You folks who are talking about “Troy” are confusing this long-demolished Ziegfeld on 6th Avenue with the newer namesake on West 54th Street. The other newer one is currently listed under “The Ziegfeld.”
A magnificent marquee indeed. You can admire it from afar, walk up to it and stand under it while, with a little imagination, it casts a spell. But it leads, heartbreakingingly, to nothing…nothing…nothing at all.
The theatre is in fact being currently used for stage shows and other acts. Some are sponsored by the Colonial Theatre restoration organization in order to raise needed funds for that project.
I haven’t been inside this theatre yet, but the entrance is an ugly botched mess I hope is eventually improved and made more attractive.
I took one of the free tours today that they offer on Saturdays (10:30 and 11:00) and Sundays (12 noon and 12:30.) The theatre is a marvel but they really haven’t begun to do any real restoration yet, and there’s an enormous amount to be done. With funds originally vetoed by Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, work had come to a standstill. Now that state funds and other moneys are available again, we were told that work is about to recommence and that the theatre will be open to the public in the spring of 2006. Let’s cross our fingers.
And don’t forget we still have the Beekman and Paris, Rhett, both single screen art houses, though I concede they are hardly in the same “monumental” league as the Astor Plaza and Ziegfeld.
I never went to the Trans-Lux in the 1950s. I was a young child and lived in Providence. But I remember looking at newspaper ads of the theatre and it suggested to me a world of the forbidden. Memory plays tricks sometimes, but I seem to recall that Julien Duvivier’s film “Deadlier than the Male” played here. It starred Jean Gabin and Danièle Delorme. I don’t think I had yet actually ever seen one, but French films of the time seemed to have an aura of the forbidden, enough to educe from me many a prepubescent blush, often just from the titles of the films. I associated the names of many of the stars of that era with a special privileged adult world that was closed to us little ones: names like Gèrard Philipe, Françoise Arnoul, Danielle Darrieux and many others. I believe the Trans-Lux may also have done second-run art-house fare (again preferring the racier entries) that had already played other venues such as the Beacon Hill, Kenmore, or Exeter. I would really like to hear additional information from those who may have clearer recollections concerning ambience and programming at the Trans-Lux.
Yes, Ron, I remember eating in that restaurant where initially you were asked to share tables with strangers in a spirit of social camaraderie. Late in the evening remaining food was served free to the needy. I remember attending the pilot session of an auteurist film class given by a gentleman named Benson. We watched Douglas Sirk’s “The Tarnished Angels” and were invited to sign up for his course at the Orson Welles Film School which also existed there at the time. I also remember attending a film and discussion session with Hollywood director Nicholas Ray, of “Rebel Without a Cause” fame. This took place in the downstairs screening room, the smallest of the three. And I remember some very rowdy near-violent anti-Vietnam-war demonstrations taking place outside on Massachusetts Avenue (near Harvard) in 1970 as I came out of a showing of Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.” I also remember the place when it was called the Esquire and had a single screen. “Point of Order”, a documentary compilation of the Joe McCarthy hearings, was the first film I ever saw there.
Vincent, it IS biased because it is slanted toward a a point of view. So what? It is not a documentary (that’s why I referred to it as op-ed). It presents the truth about Bush and his slimy Machiavellian cohorts from the point of view of antipathy. Viva antipathy! The facts are researched and no-one has successfully refuted them. You call it shrill. I call it Swiftian. It is not anti-American; it is anti-Bush (unless you equate the two as do the orgasmic wacko fundamentlists of the religious right.) The jury at Cannes had only one Frenchman. Four members, I believe, were American. Leni Riefenstahl prize? She EXTOLLED a monster in “Triumph of the Will”; Moore’s film EXCORIATES a dangerous and failed leader. Hardly the same. Moore does the world and America a noble service. Incidentally, while I do not shy away from friendly arguments, this will be my last word here…having gone on already, probably ad nauseam, on another part of “Cinema Treasures” in regard to the Iowa cinema chain. There are plenty of places to see the movie. And it comes out on DVD around the time of the Republican convention. I’d like to be in the rafters of Madison Square Garden then, dropping down DVD’s of F 9/11 like manna from Democratic heaven into the Valley of the Republicans. Of course I jest. (Gotta be careful of the Patriot Act!)
