LuisV, welcome to Cinema Treasures ! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it immensely !
I know what you mean about the wide release of “The Godfather”. For me it was August 1972 at the RKO Madison Theater in Ridgewood, theater # 4621 on this site. There was a lot of hoopla. The cement parts of the RKO Madison’s facade were painted dark blue, which caused my dad to remark it made the Madison look like “a black theater in Harlem.” There were signs for ticket holders' and ticket buyers' lines, but I don’t recall any big crowds, probably because I
went with family in the early afternoon on a weekday.
I can understand why Loew’s Valencia and Radio City are your favorite theaters. May you enjoy your trip to Loew’s Jersey !
It’s interesting that “The Godfather” was the only time you saw the Casino sold out and filled to capacity.
See, Lost Memory ? You learn something new every day !
I rather think you will survive your December Ridgewood trip, and I look forward to reading the observations that you will be posting here.
It would be ironic if, after surviving Vietnam, you did not survive your December Ridgewood trip !
Like Randle P. McMurphy of “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” leading an escape from a Red Chinese prison camp in North Korea, yet falling prey to Big Nurse in the U.S.A.
Thank you, cjdv, for mentioning the local newspaper, the Weekly Chat. My dad remembers it as “The Daily Chat”, and his mom reading it regularly. He remembers it was delivered by truck from Weirfield St. and Broadway in his old home neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, adjacent to Ridgewood, Queens. This was confirmed by a photo I saw in a book titled, “Welcome Back To Brooklyn !” that I browsed a year or two ago in the NYC Transit Museum Store in Grand Central Station.
Thanks, JakeGittes. I saw “Chinatown” in Manhattan at either the Baronet or Coronet near 59th and 3rd in June 1974, but saw “The Conversation” at the Haven in Woodhaven, late August 1974. Many of the films I saw in 1974 had something to do with the law, or the corruption thereof, starting with “Serpico” at the Casino in Richmond Hill, the above two films, “Death Wish”, “The Sting”, “Walking Tall”, and the remake of “The Front Page”.
Thank you, Lost Memory ! Having survived the fires of my youth, I now look forward to my approaching maturity.
You have implicitly wished me the Polish “sto lat !”, which means, may you live to be a hundred ! Thanks !
Yes, take a camera to Ridgewood, but wear a flak jacket to be on the safe side, if you wish. You might wish to question Bway and mrbillyc about their recent experience.
Thanks for the news and the current details of Ridgewood, mrbillyc. I will be back there some time this week. Regards to you, too.
Bushwick has been making a comeback, so how can Ridgewood be far behind ?
Unfortunately, Ridgewoood’s adjoining neighborhood of Bushwick was in the news in a bad way a week ago : the woman who was pushed into her home near Irving, Myrtle and Grove and allegedly raped by two 83rd Precinct police officers.
There was also that news of that man stabbed while coming home to 67-68 Booth Street in Forest Hills.
Thanks, Denpiano. Around 1940 or so my dad worked at National Biscuit Company at 1000 Pacific Street near Classon Avenue. He took the then-new A train Independent Subway from Bway – East NY to Franklin Avenue. The Fulton Street el had just stopped running in 1940, between downtown Bklyn and Rockaway Avenue.
My dad’s mom bought him new suits for Easter every year in the thriving garment district centering around Rockaway and Pitkin Avenues. They would go on Sundays after church, circa 1930, taking the Wilson – Rockaway Avenue trolley from Bushwick. Some merchants would start grabbing my dad’s mom’s sleeve as she was getting off the trolley :
“New suit for the boy ?”
“Take your hands off me, or I’ll go to your brother’s pushcart down the street !”
Warren, thanks for the correction on Loew’s 175th Street.
BTW, I tend to picture you as resembling the actor Everett Sloane when I read your posts.
Denpiano, thanks for disclosing your age. You’re welcome to my descriptions. Most of my childhood movie experience was at the RKO Madison and Ridgewood Theaters, which also have pages on this site.
I, too, often looked away from the movie screen while there. What I noticed most were the balcony box seats off to both sides of the screen, the design of the ceiling, which reminded me of gathered drapes and the planet Saturn seen from below, and, at the RKO Madison, a luminous clock on the wall to the left of the screen, which was bright enough to be read but not so bright as to distract from the screen.
So your early movie-going was to the Pitkin, not Loew’s Jersey City. I think there are links on this page to how the interior of the Pitkin used to look, and how the exterior looks now.
The only movie theater pipe organ I heard as a kid was at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.
Your contribution to this page is valuable, because you experienced the Pitkin in its last few years before it closed. Please elaborate on your memories of what Brownsville was like, 1959-1961.
