In 1977, I started working for the Cinema 5 chain. For a while I was used at various theatres until finding a home at the Murray Hill and Gramercy theatres. I worked briefly at the Beekman, evenings. The movie “La Grande Bourgeoise” was playing, starring Giancarlo Giannini and Catherine Deneuve. I had only been there once previously, as a customer, to see Bergman’s “Face to Face,” a movie that seems to have disappeared, still unavailable on home video/DVD. The Beekman had a distinguished place in the Cinema 5 pantheon, probably because of its Upper East Side location, only a few blocks from Cinema I & II, etc. It was gorgeous and moderne with a sleek, silver metal marquee and leaning script font lettering. Only the good stuff showed there, for the most part. I believe it was featured in a scene in “Annie Hall.” The lounge had custom furniture, free-form and modern, and it had a kooky appeal by the time the 70’s came around. The theatre seemed stuck in a very cool time period. I can remember seeing a photo of the theatre with long lines out in front of it, in a full-page ad for “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” when Warner Bros. tried to get audiences to believe that movie was a hit. I can’t think why it was booked into the Beekman when it was also down the way at Cinema II. The Beekman was the sort of theatre you would decide to see a movie in, when there were other theatre choices, just because it was so nice.
I remember this theater as the Brandt Cine, off of Exit 8 in Danbury. It had a large single screen, and a very spacious auditorium. Better movie fare opened there. In 1975, I remember seeing John Schlesinger’s “The Day of the Locust” in May, and then, in June, “Jaws” opened there and everyone went to see it. The large auditorium was packed solid with customers.
I had forgotten all about Alexander’s Department Store. Do you remember how it used to say “INCREDIBLE Alexander’s,” in humongous letters on the 60th Street side. Talk about an overstatement. Alexander’s was a poor cousin to “the other Korvettes.”
The Ogden is located in one of Denver’s more neglected but still busy areas. I went to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” there in 1989. It was part of a chain of movie houses now owned by Landmark, which includes The Mayan, The Esquire and the awful Chez Artiste. Some time in the 1990s, the theater closed and re-opened as a concert venue. I believe it is standing empty now. In the 2003 movie “About Schmidt,” Jack Nicholson drives by the theater in his motorhome when he pulls into Denver.
It seems that Syossett, NY, Denver, and Minneapolis have all been blended here. Isn’t this page about the Denver Cooper only?
I remember seeing “Silence of the Lambs” at the Denver Cooper, in 1991. Even that late in the theater’s life, it was well-maintained and felt very “cool” and beautifully designed.
The 68th Street Playhouse was a staple, one of those theaters where you always ended up from time to time. I was once told that when “La Cage Aux Folles” opened there, the theater was what they called at the time “four-walled,” meaning that the distributor actually rented the theater from the owner, and then banked all the profits. It was a gamble that really paid-off. It was easy access from Hunter College and the subway, a couple of blocks away.
I can remember seeing “Gremlins” there with my sister in the early 1980s. I don’t think it had been triplexed at that time. I remember thinking the theater must have been fairly elegant at one time. I seem to remember standing at the back of the auditorium, underneath a curved balcony, overhead. It seemed like the perfect place to see a Saturday matinee. It was the only time I ever saw a movie there. There was also the Brandt Cine in Danbury and another theater at the other end of town, the North Street Cinema.
