I loved the comment above; I attended many ‘first runs’ at the Astor.
I have argued for years about the sepia or ‘golden’ version of ‘Reflexions in a Golden Eye’. Nobody else seems to have seen it; I was beginning to think I had imagined that print.
I saw ‘Matchmaker’ (Shirley Booth), ‘El Cid’, ‘10 North Frederick’. ‘I Could go on Singing’(Judy Garland) and either ‘Psycho’ or ‘The Birds’ there. I remember being facinated by the conversion of the old Tremont theater fronting on Avery St. by the removal of the stage and addition of a 50s modern stairway, refreshment stand, and the long corridor added to the Tremont Street entrance. I remember the brick walls of the old stage house painted a dark blue, fronted by the huge cinemascope curved screen covered by a similarly curved red curtain which whooshed back at the start of the show. An old friend, the late Jimmy Hulse, was house manager there when ‘El Cid’ was playing, (on sabbitcal from his jobs at the Wilbur and Colonial).
I rememmber both entrances still in existance in the early 60s. You could go in the doors on Huntington walk through and exit on to Stuart. I don’t think there was a marquee on the Stuart Street entry. It was sort of a pie-shaped arrangement.
I think that in the 60s the 1723 Washington Olympia was called the Puritan. I saw the theatrical release of the 60s Batman (Adam West/Burt Ward) there.
The ‘Uptown’ was built originally as ‘Chickering Hall’, probably an exhibition/performance space for the Chickering Piano Factory (now artists' residences a few blocks away, on Columbus Ave.) It was remodeled in 1912 (Peabody & Stearns) as a theater, renamed the ‘Saint James Theater’. According to a former teacher of mine, it played stock company fare, the one he remembered was ‘Dracula’ in the late 20s. A woman I worked with lived on Albermarle St in the 30s,40s and told me she went there every week for double bills. I went often in the late 50s to mid 60s. It was still a pretty well kept place; I always thought it had something to do with the Christion Science Church then, as there was a small garden beside the theater, before the current expansive layout. There used to be an antique dealer on Mass Ave (Joe Goldberg-the shop was named the ‘Newton Picture Shop’-it was where the Orange line station is)
He was selling sconces and light fixtures that he claimed came from the ‘Uptown’.
Last film I saw there (Copley Place) was Polanski’s ‘Pirates’ w/Walter Matthau, circa 1986. It was screened in a tiny place no larger than a classroom, and the seats in that one pointed up toward the screen, so you felt as if you were in an airplane taking off. It was so disappointing to see a premium release in that space, I never have returned. Good riddance, if they abandon that complex!
The ‘Toy’ theater was built in 1914, architects Putnam and Cox.
I had an after-school job in the library ‘58-'62, and remember some of the staff used to congregate at the Stage Lounge adjacent. Some of my co-workers remembered it as the Copley theater which housed a stock company, but that was probably before WWII. Rosilind Russell was supposed to have been a member of the stock company. My guess is it was closed sometime before WWII, and became a movie theater when Sack got it. The stairs apparently got jettisoned with the demolition.
ian and veyou
Sack tidbits
Ben Sack used to do personalized ‘trailers’ for up-coming features, where he would sit at a desk and tell you how special this was. He also had one of him shaking hands w/ some moguls and announced his ‘bit part’ in ???? (He got some bit part in either the 10 commandments, or Ben Hur, or more likely the Cardinal.)
He was reportedly so shocked that no one came to the movie ‘Darling’ w/ Julie Christie, that he granted free admission to ‘up’ the word-of-mouth. I went. It played the Keith Memorial (Opera House).
Notes on Lotta Crabtree. There’s a musical movie of her life with Mitzi Gaynor called ‘Golden Girl’ 1951. She made her money dancing(?) for the 49ers in the California gold rush. Back in Boston, she bought the Park theater, and had a secret passageway connecting her dressing room to her apartment in an adjacent hotel. I guess she performed well into old age. Some of her bequests were for drinking fountains for animals, there is one for dogs on Boston’s esplanade, and one for horses in San Fransisco.
