Thanks Al. I’ve seen an article in the Times from 1970 that reports the same story of folks being able to pay to witness the filming of a live sex act in a 2nd floor space at 120 W. 42nd – as well as a couple of other places around town. Admission was going anywhere from $5 to $25 for this privelege. Anyway, if it was in fact the 2nd floor of the building, it was definitely not the New Cinema Playhouse space, which was in the basement. I’ll bet that when – and if – the landlords of the already condemned Wurlitzer Bldg started using the auditorium for porn, they probably just advertised on the marquee without bothering to place notices in the newspapers. Then again, with the kind of ire that tactic to chase tenants away might have drawn and with police raids still being conducted against such indecency, would the landlords have gone to such drastic measures to clear the building for demolition? The story may be apocryphal.
Fandango currently lists this theater as Regal E-Walk Stadium 13 (with only 6 features listed, although 2 of them are in heavily staggered rotation in several auditriums apiece). Moviefone, which does not offer online ticketing for this facility, is somewhat behind the times, still lists it as AMC Loews 42nd Street E-Walk.
Al… Can you ascertain when it was that the Filmmakers' Cooperative stopped operating out of this theater? I assume, based on your comments above, that you’ve found no porn listings here, so there’s nothing else to corroborate the mention in the Times article I posted above that the theater was ever used thus.
Thanks RobertR. The film opened in the U.S. on 2/8/68 per imdb.com and was released by Mekas' Filmmakers' Cooperative. If Gerald’s note’s (posted 6/27/05 above) are correct about seeing the film here in April, that’s a pretty long run for the Cinematheque and would verify they were still in the Wurlitzer Building through Spring of ‘68. Also supports the idea that the New Cinema Playhouse name came with the theater’s new 42nd Street address.
For my next research, I’ll try to figure out why I’ve been so preoccupied with this theater!
A 5/18/69 article in the New York Times written by Vincent Canby features an interview with Jonas Mekas, director of the Film Culture Non-Profit Corporation and co-founder of their Filmmakers' Cinematheque which screened so-called “underground films” at various sites around Manhattan during the mid-late 1960’s. Having had his Cinematheque exhiled from their 42nd Street home in the old Wurlitzer Building off 6th Ave, Mekas had been staggering screenings at sites like the Gallery of Modern Art on Columbus Circle and the Jewish Museum at 5th Avenue and 92nd Street. By June of ‘69, Mekas hoped to be screening avant-garde films at the Elgin on Sunday mornings and Thursday evenings. I’m not sure if these plans came to fruition or, if so, for how long they lasted. Mekas was also struggling to create a permanent home for the Cinematheque in a theater he had converted from existing space at 80 Wooster Street – later to become a home of the Anthology Film Archives in the mid-1970’s.
Dick Cavett’s late night talk show on ABC was taped here in it’s early stages. I’m not sure where it moved from there, but I recently caught a broadcast of the 1970 show with Robert Mitchum on TCM and in his monologue, Cavett makes a joke about the old “dump” they used to tape at (and offscreen staffer is heard to yell out “The Colonial”) when he can’t come up with the name. I remember as a child and teenager seeing one or two theater-like marquees for ABC and CBS TV studios around the upper Times Square area, and I now know many of these were former stage or vaudeville houses.
Cavett also jokes about the rickety balcony of the new theater he was presently occupying, assuring the mezzanine audience that at least THEY didn’t have to worry about the orchestra falling upon them. I wonder which theater that one was.
Rosalyn Regeson wrote an article titled “Where Are ‘The Chelsea Girls’ Taking Us?” and published on 9/24/67 about the then-bourgeoning exhibition of underground cinema in NYC. The piece makes mention of the Hudson Theater “giving itself over to [Andy] Warhol’s films exclusively as a result of the successful 7-week run of ‘My Hustler.’”
More from that paragraph:
“The current offering is ‘I, A Man,’ a Warhol – eye view of sex between the sexes, parodying a current Swedish import about a nymphomaniac. Opening Thursday is ‘Dope,’ the title referring not to narcotics but the mentality of the motorcyclist hero.”