I worked for Cinema 5 from 1977-1981, during college. Starting at The Sutton, I then split time between the Murray Hill on 34th Street and the Gramercy. Before I worked there, the Gramercy had been a dollar-theater in the early 1970’s, showing third run movies. I can remember seeing an enormous line for some Glenda Jackson movie in 1974 or so, when the admission was $1.00 or $1.25. When I started in late Summer, 1977, it still only showed second run movies. I remember “The Spy Who Loved Me,” “New York, New York” and “3 Women” playing. That winter, the Cinema 5 release “Outrageous!” played for a long time, second run. It was one of the first positive gay movies, starring Craig Russell and Hollis McLaren. It was a joy to have there, and I never got tired of it. The title was never put on the marquee, just quotes from the critics, and I learned how to spell “exhilarating” from the marquee. The Gramercy was a relatively small theater (500 seats?), wedged between a bank on the Northwest corner of Lexington and 23rd Street, and a doughnut shop. The marquee was chrome or stainless steel, extending out over the street and nearly the entire width of the face of the theater. The cashier’s both was Thirties art deco, and sat like a toll booth on the left hand side of the entrance. You had to go out of the theater to get into the booth. In the winter there was a portable electric heater. A bank of glass doors extended across the front. The lobby was mirrored on both sides. The small snackbar was on the left hand side of the lobby. There was a working popcorn machine, but business was usually so slow, the popcorn would be bagged up repeatedly at the end of the night. It was rare that popcorn was made fresh during an evening shift. Cinema 5 contracted with a small entrepreneurial bakery called “Incredible Edibles” and sold cookies and brownies and apple cider of all things. The cider dispenser used to smell a little fermented because this was not paseurized, but the good old raw cider. Sometimes the cider would take on a little zing of carbonation when it sat in the machine too long. The lobby was carpeted in red and sort of threadbare and dirty. The theater was at the bottom of the theater chain and was not very clean or in particularly good repair. It was generally the policy at Cinema 5 that only women cashiered. There were doormen and ushers, usually men, but at the Gramercy there was a woman usher named Theresa. She was an older Spanish lady. Someone told me that she had come to America with a man who promised to marry her, but who never did, or who left her afterwards. She had worked at the Gramercy for a very long time. She always wore a black, nylon usher’s dress, or waitress' dress. Although she was probably in her sixties, her hair was completely black and I don’t think she dyed it. She was full of advice for anyone who would listen and encouraged me to eat ruffage to “escrape de intesteens.” She would gripe when she had to do the doorman’s job, whom she called, “De doormeng.” There was a doorman she was particularly annoyed with named Peter Tan, who spoke very fast and punctuated everything with the word “man,” through his Cantonese accent. None of the managers was particularly memorable. Gail Freund was one of the snack barkeeps. She was kind of New Wave-artsy (she went to Parsons School of Design) with a Cupie doll face. She was very sweet and droll and would shave the “Incredible Edible” brownies when I begged her to. The brownies sold for $1.00, a pretty high price at the time, and I remember one time, after cutting off slivers for me, one brownie ended up looking worth about 50-cents. We laughed hard. I believe the bank of metal doors into the auditorium (and the lobby walls, for that matter) were painted red or a maroon. Going through the doors you entered straight into the auditorium, up a brief incline, under the balcony, the way a football team enters a playing field. You would go left or right to go up to the balcony, and then there was a center aisle on the main floor, with two aisles along the side walls. The screen was draped with one of those old-fashioned scalloped curtains. I cannot recall the color of the seats, but that theater always seemed very dark, so the comment above about it having aqua colored seats and interiors does not ring a bell with me and may have to do with a post-1981 time. If you didn’t go into the auditorium, you could go to the right and down the stairs to the waiting lounge, a fairly spacious room, where the pay telephone was. The manager’s office was down off the lounge, to the left of the bottom of the stairs. I believe the restrooms were at the top of the stairs, just inside of the doors into the auditorium, on either side, the men’s on the right as you entered and the women’s on the left. They may have been downstairs, but I cannot recall for sure. The signs for the restrooms were pieces of etched plexiglass (“Men”, “Ladies”) set into a brass fixture that lit them from above. Art deco styling. I used to get paid $25.00 to do a marquee change, dragging a huge ladder out onto Twenty-Third Street, praying a cab wouldn’t turn the corner and knock it over as I put up the metal letters, which were kept in a scary room in the basement. You had to go out of the exit in the front of the auditorium, to the right of the screen, to get there. An alley would take patrons out to Lexington Avenue from there, but there was a basement entrance outside, behind where the screen would be. I’d go down this metal ladder to get to the cellar door (always thinking of “The Poseidon Adventure” as I went) and I remember always being afraid I’d see rats and waterbugs. The marquee letters were kept down there. I don’t think the marquee ladder was because I can’t imagine how I would have gotten it out, so my memory is fuzzy about that. The letters were black and heavy, like iron and would clip onto horizontal metal tracks on the marquee. I remember finding the pre-formed words “Technicolor” and “Cinemascope” down among the letters and I admit I purloined them. Someone eventually stole “Cinemascope” from me, but I still have “Technicolor.” Sometimes the company would buy professionally made cut outs that were in the same typeface as the movie poster. These were foam-core letters, painted, and then nailed or stapled onto wooden frames, that were then wired through holes in the little tracks on the marquee. These could be as wide as the marquee and, while not particularly heavy, could be unwieldy, especially in the wind. They looked very spiffy and were used in the last years of the 1970s and early ‘80s, when the Gramercy went first run. There must have been a contract with 20th Century-Fox, because it started with the Fox movie “Magic,” (“A Terrifying Love Story”) starring Ann-Margret and Anthony Hopkins, about a ventriloquist and his dummy in a sordid love triangle with Ann. It was from the William Goldman novel. After that there were several Robert Altman films first-run, his