Also, even though I haven’t thought highly of Loews management in recent years, it will be sad to see this century-old name disappear nationwide. It has been in Boston almost as long as it was in New York, starting with the Orpheum which Marcus Loew took over in 1910.
Over the following seven decades Loew’s at various times also operated the Loew’s State, the St. James, the Columbia (not yet listed here), and finally the Abbey Cinemas.
When the Abbey closed in 1975, that was the end of Loew’s in the Boston area for a while, but they returned in 1988 by buying the USACinemas (formerly Sack Theatres) chain.
In the greater Boston area (broadly defined as the area covered by Boston Globe movie advertising), Loews has six theatres.
Three of these are modern megaplexes, built within the last few years with stadium seating and lots of screens: Loews Boston Common (19 screens), Loews Theatres at The Loop in Methuen (19? screens), and Loews Liberty Tree Mall (20 screens). These would all fit in with AMC’s style of operation.
But I have to wonder about the other three. The Harvard Square Theatre is a large 1920’s single-screen that was turned into a 5-plex in the 1980s. It’s in the heart of a student neighborhood and does great business, so I can’t imagine it closing. But it also isn’t the kind of property that AMC likes to run. Will they sell it off?
The Assembly Square Cinema in Somerville is the only former Sack Theatre still operated by Loews. It’s a badly dated 12-screen complex built in the early 1980s, of no architectural distinction and next door to a dead shopping mall. Will AMC update it, sell it, or just close it?
Ditto for the Fresh Pond Cinema, which started off as a General Cinema single-screen in the 1960s but was reopened as a 10-plex in 1990.
AMC’s Boston area theatres are all former General Cinemas. Their local flagships are AMC Fenway 13 and the five-screen Chestnut Hill Cinema. Someone recently reported here that Chestnut Hill has been sold off, but it’s still being advertised today as an AMC theatre.
Boston now has only two movie theatres – one Loews with 19 screens opened in 2001, and one AMC (former GCC) with 13 screens opened in 2000. Will the combined company keep both, or will anti-trust guidelines force them to sell one of them?
That’s a stunning development. The whole city of Boston has only two movie theatres – one Loews, the other AMC. Will they have to sell one of them to meet anti-trust standards?
King’s book says this theatre had several different street addresses over time, as its entrance moved from one street to another. It opened at 188 Dartmouth Street. Then, when it was turned around and expanded, the address became 461 Stuart Street. Finally, a new entrance was added at 22 Huntington Avenue.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Huntington Avenue Theatre opened on September 23, 1912, inside the existing Century Building, with 1800 seats. It may have been a remodeling of an earlier dime movie and vaudeville theatre called Potter Hall.
It later changed its name to the Strand, but King doesn’t say when that happened. By 1947, it was one of E.M. Loew’s houses.
Ben Sack remodeled it and renamed it the Capri on July 6, 1962. It replaced Sack’s first Capri Theatre which was torn down to make way for the Massachusetts Turnpike extension.
King says that this theatre was torn down around 1968, but I think Sack had already closed it by 1965 or 66.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Comique opened on September 3, 1906, advertising The World in Motion, motion pictures and illustrated songs, for ten cents. It operated from 9 am to 11:30 pm.
It was opened by Joe and Max Mark as Boston’s first theatre devoted exclusively to motion pictures. It was located at 14 Tremont Row in Scollay Square. King does not say when it closed.
It was a replacement for the old Boston Theatre, which was about to be torn down and replaced on site by the Keith Memorial Theatre.
The first day’s program featured seven vaudeville acts and two movies: Carl Laemmle’s California Straight Ahead with Reginald Denny, and a Charlie Chase comedy, The Caretaker’s Daughter, accompanied by a $50,000 Wurlitzer organ. There were four shows a day.
By the 1930s, it was called the RKO Boston, and it began a stage show policy of big bands plus a feature film.
It became the Boston Cinerama on December 30, 1953, with two daily showings of This is Cinerama.
King says that the Cinerama closed in 1971, then reopened in July 1974 as the Essex I and II, “starting with an action film policy and then moving into pornography, joining most of lower Washington Street’s sex houses.”
King describes the Rialto Theatre of the 1940s: “It was open all night, showed last-run movies, was cheap and was a smelly ‘crap can,’ as the industry called such houses….The Rialto had a stench that was indescribable. It ran the very last run of films, and half or perhaps more of the audience was asleep. I think the theatre only closed in the morning just long enough to clean.”