I remember being able to catch good glimpses of the screens from St. Louis Avenue, which ran on the eastern perimeter of the drive in. You had to cut over Oakwood and drive down St. Louis to get to the entrance if you were coming from my direction down Brentwood Road, because the Sunrise Hwy service roads were one way in each direction. I know I saw a handful of movies here, but all I can remember is the first “Fletch” with Chevy Chase.
Last time I was at the site of the old Drive-In, I stopped for a late bite in the TGIF that is near the location. There’s some big chain store there where the Drive-In lot was. I can’t remember which.
Finally, there is an article from 11/02/71 regarding a campaign by business owners to drive away “smut” on the 42nd Street block between 6th Ave and Broadway. The organizational force behind the drive was the Wurlitzer Company, whose shop was now located in the Bush Building after the old Wurlitzer Building had been demolished to make room for the plaza and walkway behind the new New York Telephone building that to this day fronts the west side of 6th Ave between 41st and 42nd Streets. While the main target of this clean-up campaign was the Bryant Theater, the article includes the following passage about the former New Cinema Playhouse:
“As opart of the landlord’s ‘pressure’ to vacate the old building… a pornographic movie theater was installed in the basement auditorium – once Wurlitzer’s demonstration room for church organs. During the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, the auditorium had housed off-Broadway theater productions and avant-garde art films.”
So, we know that this space was conceived as a company recital hall for Wurlitzer and first opened to the public as a theater in 1957 as the 41st Street Theater with 169 seats. Filmmaker’s Cinematheque took over in December of 1965 and might have expanded seating to 199. I’m wondering exactly when the theater took on the name New Cinema Playhouse, and I’m guessing that was the new moniker Mekas and Co. came up with when the Cinematheque re-opened the space with the new 42nd Street entrance in late 1967. We also now know that they were kicked out sometime prior to 1969 and that the place went porno before the whole building was demolished circa 1970/71.
Yet another Times article by Vincent Canby – this one dated 5/18/69 – discusses how the “new morality in conventional movies” has put a dent in the business of underground cinema and includes an interview with Cinematheque co-founder and director Jonas Mekas. Canby writes, “It is no longer necessary to travel to some loft in the Village to see Naked Truth. Today, Naked Truth comes to you, at your friendly neighborhood theater, sometimes starring Charlton Heston and David Janssen.”
The piece mentions that the Cinematheque was kicked out of the Wurlitzer Building basement in 1967 (though Canby has muffed exact dates in other articles) and was, at the time, operating at several different venues on a staggered schedule, including the Gallery of Modern Art, Wednesdays through Sundays, and the Jewish Museum on Tuesday nights. That June, Mekas anticipated screenings at the Elgin Cinema on Sunday mornings and Thursdays at midnight – referring to his organization as a “Flying Cinematheque.” He also hoped to square away several issues with the City pertaining to zoning and building codes and making a permanent home out of the theater at 80 Wooster Street. Money still seemed to be an issue with a $40,000 grant falling short of covering the $50,000 expenditure of remodeling and installing offices at 80 Wooster and other grants being gobbled up by the costs to run screenings at other venues.
It seems that with the more sensational aspects of the undergroung movement being absorbed by mainstream cinema, much of the Cinematheque’s patronage was being siphoned off.
Several articles appear in the Times' archives that make note of the Filmmaker’s Cinematheque and flesh out details for some of the theater’s history as described in the description and comments above:
An 8/25/67 article looks at the Cinematheque at the apex of it’s existence, having come off what is described as a very successful year that saw $100,000 in revenue generated by showings of Andy Warhol’s “The Chelsea Girls” alone. In addition to a planned $12,000 remodeling of the theater in the Wurlitzer Building, two additional screens in lower Manhattan were to be opened by the Cinematheque’s parent company, the Film Culture Non-Profit Corporation, before year’s end.
The 41st Street facility was to close on September 5th in order to create a new marquee and entrance on 42nd Street and was scheduled to reopen on October 1st under a new – and as yet undecided – name as a first-run house for underground features. The first attraction was slated to be “Portrait of Jason” – Shirley Clarke’s documentary about male prostitution – followed by Adolfa Mekas' “Windflowers.”