poorly received ones: “A Perfect Couple” and “Quintet” are the ones I remember. I thought “Quintet” was fascinating but people hated-hated-hated it and would complain about the focus when actually it was filmed in a soft focus, as though the edges of the screen were frosted by ice. When I would try to explain this, they would argue. I think the doomsday tone of the movie really bothered people. I remember second-run “Saturday Night Fever” running there, forever it seemed, and then later still, the PG-rated version of “Saturday Night Fever” for younger audiences. The profanity was dubbed out. You could still read their lips saying the “C” word and uttering “pig.” It was hell. I clearly recall a Russian movie called “A Slave of Love,” also released by Cinema 5, playing second-run at the Gramercy, and I remember I would go in to watch the last few minutes, with the image of a woman on the back of a train, being chased by soldiers. The woman is an actress who has been frivolous and silly and now has understood the need for the Revolution. Her face is in close-up and she keeps saying, “Soldiers, soldiers,” and asking why they are doing what they are doing. The train goes on into the distance, but you know the soldiers are going to capture her and it ends with a shot of the cold, white sun above the tracks and no end titles. In about 1980, Cinema 5 shipped the custom lounge furniture from the Beekman Theater down to the Gramercy, for use in the basement lounge. There had been red, 1940s or 1950s style love seats and chairs down there before. The Beekman furniture was extremely modern, sleek, amoeba shaped, dark upholstered stuff, that looked incongruous. Like putting 1960s Italian furniture in a church basement. The last time I was there was to see Drew Barrymore in “The Firestarter,” in about 1984, years after I’d stopped working there. It was on a Saturday night, and I remember the theater was full.
I was an usher/doorman from 1977 to 1981. At the time, the Murray Hill was part of the Cinema 5 (formerly Rugoff) chain. “Star Wars” was playing when I started working there in August. It was still a big hit at the time. After that, Gene Wilder’s “The World’s Greatest Lover” opened in December, and the theater became very quiet. There were a lot of other modest movies there like “Making Love,” “It’s My Turn,” “Phantasm,” “Jaws 2”, “Excalibur,” but a lot of monster hits, too, like the other “Star Wars” movies and the “Superman” series, as well as “An Unmarried Woman,” “Coma,” and “Animal House,” (a surprise hit). In 1980, there was a 70mm re-release of “The Exorcist.” The ads read, “Hear The Devil for the First time in 70mm and Dolby Stereo!” Director William Friedkin came to the theater to oversee the projection before it opened and he told the manager to remove certain lightbulbs from the lobby ceiling. (The manager ignored the dictate.) The manager was James Bradley, an ex-military man who was very officious and stern. He ran the theater like a ship but the staff was fond of him. The staff was family-like and friendly. Terry Amore was the cashier for many years. She was raised in Hells Kitchen and had an old-fashioned NY accent, the kind you only hear in old movies now. She’d answer the phone, “Murray Hill Thea-duh.” She later married one of the projectionists, Ray. When Mr. Bradley retired, younger men managed the theater and something was lost. The theater had a large chrome or stainless marquee that extended over the entire sidewalk and almost the whole width of the building. In the front of the theater there was a large display window, between the glass entrance doors on the west and the red, metal exit doors on the east. It was customary for a banner or flag to be made advertising the movie shown, and this was hung above the marquee, visible to east-west traffic. The typeface on the flag was usually the same as that in the ad or on the movie poster. Inside, the lobby was lined vertically with white-painted, thin strips of wood. The carpet was red and the walls not striped with the white wood, were painted red. Inside doors were painted red. The cashier desk, covered with the same white wood strips, was just inside the glass front doors. There was an Automaticket machine. The “telephone girl” would sit on a stool behind the cashier when the theater was busy. The lobby was split by a red rope. The inflow was on the right and the exit flow was on the other side of the rope, to the left. A “Doorman” would take tickets at a stanchion about twenty-feet up a very slight slope from the front door. Just beyond this, to the right, was the Women’s Room, and then down one or two steps, also on the right, was the lounge. To the left of the doorman’s post, back a few feet, was the telephone booth, a cozy little roomette with no door and just beyond that was the Men’s Room. The Usher’s Room was accessed through the Men’s Room. The theater was fairly sleek and modern. Two open staircases stood in the rear, on either side of the main floor auditorium (two aisles with three sections of seats, the largest in the middle). The lounge was small and narrow with a long glass window that allowed patrons to watch the movie while on line for snacks or if smoking. The walls of the lounge were painted red as well. There were modern, high back sofas on either side of the lounge: facing the aforementioned window and underneath it. The balcony above was laid out like the main floor, two aisles, etc. Smoking was permitted there. At the snackbar in the lounge, there was a working popcorn machine, candy and Coca Cola products, including Tab. Later, the owner, Mr. Rugoff, brought baked goods in from a bakery on the Upper East Side called “Incredible Edibles.” There were brownies, chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies. The oatmeal cookies were named after Mr. Rugoff’s wife, Susan. They were called “Black-Eyed Susans.” Initially, staff were permitted to eat the “spoiled” cookies, those that were considered broken or unsellable. This was revoked because an inordinate number of cookies were “spoiled.” Brownies were sometimes “shaved” and slivers fed to the staff, living on $1.50 an hour. Later, hotdogs were brought in, and this was considered vulgar and not very Cinema 5-like by some staff. The candy and soda syrup were stored in a room up near the projection booth. Up there, in the rafters, you could see the remnants of the original theater, referenced by Joe Masher (2/28/04). I had been told the original theater burned down and I seem to remember seeing charred wood up there and even old box seats if memory serves. The manager’s office was located at the bottom of the balcony staircase on the west end of the building. There was an exit there as well, to an indoor alley which led to the front of the theater and out onto 34th Street. Just outside that door, to the left, was a coffee shop, in the same building as the theater. It was probably called the Murray Hill coffee shop but I can’t be certain.