I only saw a few films there, one an Alain Delon gangster film about 1972-forgot title. It was a single screen then. I think the huge amount of construction drove people away. I remember some of the slasher films playing there after they closed the Saxon. Was there when it was a faltering antique mall. No one seemed able to find it. Had a luncheon in the restaurant; there’s an upstairs balcony used for private parties. Several of us were trying to visualize where the screen was. I think the balcony may have housed the projection booth.
I didn’t know that Hugh Stubbins was the designer-thanks for the info. I loved that theater, used to go there as the Telepix. They showed some foreign films and various short subjects. I remember seeing the Sacha Guitry film ‘Royal Affaires at Versailles’ (with the auteur, Edith Piaf, Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, & Gerard Philipe)-also the Picasso film where he paints directly onto transparencies. It was cheap, and you got to see lots of stuff. The scheduling was a little random, and you couldn’t be exactly sure when anything would start. Later, mid 60s, it became the Park SQ, and seemed more ‘art house’ with features. The building is the ‘Park Sq. Building’. When built, it was supposed to revolutionize office layout, since each floor was 3 football fields long, and you could cram a whole company on each floor. The street floor houses branch banks, shops, travel agencies, etc. I remember the lobby of the theater space had a sculptural relief of painted wooden square pegs, with the ends painted in different bright colors, somewhat resembling a scifi atomic pile.
Everone is right! The Pilgrim was always billed as ‘Formerly The Washington st Olympia’ The 1723 Olympia was a neighborhood 2nd run. I attended a few movies there in the mid-60s, but it was run-down, and a little scary because of rowdies in the audience. Neighbors told me it had been a vaudeville house, etc. I don’t remember anything about the decor, however.
We’re talking two separate theaters here. The Old Howard (some call it ‘the Old Howard Atheneum’) , which was at one time a Millerite temple stood on the site that now houses most of the Saltonstall office building. The Old Howard Casino was down from Scollay Sq, on a part of Hanover Street that no longer exists, having been replaced by Boston City Hall. The Old Howard got condemned or something in the late 40s/early 50s, but was not demolished until the late 60s. Ann Corio autographed bricks from this when it was demolished. The Casino was running into the 60s, with performers such as Blaze Star, and showing films; one bizarre film selection was ‘Saint Joan’ w/ Jean Seberg! I never got into the Casino, but a guy that used to sell prizes and refreshments there years later worked as a floor waxer in my building.
Sometime in the mid 79s the Loewe family granted a 100 year lease to a south end group that was going to restore the National to its former glory. I went to a reception there, and we toured around, the stage, etc-it was a mess and looked hopeless. Several times people wanted to restore it, but there was so little left. There were some protesters a few years ago when they finally decided to tear it down.
It had several come-back attempts. In 1969 it hosted the world premier of ‘The Mad Room’ w/ Shelly Winters; that was a remake of the 1941 Ida Lupino/Elsa Lanchester film ‘Ladies in Retirement'
The new complex is very exciting, tho’ I haven’t seen anything there;it’s going tp be legit only, and I think both the Huntington and Art are going to do some things there.
For a while, in fact up to the eighties, before it became a chain member, they used to run esoteric double features, the reaon for coupling them was sort of a game. They played ‘days of wine and roses’ with another film about addiction, ran ‘The Green carnation’ with Robert Morley’s film ‘Oscar Wilde’, and ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ with some other 3-hour film. They gave out free green carnations with the former.
I think the firsy film I saw there was the Rainmaker in the 50s; also saw South Pacific and My Fair Lady. I worked at 80 Boylston for awhile in the early 80s, when they were demolighing the Gary (aka Plymouth). They were throwing ou posters for the stage production of ‘Teahouse of the August Moon".
Originally, the Boylston st subway station connecyed to the lower lobby of the majestic, although in the 50s the subway only had a tunnel as far as the basement of 80 Boylston.
I always thought that the downfall of 733 was the fact that you could buy refreshments at the drugstore next door and bring them into the theater without paying the theater prices.
I saw almost evryting that played the main screen when I lived on the Hill and it was my neighborhood theater, including the re-releases of Sparticus and ‘Star is Born’. One thing that caused a stir near the end, was the lack of handicap access; they did eventually install an elevator, but at first there was only an escalator-I remember protests. That whole plaza is being (slowly) rebuilt. Who knows, maybe a theater will come back!
