Is there agreement that digital just generally now offers a clearer, sharper, brighter picture, which seems to be the case in ordinary multiplex auditoriums, and that RCMH may be one of the few, and maybe the only, place(s) where digital is not necessarily preferable to 35 mm?
At least one version of the Alvin Theatre (someone once told me a fire destroyed an earlier Alvin) operated on the site from Sept. 21, 1891, through 1944, when a fire destroyed part or all of the theater.
It reopened as the John P. Harris Theatre, known to most simply as the Harris, which was the flagship of the local Harris Theatres circuit. It included a large balcony.
The Harris, which initially had 2,106 seats, played virtually every Columbia movie that opened Downtown and split the 20th Century Fox films 50-50 with the nearly adjacent Fulton Theatre (now called the Byham).
Ironically, despite the Harris' contractual ties to Columbia, when the studio released the 1954 blockbuster “From Here to Eternity,” the company’s biggest hit to date, it went to the Stanley, which had nearly double the capacity of the Harris.
When the Sterns (Ernest and cousin George) purchased the Harris for their Associated Theatres circuit, they conducted a contest. Moviegoers were to guess the theater’s forthcoming identity from the phrase, “We’re making way for a gate change.” The theater became the Gateway.
Among the many notable titles to make their local debuts in the Harris years were “All About Eve,” “Born Yesterday,” “High Noon,” “The Robe,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “On the Waterfront,” “The Caine Mutiny,” “Picnic,” “Anastasia,” “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison,” “An Affair to Remember,” “Pal Joey,” “Peyton Place,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “Anatomy of a Murder,” “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “North to Alaska.”
There may have been an earlier Atlas at 3603 Perrysville Avenue, or that was a typographical error in some sources. The address at 2603 Perrysville Avenue is correct for an Atlas that existed from 1916-53 with 400 to 450 seats. At one point it was being advertised as the New Atlas, which could mean there was an earlier Atlas a bloc away on the same side of the avenue.
The theater dates to at least 1927. From then until 1936 it was known as the Avenue (one of at least five Avenue theaters in the Pittsburgh/McKeesport area in the early 20th Century).
The capacity in the early years was estimated at both 300 and 374.
In 1936 it became the Art Cinema, a name it retained until its 1995 refurbishing and reopening as the Harris.
The Art Cinema was the premiere art house (foreign, British and independent films) in Pittsburgh for about 17 years.
Its many classic films included “Paisan” (16 weeks), “The Red Shoes” (weeks 5 through 14 of its initial Downtown run), “Quartet,” “The Fallen Idol,” “The Bicycle Thief,” “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” “Bitter Rice” (a record 17 weeks, later returning for two more), “Cyrano de Bergerac,” “Trio,” “Kon-Tiki,” “Oliver Twist,” “The River,” “Rashomon,” “Manon,” “Devil in the Flesh” and many others.
The Art Cinema unfortunately lacked amenities, and when a wholly renovated Squirrel Hill Theatre reopened Christmas Day 1952 with “The Lavender Hill Mob,” the Art Cinema’s dominance as THE local art house began to fade.
As several other art theaters (the Shadyside, King’s Court, Forum, Guild) competed for product in the eastern suburbs, the Downtown Art Cinema lost its upscale audience.
Fow a while it continued to grab occasional important films (“Fanfan the Tulip,” “Forbidden Games”), but by 1954 its bill of fare vascilated among double bills of recent commercial hits (“From Here to Eternity” with “The Wild One”; “The Caine Mutiny” with “On the Waterfront”), nudist camp romps, saucy softcore sex films and a long-defunct series of striptease movies. Some, including “The Orgy at Lil’s Place” in the early 1960s, did some business, but the audience for them was finite – the “raincoat” crowd.
The theater became identified progressively more with harder-core porno in the 1970s and 1980s, and its condition deteriorated markedly over the decades. By the time it closed for renovation into the Harris, many seats were missing, and those remaining were in deplorable condition.
The Harris, though minimalist in amenities, is a great improvement in programming and comfort. Its one drawback is a peculiar acoustical problem.
The site by 1983 had become either a surface parking lot or the Light Brothers sportswear store. (Precise addresses were indistinct within the block.)