I remember seeing “Suspiria” there in 1977. It was Mann’s National at the time, and as I recall, it was the only, or one of very few Mann Theaters in New York. The marquee was distinctive, fashioned from black metal with black, candle-like light fixtures extended up off the top in a wavy pattern like a roller-coaster silhouette. I think I saw “The Black Hole” there, too, and “Alien.” I believe “Snuff” opened there as well, a fake snuff film. The distributor paid women actors to picket the movie under the marquee when it opened, to try and build some contraversy. It was a good, big, dark theater. “The Poseidon Adventure” had its world premiere there in 1972.
The Original Cinema 3 at the Plaza Hotel used to offer “reserved seating” for movies that were otherwised difficult to get into. I seem to recall that this started with the Jane Fonda/Vanessa Redgrave film, “Julia” which was also playing at Cinema I and was a huge hit. While this was commonplace with big “roadshow” movies in the Sixties, and has since resurfaced with the Internet and credit card purchasing of movie tickets, at the time it was unusual.
I worked for the Cinema 5 chain between August 1977 and June of 1981. Cinema I was the flagship theatre of the chain, where “The Exorcist” opened in 1973. Cinema II was the lesser house, (“Exorcist II: The Heretic” opened there in 1977, if that’s any indication of status), much smaller, with an auditorium beneath and turned at right angles to the auditorium of Cinema I. The upstairs waiting lounge of Cinema I overlooked Third Ave. and Bloomingdale’s across the street. The waiting area for Cinema II was negligibly small, and I think I recall plants in oblong planters. The walls of both lobbies were lined horizontally with thin strips of wood, painted white. The carpeting was grey or charcoal. Didn’t Cinema I have an escalator to the lounge, upstairs? In the Cinema I auditorium, between shows, the screen was lit with red lights, from below, I think. The auditorium had a very gentle slope with good viewing and a nice wide feeling that made it seem uncrowded. Aisles were on the sides with a concentration of seats in the middle. By contrast, Cinema II, when it was full, felt a little cramped. Ticket holders' lines for both went up to 60th and around the block toward 2nd Ave. I remember seeing “Nasty Habits” at one of the theatres and, at Cinema I, a revival of “Fantasia,” the restored version of “New York, New York” and the opening of Woody Allen’s dreary “Interiors.” Since Walter Reade’s flagship theatres, Baronet and Coronet “twin” were rivals and next door, it’s sometimes hard to remember which movie I saw where, but I believe one of your contributors is mistaken and he may actually have seen “Nashville” at the Baronet, not Cinema I. The mistake could easily be mine. There was a high concentration of theatres in the area, from the Sutton on 57th, up Third Avenue to the Trans-Lux East (which became the Gotham, later), and on 59th there was the 59th St. I and II that became something else later. And across from that, around the corner from the Baronet/Coronet, a tiny theatre, the name of which I’ve forgotten. Cinema 3 used to be at the Plaza Hotel, a supposedly elegant affair, but while it was attractive, it was always empty and no one seemed to know it was there. I don’t think they served refreshments at the original Cinema 3. I can remember seeing Andre Techine’s “Barocco” there and the Maximilian Schell documentary about Dietrich, “Marlene.”
The Beekman used to have beautiful custom furniture in the waiting lounge. Sort of free-style modern, amoebic shapes. I worked for Cinema 5 starting in 1977 when “La Grande Bourgeoise” was playing there. That furniture was eventually carted down to the Gramercy theatre on E. 23rd Street for use in the lounge there.