The two new facilities were to be the Cinematheque I at 80 Wooster Street, which would continue the sort of “varied programming” featured at the 41st Street house, and the Cinematheque II at 18 Greene Street, which was to be an “underground ‘film academy,’ offering a repertory of avant-garde ‘classics,’ ranging from ‘Zero de Contuit’, ‘Ordet’ and ‘Citizen Kane’ to ‘Scorpio Rising.’
With the monies for the 41st Street renovations already on hand, co-founder Jonas Mekas was still looking for contributions to cover the estimated $32,000 it would take to outfit the new houses on Wooster and Greene Streets, scheduled to open September 30th and late October, respectively. I could not find a listing for either of these theaters on Cinema Treasures, however, the Wooster Street address is noted on the CT page for the [url=/theaters/12436/]Anthology Film Archives{/url] as having been a mid-1970’s facility for that organization. If I can find evidence that either of those theaters did in fact open as planned, I will add them to the site.
Yes. In Bayside, Long Island, as it was then commonly called. Interestingly, one of the stated reasons for the community effort to block the retail-multiplex project that had been proposed for the old Capitol/Bayside site was because the East Bayside Homeowners Association liked to think of the area as “Small Town, Long Island, not Bayside, New York City”, according to the 1999 Times article posted above.
In any event, we know there is an ad for the theater which cites an address at 38-39 Bell and a C of O for the conversion to 4-plex at the same address, so this Cub Scout thinks it’s safe to go with that. The only thing we cannot know for sure is what the 1920’s address numbering might have been for this theater when it first opened – back when 39th Ave was known as Ashburton Ave and before the Queens street grid was reorganized into sequentially numbered streets intersecting with sequentially numbered avenues.
Right… 5th Avenue and Candlewood! That’s where Entenmann’s was. It’s been a while. Anyway… flip’s comment about going up the road to Entenmann’s made me think that he might have been thinking of the 5th Avenue Drive-In. My mistake in thinking it was on Sunrise Hwy. If flip was across Sunrise from the Drive-In then it must be the Sunrise Drive-In. Perhaps there was another Entenmann’s outlet near there at one time. Also, I don’t recall that the screens faced Sunrise Hwy… I thought they faced in more of an eastern direction… but – as is quite evident from my last couple of posts – my memory may be faulty! I lived in the area in very early 20’s in 1985-88. Right on Candlewood and Massachusettes Ave, as a matter of fact.
And I’m sure that delightful evening transpired at 38-39 Bell Blvd, not 39-01. Bryan, if you’re out there, please check the thread above of September 10th. I believe we have a more accurate address for this theater.
Filly5050… are you talking about this Drive-In or the 5th Avenue Drive-In? I’m not questioning your memory, I’m just curious since both were on Sunrise Hwy and you mention Entenmann’s being down the street. The Entenmann’s bakery that I’m thinking of is at the corner of 5th Avenue and Brentwood Road. I only ask since that intersection is probably a lot closer to the site of the Drive-In down 5th Ave than it is the Sunrise Drive-In which was much farther away down where Brentwood Road crosses Sunrise.
Thanks, Jeana… shots 61 and 79 of the 85 posted feature the Bay Shore Sunrise Drive-In – including one of the pylon sign on Sunrise that had been previously posted somewhere above.
Thanks Al… It was either the Boulevard or the Elmwood, and I’m leaning towards the Boulevard since I have early memories of going to that theater often as a child. I don’t quite remember the Elmwood until I was much older. We lived on 41st Ave in Elmhurst just off Junction Boulevard about 2 blocks from Roosevelt Ave. The Boulevard is definitely a very good bet. That theater along with the Lefrak and the Fair loomed large in my very earliest moviegoing. Thanks a bunch, Al… I really think that’s the place!
I think AMC will definitely continue to use the name – in its hybrid “AMC Loews” form. But the point is that Regal – which now runs the E-Walk – will not be able to continue using the Loews brand.
