Well, the theater didn’t close in 1966 because I was working there into November of that year, and it showed no signs of closing. But, alas, after that, I moved on and didn’t go back for decades, and by then it was long long gone. Too often in my life, I have realized too late that I loved something or someone, and had let it go without even saying goodbye. What an amazing place it was — one of the very last of the grand movie palaces/vaudeville houses. Seven stories of unused dressing rooms, a full bank of stage lights controlled by big mechanical rheostats and muscles. By the time I left, the Paramount — perhaps the grandest of all — was gone, the Roxy was gone, and the neighborhood movie palaces were dropping like flies. The RKO 58th was one of the grandest of the grand neighborhood movie palaces. I remember lines around the block for “Cleopatra” and one of the early James Bond flicks. We could accommodate 10,000 patrons a day. But, alas, most of the time the place was nearly empty. It only survived as long as it did because the manager, Nick Constabile, convinced the aging and ossified RKO management that the 3rd avenue area had undergone an early version of gentrification, and that we could double our prices, show one movie, and serve demi-tasse, and compete against the oh-so-chic neighborhood upstarts. But it was just a holding action. I grew up in that theater, and learned lessons about people that have stayed with me all my life. More even than the theater itself, the people I worked with , from a diversity of backgrounds have stayed with me . I have started to write a book about my four summers at the RKO 58th, almost because I must.
Well, the theater didn’t close in 1966 because I was working there into November of that year, and it showed no signs of closing. But, alas, after that, I moved on and didn’t go back for decades, and by then it was long long gone. Too often in my life, I have realized too late that I loved something or someone, and had let it go without even saying goodbye. What an amazing place it was — one of the very last of the grand movie palaces/vaudeville houses. Seven stories of unused dressing rooms, a full bank of stage lights controlled by big mechanical rheostats and muscles. By the time I left, the Paramount — perhaps the grandest of all — was gone, the Roxy was gone, and the neighborhood movie palaces were dropping like flies. The RKO 58th was one of the grandest of the grand neighborhood movie palaces. I remember lines around the block for “Cleopatra” and one of the early James Bond flicks. We could accommodate 10,000 patrons a day. But, alas, most of the time the place was nearly empty. It only survived as long as it did because the manager, Nick Constabile, convinced the aging and ossified RKO management that the 3rd avenue area had undergone an early version of gentrification, and that we could double our prices, show one movie, and serve demi-tasse, and compete against the oh-so-chic neighborhood upstarts. But it was just a holding action. I grew up in that theater, and learned lessons about people that have stayed with me all my life. More even than the theater itself, the people I worked with , from a diversity of backgrounds have stayed with me . I have started to write a book about my four summers at the RKO 58th, almost because I must.