Benson Twins

Does anyone here remember the Benson with the ticket booth outside the lobby?

Guys I’m laughing at this because I thought the matron at The Oasis was a bitter shrew but yours sounds worse. The one I had wore a uniform 2 sizes too tight with those nurses shoes and she was mean. Someone once threw a cup of soda at her from the balcony and she called the police. It was an afternoon and they were showing a revivial of “Twenty Thousand Leauges Under The Sea” & “Dumbo”. The manager tried to calm her down but she called the police from a payphone. The lobby was full of kids and adults laughing at her screaming how she was assaulted, as she stood there dripping in grape juice (remember that stuff from those jet spray machines?). It’s sad that young kids today wont have memories like this in these sterile multiplexes. Boy if the old balconys could talk.

Yo, RonS and YankeeMike—Not just at the Benson, but all around the Nabes, those matrons WERE a piece of work—that flashlight in the eyes could’ve blinded you. In ‘56 “The Bad Seed” played, with the stipulation that “No one under the age of 16 will be admitted!” Well, at the age of 14, I pompaded the two hairs on my upper lip to make myself look “sixteen” (must’ve appeared like a Salvador Dali moustache), I paid my cash, and was admitted. When the matron flashed her batteries at me, I said, “Hey, I couldn’t’ve gotten in here if I was under sixteen, so what the deal?” She said, “OK,” and we became great friends after that. That’s to say, I never sat in the Children’s Section again. I graduated to the balcony to smoke cigarettes.

I remember this theatre when it was a single theater. They had the nastiest matron in the world working there. She was always shooing kids out of the adult section with that flashlight of hers. When we turned 15 my friends and I had to pay adult price, and naturally we sat in the adult section. Well, the confrontation was set up and of course this witch pointed her flashlight in our eyes and told us to move to the side (children’s) section. I wasn’t going to stand for any of that, so I told her that we paid the adult price, and we were going to sit in the adult section. Besides, I told her, we were there to see the movie and weren’t planning on talking or doing anything to interrupt anyone’s enjoyment of the film. Of course, she wasn’t going to hear any of it (I recall the theater being almost empty by the way) and she ended up causing a commotion. I insisted on seeing the manager. He was probably petrified of her, so he told us he would refund our money, which we accepted with the vow never to return. I never went back, although I did end up there for 15 minutes with a bunch of camp buddies when the theatre was showing porno for a while in the mid-70’s. I remember one of my friends was disturbed about the “poor” quality (lol) of the movie, exclaiming “This is a stag film!”, whereupon we got up and left.

Yes, you are right. I thought the later marquee looked better than the original one.

I went to this theatre in the 1960’s. It had an orchestra pit that was visible untill the theatre was twinned.

The Benson Theatre seated 1359 people when it was a single screen theatre and the address was 2007-9 86th Street.