Finito, basta.
Movie,
“Fahrenheit 9/11” IS playing in your area by now. You may already know this, but here is a link to all the U.S. theatres Moore’s op-ed filmic masterpiece is now showing. http://www.f911tix.com/
Then click on the image of Florida. Florida, hmmmmmmm! Make sure your vote is counted this time!
Dave, in the listing for the 57th Street Normandie, Warren posted a comment stating that it was named after the former one on 53rd Street one. /theaters/7049/
Dave-Bronx, that 57th Street Normandie you talk about is not to be confused with this earlier Normandie on 53rd Street. The 57th Street Normandie/Playboy/Cinema Rendezvous that you describe is now listed under the Directors' Guild of America Theatre. It is a different theatre from this one. The DGA still exists. The Normandie of this listing is long-gone.
Barton, I placed “Eclipse” on my list recently. I keep adding. I love the movie a great deal and showed it when I used to run the Italian Film Society of RI from 1981 to 1996. I still have the little four-page program booklet the Little Carnegie distributed at that film. Martin Scorsese includes a nice tribute to “Eclipse” in his “My Voyage to Italy,” now available on DVD. Another thing I liked about the Little Carnegie, besides what you mention, was the very plush and spacious lobby/waiting area. It began to the rear of the auditorium and then went left along the side.
Barton, that was the American Film Theatre series, funded in part by American Express, in which various directors were commissioned to make films of important plays. Among the others were Brecht’s “Galileo” directed by Joseph Losey, Harold Pinter’s “Butley” directed by the playwright, Maxwell Anderson’s “Lost in the Stars” directed by Daniel Mann, Pinter’s “The Homecoming” directed by Peter Hall, John Osborne’s “Luther” directed by Guy Green, Jean Genet’s “The Maids” directed by Christopher Miles, Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” directed by Tom O'Horgan, and “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” directed by Denis Heroux. The series did not go into wide release but usually played one theatre in the larger metropolitan areas. The two you mentioned, Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” and O'Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” were directed respectively by Tony Richardson and John Frankenheimer. They were among the best of the bunch.
Jim, that is an utterly hilarious story. It could be part of a movie. If you have other stories and recollections of Fall River movie theatres, please post them. That’s what this site is all about.
The Nickelodeon had several screens. It was a premiere art house for the Boston area especially in the 1980s and 1990s and replaced an earlier incarnation down the corner of Cummington Street and another street that leads to Huntington Avenue. The place was one Green-Line stop or a short walk from Kenmore Square. After the Kendall Square Cinemas in Cambridge was built, there was some day/dating in the programming. I used to go to the Nickelodeon often. The programming was great. The projection was usually first rate, and they served terrific ice cream by the scoop. The last time I went there was when I brought some Italian club students to see Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Malena” on February 10, 2001. One week later the Nickelodeon was closed!
Roger, regarding Hartford, you are correct. But those two are in neighborhoods away from the center and I knew about them. What I was thinking was DOWNTOWN Hartford. There are no more there.
I have a note that at the Cine Orleans, built in the Strand stagehouse, I saw Robert Aldrich’s “The Legend of Lylah Clare” in 1968. It starred Kim Novak, Peter Finch and Ernest Borgnine and had (gasp! horrors! egads! amend the Constitution!) a lesbian theme.