Yes Patrick. I realize now I really didn’t follow through on my thought in that post. I agree with you and did not mean to infer that since I’ve seen this practice on this and other sites it was somehow acceptable. I make it a practice to summarize articles myself just as you suggest and directly quote content only minimally (a line or two maybe a paragraph at most).
Lost… I am most DEFINITELY guilty of posting photos I acquired from the internet. However, many such photos are left open for downloading and usually have identifying watermarks (and are substantially lower resolution than the originals). I’d have to clear out half of my photobucket account. On that token, I wonder about images of newspaper advertisements for films, a great many of which have been scanned and posted here? A definite can of worms… But as Patrick indicates, it seems to be more of an issue between each member and the image-hosting provider.
By the way… did the site just go haywire for a few minutes? Nothing I tried to post went through, but I didn’t get the usual error messages.
User comments are always subject to the expression personal opinion or other non-factual data (from fuzzy recollections to – at worst – deliberate misinformation). I think what is key for the integrity of this site is ensuring that the theater descriptions posted at the top of each page should contain as accurate and up-to-date information as possible.
As for posting the full content of newspaper articles, I’ve seen it done on this site and others. Unfortunately, you can’t always link to online archived articles as they are typically viewable to registered users only and often at a cost. Even when these articles are purchased, you’ll typically find a boiler plate message or link noting that there is no license implied by the purchase to publish the article elsewhere. You may obtain such a license (and they usually expire at a set time – 6 months or 1 yr) but the costs are considerable. One NYC newspaper charges $600 for a 6 month license to re-publish complete articles – and that’s for non-profit usage! For commercial websites, the fee goes as high as $6000!
Thanks, Al. I suppose there may have been various 2nd features booked by individual nabes througout the run and therefore not advertised. If you’re ever able to post an image of that ad, I’d love to see the theaters listed for Queens and try to figure out where I saw this. Unfortunately, my Dad is no longer alive for me to ask him. I don’t remember him taking me into Manhattan for this, and it sounds like something we’d just run to a local house to see.
I found an article on the NY Times website written by Times' film critic Vincent Canby on Jan. 7th, 1966, with the headline “Underground Movies Find Showcase On 41st St.” The article verifies the original address of 125 41st Avenue as indicated in the original description for the theater above. Canby also notes that the 199-seat auditorium had existed in the building’s basement for 7 years, originally designed for Wurlitzer recitals and later housing Off Broadway stage shows under the name 41st Street Theater. I did, however, find another article from Mar. 27th, 1957, announcing that the 41st Street Theater would be opening on April 7th of that year for previews of the biographical drama “Oscar Wilde.” That earlier article also states that the theater (which included a proscenium stage) had a capacity of 169.
Going back to the Canby article of ‘66, here’s an interesting passage:
“Since Dec. 1 the house, under a 12-month lease to the Filmmakers' Cinematheque, has been open to the public six nights a week for the repertory screening of hte works of new directors and those of such underground film ‘names’ as Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, Gregory Markopoulos and Stan Brakhage. Showings ar at 8 and 10pm. On the seventh night, usually Monday, the program, for a ‘members only’ film society, is devoted to film classics from above-ground masters like Fritz Lang and D.W. Griffith.”
According to the article, even at this early stage in its existence, the Cinematheque was in a $2000 financial hole, finding it difficult to cover the monthly overhead (which included the $850 monthly rental and salaries for a manager, cashier, secretary and “one non-union projectionist”) with ticket sales, though co-founder Jonas Mekas was anticipating some help in the form of donations from friends. The theater had been averaging about 70-80 patrons per performance at $1.50 a pop, with the most popular titles being those associated with Andy Warhol’s name. Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising” also had been a big draw as had Mr. Mekas' own “The Brig”.
Actually, I’m mistaken about the new project on the Wurlitzer Bldg site. Bank of America is rising on the block bounded by 42nd and 43rd Streets along the west side of 6th Avenue. However, the Wurlitzer Building is most definitely extinct.