There was a different Avenue Theatre in McKeesport at one time, at about 520 Fifth Avenue.
There were at least five theaters called the Avenue in the Pittsburgh area, but the 200- (or 225-) seater mentioned here was at 1108 Fifth Avenue in McKeesport, a town just to the east of Pittsburgh.
The theater’s earlier name was the Pearl.
At one time the Ardmore was the highest-grossing single-screen drive-in in Western Pennsylvania. Just to experience it once, I went out for a double bill of the blockbusters “Charade” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie."
It later became a Gold Circle shopping center, although that may not be its current identity.
Of the drive-ins on or near Route 30, it was the nearest to Wilkinsburg and, by extension, Downtown Pittsburgh. The others, from west to east, were the five-screen Greater Pittsburgh, the Blue Dell and its temporary lot-mate the Bell-Aire (sp?), plus the Maple and the Super 30.
I, too, found estimates of the capacity as being both 1,134 and 882.
The theater dates to 1915 and closed in either 1965-66. I got there only a couple of times – once when the Carroll Baker film “Sylvia,” partially shot in Pittsburgh, was doubled with a reissue of “Psycho.”
The last film may have been “Mary Poppins.”
The theater was razed and the property used for a bank’s surface parking lot.
I regret I cannot answer that, Veyoung. I never acquired inside information on screens and do not know what the Nixon did with its screens between movie engagements.
The longtime manager was a great guy named Leo Carlin, who had the build of a pugilist (which, if memory serves, he had been) and who ran a tight ship. Sometime in the 1970s or maybe early 1980s, Mr. Carlin became incapacitated and retreated to his home in – I want to say – Burgettstown.
In the Carlin era, plays opened on Monday nights. They played two performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the theater was closed on Sundays.
As much as I loved seeing each new theater production that played the Nixon, including Forrest Tucker in “The Music Man,” my favorite time for attending the Nixon was during the 34-week run of “West Side Story,” which I saw very regularly there.
My first visit to the Nixon was for the movie “South Pacific,” but my first play there was “Sunrise at Campobello” with Leif Erickson.
The theater existed from 1915-59 and eventually was razed. Although it had a capacity of 575 at one point, I found a second source that indicates just 476 seats.
My records indicatde it opened in 1923 with 1,248 seats.
It was an ordinary neighborhood theater until owner Stanley (“Zundy”) Kramer took great pride in turning it into an art house. Although he once played a series of film classics that included “Good News,” most of the Kramer-Arcade years hosted such independent and foreign films as “I Sent a Letter to My Love,” “The Tin Drum,” “`Breaker' Morant” and “Sandakan 8.”
Jean-Luc Godard made an appearance here for one of his movies.
Zundy Kramer took great pride in the prestige associated with running a local art theater and seemed to distribute as many passes to local dignitaries as he sold tickets.
The fire that destroyed the theater robbed the South Side community of a significant asset.
This theater opened as the Alhambra, then became the Regent and possibly, later, just Cinema. There was a fire in 1970. It was still standing as late as 1983.
This theater at 956 Liberty Avenue, Downtown, opened as the Victoria, probably designed as a legitimate theater, from 1912 to about 1920.
Then it became the Sam Shubert from about 1920 to about 1927, suggesting it was almost certainlyh a legitimate theater during these early decades.
It was the Loew’s Aldine from Sept. 17, 1923, through 1934. The switrch from Shubert to Loew’s strongly suggests a shift from legit to moviehouse.
I cannot account at this time for the period from 1934-39, but in 1939 it became known at Loew’s Senator, but sometime between then and 1950, the John P. Harris circuit purchased the theater and modified the name to the (Harris) Senator.
It played some second-run features, generally in double features, as if it were a neighborhood house, and some minor first-run features, but more often the Senator picked up “moveover” movies directly after the completion of their first-run engagements at the nearby John P. Harris Theatre, the flagship of the Harris circuit.
These moveover attractions included “The Snake Pit,” “Yellow Sky,” “A Letter to Three Wives,” “Come to the Stable,” “Pinky” and “All the King’s Men.”