One of the many regrets of my life was that I never visited the Durfee, although I lived in nearby Providence. That’s why I submitted this theatre to begin with. I knew about and could have gone to see Lillian Gish in her 1970s nostalgic appearance/film presentation. I don’t feel like looking up the details right now, but I chose to see something else in Providence that night, at Brown University (thanks, W.C. Fields.) I did see Gish in the audience at Radio City Music Hall in a restoration/revival of “A Star is Born” several years later, but never the Durfee, though I drove by it many times. Why have ALL the old theatres of Fall River been closed or destroyed? ALL OF THEM! Just like Hartford. Surely one could have been used today as a theatre and concert venue like Providence’s Performing Arts Center (Loew’s State) or New Bedford’s Zeiterion. Jim Isadore, you seem to be familiar with the Durfee. Do you know of any surviving photos?
This is all very interesting to me. I live on the east coast. I too took a picture of the exterior some time in the 1980s when I went into my marquee-photographing mode. Being Italian, loving Italian films and operas, I thought “La Tosca” was a fabulous name for a movie theatre. Keep us informed.
At the end of the 1996 film “Celluloid,” an Italian movie about the making of Rossellini’s “Open City,” the scrolled narrative mentions the World Theatre by name as being instrumental in the beginning recognition of the film’s worth. Still virtually unseen and unappreciated in Italy, “Open City” began a 21-month run at the World with showings from 9 A.M. to 11 P.M., beginning in February, 1946. International acclaim for the revolutionary movie followed, augmented by its subsequent success in France later that year. So the history of Italian neo-realism owes a debt to Rod Geiger (the American G.I. who negotiated the importation of “Open City”), to its then-distributor Mayer-Burstyn, and to the World Theatre which showcased it in the middle of Manhattan.
Nothing to forgive, David S. It’s just that I was utterly certain about that and checked the New York Times microfilm to confirm. You may note that the Playboy was a theatre that I submitted and have had great times there over the decades.
I recently saw “Before Sunset” on a special mid-week matinee scheduled because of cloudy weather! The movie playing in the other of the two auditoriums (and packed to the gills!) was Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
You folks who are talking about “Troy” are confusing this long-demolished Ziegfeld on 6th Avenue with the newer namesake on West 54th Street. The other newer one is currently listed under “The Ziegfeld.”
A magnificent marquee indeed. You can admire it from afar, walk up to it and stand under it while, with a little imagination, it casts a spell. But it leads, heartbreakingingly, to nothing…nothing…nothing at all.
The theatre is in fact being currently used for stage shows and other acts. Some are sponsored by the Colonial Theatre restoration organization in order to raise needed funds for that project.
I haven’t been inside this theatre yet, but the entrance is an ugly botched mess I hope is eventually improved and made more attractive.
I took one of the free tours today that they offer on Saturdays (10:30 and 11:00) and Sundays (12 noon and 12:30.) The theatre is a marvel but they really haven’t begun to do any real restoration yet, and there’s an enormous amount to be done. With funds originally vetoed by Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, work had come to a standstill. Now that state funds and other moneys are available again, we were told that work is about to recommence and that the theatre will be open to the public in the spring of 2006. Let’s cross our fingers.
And don’t forget we still have the Beekman and Paris, Rhett, both single screen art houses, though I concede they are hardly in the same “monumental” league as the Astor Plaza and Ziegfeld.
Yes, I remember the Abbey and went to many movies there before it became the (first) Nickelodeon. Perhaps that should be added as another listing.
I never went to the Trans-Lux in the 1950s. I was a young child and lived in Providence. But I remember looking at newspaper ads of the theatre and it suggested to me a world of the forbidden. Memory plays tricks sometimes, but I seem to recall that Julien Duvivier’s film “Deadlier than the Male” played here. It starred Jean Gabin and Danièle Delorme. I don’t think I had yet actually ever seen one, but French films of the time seemed to have an aura of the forbidden, enough to educe from me many a prepubescent blush, often just from the titles of the films. I associated the names of many of the stars of that era with a special privileged adult world that was closed to us little ones: names like Gèrard Philipe, Françoise Arnoul, Danielle Darrieux and many others. I believe the Trans-Lux may also have done second-run art-house fare (again preferring the racier entries) that had already played other venues such as the Beacon Hill, Kenmore, or Exeter. I would really like to hear additional information from those who may have clearer recollections concerning ambience and programming at the Trans-Lux.