A friend of mine used to live on Georgia Avenue, near Livonia Avenue, about that time, before she and her family moved to near the Avenue U station on the Brighton Line.
Some time toward the end of the 1930’s, my dad, who was from Bushwick, dated a gal who lived near Pitkin and Pennsylvania Avenues, and went to Loew’s Pitkin with her. He remembers it as a beautiful theater.
Denpiano, your description of the Jersey reads a lot like Loews Valencia, the Queens Wonder Theater of which the Loew’s Jersey was one. The others were the 168th St. Theater in Manhattan, where Rev. Ike used to have his services, Loew’s Paradise in The Bronx, mentioned in the 1955 Academy Award-winning film, “Marty”, and Loew’s Kings on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, which has a page on this site, but which I think is still a rotting, unused hulk.
How old are you, Denpiano ? I will turn fifty on this coming Thursday, the 17th. I remember MelloRol soft ice cream cones also, and the blue, white and yellow three-D icicled block letters on the horizontal banner out front, advertising “HEALTHFULLY AIR CONDITIONED CONDITIONED”, and that inviting universal movie theater smell beckoning the customers.
You read like you’re due for a visit to the Jersey in Jersey City. Unlike the other four Loew’s Wonder Theaters, it’s still showing movies !!! Not sitting forlorn in poor condition at all !
Ov vey iz mir, I’m not sure what condition Loew’s Pitkin is in now.
Is there still a need for Father Guido ? How about those prominent screen priests, Fathers Merrin amd Karras ? Father Flanagan ? How about the priests from “Going My Way” and “Bells Of St. Mary’s” ?
Yeah, yeah, I know, stop with the Pat O'Brien bits ….
Fortunately, the Kew Gardens, formerly the Austin, is not in the middle of nowhere, but is at a busy, easily accessible location, convenient to subway, bus, LIRR and walking.
To say the least. The gimmick in that one was “spine-tingling Percepto” (mild electric shocks in some of the seats). I saw that at Film Forum also, and, boy, did we have fun letting it rip !
Not only did the dark silhouette of The Tingler move across the otherwise blank white movie screen, as an added bonus, a member of the Film Forum staff ran around the cinema, shaking a three-foot rubber Tingler at us !
My favorite line from “The Tingler” was when Vincent Price and his trampy wife were in the same room as the family cat, and he says to her, “You two have met, in the same alley, perhaps ?”
My favorite scene was when Price injects himself with the “LSD 25” !
What my wife and I found scariest about “House on Haunted Hill” was not the Emergo, but the severed heads inside the suitcases.
That would have been Jack McCarthy, EdSolero. Eugene McCarthy aspired to the Democratic presidential candidacy in 1968. He had the support of many young people to the tune of “Be clean for Gene”, but lost out to Hubert Humphrey, who of course lost the election to Nixon.
Thanks for the Honeymooners Loews Pitkin reference !
“What a pity to think that lobby has been gutted for retail space!”
Yes, but better retail space than vacant, with winos and homeless squatting there, criminal element lurking there, or a shooting gallery for junkies.
I remember WPIX’s “Officer” Joe Bolton as the host of the Three Stooges show on Channel 11 very well, cautioning viewers not to attempt their stunts.
It was a big leap from that innocence to a teenage boy tragically and accidentally killing himself about a dozen years later in emulation of rock star Alice Cooper mock-hanging himself on stage.
Thanks, Robert and lostmemory. I saw (and felt)“Emergo” and other William Castle gimmicks (Punishment Poll, Percepto)at Film Forum, 57 Watts St. lower Manhattan at the September 1988 Gimmick-O-Rama. Closest I came to experiencing them at the Madison was “Premature Burial” (summer 1962) “Man With The X-Ray Eyes” and “Black Sabbath” (spring and summer 1964, respectively). The first William Castle film I saw at the Madison was
“I Saw What You Did” in summer 1965.
LuisV, welcome to Cinema Treasures ! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it immensely !
I know what you mean about the wide release of “The Godfather”. For me it was August 1972 at the RKO Madison Theater in Ridgewood, theater # 4621 on this site. There was a lot of hoopla. The cement parts of the RKO Madison’s facade were painted dark blue, which caused my dad to remark it made the Madison look like “a black theater in Harlem.” There were signs for ticket holders' and ticket buyers' lines, but I don’t recall any big crowds, probably because I
went with family in the early afternoon on a weekday.
I can understand why Loew’s Valencia and Radio City are your favorite theaters. May you enjoy your trip to Loew’s Jersey !
It’s interesting that “The Godfather” was the only time you saw the Casino sold out and filled to capacity.