Meanwhile, Pittsburgh’s primary legitimate theater, the 2,160-seat Nixon at 417 Sixth Avenue (or 413 or 423), which had opened Dec. 7, 1903, closed on April 29, 1950 with Mae West in a revival of her “Diamond Lil.”
To maintain the continuity/identity of major national touring companies in Pittsburgh, the Harris Senator changed its name to the (new) 1,760-seat Nixon Theatre in 1950.
For the next quarter century, it functioned as the primary legitimate Pittsburgh theater for touring shows beginning with “Oklahoma” Sept. 4, 1950. Henry Fonda came in in “Mister Roberts.”
The dozens of other live productions included “Darkness at Noon” with Edward G. Robinson, “Bell, Book and Candle” with Rosalind Russell, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” with Carol Channing, “Call Me Madam” with Elaine Stritch and “Porgy and Bess” with William Warfield, Leontyne Price and Cab Calloway. Plus Bette Davis in “Two’s Company,” Julie Harris in “I Am a Camera,” Helen Hayes in “Mrs. McThing” and many others.
Though an occasional movie slipped in, the Nixon didn’t begin a recurring policy of roadshow films until “Guys and Dolls” open in late January 1956 and stayed 10 weeks. From then on, theater and roadshow movies opened in alternating wavess.
The movie “Oklahoma” played for 24 weeks, “Around the World in 80 Days” for 39, “South Pacific” for 26, soon returning for 10 additional weeks after an interruption for plays, and Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” for nine.
The film of “The Diary of Anne Frank” was booked for the summer of 1959 but inexplicably did disastrous business and was yanked after four weeks and four days.
“Porgy and Bess” played for eight weeks, “Can-Can” for 14, “Spartacus” for 13, “Gone With the Wind” for six, “La Dolce Vita” for 11, “West Side Story” for 34 and “Mutiny on the Bounty” for 16.
“Lawrence of Arabia” had played just four days of its third week when the Nixon suffered a fire. “Lawrence” moved over to the Fulton a couple of weeks later to resume a reserved-seat engagement, but the momentum was lost, and it lasted just seven more weeks.
Stage plays continued to turn up at the Nixon, but more and more the balance of the theater’s schedule was given over to movies.
Oddly, when the theater played regular continuous-performance films such as “The Prize,” “Sunday in New York” and “Kelly’s Heroes,” it under-performed. The Nixon was off the beaten path of ordinary moviehouses and tended not to benefit from impulse ticket purchasing.
“The Fall of the Roman Empire” returned the theater to a roadshow policy but lasted a lean six weeks. “Mary Poppins,” though, did 16 hardy weeks before having to vacate the premises for a run of plays.
“The Sound of Music” then blasted all previous hose records with a 106-week run that was still going gangbusters when the theater switched to another Julie Andrews musical, “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” for 30 weeks, giving Andrews 136 consecutive weeks here.
“Far From the Madding Crowd” limped through eight weeks. After a few months of plays, “Finian’s Rainbow” moved in for seven weeks and “Sweet Charity” for 13.
Many more plays played before “Patton” settled in for 16 weeks.
Aidst a flurry of plays, the Nixon tried a couple of blaxploitation films that died.
The many plays that followed included three engagements of “Godspell” totaling 13 weeks.
The theater’s subscription base for plays, so often interrupted for long stretches of movies, eroded over the years. By 1974-75, subscribers had become wary of an extremely irregular play schedule, with promised productions being canceled and name players backing out of tours. Business was terrible. The shows that came in were small and tacky.
The theater closed in November 1975 and was leveled. It became a surface parking lot.
One distinctive feature of the exterior had been a marquee that stretched over an alleyway adjacent to the theater.
Yes, understood, Warren. Thank you. I typed my earlier comment too hastily and wasn’t as clear as I might have been. But it was based on the fact I’d discovered that “Pandora” had opened at the Normandie.
I love all those interior and exterior shots and the ads that contain plenty of detail – but especially those that show surrounding ads to we can see again which pictures were running concurrently. We had MOVIES then.
It was interesting to me to learn a few days ago that when “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman” opened in New York, MGM premiered it in a new art house, several blocks from the heart of Broadway. In my hometown of Pittsburgh it went into Loew’s Penn (now called Heinz Hall), a 3300-seater that was MGM’s main outlet in Western Pennsylvania.
