Adonis Theatre
839 8th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10019
839 8th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10019
14 people
favorited this theater
Showing 76 - 100 of 132 comments
Oklahomo Cowboy:
You have charm. You are clever. Without a doubt you are the best looking young stud in Oklahoma City, but your vocabulary and spelling are somewhat lacking. Perhaps the word you were wanting to write is moniker(?).
pmullins;
Thanks for the update & info.
Actually, my monider is OKLAHOMO COWBOY
Dear Warren,
Being homophobic is just telling everyone how ignorant and stupid you are. You are a shameful individual who should be excised from this website post haste. Being homophobic and ignorant means you can’t cope with life and you have to hate others so you can love yourself. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome affects straights as well. I pray the good lord will overlook your ignorance and not inflict you or your loved ones with this illness.
‘Oklahoma Cowboy’—The Back Row was probably not filmed there, because I frequented the place during most of its history (without EVER getting one of the above personnel’s Famous STD’s), and I think I would have known. You can write this one guy BJ at his blog, BJ’s Pornology, and ask him, he’ll know. I’ve exchanged some videos and info with him, and he’s an encyclopedia of 70s gay movies. Friendly, and will answer your email right away. Just put BJ’s Pornology into Google and you’ll find him straightaway.
‘A Night at the Adonis’ is well before AIDS, but that doesn’t stop professional bores from giving insufferable and uninformative and hateful sermons. What an idiotic thing to say, Nameless Bore. I warned them at the Fair about you, and they’ve made sure to cut out all smoking, after you reported them. You are obviously on a homophobic crusade under the guise of old movie house expertise (you may have some, but who would care now…) Why don’t you start your own preachy blog or just go teach Sunday School in a red state?
Hollywood—Jack Deveau has been dead a good while, and Hand in Hand Films and all the old porno studios are long gone, replaced with the things straight to video from Czech Republic, etc. You mean the vhs doesn’t have ‘Moonlight Serenade’ on it? Anyway, I think eBay’s naughtybids site has it pretty frequently. Impossible to find those old titles in regular porno stores any more—things like ‘Adam and Yves’ are long gone, and one early 70’s that was terrific, showed at the Mini-Cinema, once right in Rockefeller Cinema, was ‘Gay Guide to Hawaii’. It’s probably been completely lost, and was probably never even on vhs.
Was “The Back Row” also filmed there? That handsome lead actor is exactly my type of guy.
This theatre was before my time, but I would like to have seen it. Sounds like it was a fun cruise spot.
Here is another photo:
http://tinyurl.com/2pwdxw
the old Adonis had a restroom on the balcony level with one of those old 70’s silver disco light fixtures for awhile. Things were done quite out in the open as well as in comparative privacy. There was a phone booth on the second floor that was always ringing, people would call in for dirty talk.
I met Wrangler and Whiting at a wedding of mutual friends in 1990, but had thought they were already married. someone said here they didn’t marry till 1994. I talked to them a good bit, as both Margaret and I were performers in the wedding ceremony. They were very funny, real Beverly Hills characters. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Playpen is still there, but I’ve never been inside. I think it lasted as the ‘New Adonis’ for 5 years, till 1995, in any case a few years. It was full of campy Greek statues and became filthy after a year—broken chairs, toilets, everything. They had taken the old ‘Adonis Superstar’ photos (from the film ‘A Night at the Adonis’, which I saw at the old theater just after they filmed it there) on black velvet from the old theater and placed them back up at the new place. The same cashiers worked both theaters for years, and one of them, a woman named Bertha, was in the film ‘A Night at the Adonis.
(continuing) I had heard that the old theater, obviously the Tivoli, had been built by B. Rose for F. Brice, that was what everybody used to say. I remember seeing ‘A Night at the Adonis’ there right after it was filmed inside there, and I’ve got a review of the film on IMDB. by 1987 at least, the balcony had collapsed and the place went all the way downhill. It closed in 1989 and moved down to the west side of 8th at 44th. The old marquee bore the words ‘Move to 44th Street’. The theater there (correct as shown in a photo above) did become the Playpen, which still exists—I’d forgotten how ugly the colours are.
Wonderfully informative thread which I look forward to reading in detail later. To clear up anything I may have missed in skimming, I can definitely tell you about the 2 Adonises, having gone to both of them quite a lot. The old one was truly a pleasure, and was on 8th, between 50th and 51st, and has, as noted, been demolished for that high rise. When I first started going in 1976, it was clean and stayed that way for a few years, there were quaint old-fashioned signs about ‘The Male Flagship Theater of the Nation’ and outside the balcony theater was a spacious are with quaint wicker chairs, which sank into disrepair by the early 80s.
Nothing has been mentioned on this page yet about Mrs. Chelly Wilson, the Greek-born exploitation film producer, distributor and exhibtitor who was a seminal figure (no pun intended) in the New York porn cinema scene. The Tivoli and the Cameo (former Squire) on Eighth Avenue were her earliest ventures as an exhibitor. I found a NY Times article that identifies Mrs. Wilson as the operator for both theaters as early as January of 1968 – and her association with the Cameo goes back possibly as early as 1964 when proto-porn flicks like the Olga series made their debut under her stewardship. Her empire on Eighth Avenue would expand by 1970 to include the Capri and the Eros I and Eros II theaters (the latter to become known as the Venus) all clustered on the block between 45th and 46th Streets.
very funny……….gives a new meaning to my little pony
Interesting grouping of ads here:
My Little Porno – Post 7/4/86
Brings to mind the old Sesame Street learning song “One of these things is not like the other…”
Yes, Warren, my typing error. I meant 8th Ave. Thanks for pointing it out. Hollywood… both theaters were known as the Adonis at different times. I believe the name probably has a longer association with the Tivoli than it does with the Cameo turned Playpen.
