Regal UA Midway

The biggest theatre is 219 and sells out at 199(aud #5), aud #9 is 209 seats and sells out at 190. Those are my biggest.

I liked working at this theater back in the mid ‘90’s. I did contract work, and found out the hard way that parking is closely monitored in Forest Hills (NYC parking tickets are outrageous, but I guess they need (or really want) the money!). It really is a great location; and no, I didn’t know it was named after the Battle of Midway. I wrongly assumed it was located between 2 other UA theaters, at one time!

The best thing about my visits to this theater was speaking with the daytime doorman, Jack W. I know some of you are familiar with him: he was quite a gentleman, a real character and an excellent, if not legendary, UA district manager in his day (in the 70’s and 80’s). I guess he got sick (cancer, I believe), and had to retire from the very stressful DM position. But he loved theaters so much that he wanted to work the door at the Midway, to stay in the theater business (certainly not for the pay!). The stories he would tell, being around the theater business so long, were excellent. Speaking with him was always a pleasure. I was bothered to hear that Jack passed on some years back. You don’t find many “real” movie theater people like him around the business today. RIP Jack-

Management shifted to Skouras two years after the Midway opened (late September 1944), to RKO two years later (September 1946), and back to Skouras again on September 1948, the final transfer. I saw “The Dolly Sisters” at noon at the Midway on Christmas Day, but walked out on “The Caribbean Mystery” so I wouldn’t miss the start of an early holiday dinner.

I wish our chamber of commerce would do something to help save the stadium, its sitting empty decaying.

And let us not forget that some of the film is actually set (and was filmed on location) at the West Side Tennis Club’s historic Stadium on Burns Street, just a short walk from the Midway. I wonder what is behind this booking? A one-off revival? An ongoing Thursday classics series?

Yeah, I saw that too. It’s one of my favorite movies, and the date’s also my birthday so…here’s hoping, I guess.

Does anyone know about Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train playing on 9/21 at this theatre?

Mystery solved. Thanks Paul.

Ed, I agree, I also liked the former Midway’s balcony theaters. It could be because it was a novelty, statdium seating as a common feature was still years away. Not to mention that it was perhaps one of the cleanest, well kept theaters I had been to at the time. The place was maintained beautifully in the 80’s, and into the early 90’s when I stopped going there.

That is odd. When it became a twin, did they just close the balcony completely? I say this because when it was a twin, it had the same amount of seats in theater 1 and 2 as it did when it was a quad. It sounds like they just cut the downstairs in half, and closed the balcony. Then cut the balcony in half later, and made 3 and 4 out of that? How long did it operate as a twin?

Another good film I was pleased to view at the Midway in 1970 was the Jack Nicholson-Karen Black vehicle, “Five Easy Pieces.” Debbie and I watched it from the Midway’s comfy balcony one very chilly May evening. It was quite intense, viewing-wise, and I later discovered that many people who’d seen it had hated it. I thought, who could ever hate tortured musical rebel Bobby DuPuis and his thoroughly dysfunctional family? The plot was considerably offbeat, and I thought the acting was pretty darn good overall.

Most people seem to remember the one classic scene in the diner. Yep, the chicken salad sandwich order, Bobby with an attitude, the snotty waitress and the two rough-talking but amusing hitchhiking lesbians were certainly the stuff of Hollywood legends. But equally memorable is the scene in which he wheels his mute and Alzheimer’s-afflicted dad onto an open area overlooking a cliff one frigid morning in the Pacific northwest and tries to communicate with him. Touching and brilliant. So was the closing scene at the gas station just before the credits began to roll.

For years. to no avail, I tried to obtain the soundtrack (which played extremely well over the Midway’s sound system) in LP, cassette or CD format. Fruitless. Epic Records really did one crappy job marketing and distributing one, if it even existed. I wanted it as much for the classical pieces as well as for the Tammy Wynette “D-I-V-O-R-C-E”-type material. Well, it did acctually exist and I managed to snag a mint LP copy for two bucks last year at Ray & Sharon Courts' Hollywood Collectors Show at the Beverly Garland Hotel in North Hollywood. (It had been held there four times a year for ages, but has since switched over to a hotel at LAX. Ray claimed that Garland adamantly refused to upgrade her hotel’s decrepit air-conditioning system True! www.hollywoodcollectorsshow.com for anyone who may wish to attend. The shows are held in LA, Chicago and NY, and perhaps in even more cities now. Seeing and meeting many older actors such as John Agar, Larry Storch, Linda Blair, etc. is a total hoot!)

It’s in a good location, so the Midway should survive pretty well. It was always busy when I used to go there, but that’s a while ago. But it only had to get better since they redid the place. It was always a clean and well kept theater back in the 80’s and early 90’s when I used to go there.