Thanks, Warren. Never saw that marquee before. I love the old ones, with the individually-placed letters. I was always intrigued when moviehouses outside New York used the names of actors who weren’t necessarily the top-billed ones, violating the contractual billing, so to speak, to favor a hometown actor, a singer who was at a local nightclub, etc.
But I did like the Broadway Theatre’s script-like marquee from the 1980s and 1990s.
Of all the Manhattan moviehouses I never got to visit, this is the one I most mind having missed. When I accompanied my folks to New York starting in 1955, we always went to whatever was playing at Radio City Music Hall, starting with “Mr. Roberts.” But despite the awareness that the Roxy was nearby, we somehow never got there. Damn!
What a kick it was to see big pictures here such as “Star” and “The Sand Pebbles.” Sorry my regular NYC access had not begun early enough to catch “West Side Story” here.
Best rep/classics house in New York ever, right? The hours I spent in here watching irresistible double bills programmed by Frank Rowley. Just receiving those schedules in the mail meant everything stopped while I read them, both sides, top to bottom. What great festivals!
Am I the only one who, a short time later, cannot remember which movies he saw here versus which ones he saw across the street? The experiences all runs together when you’re in soulless multiplexes and megaplexes.
Do I remember correctly that Frank Sinatra appeared here during the engagement of his “Johnny Concho”? He (oddly enough) co-produced this minor western, which he later dissed on the TV special “Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back."
I saw "Johnny Concho” at the Paramount and vaguely recall Sinatra making a live appearance.
Also caught “The Carpetbaggers” here on a mobbed Saturday night in the summer of 1964.
Is there agreement that digital just generally now offers a clearer, sharper, brighter picture, which seems to be the case in ordinary multiplex auditoriums, and that RCMH may be one of the few, and maybe the only, place(s) where digital is not necessarily preferable to 35 mm?
At least one version of the Alvin Theatre (someone once told me a fire destroyed an earlier Alvin) operated on the site from Sept. 21, 1891, through 1944, when a fire destroyed part or all of the theater.
It reopened as the John P. Harris Theatre, known to most simply as the Harris, which was the flagship of the local Harris Theatres circuit. It included a large balcony.
The Harris, which initially had 2,106 seats, played virtually every Columbia movie that opened Downtown and split the 20th Century Fox films 50-50 with the nearly adjacent Fulton Theatre (now called the Byham).
Ironically, despite the Harris' contractual ties to Columbia, when the studio released the 1954 blockbuster “From Here to Eternity,” the company’s biggest hit to date, it went to the Stanley, which had nearly double the capacity of the Harris.
When the Sterns (Ernest and cousin George) purchased the Harris for their Associated Theatres circuit, they conducted a contest. Moviegoers were to guess the theater’s forthcoming identity from the phrase, “We’re making way for a gate change.” The theater became the Gateway.
Among the many notable titles to make their local debuts in the Harris years were “All About Eve,” “Born Yesterday,” “High Noon,” “The Robe,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “On the Waterfront,” “The Caine Mutiny,” “Picnic,” “Anastasia,” “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison,” “An Affair to Remember,” “Pal Joey,” “Peyton Place,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “Anatomy of a Murder,” “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “North to Alaska.”
The Ambridge seems to have been the name of three distinct theaters in Ambridge, Pa,
The first was at 714 Merchant Street at Seventh Avenue. It may have had as many as 1,335 seats. By the 1980s, a bank occupied the site.
A second Ambridge Theatre was on Merchant at Fifth Avenue. After a fire destroyed the theater, an Equibank opened on the site.
Congratulations to the current Ambridge for hanging on proudly in the megaplex era.
There may have been an earlier Atlas at 3603 Perrysville Avenue, or that was a typographical error in some sources. The address at 2603 Perrysville Avenue is correct for an Atlas that existed from 1916-53 with 400 to 450 seats. At one point it was being advertised as the New Atlas, which could mean there was an earlier Atlas a bloc away on the same side of the avenue.
The theater dates to at least 1927. From then until 1936 it was known as the Avenue (one of at least five Avenue theaters in the Pittsburgh/McKeesport area in the early 20th Century).