A high school chum of mine saw “Night Of The Living Dead” and the Betty Boop Restrospective at the Elgin in Manhattan at 23rd and 8th in 1973 or 74.
See, Lost Memory ? You learn something new every day !
I rather think you will survive your December Ridgewood trip, and I look forward to reading the observations that you will be posting here.
It would be ironic if, after surviving Vietnam, you did not survive your December Ridgewood trip !
Like Randle P. McMurphy of “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” leading an escape from a Red Chinese prison camp in North Korea, yet falling prey to Big Nurse in the U.S.A.
Thank you, cjdv, for mentioning the local newspaper, the Weekly Chat. My dad remembers it as “The Daily Chat”, and his mom reading it regularly. He remembers it was delivered by truck from Weirfield St. and Broadway in his old home neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, adjacent to Ridgewood, Queens. This was confirmed by a photo I saw in a book titled, “Welcome Back To Brooklyn !” that I browsed a year or two ago in the NYC Transit Museum Store in Grand Central Station.
Thanks, JakeGittes. I saw “Chinatown” in Manhattan at either the Baronet or Coronet near 59th and 3rd in June 1974, but saw “The Conversation” at the Haven in Woodhaven, late August 1974. Many of the films I saw in 1974 had something to do with the law, or the corruption thereof, starting with “Serpico” at the Casino in Richmond Hill, the above two films, “Death Wish”, “The Sting”, “Walking Tall”, and the remake of “The Front Page”.
Thank you, Lost Memory ! Having survived the fires of my youth, I now look forward to my approaching maturity.
You have implicitly wished me the Polish “sto lat !”, which means, may you live to be a hundred ! Thanks !
Yes, take a camera to Ridgewood, but wear a flak jacket to be on the safe side, if you wish. You might wish to question Bway and mrbillyc about their recent experience.
Thanks for the news and the current details of Ridgewood, mrbillyc. I will be back there some time this week. Regards to you, too.
Bushwick has been making a comeback, so how can Ridgewood be far behind ?
Unfortunately, Ridgewoood’s adjoining neighborhood of Bushwick was in the news in a bad way a week ago : the woman who was pushed into her home near Irving, Myrtle and Grove and allegedly raped by two 83rd Precinct police officers.
There was also that news of that man stabbed while coming home to 67-68 Booth Street in Forest Hills.
Thanks, Denpiano. Around 1940 or so my dad worked at National Biscuit Company at 1000 Pacific Street near Classon Avenue. He took the then-new A train Independent Subway from Bway – East NY to Franklin Avenue. The Fulton Street el had just stopped running in 1940, between downtown Bklyn and Rockaway Avenue.
My dad’s mom bought him new suits for Easter every year in the thriving garment district centering around Rockaway and Pitkin Avenues. They would go on Sundays after church, circa 1930, taking the Wilson – Rockaway Avenue trolley from Bushwick. Some merchants would start grabbing my dad’s mom’s sleeve as she was getting off the trolley :
“New suit for the boy ?”
“Take your hands off me, or I’ll go to your brother’s pushcart down the street !”
-PKoch (Peter)
Thanks, Warren. Perhaps it meant a new Loew’s Twin Theater was about to be opened, or ground broken to start construction of one.
Thanks, Lost Memory ! How did you know that tomorrow is my 50th birthday ?
Warren, thanks for the correction on Loew’s 175th Street.
BTW, I tend to picture you as resembling the actor Everett Sloane when I read your posts.
Denpiano, thanks for disclosing your age. You’re welcome to my descriptions. Most of my childhood movie experience was at the RKO Madison and Ridgewood Theaters, which also have pages on this site.
I, too, often looked away from the movie screen while there. What I noticed most were the balcony box seats off to both sides of the screen, the design of the ceiling, which reminded me of gathered drapes and the planet Saturn seen from below, and, at the RKO Madison, a luminous clock on the wall to the left of the screen, which was bright enough to be read but not so bright as to distract from the screen.
So your early movie-going was to the Pitkin, not Loew’s Jersey City. I think there are links on this page to how the interior of the Pitkin used to look, and how the exterior looks now.
The only movie theater pipe organ I heard as a kid was at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.
Your contribution to this page is valuable, because you experienced the Pitkin in its last few years before it closed. Please elaborate on your memories of what Brownsville was like, 1959-1961.
A friend of mine used to live on Georgia Avenue, near Livonia Avenue, about that time, before she and her family moved to near the Avenue U station on the Brighton Line.
Some time toward the end of the 1930’s, my dad, who was from Bushwick, dated a gal who lived near Pitkin and Pennsylvania Avenues, and went to Loew’s Pitkin with her. He remembers it as a beautiful theater.