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I never understood, or liked, the way Cinema 5 gave this theatre special lettering that varied from all the others in the chain.
In 1977, I started working for the Cinema 5 chain. For a while I was used at various theatres until finding a home at the Murray Hill and Gramercy theatres. I worked briefly at the Beekman, evenings. The movie “La Grande Bourgeoise” was playing, starring Giancarlo Giannini and Catherine Deneuve. I had only been there once previously, as a customer, to see Bergman’s “Face to Face,” a movie that seems to have disappeared, still unavailable on home video/DVD. The Beekman had a distinguished place in the Cinema 5 pantheon, probably because of its Upper East Side location, only a few blocks from Cinema I & II, etc. It was gorgeous and moderne with a sleek, silver metal marquee and leaning script font lettering. Only the good stuff showed there, for the most part. I believe it was featured in a scene in “Annie Hall.” The lounge had custom furniture, free-form and modern, and it had a kooky appeal by the time the 70’s came around. The theatre seemed stuck in a very cool time period. I can remember seeing a photo of the theatre with long lines out in front of it, in a full-page ad for “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” when Warner Bros. tried to get audiences to believe that movie was a hit. I can’t think why it was booked into the Beekman when it was also down the way at Cinema II. The Beekman was the sort of theatre you would decide to see a movie in, when there were other theatre choices, just because it was so nice.
I remember this theater as the Brandt Cine, off of Exit 8 in Danbury. It had a large single screen, and a very spacious auditorium. Better movie fare opened there. In 1975, I remember seeing John Schlesinger’s “The Day of the Locust” in May, and then, in June, “Jaws” opened there and everyone went to see it. The large auditorium was packed solid with customers.
I had forgotten all about Alexander’s Department Store. Do you remember how it used to say “INCREDIBLE Alexander’s,” in humongous letters on the 60th Street side. Talk about an overstatement. Alexander’s was a poor cousin to “the other Korvettes.”
The Ogden is located in one of Denver’s more neglected but still busy areas. I went to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” there in 1989. It was part of a chain of movie houses now owned by Landmark, which includes The Mayan, The Esquire and the awful Chez Artiste. Some time in the 1990s, the theater closed and re-opened as a concert venue. I believe it is standing empty now. In the 2003 movie “About Schmidt,” Jack Nicholson drives by the theater in his motorhome when he pulls into Denver.
It seems that Syossett, NY, Denver, and Minneapolis have all been blended here. Isn’t this page about the Denver Cooper only?
I remember seeing “Silence of the Lambs” at the Denver Cooper, in 1991. Even that late in the theater’s life, it was well-maintained and felt very “cool” and beautifully designed.
The 68th Street Playhouse was a staple, one of those theaters where you always ended up from time to time. I was once told that when “La Cage Aux Folles” opened there, the theater was what they called at the time “four-walled,” meaning that the distributor actually rented the theater from the owner, and then banked all the profits. It was a gamble that really paid-off. It was easy access from Hunter College and the subway, a couple of blocks away.
I can remember seeing “Gremlins” there with my sister in the early 1980s. I don’t think it had been triplexed at that time. I remember thinking the theater must have been fairly elegant at one time. I seem to remember standing at the back of the auditorium, underneath a curved balcony, overhead. It seemed like the perfect place to see a Saturday matinee. It was the only time I ever saw a movie there. There was also the Brandt Cine in Danbury and another theater at the other end of town, the North Street Cinema.