I saw many films at the Brattle in the 60s, and marvelled at the rear projection screen. The theater at the time was owned by Bryant Halliday and Cyrus Harvey; they popularized the films of Ingmar Bergman thru' their company Janus Films. I also saw the Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee films there. The rear projection screen had one problem-they could only show older films and foreign stuff, since the curved cinemascope thing would be distorted. They bought the University in the early 60s, renamed it the Harvard Sq, and that gave them a place to show wide screen stuff. The coffee shop in the basement, ‘The Blue Parrot’ was named for the rival bar in Casablanca.
I applied for a job as an usher at the old Beacon Hill, but I was only 15, and too young. ‘And God Created Woman’ with Brigitte Bardot was the feature. I was interviewed by the then unknown Ben Sack himself. This was before he took over the Plymouth which he renamed the Gary, and the Majestic, which he renamed the Saxon. The old Beacon Hill was completely demolished whn they built the high rise ‘One Beacon’; however, they did put in the theater complex in part of the parking garage. It was a descent into the underworld, and in one auditorium, you could hear the trolly cars screeching by on their way from Park st to Govt. center.
I saw ‘10 North Frederick’, ‘El Cid’, and ‘The Matchmaker’ there when it was a first-run house. ‘Blackula’, ‘Mark of the Devil’, etc. when it went downhill. It was interesting structurally, and this probably explains the increase in seating capacity noted above by Warren; the original entrance seemed to be on Avery St, and the name ‘Tremont Theater’ was cut into the stone on that facade. When it got renovated into the Astor, a new promenade entrance was put through perpendicular to the auditorium. A new candy counter and a sprawling staircase behind it ran up to the balcony level. The entire stage and proscenium were removed and replaced with orchestra seats. The 70 m screen and curtain were directly on the back wall of the old stage house. All the old brick walls of the stage house were painted dark blue to disguise them. The balconies remained the original ones from the theater, and had the bowed fronts like all the old legit theaters, abruptly ending at where the old proscenium had been.
Some notes on the Opera House (Aka RKO Keith Memorial, aka Savoy)
It got renamed Savoy by Ben Sack when in the late 60s the D'Oyly Carte Company came to Boston to perform Gilbert & Sullivan; they were originally set to use the old University Theater (later the Harvard Square), which was deemed unfit for their productions at the time.
According to Douglas Tucci, in an article titled ‘The Boston Rialto'
the terra cotta entrance on Washington st. served as entrance to 3 theaters, the Opera House, the Bijou, and an older 'B.F. Keith’ theater, the auditorium of which apparently ran along Mason st. The Bijou was a small second floor theater whose main attraction was a waterfall enclosed in a glass staircase. All 3 could be accessed from the main corridor that runs from Washington to Mason st. The older ‘B.F. Keith was demolished years ago. All 3 could also be accessed from Tremont st by a passageway that originally went in a tunnel under Mason st., but in my lifetime, was only a passageway through some buildings, so you had to come outdoors again, cross Mason st. and enter the current corridor. Someone told me about 15 years ago that part of the glass waterfall stair was still there, under carpeting, at the rear of a shoe store fronting on Washington st., but I doubt that it would still be there now, with all the construction, redevelopment stuff going on.
Just a note: When I went on the tour of the ‘reburbished’ Wang, the guide pointed out that the marble is not real but an Italian process called (I think) Scagliola; they press real marble dust into wet plaster. He said the workers were very secretive about how it was done and worked behind shrouds.
Also, I don’t hink the projectionj booths were ever on the ground floor-that was the Boston Cinerama theater. I remember as a kid sneaking up to the very top of the balcony; some Cinemascope thing was playing, and the 70-foot screen looked the size of an airmail stamp. There were, and still are, two brass-doored elevators to take people up to the top of the balcony. I never got to ride in them as a kid, since they were the old kind that required an elevator operator.
I loved the comment above; I attended many ‘first runs’ at the Astor.
I have argued for years about the sepia or ‘golden’ version of ‘Reflexions in a Golden Eye’. Nobody else seems to have seen it; I was beginning to think I had imagined that print.