Denpiano, your description of the Jersey reads a lot like Loews Valencia, the Queens Wonder Theater of which the Loew’s Jersey was one. The others were the 168th St. Theater in Manhattan, where Rev. Ike used to have his services, Loew’s Paradise in The Bronx, mentioned in the 1955 Academy Award-winning film, “Marty”, and Loew’s Kings on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, which has a page on this site, but which I think is still a rotting, unused hulk.
How old are you, Denpiano ? I will turn fifty on this coming Thursday, the 17th. I remember MelloRol soft ice cream cones also, and the blue, white and yellow three-D icicled block letters on the horizontal banner out front, advertising “HEALTHFULLY AIR CONDITIONED CONDITIONED”, and that inviting universal movie theater smell beckoning the customers.
You read like you’re due for a visit to the Jersey in Jersey City. Unlike the other four Loew’s Wonder Theaters, it’s still showing movies !!! Not sitting forlorn in poor condition at all !
Ov vey iz mir, I’m not sure what condition Loew’s Pitkin is in now.
Is there still a need for Father Guido ? How about those prominent screen priests, Fathers Merrin amd Karras ? Father Flanagan ? How about the priests from “Going My Way” and “Bells Of St. Mary’s” ?
Yeah, yeah, I know, stop with the Pat O'Brien bits ….
Hi, DABOC24. I don’t remember a Jimmy Mahoney from St. Brigid’s, unfortunately.
Hi, April W. Sorry for having been out of touch so long. I know I owe you an e-mail, and I will send you one, soon, I hope.
Great ! Thanks, lostmemory !
How about some Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter jokes ?
A mind is a wonderful thing to taste, but human brain as a delicacy can be hard to swallow.
Me too. Not to mention the bloody mess inside that stains them.
I can picture instructions for a course in movie horror that one has to travel to :
“Room should be left in luggage for two severed heads.”
Go for those bargains, hardbop !
Fortunately, the Kew Gardens, formerly the Austin, is not in the middle of nowhere, but is at a busy, easily accessible location, convenient to subway, bus, LIRR and walking.
To say the least. The gimmick in that one was “spine-tingling Percepto” (mild electric shocks in some of the seats). I saw that at Film Forum also, and, boy, did we have fun letting it rip !
Not only did the dark silhouette of The Tingler move across the otherwise blank white movie screen, as an added bonus, a member of the Film Forum staff ran around the cinema, shaking a three-foot rubber Tingler at us !
My favorite line from “The Tingler” was when Vincent Price and his trampy wife were in the same room as the family cat, and he says to her, “You two have met, in the same alley, perhaps ?”
My favorite scene was when Price injects himself with the “LSD 25” !
What my wife and I found scariest about “House on Haunted Hill” was not the Emergo, but the severed heads inside the suitcases.
Miracles DO happen. Witness the renewal of Loew’s Jersey in Jersey City !
That would have been Jack McCarthy, EdSolero. Eugene McCarthy aspired to the Democratic presidential candidacy in 1968. He had the support of many young people to the tune of “Be clean for Gene”, but lost out to Hubert Humphrey, who of course lost the election to Nixon.
Thanks for the Honeymooners Loews Pitkin reference !
“What a pity to think that lobby has been gutted for retail space!”
Yes, but better retail space than vacant, with winos and homeless squatting there, criminal element lurking there, or a shooting gallery for junkies.
I remember WPIX’s “Officer” Joe Bolton as the host of the Three Stooges show on Channel 11 very well, cautioning viewers not to attempt their stunts.
It was a big leap from that innocence to a teenage boy tragically and accidentally killing himself about a dozen years later in emulation of rock star Alice Cooper mock-hanging himself on stage.
Thanks, Robert and lostmemory. I saw (and felt)“Emergo” and other William Castle gimmicks (Punishment Poll, Percepto)at Film Forum, 57 Watts St. lower Manhattan at the September 1988 Gimmick-O-Rama. Closest I came to experiencing them at the Madison was “Premature Burial” (summer 1962) “Man With The X-Ray Eyes” and “Black Sabbath” (spring and summer 1964, respectively). The first William Castle film I saw at the Madison was
“I Saw What You Did” in summer 1965.
Hi, Karl Bernstein, good to see you here on “Cinema Treasures” as well as Paul Matus' “My Recollection” and “SubTalk” of nycsubway.org !
To say the least, especially for those who sat on one !
Those HIV-contaminated needles in cinema seats were an all-too-real threat not long ago !
Thanks, Warren. I don’t care about Lucy and Desi, but it’s great to have that ad for “The Lost Weekend”, one of my favorite films !
Thanks also for all the details about “lobby lock-outs” !