Thanks Al. I’ve seen an article in the Times from 1970 that reports the same story of folks being able to pay to witness the filming of a live sex act in a 2nd floor space at 120 W. 42nd – as well as a couple of other places around town. Admission was going anywhere from $5 to $25 for this privelege. Anyway, if it was in fact the 2nd floor of the building, it was definitely not the New Cinema Playhouse space, which was in the basement. I’ll bet that when – and if – the landlords of the already condemned Wurlitzer Bldg started using the auditorium for porn, they probably just advertised on the marquee without bothering to place notices in the newspapers. Then again, with the kind of ire that tactic to chase tenants away might have drawn and with police raids still being conducted against such indecency, would the landlords have gone to such drastic measures to clear the building for demolition? The story may be apocryphal.
Fandango currently lists this theater as Regal E-Walk Stadium 13 (with only 6 features listed, although 2 of them are in heavily staggered rotation in several auditriums apiece). Moviefone, which does not offer online ticketing for this facility, is somewhat behind the times, still lists it as AMC Loews 42nd Street E-Walk.
Al… Can you ascertain when it was that the Filmmakers' Cooperative stopped operating out of this theater? I assume, based on your comments above, that you’ve found no porn listings here, so there’s nothing else to corroborate the mention in the Times article I posted above that the theater was ever used thus.
Thanks RobertR. The film opened in the U.S. on 2/8/68 per imdb.com and was released by Mekas' Filmmakers' Cooperative. If Gerald’s note’s (posted 6/27/05 above) are correct about seeing the film here in April, that’s a pretty long run for the Cinematheque and would verify they were still in the Wurlitzer Building through Spring of ‘68. Also supports the idea that the New Cinema Playhouse name came with the theater’s new 42nd Street address.
For my next research, I’ll try to figure out why I’ve been so preoccupied with this theater!
A 5/18/69 article in the New York Times written by Vincent Canby features an interview with Jonas Mekas, director of the Film Culture Non-Profit Corporation and co-founder of their Filmmakers' Cinematheque which screened so-called “underground films” at various sites around Manhattan during the mid-late 1960’s. Having had his Cinematheque exhiled from their 42nd Street home in the old Wurlitzer Building off 6th Ave, Mekas had been staggering screenings at sites like the Gallery of Modern Art on Columbus Circle and the Jewish Museum at 5th Avenue and 92nd Street. By June of ‘69, Mekas hoped to be screening avant-garde films at the Elgin on Sunday mornings and Thursday evenings. I’m not sure if these plans came to fruition or, if so, for how long they lasted. Mekas was also struggling to create a permanent home for the Cinematheque in a theater he had converted from existing space at 80 Wooster Street – later to become a home of the Anthology Film Archives in the mid-1970’s.
Dick Cavett’s late night talk show on ABC was taped here in it’s early stages. I’m not sure where it moved from there, but I recently caught a broadcast of the 1970 show with Robert Mitchum on TCM and in his monologue, Cavett makes a joke about the old “dump” they used to tape at (and offscreen staffer is heard to yell out “The Colonial”) when he can’t come up with the name. I remember as a child and teenager seeing one or two theater-like marquees for ABC and CBS TV studios around the upper Times Square area, and I now know many of these were former stage or vaudeville houses.
Cavett also jokes about the rickety balcony of the new theater he was presently occupying, assuring the mezzanine audience that at least THEY didn’t have to worry about the orchestra falling upon them. I wonder which theater that one was.
Rosalyn Regeson wrote an article titled “Where Are ‘The Chelsea Girls’ Taking Us?” and published on 9/24/67 about the then-bourgeoning exhibition of underground cinema in NYC. The piece makes mention of the Hudson Theater “giving itself over to [Andy] Warhol’s films exclusively as a result of the successful 7-week run of ‘My Hustler.’”
More from that paragraph:
“The current offering is ‘I, A Man,’ a Warhol – eye view of sex between the sexes, parodying a current Swedish import about a nymphomaniac. Opening Thursday is ‘Dope,’ the title referring not to narcotics but the mentality of the motorcyclist hero.”