The South End Historical Society sent me a copy of their November 1982 newsletter, with an article by J. Paul Chavanne about the history of theatres in that neighborhood. Of this one, he says:
“In 1911, architect James S. Ball planned the Puritan Theatre at 1741 Washington St. near Massachusetts Avenue. The Puritan presented small-time vaudeville and films. A Marr and Colton organ was installed during the silent film era. In the 1970s, the house was renamed the Teatro America and showed Spanish language pictures. The theatre was destroyed by fire on January 8, 1977.”
Among the films featured at the Olympia during its first two years were Queen Elizabeth; The Money Kings, or Wall Street Outwitted; The Prisoner of Zenda; and A Tale of Two Cities.
After being remodeled with new seats, the Olympia became the Pilgrim on January 5, 1949. On December 11, 1952, the Pilgrim used RCA’s black-and-white TV projection system to present the opera Carmen live from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.
The Pilgrim was the first theatre in Boston to present 3-D movies, offering a series of five short subjects in 1953.
In 1965, the Pilgrim began showing sex films. Later it became Boston’s last burlesque theatre, best known for the day in 1974 that stripper Fanne Foxe appeared on stage with Congressman Wilbur Mills.
I’m not sure when live burlesque ended here, but by the end of its life, the Pilgrim was strictly an X-rated movie house, the last in Boston. Its Chinatown neighbors considered it a detriment to the area, and seemed mostly happy to have it torn down in 1996. A new residential tower, Park Essex, is still under construction on its site.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Kenmore opened around 1939, with 65 seats at street-level and 636 in the lower level. (I’m having trouble picturing what this looked like.)
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, General Cinema leased the Paramount in October 1968, operating it as a first-run house. General Cinema left in March 1972, and new management changed the booking policy to low-priced double features. In June 1974, it began showing pornographic films.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, Austin’s Palace Theater opened on Memorial Day, 1891, with 1100 seats. It replaced Austin’s earlier Nickel Museum or Nickelodeon in the same building.
“In July 1894 the Palace Tehatre introduced the stage spotlight, the first in the country, using a searchlight like those used on Navy man-of-war ships. The spotlight was fixed to the gallery railing, to illuminate marches and living pictures.”
It was very briefly renamed the Trocadero in 1896 and 1897, then became the Palace again, playing burlesque and vaudeville.
A Boston Post article in April 1931 reports on the theatre’s demolition, and lists some of the performers who had appeared on its stage: Al Jolson, Weber and Fields, Montgomery and Stone, Clark and McCullough, Gallagher and Shean, Mack Sennett, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Will Rogers, Jim Jeffries, and John L. Sullivan.
I don’t know what occupied the site of the Palace between 1931 and the early 1960s, when almost everything else in Scollay Square was demolished.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the first Howard Athenaeum opened on October 13, 1845, converted from a Millerite temple after the world failed to end on schedule.
It burned in February, 1846 and was immediately replaced by the second Howard Athenaeum, which opened on October 5, 1846.
Burlesque began in 1898 and continued until a police raid closed it in 1953. Old films played between stage shows.
King says that the Old Howard reopened on February 22, 1954, with a new policy proclaiming “Boston’s Only Variety Stage Show” and omitting the word “burlesque” from advertisements. “But, after a few weeks, ‘lady stars’ crept back into its ads and shows.” He says it closed again by 1955.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the “gigantic” National Theatre opened on September 18, 1911, with 3500 seats. The grand opening caused a near-riot, as 8000 people pressed against its doors, shattering the glass.
King says “there was little else remarkable about this structure, other than its size.”
In February 1913, the National and the B.F. Keith Theatre both offered Edison’s Talking Pictures, “a phonograph and film device, some 13 years ahead of workable sound pictures. The problem was amplification: a phonograph horn, no matter how big, could not carry sound any further than a few rows.”
In August 1915, the National was renamed the Boston Hippodrome, and it offered its customers free parking for their automobiles.
On March 19, 1919, it was renovated and renamed the Waldorf by Harry Kelcey, founder of the Waldorf restaurant chain. He established a policy of two-show-a-day vaudeville and photoplays, and also operated Waldorf theatres in suburban Lynn and Waltham. King doesn’t say how long the Waldorf name lasted before it reverted to National again.
