop through the large garage door, you are in the auditorium of the Chester theatre. The concrete balcony structure is still there, though the decorative ceiling on the underside of it is gone and cars are parked there, but the seats are still in place above. The back of the balcony is so dark I couldn’t tell what condition the ceiling is in. The ceiling and the upper walls from about mid-balcony and forward still have the decorative plasterwork with flaking brown and beige paint. Through the procenium in the stage area are automobile lifts for the muffler shop. The lower part of the procenium plaster work has been removed. The organ screens are largely intact, but the draperies are gone. It looks eerily similar to the photos we’ve all seen of the Michigan Theatre in Detroit, with the upper plasterwork hanging in limbo above the cars inside the one-time picture palace.
lostmemory: – could it be that in 1917 theatres were not specifically designated as motion picture theatres? It probably had a working stage and presented vaudville as well as movies. Modern NYC C of O’s indicate motion picture theatre when there is no stage, fly-loft, scenery, an abundance of draperies and high-voltage stage lighting boards, or performers using candles or cigarettes. The combination of those elements in the past have been the source of many disasterous theatre fires that resulted in large losses of life. A C of O for a motion picture theatre requires less in the way of fire supression equipment and slightly less restrictive regulation by the FDNY.
I’m hearing through the grapevine that at least one of the BEEKMAN signatures was salvaged and is being restored, and will soon be installed in the lobby of the Greenport Theatre out on Long Island. If we have any Cinema Treasures fans here who are near the Greenport, could you keep an eye on it and let us know if it happens?
EXCELLENT!!
Thank you, Mr. Fusion…
The sax player is a caricature of Jack Leonard? I don’t know… but then, I never saw him in dark glasses…
I would love to be able to get the original GCC Feature Presentation, too – the one that goes with the music file up near the beginning of this thread.
BTW, to those concerned, I am going to have to find a place video place in Manhattan to put the Loews jingle and feature presentation on a cd-rom for me – I’ve searched all over the place and can’t find the proper cables to do it myself.
I’m only getting the audio – what video codec is required for it?
A satelite view of the Lincoln Square – the roof of the Imax auditorium is on the right side of the high-rise apartment section of the building.
View link
I don’t think Clearview has built any theatres from the ground up – they were all aquired from other operators.
RobertR posted to the Loew’s State [NYC] page on this site a newspaper ad dated 1/28/1943. Mixed in among the ads is a small ad for Bette Davis in “Now Voyager” at the 68th Street Playhouse.
View link
I hadn’t realized the place was that old – even though I worked there – I thought it had been converted to a theatre in the early 1950’s.
I think Joe Masher is correct and I’m confused. I remember going here when I worked for GCC in the late 1970s, and it was fairly new, inside of a mall, not free-standing. The marquee in the mall had a 1-2-3-4 title board and the word ‘CINEMA’ in small letters, sideways, on the #1 section of the sign. I was visiting from the midwest and not familiar with the area, and I wasn’t the one driving so I didn’t know where the hell we were. Since I’ve been in NYC for a while now I thought “The Westchester” and “Westchester Mall” were one-and-the-same. To further complicate matters, a recently-found list of all of GCC’s theatres in 1983 lists Westchester Mall Cinema I-IV in Mohegon Lake, and White Plains Cinema I & II in White Plains. The exact addresses are not listed.
One of the partners in City Cinemas at the time bought out a production company called M-Square Productions, and they held the lease on this theatre and the Minetta Lane Theater, an off-Broadway house over near the Waverly. When we first went in there to look around, the cellar was literally stuffed with everything imaginable that could be used for stage shows – furniture, costumes, every kind of prop you could think of, light fixtures and cables for the stage. It was offered to other production companies but nobody wanted it, so it was trashed.
They had archetectural plans drawn up to have the Minetta Lane Theater converted to a cinema. Another of the partners, in the meantime, hired someone to operate and book (or whatever you have to do to get shows into a stage theater). It was making money, so the conversion was never done.
Somewhere along the way City Cinemas also aquired the little Orpheum at 2 av & St Marks mentioned above, but we (the cinema group) had less to do with that one than we did with the Minetta. I’m emailing a friend to refresh my memory as to whether it was part of the same deal with M-Square.
Since I haven’t been associated with City Cinemas since sometime in the late 20th century (back when they were into movie theatres, not real estate development) I don’t know if they still have any involvment with the Minetta or little Orpheum.
Yup – this was the Entermedia… when I moved to NYC in the early 80s the marquee said Entermedia, but I never saw it open when it had that name.
If they close it they need to get that recently-installed chandelier from the Loew’s Capitol in NYC and donate it to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens – don’t let it get lost….
This glass high-rise next door to the Paramount – is that the building that contais the Loews Boston Common Theatre?
Th
When we operated it as a movie house the marquee was stainless steel, Roundabout ‘antiqued’ it – like a piece of furniture.
Unfortunately the Keith’s is gone and we might as well get used to it. Even if it was to be 100% restored, those who remember what it was are no longer welcome in this area of Flushing anyway, given the fact that virtually all the businesses in the area have all the signage in Chinese and Korean – no English to be seen. It’s subtle, not overt, but if Americans were welcome there the signs would have some English on them. Sorry for not being PC – but everyone concerned about the restoration or redevelopment of this once-grand movie palace both here on this board and in civic circles have been dancing around this 800 pound gorilla in the middle of the room for 20 years. Those who occupy the area now couldn’t care less about the place, they just want it out of the way so they can have more retail space and more ridiculously priced apartments. The architecture is simply not valued by those who would use it – 4 walls and a roof is all that is needed.