The capacity in the early years was estimated at both 300 and 374.
In 1936 it became the Art Cinema, a name it retained until its 1995 refurbishing and reopening as the Harris.
The Art Cinema was the premiere art house (foreign, British and independent films) in Pittsburgh for about 17 years.
Its many classic films included “Paisan” (16 weeks), “The Red Shoes” (weeks 5 through 14 of its initial Downtown run), “Quartet,” “The Fallen Idol,” “The Bicycle Thief,” “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” “Bitter Rice” (a record 17 weeks, later returning for two more), “Cyrano de Bergerac,” “Trio,” “Kon-Tiki,” “Oliver Twist,” “The River,” “Rashomon,” “Manon,” “Devil in the Flesh” and many others.
The Art Cinema unfortunately lacked amenities, and when a wholly renovated Squirrel Hill Theatre reopened Christmas Day 1952 with “The Lavender Hill Mob,” the Art Cinema’s dominance as THE local art house began to fade.
As several other art theaters (the Shadyside, King’s Court, Forum, Guild) competed for product in the eastern suburbs, the Downtown Art Cinema lost its upscale audience.
Fow a while it continued to grab occasional important films (“Fanfan the Tulip,” “Forbidden Games”), but by 1954 its bill of fare vascilated among double bills of recent commercial hits (“From Here to Eternity” with “The Wild One”; “The Caine Mutiny” with “On the Waterfront”), nudist camp romps, saucy softcore sex films and a long-defunct series of striptease movies. Some, including “The Orgy at Lil’s Place” in the early 1960s, did some business, but the audience for them was finite – the “raincoat” crowd.
The theater became identified progressively more with harder-core porno in the 1970s and 1980s, and its condition deteriorated markedly over the decades. By the time it closed for renovation into the Harris, many seats were missing, and those remaining were in deplorable condition.
The Harris, though minimalist in amenities, is a great improvement in programming and comfort. Its one drawback is a peculiar acoustical problem.
Postscript to the above: The other Avenue Theatre in McKeesport later was known as the Victor, for which I’ll create a C.T. entry now.
The site by 1983 had become either a surface parking lot or the Light Brothers sportswear store. (Precise addresses were indistinct within the block.)
There was a different Avenue Theatre in McKeesport at one time, at about 520 Fifth Avenue.
There were at least five theaters called the Avenue in the Pittsburgh area, but the 200- (or 225-) seater mentioned here was at 1108 Fifth Avenue in McKeesport, a town just to the east of Pittsburgh.
The theater’s earlier name was the Pearl.
At one time the Ardmore was the highest-grossing single-screen drive-in in Western Pennsylvania. Just to experience it once, I went out for a double bill of the blockbusters “Charade” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie."
It later became a Gold Circle shopping center, although that may not be its current identity.
Of the drive-ins on or near Route 30, it was the nearest to Wilkinsburg and, by extension, Downtown Pittsburgh. The others, from west to east, were the five-screen Greater Pittsburgh, the Blue Dell and its temporary lot-mate the Bell-Aire (sp?), plus the Maple and the Super 30.
I, too, found estimates of the capacity as being both 1,134 and 882.
The theater dates to 1915 and closed in either 1965-66. I got there only a couple of times – once when the Carroll Baker film “Sylvia,” partially shot in Pittsburgh, was doubled with a reissue of “Psycho.”
The last film may have been “Mary Poppins.”
The theater was razed and the property used for a bank’s surface parking lot.
I regret I cannot answer that, Veyoung. I never acquired inside information on screens and do not know what the Nixon did with its screens between movie engagements.
The longtime manager was a great guy named Leo Carlin, who had the build of a pugilist (which, if memory serves, he had been) and who ran a tight ship. Sometime in the 1970s or maybe early 1980s, Mr. Carlin became incapacitated and retreated to his home in – I want to say – Burgettstown.
In the Carlin era, plays opened on Monday nights. They played two performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the theater was closed on Sundays.
As much as I loved seeing each new theater production that played the Nixon, including Forrest Tucker in “The Music Man,” my favorite time for attending the Nixon was during the 34-week run of “West Side Story,” which I saw very regularly there.