Hollywood… as a few of us here suspected, you are confusing the theater listed on this page with the former Squire/Ideal theater that later became the XXX Cameo and subsequently assumed the Adonis moniker when the former Tivoli (the subject of this page) was demolished. The photo you have posted is definitely a shot of that other theater listed on CT here and located further to the south down 8th Ave near 43rd Street. That theater still exists and still goes by the name Playpen.
The Tivoli theater discussed on this page was located on B'way between 50th and 51st. While both buildings resemble each other to a degree, you can compare your photo with the one Warren posted on August 16th, 2005 to note the differences.
By all means, please repost your photo on the right page as it offers a glimpse of that theater during a period of operation that is not documented there.
So then, would your recollection be that the Cameo became the Playpen after the Adonis/Playpen was closed for demolition in 1990? And do you recall any attempts to book 1st run non-porno fare at the Adonis in its last days such as the story conveyed by AlexNYC on March 23rd and 26th of this year?
I’d be interested in seeing that photo as well, hollywood. The two facades (the Tivoli/Adonis and the Cameo/Playpen) were very similar in architectural styles and can be easily confused. They’re also on the same side of 8th Ave and within blocks of each other. But so many of those XXX theaters in the area changed or swapped names over the years that its easy enough to believe. You can set up a photobucket account for free (www.photobucket.com), or if you like you can contact another CT member who already has a photobucket account and perhaps they’ll post it here for you. I’ve hosted other members' photos on my photobucket several times already.
Thanks for sharing that, Alex, and apparently shedding some light on a little known and obviously short-lived legitimate revival for the former Tivoli before she was so unceremoniously swept out of the way in the name “progress.” I wonder if the distributors of the film four-walled the theater for their qualifying run? I wonder if we can find out more about this engagement (and possible others), as well as nailing down just exactly what the place was renamed during the time.
It was the same theater that was once the Adonis at 50th Street & 8th Avenue. I recall having passed by many times and wondering what the theater looked like inside, since it appeared to be so big. I think it was closed for a while before they reopened it and attempted to play first release non-porn films. I’m not sure if they remodeled the place inside when I saw Silent Tongue, since I had nothing to compare it to.
I located 2 release dates for Silent Tongue. The Entertainment Weekly reviewed it in their December 17, 1993 issue. So it may have been in very limited release in December 1993 for Oscar contention purposes. It was then released more widely on February 25,1994, as I have the NY Times review of the film from that date, when it played at 2 theaters Loews Tower East (3rd Ave & 71st) & Lowes Village Theater VII (3rd Ave & 11th St). So it’s likely I saw it at the Tivoli/Adonis in December 1993, instead of in 1994.
Alex… I’m a little confused. I thought this theater had shut its doors as a gay porn house in 1989 due to the machinations of William Zeckendorf who was trying to lure tenants into his Worldwide Plaza hi-rise on the adjacent block. Here is an article from the Times published in 1990:
View link
If the link doesn’t work, here is a material passaage:
<< Directly north of Worldwide Plaza, on Eighth Avenue, between 50th and 51st Streets, is the blockfront that includes the former Adonis Theater, which showed gay pornographic films from 1975 until last year, when it was shut. The closing was engineered by Mr. Zeckendorf as part of his deal with the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, a major tenant in Worldwide Plaza, although the developer will not elaborate on how he did it. Repeated telephone calls to the theater operator were not returned.
Built as the Tivoli and opened in 1921, the 1,433-seat theater was perhaps the second largest single-screen cinema left in Manhattan, after Loews Astor Plaza, at Broadway and 44th Street. The building also has what may be the last open-air, roof-garden theater in Manhattan, according to Michael R. Miller, regional director of the Theatre Historical Society, although it has probably not been used since the advent of the talkies. The theater’s Renaissance-style facade, by Eisendrath & Horwitz, includes a large balcony, flanked by two-story Ionic columns.
‘'It’s an ugly, unattractive, eyesore,’‘ Mr. Zeckendorf said. ’‘We hope to replace it with a structure more in keeping with Worldwide Plaza.’‘ >>
I researched a bit more on the Times site and found a later article dated June 1995 that reports the demolition of the theater and mentions that Mr. Zeckendorf had finally succeeded in closing the theater (one assumes permanently) in January of 1994, “after years of manuevering.” This opens a door for the possibility that in a fight for its life, the theater’s management might have instituted a policy of showing straight films in a last ditch effort to prove its worthiness in the resurgent neighborhood. Here is a link to that article:
View link
I believe there was another theater that picked up the “Adonis” moniker at some point further down 8th Ave in the ‘40’s across from the Cameo/Playpen Theater. Does that ring a bell with anyone?
Silent Tongue a porno flick? With River Phoenix? LOL
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108135/
I recall the film was just released, but this was the only place in the NYC the film was being shown. But the theater was not Adonis, it had a different name, but I can’t recall what it was called. I believe the theater may have closed for good after that.
I finally got to see what the inside looked like, it reminded me a bit of what the RKO Keith in Flushing was like. This was a theater that could still have been restored to it’s previous glory.
Great photo Warren. I recall seeing the film Silent Tongue there starring River Phoenix, Richard Harris & Alan Bates (in 1994?), which was released posthumously after River’s death in 1993. I can’t recall what the theater’s name was then, but it was obvious the theater had alot of history to it, and was in need of repair.
this is not the old adonis/playpen