I worked for Cinema 5 from 1977-1981, during college. Starting at The Sutton, I then split time between the Murray Hill on 34th Street and the Gramercy. Before I worked there, the Gramercy had been a dollar-theater in the early 1970’s, showing third run movies. I can remember seeing an enormous line for some Glenda Jackson movie in 1974 or so, when the admission was $1.00 or $1.25. When I started in late Summer, 1977, it still only showed second run movies. I remember “The Spy Who Loved Me,” “New York, New York” and “3 Women” playing. That winter, the Cinema 5 release “Outrageous!” played for a long time, second run. It was one of the first positive gay movies, starring Craig Russell and Hollis McLaren. It was a joy to have there, and I never got tired of it. The title was never put on the marquee, just quotes from the critics, and I learned how to spell “exhilarating” from the marquee. The Gramercy was a relatively small theater (500 seats?), wedged between a bank on the Northwest corner of Lexington and 23rd Street, and a doughnut shop. The marquee was chrome or stainless steel, extending out over the street and nearly the entire width of the face of the theater. The cashier’s both was Thirties art deco, and sat like a toll booth on the left hand side of the entrance. You had to go out of the theater to get into the booth. In the winter there was a portable electric heater. A bank of glass doors extended across the front. The lobby was mirrored on both sides. The small snackbar was on the left hand side of the lobby. There was a working popcorn machine, but business was usually so slow, the popcorn would be bagged up repeatedly at the end of the night. It was rare that popcorn was made fresh during an evening shift. Cinema 5 contracted with a small entrepreneurial bakery called “Incredible Edibles” and sold cookies and brownies and apple cider of all things. The cider dispenser used to smell a little fermented because this was not paseurized, but the good old raw cider. Sometimes the cider would take on a little zing of carbonation when it sat in the machine too long. The lobby was carpeted in red and sort of threadbare and dirty. The theater was at the bottom of the theater chain and was not very clean or in particularly good repair. It was generally the policy at Cinema 5 that only women cashiered. There were doormen and ushers, usually men, but at the Gramercy there was a woman usher named Theresa. She was an older Spanish lady. Someone told me that she had come to America with a man who promised to marry her, but who never did, or who left her afterwards. She had worked at the Gramercy for a very long time. She always wore a black, nylon usher’s dress, or waitress' dress. Although she was probably in her sixties, her hair was completely black and I don’t think she dyed it. She was full of advice for anyone who would listen and encouraged me to eat ruffage to “escrape de intesteens.” She would gripe when she had to do the doorman’s job, whom she called, “De doormeng.” There was a doorman she was particularly annoyed with named Peter Tan, who spoke very fast and punctuated everything with the word “man,” through his Cantonese accent. None of the managers was particularly memorable. Gail Freund was one of the snack barkeeps. She was kind of New Wave-artsy (she went to Parsons School of Design) with a Cupie doll face. She was very sweet and droll and would shave the “Incredible Edible” brownies when I begged her to. The brownies sold for $1.00, a pretty high price at the time, and I remember one time, after cutting off slivers for me, one brownie ended up looking worth about 50-cents. We laughed hard. I believe the bank of metal doors into the auditorium (and the lobby walls, for that matter) were painted red or a maroon. Going through the doors you entered straight into the auditorium, up a brief incline, under the balcony, the way a football team enters a playing field. You would go left or right to go up to the balcony, and then there was a center aisle on the main floor, with two aisles along the side walls. The screen was draped with one of those old-fashioned scalloped curtains. I cannot recall the color of the seats, but that theater always seemed very dark, so the comment above about it having aqua colored seats and interiors does not ring a bell with me and may have to do with a post-1981 time. If you didn’t go into the auditorium, you could go to the right and down the stairs to the waiting lounge, a fairly spacious room, where the pay telephone was. The manager’s office was down off the lounge, to the left of the bottom of the stairs. I believe the restrooms were at the top of the stairs, just inside of the doors into the auditorium, on either side, the men’s on the right as you entered and the women’s on the left. They may have been downstairs, but I cannot recall for sure. The signs for the restrooms were pieces of etched plexiglass (“Men”, “Ladies”) set into a brass fixture that lit them from above. Art deco styling. I used to get paid $25.00 to do a marquee change, dragging a huge ladder out onto Twenty-Third Street, praying a cab wouldn’t turn the corner and knock it over as I put up the metal letters, which were kept in a scary room in the basement. You had to go out of the exit in the front of the auditorium, to the right of the screen, to get there. An alley would take patrons out to Lexington Avenue from there, but there was a basement entrance outside, behind where the screen would be. I’d go down this metal ladder to get to the cellar door (always thinking of “The Poseidon Adventure” as I went) and I remember always being afraid I’d see rats and waterbugs. The marquee letters were kept down there. I don’t think the marquee ladder was because I can’t imagine how I would have gotten it out, so my memory is fuzzy about that. The letters were black and heavy, like iron and would clip onto horizontal metal tracks on the marquee. I remember finding the pre-formed words “Technicolor” and “Cinemascope” down among the letters and I admit I purloined them. Someone eventually stole “Cinemascope” from me, but I still have “Technicolor.” Sometimes the company would buy professionally made cut outs that were in the same typeface as the movie poster. These were foam-core letters, painted, and then nailed or stapled onto wooden frames, that were then wired through holes in the little tracks on the marquee. These could be as wide as the marquee and, while not particularly heavy, could be unwieldy, especially in the wind. They looked very spiffy and were used in the last years of the 1970s and early ‘80s, when the Gramercy went first run. There must have been a contract with 20th Century-Fox, because it started with the Fox movie “Magic,” (“A Terrifying Love Story”) starring Ann-Margret and Anthony Hopkins, about a ventriloquist and his dummy in a sordid love triangle with Ann. It was from the William Goldman novel. After that there were several Robert Altman films first-run, his