I remember being able to catch good glimpses of the screens from St. Louis Avenue, which ran on the eastern perimeter of the drive in. You had to cut over Oakwood and drive down St. Louis to get to the entrance if you were coming from my direction down Brentwood Road, because the Sunrise Hwy service roads were one way in each direction. I know I saw a handful of movies here, but all I can remember is the first “Fletch” with Chevy Chase.
Last time I was at the site of the old Drive-In, I stopped for a late bite in the TGIF that is near the location. There’s some big chain store there where the Drive-In lot was. I can’t remember which.
Finally, there is an article from 11/02/71 regarding a campaign by business owners to drive away “smut” on the 42nd Street block between 6th Ave and Broadway. The organizational force behind the drive was the Wurlitzer Company, whose shop was now located in the Bush Building after the old Wurlitzer Building had been demolished to make room for the plaza and walkway behind the new New York Telephone building that to this day fronts the west side of 6th Ave between 41st and 42nd Streets. While the main target of this clean-up campaign was the Bryant Theater, the article includes the following passage about the former New Cinema Playhouse:
“As opart of the landlord’s ‘pressure’ to vacate the old building… a pornographic movie theater was installed in the basement auditorium – once Wurlitzer’s demonstration room for church organs. During the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, the auditorium had housed off-Broadway theater productions and avant-garde art films.”
So, we know that this space was conceived as a company recital hall for Wurlitzer and first opened to the public as a theater in 1957 as the 41st Street Theater with 169 seats. Filmmaker’s Cinematheque took over in December of 1965 and might have expanded seating to 199. I’m wondering exactly when the theater took on the name New Cinema Playhouse, and I’m guessing that was the new moniker Mekas and Co. came up with when the Cinematheque re-opened the space with the new 42nd Street entrance in late 1967. We also now know that they were kicked out sometime prior to 1969 and that the place went porno before the whole building was demolished circa 1970/71.
And I promise… THAT’S ALL I GOT!!!
Yet another Times article by Vincent Canby – this one dated 5/18/69 – discusses how the “new morality in conventional movies” has put a dent in the business of underground cinema and includes an interview with Cinematheque co-founder and director Jonas Mekas. Canby writes, “It is no longer necessary to travel to some loft in the Village to see Naked Truth. Today, Naked Truth comes to you, at your friendly neighborhood theater, sometimes starring Charlton Heston and David Janssen.”
The piece mentions that the Cinematheque was kicked out of the Wurlitzer Building basement in 1967 (though Canby has muffed exact dates in other articles) and was, at the time, operating at several different venues on a staggered schedule, including the Gallery of Modern Art, Wednesdays through Sundays, and the Jewish Museum on Tuesday nights. That June, Mekas anticipated screenings at the Elgin Cinema on Sunday mornings and Thursdays at midnight – referring to his organization as a “Flying Cinematheque.” He also hoped to square away several issues with the City pertaining to zoning and building codes and making a permanent home out of the theater at 80 Wooster Street. Money still seemed to be an issue with a $40,000 grant falling short of covering the $50,000 expenditure of remodeling and installing offices at 80 Wooster and other grants being gobbled up by the costs to run screenings at other venues.
It seems that with the more sensational aspects of the undergroung movement being absorbed by mainstream cinema, much of the Cinematheque’s patronage was being siphoned off.
Several articles appear in the Times' archives that make note of the Filmmaker’s Cinematheque and flesh out details for some of the theater’s history as described in the description and comments above:
An 8/25/67 article looks at the Cinematheque at the apex of it’s existence, having come off what is described as a very successful year that saw $100,000 in revenue generated by showings of Andy Warhol’s “The Chelsea Girls” alone. In addition to a planned $12,000 remodeling of the theater in the Wurlitzer Building, two additional screens in lower Manhattan were to be opened by the Cinematheque’s parent company, the Film Culture Non-Profit Corporation, before year’s end.
The 41st Street facility was to close on September 5th in order to create a new marquee and entrance on 42nd Street and was scheduled to reopen on October 1st under a new – and as yet undecided – name as a first-run house for underground features. The first attraction was slated to be “Portrait of Jason” – Shirley Clarke’s documentary about male prostitution – followed by Adolfa Mekas' “Windflowers.”