I saw ‘Matchmaker’ (Shirley Booth), ‘El Cid’, ‘10 North Frederick’. ‘I Could go on Singing’(Judy Garland) and either ‘Psycho’ or ‘The Birds’ there. I remember being facinated by the conversion of the old Tremont theater fronting on Avery St. by the removal of the stage and addition of a 50s modern stairway, refreshment stand, and the long corridor added to the Tremont Street entrance. I remember the brick walls of the old stage house painted a dark blue, fronted by the huge cinemascope curved screen covered by a similarly curved red curtain which whooshed back at the start of the show. An old friend, the late Jimmy Hulse, was house manager there when ‘El Cid’ was playing, (on sabbitcal from his jobs at the Wilbur and Colonial).
I rememmber both entrances still in existance in the early 60s. You could go in the doors on Huntington walk through and exit on to Stuart. I don’t think there was a marquee on the Stuart Street entry. It was sort of a pie-shaped arrangement.
The Judy Garland concert was at the Back Bay (aka Donnelly Memorial, aka Loew’s State), Fri-Sat, May 24-25, 1968. May 25 was a ‘no show’.
I think that in the 60s the 1723 Washington Olympia was called the Puritan. I saw the theatrical release of the 60s Batman (Adam West/Burt Ward) there.
The ‘Uptown’ was built originally as ‘Chickering Hall’, probably an exhibition/performance space for the Chickering Piano Factory (now artists' residences a few blocks away, on Columbus Ave.) It was remodeled in 1912 (Peabody & Stearns) as a theater, renamed the ‘Saint James Theater’. According to a former teacher of mine, it played stock company fare, the one he remembered was ‘Dracula’ in the late 20s. A woman I worked with lived on Albermarle St in the 30s,40s and told me she went there every week for double bills. I went often in the late 50s to mid 60s. It was still a pretty well kept place; I always thought it had something to do with the Christion Science Church then, as there was a small garden beside the theater, before the current expansive layout. There used to be an antique dealer on Mass Ave (Joe Goldberg-the shop was named the ‘Newton Picture Shop’-it was where the Orange line station is)
He was selling sconces and light fixtures that he claimed came from the ‘Uptown’.
Last film I saw there (Copley Place) was Polanski’s ‘Pirates’ w/Walter Matthau, circa 1986. It was screened in a tiny place no larger than a classroom, and the seats in that one pointed up toward the screen, so you felt as if you were in an airplane taking off. It was so disappointing to see a premium release in that space, I never have returned. Good riddance, if they abandon that complex!
The ‘Toy’ theater was built in 1914, architects Putnam and Cox.
I had an after-school job in the library ‘58-'62, and remember some of the staff used to congregate at the Stage Lounge adjacent. Some of my co-workers remembered it as the Copley theater which housed a stock company, but that was probably before WWII. Rosilind Russell was supposed to have been a member of the stock company. My guess is it was closed sometime before WWII, and became a movie theater when Sack got it. The stairs apparently got jettisoned with the demolition.
I don’t think movies were ever shown at the Old Howard Atheneum, just the Casino.
ian and veyou
Sack tidbits
Ben Sack used to do personalized ‘trailers’ for up-coming features, where he would sit at a desk and tell you how special this was. He also had one of him shaking hands w/ some moguls and announced his ‘bit part’ in ???? (He got some bit part in either the 10 commandments, or Ben Hur, or more likely the Cardinal.)
He was reportedly so shocked that no one came to the movie ‘Darling’ w/ Julie Christie, that he granted free admission to ‘up’ the word-of-mouth. I went. It played the Keith Memorial (Opera House).
I saw ‘curious Yellow’ ‘Barbarella’ and ‘Flesh Gordon’ there, late 60s.
Notes on Lotta Crabtree. There’s a musical movie of her life with Mitzi Gaynor called ‘Golden Girl’ 1951. She made her money dancing(?) for the 49ers in the California gold rush. Back in Boston, she bought the Park theater, and had a secret passageway connecting her dressing room to her apartment in an adjacent hotel. I guess she performed well into old age. Some of her bequests were for drinking fountains for animals, there is one for dogs on Boston’s esplanade, and one for horses in San Fransisco.