On pages 232-233, King talks about his days as an usher and assistant manager of the National in the late 1930s, and a subsequent visit in 1983 after it had closed. I won’t quote all of it, but this sounds memorable:
“The National had Amateur Nights every Sunday, where contestants performed ‘in one’, that is, in front of the curtain. Those nights were wild, drawing a boisterous audience not averse to throwing objects at the performers….the manager, his assistant, and a policeman stood facing the audience while standing in front of its unused orchestra pit and organ remains. An usher was placed in each of the side boxes to keep watch. We never saw much of the would-be actors, since our eyes were focused on the audience. It all reminded me of wardens guarding their prisoners: the South End of Boston was really rough in those days, fallen from the rest of Back Bay elegance.”
When King returned for a tour in 1983, “the orchestra pit and the first three rows of seating were filled with water seeping from the old Charles River bay.” (The South End, like the Back Bay, was filled land.)
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, Jacob Lourie opened the “small but deluxe” Modern Theatre on June 25, 1914, inside an office building that was built in 1876. A sign in the front archway read, “The Modern Theatre, High Class Photoplays.”
“The screen was deeply recessed inside a permanent wood-paneled drawing room setting. The stage started well within this area, and on its level were large ornate double doors at each side. An Estay organ was played in the small orchestra pit.”
On February 19, 1949, the Modern was renamed the Mayflower. In 1967, it could no longer compete with neighborhood first-run theatres, and it began an adult film policy.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, this one started out as an amusement called Hale’s Tours, where “customers sat in mockups of train coach interiors, which shook, rattled and rocked as film scenery rushed by on a motion picture screen. This was a short-lived attraction. The location then became the Unique Theatre, then the Stuart.”
As the Unique Theatre, it opened in January 1907, with 250 seats.
AMC never went bankrupt. However, General Cinema went bankrupt and then AMC took them over.
Also, even though I haven’t thought highly of Loews management in recent years, it will be sad to see this century-old name disappear nationwide. It has been in Boston almost as long as it was in New York, starting with the Orpheum which Marcus Loew took over in 1910.
Over the following seven decades Loew’s at various times also operated the Loew’s State, the St. James, the Columbia (not yet listed here), and finally the Abbey Cinemas.
When the Abbey closed in 1975, that was the end of Loew’s in the Boston area for a while, but they returned in 1988 by buying the USACinemas (formerly Sack Theatres) chain.
I’m glad to hear this, but what is the logic behind a requirement for a 15 or 20 minute interval between shows?
In the greater Boston area (broadly defined as the area covered by Boston Globe movie advertising), Loews has six theatres.
Three of these are modern megaplexes, built within the last few years with stadium seating and lots of screens: Loews Boston Common (19 screens), Loews Theatres at The Loop in Methuen (19? screens), and Loews Liberty Tree Mall (20 screens). These would all fit in with AMC’s style of operation.
But I have to wonder about the other three. The Harvard Square Theatre is a large 1920’s single-screen that was turned into a 5-plex in the 1980s. It’s in the heart of a student neighborhood and does great business, so I can’t imagine it closing. But it also isn’t the kind of property that AMC likes to run. Will they sell it off?
The Assembly Square Cinema in Somerville is the only former Sack Theatre still operated by Loews. It’s a badly dated 12-screen complex built in the early 1980s, of no architectural distinction and next door to a dead shopping mall. Will AMC update it, sell it, or just close it?
Ditto for the Fresh Pond Cinema, which started off as a General Cinema single-screen in the 1960s but was reopened as a 10-plex in 1990.
AMC’s Boston area theatres are all former General Cinemas. Their local flagships are AMC Fenway 13 and the five-screen Chestnut Hill Cinema. Someone recently reported here that Chestnut Hill has been sold off, but it’s still being advertised today as an AMC theatre.
Boston now has only two movie theatres – one Loews with 19 screens opened in 2001, and one AMC (former GCC) with 13 screens opened in 2000. Will the combined company keep both, or will anti-trust guidelines force them to sell one of them?
That’s a stunning development. The whole city of Boston has only two movie theatres – one Loews, the other AMC. Will they have to sell one of them to meet anti-trust standards?
King’s book says this theatre had several different street addresses over time, as its entrance moved from one street to another. It opened at 188 Dartmouth Street. Then, when it was turned around and expanded, the address became 461 Stuart Street. Finally, a new entrance was added at 22 Huntington Avenue.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Huntington Avenue Theatre opened on September 23, 1912, inside the existing Century Building, with 1800 seats. It may have been a remodeling of an earlier dime movie and vaudeville theatre called Potter Hall.
It later changed its name to the Strand, but King doesn’t say when that happened. By 1947, it was one of E.M. Loew’s houses.