The two new facilities were to be the Cinematheque I at 80 Wooster Street, which would continue the sort of “varied programming” featured at the 41st Street house, and the Cinematheque II at 18 Greene Street, which was to be an “underground ‘film academy,’ offering a repertory of avant-garde ‘classics,’ ranging from ‘Zero de Contuit’, ‘Ordet’ and ‘Citizen Kane’ to ‘Scorpio Rising.’
With the monies for the 41st Street renovations already on hand, co-founder Jonas Mekas was still looking for contributions to cover the estimated $32,000 it would take to outfit the new houses on Wooster and Greene Streets, scheduled to open September 30th and late October, respectively. I could not find a listing for either of these theaters on Cinema Treasures, however, the Wooster Street address is noted on the CT page for the [url=/theaters/12436/]Anthology Film Archives{/url] as having been a mid-1970’s facility for that organization. If I can find evidence that either of those theaters did in fact open as planned, I will add them to the site.
Yes. In Bayside, Long Island, as it was then commonly called. Interestingly, one of the stated reasons for the community effort to block the retail-multiplex project that had been proposed for the old Capitol/Bayside site was because the East Bayside Homeowners Association liked to think of the area as “Small Town, Long Island, not Bayside, New York City”, according to the 1999 Times article posted above.
In any event, we know there is an ad for the theater which cites an address at 38-39 Bell and a C of O for the conversion to 4-plex at the same address, so this Cub Scout thinks it’s safe to go with that. The only thing we cannot know for sure is what the 1920’s address numbering might have been for this theater when it first opened – back when 39th Ave was known as Ashburton Ave and before the Queens street grid was reorganized into sequentially numbered streets intersecting with sequentially numbered avenues.
Right… 5th Avenue and Candlewood! That’s where Entenmann’s was. It’s been a while. Anyway… flip’s comment about going up the road to Entenmann’s made me think that he might have been thinking of the 5th Avenue Drive-In. My mistake in thinking it was on Sunrise Hwy. If flip was across Sunrise from the Drive-In then it must be the Sunrise Drive-In. Perhaps there was another Entenmann’s outlet near there at one time. Also, I don’t recall that the screens faced Sunrise Hwy… I thought they faced in more of an eastern direction… but – as is quite evident from my last couple of posts – my memory may be faulty! I lived in the area in very early 20’s in 1985-88. Right on Candlewood and Massachusettes Ave, as a matter of fact.
Thanks, Bill.
And I’m sure that delightful evening transpired at 38-39 Bell Blvd, not 39-01. Bryan, if you’re out there, please check the thread above of September 10th. I believe we have a more accurate address for this theater.
Sorry… I mean flip5050.
Filly5050… are you talking about this Drive-In or the 5th Avenue Drive-In? I’m not questioning your memory, I’m just curious since both were on Sunrise Hwy and you mention Entenmann’s being down the street. The Entenmann’s bakery that I’m thinking of is at the corner of 5th Avenue and Brentwood Road. I only ask since that intersection is probably a lot closer to the site of the Drive-In down 5th Ave than it is the Sunrise Drive-In which was much farther away down where Brentwood Road crosses Sunrise.
Thanks, Jeana… shots 61 and 79 of the 85 posted feature the Bay Shore Sunrise Drive-In – including one of the pylon sign on Sunrise that had been previously posted somewhere above.
Thanks Al… It was either the Boulevard or the Elmwood, and I’m leaning towards the Boulevard since I have early memories of going to that theater often as a child. I don’t quite remember the Elmwood until I was much older. We lived on 41st Ave in Elmhurst just off Junction Boulevard about 2 blocks from Roosevelt Ave. The Boulevard is definitely a very good bet. That theater along with the Lefrak and the Fair loomed large in my very earliest moviegoing. Thanks a bunch, Al… I really think that’s the place!
I think AMC will definitely continue to use the name – in its hybrid “AMC Loews” form. But the point is that Regal – which now runs the E-Walk – will not be able to continue using the Loews brand.