My first visit to the Nixon was for the movie “South Pacific,” but my first play there was “Sunrise at Campobello” with Leif Erickson.
The theater existed from 1915-59 and eventually was razed. Although it had a capacity of 575 at one point, I found a second source that indicates just 476 seats.
The Arcade was at 1915 East Carson Street.
My records indicatde it opened in 1923 with 1,248 seats.
It was an ordinary neighborhood theater until owner Stanley (“Zundy”) Kramer took great pride in turning it into an art house. Although he once played a series of film classics that included “Good News,” most of the Kramer-Arcade years hosted such independent and foreign films as “I Sent a Letter to My Love,” “The Tin Drum,” “`Breaker' Morant” and “Sandakan 8.”
Jean-Luc Godard made an appearance here for one of his movies.
Zundy Kramer took great pride in the prestige associated with running a local art theater and seemed to distribute as many passes to local dignitaries as he sold tickets.
The fire that destroyed the theater robbed the South Side community of a significant asset.
This theater opened as the Alhambra, then became the Regent and possibly, later, just Cinema. There was a fire in 1970. It was still standing as late as 1983.
This theater at 956 Liberty Avenue, Downtown, opened as the Victoria, probably designed as a legitimate theater, from 1912 to about 1920.
Then it became the Sam Shubert from about 1920 to about 1927, suggesting it was almost certainlyh a legitimate theater during these early decades.
It was the Loew’s Aldine from Sept. 17, 1923, through 1934. The switrch from Shubert to Loew’s strongly suggests a shift from legit to moviehouse.
I cannot account at this time for the period from 1934-39, but in 1939 it became known at Loew’s Senator, but sometime between then and 1950, the John P. Harris circuit purchased the theater and modified the name to the (Harris) Senator.
It played some second-run features, generally in double features, as if it were a neighborhood house, and some minor first-run features, but more often the Senator picked up “moveover” movies directly after the completion of their first-run engagements at the nearby John P. Harris Theatre, the flagship of the Harris circuit.
These moveover attractions included “The Snake Pit,” “Yellow Sky,” “A Letter to Three Wives,” “Come to the Stable,” “Pinky” and “All the King’s Men.”
Meanwhile, Pittsburgh’s primary legitimate theater, the 2,160-seat Nixon at 417 Sixth Avenue (or 413 or 423), which had opened Dec. 7, 1903, closed on April 29, 1950 with Mae West in a revival of her “Diamond Lil.”
To maintain the continuity/identity of major national touring companies in Pittsburgh, the Harris Senator changed its name to the (new) 1,760-seat Nixon Theatre in 1950.
For the next quarter century, it functioned as the primary legitimate Pittsburgh theater for touring shows beginning with “Oklahoma” Sept. 4, 1950. Henry Fonda came in in “Mister Roberts.”
The dozens of other live productions included “Darkness at Noon” with Edward G. Robinson, “Bell, Book and Candle” with Rosalind Russell, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” with Carol Channing, “Call Me Madam” with Elaine Stritch and “Porgy and Bess” with William Warfield, Leontyne Price and Cab Calloway. Plus Bette Davis in “Two’s Company,” Julie Harris in “I Am a Camera,” Helen Hayes in “Mrs. McThing” and many others.
Though an occasional movie slipped in, the Nixon didn’t begin a recurring policy of roadshow films until “Guys and Dolls” open in late January 1956 and stayed 10 weeks. From then on, theater and roadshow movies opened in alternating wavess.
The movie “Oklahoma” played for 24 weeks, “Around the World in 80 Days” for 39, “South Pacific” for 26, soon returning for 10 additional weeks after an interruption for plays, and Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” for nine.
The film of “The Diary of Anne Frank” was booked for the summer of 1959 but inexplicably did disastrous business and was yanked after four weeks and four days.
“Porgy and Bess” played for eight weeks, “Can-Can” for 14, “Spartacus” for 13, “Gone With the Wind” for six, “La Dolce Vita” for 11, “West Side Story” for 34 and “Mutiny on the Bounty” for 16.