Ben Sack remodeled it and renamed it the Capri on July 6, 1962. It replaced Sack’s first Capri Theatre which was torn down to make way for the Massachusetts Turnpike extension.
King says that this theatre was torn down around 1968, but I think Sack had already closed it by 1965 or 66.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Comique opened on September 3, 1906, advertising The World in Motion, motion pictures and illustrated songs, for ten cents. It operated from 9 am to 11:30 pm.
It was opened by Joe and Max Mark as Boston’s first theatre devoted exclusively to motion pictures. It was located at 14 Tremont Row in Scollay Square. King does not say when it closed.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Keith-Albee Boston opened on October 5, 1925, with nearly 4000 seats.
It was a replacement for the old Boston Theatre, which was about to be torn down and replaced on site by the Keith Memorial Theatre.
The first day’s program featured seven vaudeville acts and two movies: Carl Laemmle’s California Straight Ahead with Reginald Denny, and a Charlie Chase comedy, The Caretaker’s Daughter, accompanied by a $50,000 Wurlitzer organ. There were four shows a day.
By the 1930s, it was called the RKO Boston, and it began a stage show policy of big bands plus a feature film.
It became the Boston Cinerama on December 30, 1953, with two daily showings of This is Cinerama.
King says that the Cinerama closed in 1971, then reopened in July 1974 as the Essex I and II, “starting with an action film policy and then moving into pornography, joining most of lower Washington Street’s sex houses.”
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Star Theatre opened in November 1907.
King describes the Rialto Theatre of the 1940s: “It was open all night, showed last-run movies, was cheap and was a smelly ‘crap can,’ as the industry called such houses….The Rialto had a stench that was indescribable. It ran the very last run of films, and half or perhaps more of the audience was asleep. I think the theatre only closed in the morning just long enough to clean.”
He says that it was demolished in mid-1962.
The South End Historical Society sent me a copy of their November 1982 newsletter, with an article by J. Paul Chavanne about the history of theatres in that neighborhood. Of this one, he says:
“In 1911, architect James S. Ball planned the Puritan Theatre at 1741 Washington St. near Massachusetts Avenue. The Puritan presented small-time vaudeville and films. A Marr and Colton organ was installed during the silent film era. In the 1970s, the house was renamed the Teatro America and showed Spanish language pictures. The theatre was destroyed by fire on January 8, 1977.”
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, Gordon and Lord’s Scollay Square Olympia opened on November 17, 1913, with 3200 seats.
King says that the Olympia was demolished in 1962.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, Gordon’s Olympia opened on May 6, 1912, offering vaudeville and films. It had 2500 seats.
Among the films featured at the Olympia during its first two years were Queen Elizabeth; The Money Kings, or Wall Street Outwitted; The Prisoner of Zenda; and A Tale of Two Cities.
After being remodeled with new seats, the Olympia became the Pilgrim on January 5, 1949. On December 11, 1952, the Pilgrim used RCA’s black-and-white TV projection system to present the opera Carmen live from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.
The Pilgrim was the first theatre in Boston to present 3-D movies, offering a series of five short subjects in 1953.
In 1965, the Pilgrim began showing sex films. Later it became Boston’s last burlesque theatre, best known for the day in 1974 that stripper Fanne Foxe appeared on stage with Congressman Wilbur Mills.
I’m not sure when live burlesque ended here, but by the end of its life, the Pilgrim was strictly an X-rated movie house, the last in Boston. Its Chinatown neighbors considered it a detriment to the area, and seemed mostly happy to have it torn down in 1996. A new residential tower, Park Essex, is still under construction on its site.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, E.M. Loew changed the Gayety’s name to Victory in September 1946, then to Publix in 1949.
Demolition continues to proceed slowly. The front wall on Washington Street is heavily scaffolded but still standing.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, this was Boston’s first newsreel theatre, opened in 1936. It was later joined by the the Trans-Lux, the Telepix, and the (second) Old South.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Kenmore opened around 1939, with 65 seats at street-level and 636 in the lower level. (I’m having trouble picturing what this looked like.)
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Telepix opened in April 1939. King doesn’t say when it changed its name to the Park Square.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, General Cinema leased the Paramount in October 1968, operating it as a first-run house. General Cinema left in March 1972, and new management changed the booking policy to low-priced double features. In June 1974, it began showing pornographic films.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, Austin’s Palace Theater opened on Memorial Day, 1891, with 1100 seats. It replaced Austin’s earlier Nickel Museum or Nickelodeon in the same building.