When I started as an usher in 1968 tickets were about $2. An increase to $12.50 over nearly thirty-eight years is not unreasonable.
At my Photobucket link above, I have added a view of the lobby of the Palace as it appears today.
Patsy, when the Palace closed in 1969 the marquee was torn down and the front entrance was boarded up. The theatre has been restored for quite a few years now, and only in the last several years have they finally installed a new marquee. I’ve seen photos of it but can’t seem to locate any right now. It is a half-circle of steel and glass, with no attraction board like a movie theatre would have – basically just a canopy. It is similar to the new marquee of the Allen theatre, just down the block from the Palace. That marquee can be seen at the sign companys website at the following link: http://www.wagnersign.com/allen01.html
I seem to remember seeing a photo of the Palace when it opened in 1922, but I can’t remember what the original marquee looked like.
Regarding the Grand Opening ad on the link above: What element would make a drive-in theatre “Luxurious”??
At the time it reopened after the collapse, the place was a dump. We tried to make what was there presentable and clean, but not a lot of money was spent because it was only supposed to be open for six weeks. We had to show ticket sales reciepts to prove to the city that it was operating, in order to maintain its ‘special occupancy’ status. If a theatre is closed for more than 2 years, it loses that status, and the owner has to jump through all kinds of flaming hoops with the city bureaucracy to regain it. The building and property were owned by an affiliate of Pacific Theatres, Almi Group held a lease and by that time Cineplex Odeon was involved with a booking arrangement. Everybody was suing everybody else due to the collapse, but they all agreed to get it open, since each thought they would prevail in court and finally end up with place. Nobodys name, Pacific, City Cinemas, Almi, RKO or Cineplex was put on it in any advertising or the signage, since it was a strained partnership, not to mention an embarrassment. I had to call in figures at night to both City Cinemas and Cineplex Odeon. In the beginning I argued that it be booked sub-run and charge a reduced price, because I knew the place was was not up to anybody’s standards for a first-run theatre, and predicted the complaints we received. But I was overruled by the powers that be.
Wow, Warren, where did you find that? That is the old Hill alright, I can tell by the peaked roof set back from the edge, and the marquee is the same as it was, though with smaller signage. When Rugoff took it over in the 1950s and turned it into the cinema that it was before 1990, he stripped the cornice off, bricked up the windows and put white stucco on the facade. When I worked there we could see the bricked-up windows on the inside, in the ancient stairway leading up to the old horseshoe balconies. By the time it closed for quadding, the stucco was deteriorating on the outside and you could make out the shape of the windows behind the stucco. Rugoff kept that marquee, but put slightly larger attraction boards on the east, west AND north sides. The vertical blade sign had been removed. Above the east and west attraction boards were the letters spelling out MURRAY HILL, each one standing up on a stem.
Yes, the 57th Street playhouse had a flat marquee, and just an awning over the sidewalk. When I worked there in the early 90s we had a blue flag on the pole with silver letters spelling out ‘57th St. Playhouse’. The Festival never had a marquee either, and no awning, only a sign in the window of the upstairs lobby.
Around 1992 or 93 this place was being robbed frequently, sometimes twice a week. The NYPD set up an operation where they had several undercover officers in the lobby as customers and another in the managers office. Sure enough, the robbers showed up and this time fired at the undercover “manager” when he refused to open the safe – fire was returned, resulting in one perp assuming room temperature in the lobby and the other was chased down 56th Street and captured at 6th Ave.
Who owned the Hipp (the business, not the property) towards the end? And after all those years there, what did Silverthorn do after it closed – I don’t think he was retiring age at the time of the closing. Didn’t he pass away fairly recently?
I was passing through the neighborhood and got off the bus to snoop around at the old RKO Chester. First, the ‘hot sheets’ hotel, referred to above, has been renovated, inside and out, into a new Howard Johnsons hotel. The exterior renovations are only on the hotel section of the building. The other storefronts including what was at one time the lobby entrance to the theatre are still run down and closed. Then, if you go around on the West Farms Rd. side of the building, there is a muffler and tune-up shop. If you go into the shop through the large garage door, you are in the auditorium of the Chester theatre. The concrete balcony structure is still there, though the decorative ceiling on the underside of it is gone and cars are parked there, but the seats are still in place above. The back of the balcony is so dark I couldn’t tell what condition the ceiling is in. The ceiling and the upper walls from about mid-balcony and forward still have the decorative plasterwork with flaking brown and beige paint. Through the procenium in the stage area are automobile lifts for the muffler shop. The lower part of the procenium plaster work has been removed. The organ screens are largely intact, but the draperies are gone. It looks eerily similar to the photos we’ve all seen of the Michigan Theatre in Detroit, with the upper plasterwork hanging in limbo above the cars inside the one-time picture palace.
lostmemory: – could it be that in 1917 theatres were not specifically designated as motion picture theatres? It probably had a working stage and presented vaudville as well as movies. Modern NYC C of O’s indicate motion picture theatre when there is no stage, fly-loft, scenery, an abundance of draperies and high-voltage stage lighting boards, or performers using candles or cigarettes. The combination of those elements in the past have been the source of many disasterous theatre fires that resulted in large losses of life. A C of O for a motion picture theatre requires less in the way of fire supression equipment and slightly less restrictive regulation by the FDNY.