“Lawrence of Arabia” had played just four days of its third week when the Nixon suffered a fire. “Lawrence” moved over to the Fulton a couple of weeks later to resume a reserved-seat engagement, but the momentum was lost, and it lasted just seven more weeks.
Stage plays continued to turn up at the Nixon, but more and more the balance of the theater’s schedule was given over to movies.
Oddly, when the theater played regular continuous-performance films such as “The Prize,” “Sunday in New York” and “Kelly’s Heroes,” it under-performed. The Nixon was off the beaten path of ordinary moviehouses and tended not to benefit from impulse ticket purchasing.
“The Fall of the Roman Empire” returned the theater to a roadshow policy but lasted a lean six weeks. “Mary Poppins,” though, did 16 hardy weeks before having to vacate the premises for a run of plays.
“The Sound of Music” then blasted all previous hose records with a 106-week run that was still going gangbusters when the theater switched to another Julie Andrews musical, “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” for 30 weeks, giving Andrews 136 consecutive weeks here.
“Far From the Madding Crowd” limped through eight weeks. After a few months of plays, “Finian’s Rainbow” moved in for seven weeks and “Sweet Charity” for 13.
Many more plays played before “Patton” settled in for 16 weeks.
Aidst a flurry of plays, the Nixon tried a couple of blaxploitation films that died.
The many plays that followed included three engagements of “Godspell” totaling 13 weeks.
The theater’s subscription base for plays, so often interrupted for long stretches of movies, eroded over the years. By 1974-75, subscribers had become wary of an extremely irregular play schedule, with promised productions being canceled and name players backing out of tours. Business was terrible. The shows that came in were small and tacky.
The theater closed in November 1975 and was leveled. It became a surface parking lot.
One distinctive feature of the exterior had been a marquee that stretched over an alleyway adjacent to the theater.
The
Yes, understood, Warren. Thank you. I typed my earlier comment too hastily and wasn’t as clear as I might have been. But it was based on the fact I’d discovered that “Pandora” had opened at the Normandie.
I love all those interior and exterior shots and the ads that contain plenty of detail – but especially those that show surrounding ads to we can see again which pictures were running concurrently. We had MOVIES then.
It was interesting to me to learn a few days ago that when “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman” opened in New York, MGM premiered it in a new art house, several blocks from the heart of Broadway. In my hometown of Pittsburgh it went into Loew’s Penn (now called Heinz Hall), a 3300-seater that was MGM’s main outlet in Western Pennsylvania.
Thanks, Warren. Never saw that marquee before. I love the old ones, with the individually-placed letters. I was always intrigued when moviehouses outside New York used the names of actors who weren’t necessarily the top-billed ones, violating the contractual billing, so to speak, to favor a hometown actor, a singer who was at a local nightclub, etc.
But I did like the Broadway Theatre’s script-like marquee from the 1980s and 1990s.
Sorry! Please advise: What is the proper … nomenclature?
Does anyone disagree that this offers the most majestic movie experience (with the possible exception of IMAX) left in New York?
Of all the Manhattan moviehouses I never got to visit, this is the one I most mind having missed. When I accompanied my folks to New York starting in 1955, we always went to whatever was playing at Radio City Music Hall, starting with “Mr. Roberts.” But despite the awareness that the Roxy was nearby, we somehow never got there. Damn!
What a kick it was to see big pictures here such as “Star” and “The Sand Pebbles.” Sorry my regular NYC access had not begun early enough to catch “West Side Story” here.
Best rep/classics house in New York ever, right? The hours I spent in here watching irresistible double bills programmed by Frank Rowley. Just receiving those schedules in the mail meant everything stopped while I read them, both sides, top to bottom. What great festivals!
Am I the only one who, a short time later, cannot remember which movies he saw here versus which ones he saw across the street? The experiences all runs together when you’re in soulless multiplexes and megaplexes.
Do I remember correctly that Frank Sinatra appeared here during the engagement of his “Johnny Concho”? He (oddly enough) co-produced this minor western, which he later dissed on the TV special “Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back."
I saw "Johnny Concho” at the Paramount and vaguely recall Sinatra making a live appearance.
Also caught “The Carpetbaggers” here on a mobbed Saturday night in the summer of 1964.