Yes, Ron, I remember eating in that restaurant where initially you were asked to share tables with strangers in a spirit of social camaraderie. Late in the evening remaining food was served free to the needy. I remember attending the pilot session of an auteurist film class given by a gentleman named Benson. We watched Douglas Sirk’s “The Tarnished Angels” and were invited to sign up for his course at the Orson Welles Film School which also existed there at the time. I also remember attending a film and discussion session with Hollywood director Nicholas Ray, of “Rebel Without a Cause” fame. This took place in the downstairs screening room, the smallest of the three. And I remember some very rowdy near-violent anti-Vietnam-war demonstrations taking place outside on Massachusetts Avenue (near Harvard) in 1970 as I came out of a showing of Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.” I also remember the place when it was called the Esquire and had a single screen. “Point of Order”, a documentary compilation of the Joe McCarthy hearings, was the first film I ever saw there.
Vincent, it IS biased because it is slanted toward a a point of view. So what? It is not a documentary (that’s why I referred to it as op-ed). It presents the truth about Bush and his slimy Machiavellian cohorts from the point of view of antipathy. Viva antipathy! The facts are researched and no-one has successfully refuted them. You call it shrill. I call it Swiftian. It is not anti-American; it is anti-Bush (unless you equate the two as do the orgasmic wacko fundamentlists of the religious right.) The jury at Cannes had only one Frenchman. Four members, I believe, were American. Leni Riefenstahl prize? She EXTOLLED a monster in “Triumph of the Will”; Moore’s film EXCORIATES a dangerous and failed leader. Hardly the same. Moore does the world and America a noble service. Incidentally, while I do not shy away from friendly arguments, this will be my last word here…having gone on already, probably ad nauseam, on another part of “Cinema Treasures” in regard to the Iowa cinema chain. There are plenty of places to see the movie. And it comes out on DVD around the time of the Republican convention. I’d like to be in the rafters of Madison Square Garden then, dropping down DVD’s of F 9/11 like manna from Democratic heaven into the Valley of the Republicans. Of course I jest. (Gotta be careful of the Patriot Act!)
Finito, basta.
Movie,
“Fahrenheit 9/11” IS playing in your area by now. You may already know this, but here is a link to all the U.S. theatres Moore’s op-ed filmic masterpiece is now showing.
http://www.f911tix.com/
Then click on the image of Florida. Florida, hmmmmmmm! Make sure your vote is counted this time!
Dave, in the listing for the 57th Street Normandie, Warren posted a comment stating that it was named after the former one on 53rd Street one.
/theaters/7049/
Dave-Bronx, that 57th Street Normandie you talk about is not to be confused with this earlier Normandie on 53rd Street. The 57th Street Normandie/Playboy/Cinema Rendezvous that you describe is now listed under the Directors' Guild of America Theatre. It is a different theatre from this one. The DGA still exists. The Normandie of this listing is long-gone.
Barton, I placed “Eclipse” on my list recently. I keep adding. I love the movie a great deal and showed it when I used to run the Italian Film Society of RI from 1981 to 1996. I still have the little four-page program booklet the Little Carnegie distributed at that film. Martin Scorsese includes a nice tribute to “Eclipse” in his “My Voyage to Italy,” now available on DVD. Another thing I liked about the Little Carnegie, besides what you mention, was the very plush and spacious lobby/waiting area. It began to the rear of the auditorium and then went left along the side.