“In July 1894 the Palace Tehatre introduced the stage spotlight, the first in the country, using a searchlight like those used on Navy man-of-war ships. The spotlight was fixed to the gallery railing, to illuminate marches and living pictures.”
It was very briefly renamed the Trocadero in 1896 and 1897, then became the Palace again, playing burlesque and vaudeville.
A Boston Post article in April 1931 reports on the theatre’s demolition, and lists some of the performers who had appeared on its stage: Al Jolson, Weber and Fields, Montgomery and Stone, Clark and McCullough, Gallagher and Shean, Mack Sennett, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Will Rogers, Jim Jeffries, and John L. Sullivan.
I don’t know what occupied the site of the Palace between 1931 and the early 1960s, when almost everything else in Scollay Square was demolished.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, Waldron’s Casino opened at 44 Hanover Street on January 3, 1910.
In the fall of 1928, NETOCO briefly leased the Casino, putting in a new Wurlitzer organ and featuring Paramount films and vaudeville.
In June 1958, it was renamed the Old Howard Casino. It closed in 1962 and was demolished to make way for Government Center.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the first Howard Athenaeum opened on October 13, 1845, converted from a Millerite temple after the world failed to end on schedule.
It burned in February, 1846 and was immediately replaced by the second Howard Athenaeum, which opened on October 5, 1846.
Burlesque began in 1898 and continued until a police raid closed it in 1953. Old films played between stage shows.
King says that the Old Howard reopened on February 22, 1954, with a new policy proclaiming “Boston’s Only Variety Stage Show” and omitting the word “burlesque” from advertisements. “But, after a few weeks, ‘lady stars’ crept back into its ads and shows.” He says it closed again by 1955.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the “gigantic” National Theatre opened on September 18, 1911, with 3500 seats. The grand opening caused a near-riot, as 8000 people pressed against its doors, shattering the glass.
King says “there was little else remarkable about this structure, other than its size.”
In February 1913, the National and the B.F. Keith Theatre both offered Edison’s Talking Pictures, “a phonograph and film device, some 13 years ahead of workable sound pictures. The problem was amplification: a phonograph horn, no matter how big, could not carry sound any further than a few rows.”
In August 1915, the National was renamed the Boston Hippodrome, and it offered its customers free parking for their automobiles.
On March 19, 1919, it was renovated and renamed the Waldorf by Harry Kelcey, founder of the Waldorf restaurant chain. He established a policy of two-show-a-day vaudeville and photoplays, and also operated Waldorf theatres in suburban Lynn and Waltham. King doesn’t say how long the Waldorf name lasted before it reverted to National again.
On pages 232-233, King talks about his days as an usher and assistant manager of the National in the late 1930s, and a subsequent visit in 1983 after it had closed. I won’t quote all of it, but this sounds memorable:
“The National had Amateur Nights every Sunday, where contestants performed ‘in one’, that is, in front of the curtain. Those nights were wild, drawing a boisterous audience not averse to throwing objects at the performers….the manager, his assistant, and a policeman stood facing the audience while standing in front of its unused orchestra pit and organ remains. An usher was placed in each of the side boxes to keep watch. We never saw much of the would-be actors, since our eyes were focused on the audience. It all reminded me of wardens guarding their prisoners: the South End of Boston was really rough in those days, fallen from the rest of Back Bay elegance.”
When King returned for a tour in 1983, “the orchestra pit and the first three rows of seating were filled with water seeping from the old Charles River bay.” (The South End, like the Back Bay, was filled land.)
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, Jacob Lourie opened the “small but deluxe” Modern Theatre on June 25, 1914, inside an office building that was built in 1876. A sign in the front archway read, “The Modern Theatre, High Class Photoplays.”
“The screen was deeply recessed inside a permanent wood-paneled drawing room setting. The stage started well within this area, and on its level were large ornate double doors at each side. An Estay organ was played in the small orchestra pit.”
On February 19, 1949, the Modern was renamed the Mayflower. In 1967, it could no longer compete with neighborhood first-run theatres, and it began an adult film policy.
According to Donald C. King’s new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, this one started out as an amusement called Hale’s Tours, where “customers sat in mockups of train coach interiors, which shook, rattled and rocked as film scenery rushed by on a motion picture screen. This was a short-lived attraction. The location then became the Unique Theatre, then the Stuart.”
As the Unique Theatre, it opened in January 1907, with 250 seats.