I only saw a few films there, one an Alain Delon gangster film about 1972-forgot title. It was a single screen then. I think the huge amount of construction drove people away. I remember some of the slasher films playing there after they closed the Saxon. Was there when it was a faltering antique mall. No one seemed able to find it. Had a luncheon in the restaurant; there’s an upstairs balcony used for private parties. Several of us were trying to visualize where the screen was. I think the balcony may have housed the projection booth.
I didn’t know that Hugh Stubbins was the designer-thanks for the info. I loved that theater, used to go there as the Telepix. They showed some foreign films and various short subjects. I remember seeing the Sacha Guitry film ‘Royal Affaires at Versailles’ (with the auteur, Edith Piaf, Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, & Gerard Philipe)-also the Picasso film where he paints directly onto transparencies. It was cheap, and you got to see lots of stuff. The scheduling was a little random, and you couldn’t be exactly sure when anything would start. Later, mid 60s, it became the Park SQ, and seemed more ‘art house’ with features. The building is the ‘Park Sq. Building’. When built, it was supposed to revolutionize office layout, since each floor was 3 football fields long, and you could cram a whole company on each floor. The street floor houses branch banks, shops, travel agencies, etc. I remember the lobby of the theater space had a sculptural relief of painted wooden square pegs, with the ends painted in different bright colors, somewhat resembling a scifi atomic pile.
Everone is right! The Pilgrim was always billed as ‘Formerly The Washington st Olympia’ The 1723 Olympia was a neighborhood 2nd run. I attended a few movies there in the mid-60s, but it was run-down, and a little scary because of rowdies in the audience. Neighbors told me it had been a vaudeville house, etc. I don’t remember anything about the decor, however.
We’re talking two separate theaters here. The Old Howard (some call it ‘the Old Howard Atheneum’) , which was at one time a Millerite temple stood on the site that now houses most of the Saltonstall office building. The Old Howard Casino was down from Scollay Sq, on a part of Hanover Street that no longer exists, having been replaced by Boston City Hall. The Old Howard got condemned or something in the late 40s/early 50s, but was not demolished until the late 60s. Ann Corio autographed bricks from this when it was demolished. The Casino was running into the 60s, with performers such as Blaze Star, and showing films; one bizarre film selection was ‘Saint Joan’ w/ Jean Seberg! I never got into the Casino, but a guy that used to sell prizes and refreshments there years later worked as a floor waxer in my building.
Sometime in the mid 79s the Loewe family granted a 100 year lease to a south end group that was going to restore the National to its former glory. I went to a reception there, and we toured around, the stage, etc-it was a mess and looked hopeless. Several times people wanted to restore it, but there was so little left. There were some protesters a few years ago when they finally decided to tear it down.
It had several come-back attempts. In 1969 it hosted the world premier of ‘The Mad Room’ w/ Shelly Winters; that was a remake of the 1941 Ida Lupino/Elsa Lanchester film ‘Ladies in Retirement'
The new complex is very exciting, tho’ I haven’t seen anything there;it’s going tp be legit only, and I think both the Huntington and Art are going to do some things there.
For a while, in fact up to the eighties, before it became a chain member, they used to run esoteric double features, the reaon for coupling them was sort of a game. They played ‘days of wine and roses’ with another film about addiction, ran ‘The Green carnation’ with Robert Morley’s film ‘Oscar Wilde’, and ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ with some other 3-hour film. They gave out free green carnations with the former.
I think the firsy film I saw there was the Rainmaker in the 50s; also saw South Pacific and My Fair Lady. I worked at 80 Boylston for awhile in the early 80s, when they were demolighing the Gary (aka Plymouth). They were throwing ou posters for the stage production of ‘Teahouse of the August Moon".
Originally, the Boylston st subway station connecyed to the lower lobby of the majestic, although in the 50s the subway only had a tunnel as far as the basement of 80 Boylston.
I always thought that the downfall of 733 was the fact that you could buy refreshments at the drugstore next door and bring them into the theater without paying the theater prices.