Barton, that was the American Film Theatre series, funded in part by American Express, in which various directors were commissioned to make films of important plays. Among the others were Brecht’s “Galileo” directed by Joseph Losey, Harold Pinter’s “Butley” directed by the playwright, Maxwell Anderson’s “Lost in the Stars” directed by Daniel Mann, Pinter’s “The Homecoming” directed by Peter Hall, John Osborne’s “Luther” directed by Guy Green, Jean Genet’s “The Maids” directed by Christopher Miles, Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” directed by Tom O'Horgan, and “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” directed by Denis Heroux. The series did not go into wide release but usually played one theatre in the larger metropolitan areas. The two you mentioned, Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” and O'Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” were directed respectively by Tony Richardson and John Frankenheimer. They were among the best of the bunch.
Jim, that is an utterly hilarious story. It could be part of a movie. If you have other stories and recollections of Fall River movie theatres, please post them. That’s what this site is all about.
The Nickelodeon had several screens. It was a premiere art house for the Boston area especially in the 1980s and 1990s and replaced an earlier incarnation down the corner of Cummington Street and another street that leads to Huntington Avenue. The place was one Green-Line stop or a short walk from Kenmore Square. After the Kendall Square Cinemas in Cambridge was built, there was some day/dating in the programming. I used to go to the Nickelodeon often. The programming was great. The projection was usually first rate, and they served terrific ice cream by the scoop. The last time I went there was when I brought some Italian club students to see Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Malena” on February 10, 2001. One week later the Nickelodeon was closed!
I am curious about what the one in Manhattan near Union Square was called. Anyone know?
Roger, regarding Hartford, you are correct. But those two are in neighborhoods away from the center and I knew about them. What I was thinking was DOWNTOWN Hartford. There are no more there.
I have a note that at the Cine Orleans, built in the Strand stagehouse, I saw Robert Aldrich’s “The Legend of Lylah Clare” in 1968. It starred Kim Novak, Peter Finch and Ernest Borgnine and had (gasp! horrors! egads! amend the Constitution!) a lesbian theme.
One of the many regrets of my life was that I never visited the Durfee, although I lived in nearby Providence. That’s why I submitted this theatre to begin with. I knew about and could have gone to see Lillian Gish in her 1970s nostalgic appearance/film presentation. I don’t feel like looking up the details right now, but I chose to see something else in Providence that night, at Brown University (thanks, W.C. Fields.) I did see Gish in the audience at Radio City Music Hall in a restoration/revival of “A Star is Born” several years later, but never the Durfee, though I drove by it many times. Why have ALL the old theatres of Fall River been closed or destroyed? ALL OF THEM! Just like Hartford. Surely one could have been used today as a theatre and concert venue like Providence’s Performing Arts Center (Loew’s State) or New Bedford’s Zeiterion. Jim Isadore, you seem to be familiar with the Durfee. Do you know of any surviving photos?
This is all very interesting to me. I live on the east coast. I too took a picture of the exterior some time in the 1980s when I went into my marquee-photographing mode. Being Italian, loving Italian films and operas, I thought “La Tosca” was a fabulous name for a movie theatre. Keep us informed.
At the end of the 1996 film “Celluloid,” an Italian movie about the making of Rossellini’s “Open City,” the scrolled narrative mentions the World Theatre by name as being instrumental in the beginning recognition of the film’s worth. Still virtually unseen and unappreciated in Italy, “Open City” began a 21-month run at the World with showings from 9 A.M. to 11 P.M., beginning in February, 1946. International acclaim for the revolutionary movie followed, augmented by its subsequent success in France later that year. So the history of Italian neo-realism owes a debt to Rod Geiger (the American G.I. who negotiated the importation of “Open City”), to its then-distributor Mayer-Burstyn, and to the World Theatre which showcased it in the middle of Manhattan.
Nothing to forgive, David S. It’s just that I was utterly certain about that and checked the New York Times microfilm to confirm. You may note that the Playboy was a theatre that I submitted and have had great times there over the decades.
Sure is in western Massachusetts. My error, can someone change it?
I recently saw “Before Sunset” on a special mid-week matinee scheduled because of cloudy weather! The movie playing in the other of the two auditoriums (and packed to the gills!) was Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.”