poorly received ones: “A Perfect Couple” and “Quintet” are the ones I remember. I thought “Quintet” was fascinating but people hated-hated-hated it and would complain about the focus when actually it was filmed in a soft focus, as though the edges of the screen were frosted by ice. When I would try to explain this, they would argue. I think the doomsday tone of the movie really bothered people. I remember second-run “Saturday Night Fever” running there, forever it seemed, and then later still, the PG-rated version of “Saturday Night Fever” for younger audiences. The profanity was dubbed out. You could still read their lips saying the “C” word and uttering “pig.” It was hell. I clearly recall a Russian movie called “A Slave of Love,” also released by Cinema 5, playing second-run at the Gramercy, and I remember I would go in to watch the last few minutes, with the image of a woman on the back of a train, being chased by soldiers. The woman is an actress who has been frivolous and silly and now has understood the need for the Revolution. Her face is in close-up and she keeps saying, “Soldiers, soldiers,” and asking why they are doing what they are doing. The train goes on into the distance, but you know the soldiers are going to capture her and it ends with a shot of the cold, white sun above the tracks and no end titles. In about 1980, Cinema 5 shipped the custom lounge furniture from the Beekman Theater down to the Gramercy, for use in the basement lounge. There had been red, 1940s or 1950s style love seats and chairs down there before. The Beekman furniture was extremely modern, sleek, amoeba shaped, dark upholstered stuff, that looked incongruous. Like putting 1960s Italian furniture in a church basement. The last time I was there was to see Drew Barrymore in “The Firestarter,” in about 1984, years after I’d stopped working there. It was on a Saturday night, and I remember the theater was full.
I was an usher/doorman from 1977 to 1981. At the time, the Murray Hill was part of the Cinema 5 (formerly Rugoff) chain. “Star Wars” was playing when I started working there in August. It was still a big hit at the time. After that, Gene Wilder’s “The World’s Greatest Lover” opened in December, and the theater became very quiet. There were a lot of other modest movies there like “Making Love,” “It’s My Turn,” “Phantasm,” “Jaws 2”, “Excalibur,” but a lot of monster hits, too, like the other “Star Wars” movies and the “Superman” series, as well as “An Unmarried Woman,” “Coma,” and “Animal House,” (a surprise hit). In 1980, there was a 70mm re-release of “The Exorcist.” The ads read, “Hear The Devil for the First time in 70mm and Dolby Stereo!” Director William Friedkin came to the theater to oversee the projection before it opened and he told the manager to remove certain lightbulbs from the lobby ceiling. (The manager ignored the dictate.) The manager was James Bradley, an ex-military man who was very officious and stern. He ran the theater like a ship but the staff was fond of him. The staff was family-like and friendly. Terry Amore was the cashier for many years. She was raised in Hells Kitchen and had an old-fashioned NY accent, the kind you only hear in old movies now. She’d answer the phone, “Murray Hill Thea-duh.” She later married one of the projectionists, Ray. When Mr. Bradley retired, younger men managed the theater and something was lost. The theater had a large chrome or stainless marquee that extended over the entire sidewalk and almost the whole width of the building. In the front of the theater there was a large display window, between the glass entrance doors on the west and the red, metal exit doors on the east. It was customary for a banner or flag to be made advertising the movie shown, and this was hung above the marquee, visible to east-west traffic. The typeface on the flag was usually the same as that in the ad or on the movie poster. Inside, the lobby was lined vertically with white-painted, thin strips of wood. The carpet was red and the walls not striped with the white wood, were painted red. Inside doors were painted red. The cashier desk, covered with the same white wood strips, was just inside the glass front doors. There was an Automaticket machine. The “telephone girl” would sit on a stool behind the cashier when the theater was busy. The lobby was split by a red rope. The inflow was on the right and the exit flow was on the other side of the rope, to the left. A “Doorman” would take tickets at a stanchion about twenty-feet up a very slight slope from the front door. Just beyond this, to the right, was the Women’s Room, and then down one or two steps, also on the right, was the lounge. To the left of the doorman’s post, back a few feet, was the telephone booth, a cozy little roomette with no door and just beyond that was the Men’s Room. The Usher’s Room was accessed through the Men’s Room. The theater was fairly sleek and modern. Two open staircases stood in the rear, on either side of the main floor auditorium (two aisles with three sections of seats, the largest in the middle). The lounge was small and narrow with a long glass window that allowed patrons to watch the movie while on line for snacks or if smoking. The walls of the lounge were painted red as well. There were modern, high back sofas on either side of the lounge: facing the aforementioned window and underneath it. The balcony above was laid out like the main floor, two aisles, etc. Smoking was permitted there. At the snackbar in the lounge, there was a working popcorn machine, candy and Coca Cola products, including Tab. Later, the owner, Mr. Rugoff, brought baked goods in from a bakery on the Upper East Side called “Incredible Edibles.” There were brownies, chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies. The oatmeal cookies were named after Mr. Rugoff’s wife, Susan. They were called “Black-Eyed Susans.” Initially, staff were permitted to eat the “spoiled” cookies, those that were considered broken or unsellable. This was revoked because an inordinate number of cookies were “spoiled.” Brownies were sometimes “shaved” and slivers fed to the staff, living on $1.50 an hour. Later, hotdogs were brought in, and this was considered vulgar and not very Cinema 5-like by some staff. The candy and soda syrup were stored in a room up near the projection booth. Up there, in the rafters, you could see the remnants of the original theater, referenced by Joe Masher (2/28/04). I had been told the original theater burned down and I seem to remember seeing charred wood up there and even old box seats if memory serves. The manager’s office was located at the bottom of the balcony staircase on the west end of the building. There was an exit there as well, to an indoor alley which led to the front of the theater and out onto 34th Street. Just outside that door, to the left, was a coffee shop, in the same building as the theater. It was probably called the Murray Hill coffee shop but I can’t be certain.