They’ll never take me alive, Lost!
Yes Patrick. I realize now I really didn’t follow through on my thought in that post. I agree with you and did not mean to infer that since I’ve seen this practice on this and other sites it was somehow acceptable. I make it a practice to summarize articles myself just as you suggest and directly quote content only minimally (a line or two maybe a paragraph at most).
Lost… I am most DEFINITELY guilty of posting photos I acquired from the internet. However, many such photos are left open for downloading and usually have identifying watermarks (and are substantially lower resolution than the originals). I’d have to clear out half of my photobucket account. On that token, I wonder about images of newspaper advertisements for films, a great many of which have been scanned and posted here? A definite can of worms… But as Patrick indicates, it seems to be more of an issue between each member and the image-hosting provider.
By the way… did the site just go haywire for a few minutes? Nothing I tried to post went through, but I didn’t get the usual error messages.
User comments are always subject to the expression personal opinion or other non-factual data (from fuzzy recollections to – at worst – deliberate misinformation). I think what is key for the integrity of this site is ensuring that the theater descriptions posted at the top of each page should contain as accurate and up-to-date information as possible.
As for posting the full content of newspaper articles, I’ve seen it done on this site and others. Unfortunately, you can’t always link to online archived articles as they are typically viewable to registered users only and often at a cost. Even when these articles are purchased, you’ll typically find a boiler plate message or link noting that there is no license implied by the purchase to publish the article elsewhere. You may obtain such a license (and they usually expire at a set time – 6 months or 1 yr) but the costs are considerable. One NYC newspaper charges $600 for a 6 month license to re-publish complete articles – and that’s for non-profit usage! For commercial websites, the fee goes as high as $6000!
Thanks, Al. I suppose there may have been various 2nd features booked by individual nabes througout the run and therefore not advertised. If you’re ever able to post an image of that ad, I’d love to see the theaters listed for Queens and try to figure out where I saw this. Unfortunately, my Dad is no longer alive for me to ask him. I don’t remember him taking me into Manhattan for this, and it sounds like something we’d just run to a local house to see.
I found an article on the NY Times website written by Times' film critic Vincent Canby on Jan. 7th, 1966, with the headline “Underground Movies Find Showcase On 41st St.” The article verifies the original address of 125 41st Avenue as indicated in the original description for the theater above. Canby also notes that the 199-seat auditorium had existed in the building’s basement for 7 years, originally designed for Wurlitzer recitals and later housing Off Broadway stage shows under the name 41st Street Theater. I did, however, find another article from Mar. 27th, 1957, announcing that the 41st Street Theater would be opening on April 7th of that year for previews of the biographical drama “Oscar Wilde.” That earlier article also states that the theater (which included a proscenium stage) had a capacity of 169.
Going back to the Canby article of ‘66, here’s an interesting passage:
“Since Dec. 1 the house, under a 12-month lease to the Filmmakers' Cinematheque, has been open to the public six nights a week for the repertory screening of hte works of new directors and those of such underground film ‘names’ as Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, Gregory Markopoulos and Stan Brakhage. Showings ar at 8 and 10pm. On the seventh night, usually Monday, the program, for a ‘members only’ film society, is devoted to film classics from above-ground masters like Fritz Lang and D.W. Griffith.”
According to the article, even at this early stage in its existence, the Cinematheque was in a $2000 financial hole, finding it difficult to cover the monthly overhead (which included the $850 monthly rental and salaries for a manager, cashier, secretary and “one non-union projectionist”) with ticket sales, though co-founder Jonas Mekas was anticipating some help in the form of donations from friends. The theater had been averaging about 70-80 patrons per performance at $1.50 a pop, with the most popular titles being those associated with Andy Warhol’s name. Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising” also had been a big draw as had Mr. Mekas' own “The Brig”.
Actually, I’m mistaken about the new project on the Wurlitzer Bldg site. Bank of America is rising on the block bounded by 42nd and 43rd Streets along the west side of 6th Avenue. However, the Wurlitzer Building is most definitely extinct.