I saw almost evryting that played the main screen when I lived on the Hill and it was my neighborhood theater, including the re-releases of Sparticus and ‘Star is Born’. One thing that caused a stir near the end, was the lack of handicap access; they did eventually install an elevator, but at first there was only an escalator-I remember protests. That whole plaza is being (slowly) rebuilt. Who knows, maybe a theater will come back!
I saw many films at the Brattle in the 60s, and marvelled at the rear projection screen. The theater at the time was owned by Bryant Halliday and Cyrus Harvey; they popularized the films of Ingmar Bergman thru' their company Janus Films. I also saw the Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee films there. The rear projection screen had one problem-they could only show older films and foreign stuff, since the curved cinemascope thing would be distorted. They bought the University in the early 60s, renamed it the Harvard Sq, and that gave them a place to show wide screen stuff. The coffee shop in the basement, ‘The Blue Parrot’ was named for the rival bar in Casablanca.
I applied for a job as an usher at the old Beacon Hill, but I was only 15, and too young. ‘And God Created Woman’ with Brigitte Bardot was the feature. I was interviewed by the then unknown Ben Sack himself. This was before he took over the Plymouth which he renamed the Gary, and the Majestic, which he renamed the Saxon. The old Beacon Hill was completely demolished whn they built the high rise ‘One Beacon’; however, they did put in the theater complex in part of the parking garage. It was a descent into the underworld, and in one auditorium, you could hear the trolly cars screeching by on their way from Park st to Govt. center.
I saw ‘10 North Frederick’, ‘El Cid’, and ‘The Matchmaker’ there when it was a first-run house. ‘Blackula’, ‘Mark of the Devil’, etc. when it went downhill. It was interesting structurally, and this probably explains the increase in seating capacity noted above by Warren; the original entrance seemed to be on Avery St, and the name ‘Tremont Theater’ was cut into the stone on that facade. When it got renovated into the Astor, a new promenade entrance was put through perpendicular to the auditorium. A new candy counter and a sprawling staircase behind it ran up to the balcony level. The entire stage and proscenium were removed and replaced with orchestra seats. The 70 m screen and curtain were directly on the back wall of the old stage house. All the old brick walls of the stage house were painted dark blue to disguise them. The balconies remained the original ones from the theater, and had the bowed fronts like all the old legit theaters, abruptly ending at where the old proscenium had been.
Some notes on the Opera House (Aka RKO Keith Memorial, aka Savoy)
It got renamed Savoy by Ben Sack when in the late 60s the D'Oyly Carte Company came to Boston to perform Gilbert & Sullivan; they were originally set to use the old University Theater (later the Harvard Square), which was deemed unfit for their productions at the time.
According to Douglas Tucci, in an article titled ‘The Boston Rialto'
the terra cotta entrance on Washington st. served as entrance to 3 theaters, the Opera House, the Bijou, and an older 'B.F. Keith’ theater, the auditorium of which apparently ran along Mason st. The Bijou was a small second floor theater whose main attraction was a waterfall enclosed in a glass staircase. All 3 could be accessed from the main corridor that runs from Washington to Mason st. The older ‘B.F. Keith was demolished years ago. All 3 could also be accessed from Tremont st by a passageway that originally went in a tunnel under Mason st., but in my lifetime, was only a passageway through some buildings, so you had to come outdoors again, cross Mason st. and enter the current corridor. Someone told me about 15 years ago that part of the glass waterfall stair was still there, under carpeting, at the rear of a shoe store fronting on Washington st., but I doubt that it would still be there now, with all the construction, redevelopment stuff going on.
Just a note: When I went on the tour of the ‘reburbished’ Wang, the guide pointed out that the marble is not real but an Italian process called (I think) Scagliola; they press real marble dust into wet plaster. He said the workers were very secretive about how it was done and worked behind shrouds.
Also, I don’t hink the projectionj booths were ever on the ground floor-that was the Boston Cinerama theater. I remember as a kid sneaking up to the very top of the balcony; some Cinemascope thing was playing, and the 70-foot screen looked the size of an airmail stamp. There were, and still are, two brass-doored elevators to take people up to the top of the balcony. I never got to ride in them as a kid, since they were the old kind that required an elevator operator.