I remember seeing “Suspiria” there in 1977. It was Mann’s National at the time, and as I recall, it was the only, or one of very few Mann Theaters in New York. The marquee was distinctive, fashioned from black metal with black, candle-like light fixtures extended up off the top in a wavy pattern like a roller-coaster silhouette. I think I saw “The Black Hole” there, too, and “Alien.” I believe “Snuff” opened there as well, a fake snuff film. The distributor paid women actors to picket the movie under the marquee when it opened, to try and build some contraversy. It was a good, big, dark theater. “The Poseidon Adventure” had its world premiere there in 1972.
The Original Cinema 3 at the Plaza Hotel used to offer “reserved seating” for movies that were otherwised difficult to get into. I seem to recall that this started with the Jane Fonda/Vanessa Redgrave film, “Julia” which was also playing at Cinema I and was a huge hit. While this was commonplace with big “roadshow” movies in the Sixties, and has since resurfaced with the Internet and credit card purchasing of movie tickets, at the time it was unusual.
I worked for the Cinema 5 chain between August 1977 and June of 1981. Cinema I was the flagship theatre of the chain, where “The Exorcist” opened in 1973. Cinema II was the lesser house, (“Exorcist II: The Heretic” opened there in 1977, if that’s any indication of status), much smaller, with an auditorium beneath and turned at right angles to the auditorium of Cinema I. The upstairs waiting lounge of Cinema I overlooked Third Ave. and Bloomingdale’s across the street. The waiting area for Cinema II was negligibly small, and I think I recall plants in oblong planters. The walls of both lobbies were lined horizontally with thin strips of wood, painted white. The carpeting was grey or charcoal. Didn’t Cinema I have an escalator to the lounge, upstairs? In the Cinema I auditorium, between shows, the screen was lit with red lights, from below, I think. The auditorium had a very gentle slope with good viewing and a nice wide feeling that made it seem uncrowded. Aisles were on the sides with a concentration of seats in the middle. By contrast, Cinema II, when it was full, felt a little cramped. Ticket holders' lines for both went up to 60th and around the block toward 2nd Ave. I remember seeing “Nasty Habits” at one of the theatres and, at Cinema I, a revival of “Fantasia,” the restored version of “New York, New York” and the opening of Woody Allen’s dreary “Interiors.” Since Walter Reade’s flagship theatres, Baronet and Coronet “twin” were rivals and next door, it’s sometimes hard to remember which movie I saw where, but I believe one of your contributors is mistaken and he may actually have seen “Nashville” at the Baronet, not Cinema I. The mistake could easily be mine. There was a high concentration of theatres in the area, from the Sutton on 57th, up Third Avenue to the Trans-Lux East (which became the Gotham, later), and on 59th there was the 59th St. I and II that became something else later. And across from that, around the corner from the Baronet/Coronet, a tiny theatre, the name of which I’ve forgotten. Cinema 3 used to be at the Plaza Hotel, a supposedly elegant affair, but while it was attractive, it was always empty and no one seemed to know it was there. I don’t think they served refreshments at the original Cinema 3. I can remember seeing Andre Techine’s “Barocco” there and the Maximilian Schell documentary about Dietrich, “Marlene.”
The Beekman used to have beautiful custom furniture in the waiting lounge. Sort of free-style modern, amoebic shapes. I worked for Cinema 5 starting in 1977 when “La Grande Bourgeoise” was playing there. That furniture was eventually carted down to the Gramercy theatre on E. 23rd Street for use in the lounge there.