thanks uarules, just got back from vacation and saw my ugly mug next to Paul Newman’s in the paper (for the record, his picture is on the right!).
and thanks to Cinematreasures for ‘allowing’ them to reprint it (i copied and pasted the same night, not really thinking about reprints etc). my understanding is that they were glad for the publicity so it worked out all the way around.
i had a sentence in there about the hard working staff too but of course it never made the cut. working matinee’s, holidays, weekends – these are the real unsung heroes.
thank you! not a bad line-up. (and now its here for posterity).
thanks.
i could kick myself for not visiting in its last days. i read in that rag Newsday it would be closed in May. when it continued through the summer i thought ‘ah, must have been reprieved by the governor.’
i could write much about ‘big brother’ and corporate America but i’ll spare you. suffice to say that if i ever write a book on how to run a business into the ground, i have much material just from my own former company.
when i was a kid, i used to pass the dumpster by the Jerry Lewis Cinema in Ronkonkoma (now OTB) and rescue pieces of 35 mm film from the trashman. they’d just be laying on the top.
i had frames from Cabaret, The New Centurions, a few others. i suppose some collector somewhere would pay some pittance for them but who cares. i grabbed them for the inspiration they gave me (to write, to dream of directing my own films).
a friend of mine was passing Metromedia (tv channel 5) when they had a 2 yard dumpster behind the building. He found an old camera (that MIGHT have been one of three used to shoot The Honeymooner’s). Another friend found old kinescopes of Chuck McAnn, Sandy Becker, etc. Seinfeld’s first appearance on tv. No one had heard of DVD’s or realized the collecting market potential out there. One man’s dross is another’s gold.
Seems like nothing has changed. U/A was created by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin. You think they’d have a better sense of their own history, or an eye toward a future cineaste museum. Ah well.
MY guess is that most of the crap in a dumpster belongs there… :)
i will , thanks. the staff seemed not unaware of the value of some of the history. pretty wild. i keep meaning to check out what was playing the LAST day. i see from an old advert someone posted that it had its grand opening with The Sons Of Katie Elder!
shamas shamas el ma kababis. for 75 dollars these days, you couldn’t even find room in that dumpster let alone a studio apartment with Charles Boyer upstairs!
the interplay between an angry Paul (Redford) and the phone repairman (Herb Edelman) always makes me laugh..
-i said, do you want a drink?
-who?
-you.
-me?
-yeah.
-no.
-right!
you captured it perfectly Bob.
i thought some of those impressions were lost on others – but you nailed them!
very touching words,too: those are very nice memories of your parents that you’ll carry forever.
you know what’s funny – i find myself buying back all the films i saw as a kid, and forcing the young ‘uns in the family to revisit them.
and its not a hard sell.
when they visit my house, neices and nephews ASK me for Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, The Pink Panther, Charlie Chaplin, Peter Sellers! Barefoot in the Park is STILL a terrific film, and out on dvd! Walmart sold it at Valentine’s time for under 5 bucks.
Before i started screening for the kids, they’d never heard of the 3 Stooges, or John Wayne! My God, Jerry Lewis! Presley in Viva Las Vegas or Girl Happy. I can’t even imagine growing up in a world without Laurel and Hardy, Mickey Rooney or Gene Kelly.
Last count i heard there were 363 drive ins left in America. I visited one about a year ago in Turro, Cape Cod (?) that showed a double feature, with cartoons and the original intermission films! What a treat! They even had those wonderful weighty speakers! I think there are a few left in Pennsylvania – one owner generously offered to talk to me when i looked into starting one on Long Island once. They really were a special treat for the whole family. There certainly aren’t many left.
omg. i wrote a beautiful elegy to this theater and its wonderful staff, and then checked TERMS OF USE. my essay disappeared.
i rewrote as much as i could remember, then clicked PREVIEW. told me i wasn’t logged in, and wiped me out again.
third time may be lucky but i’m running out of steam here.
when i first drove past the theater last night and read that it was closed, i was heartbroken. at 1 am , i wrote this to a local paper…
For half a century the Patchogue All Weather Indoor/Outdoor Theater was the jewel the surrounding community flocked to every weekend. With speakers that hung heavily from your windows, and the best popcorn in town, Patchogue showed double features with all the intermission cartoons intact and of course Woody Woodpecker cartoons before and after each feature. There was a little park set up with a swingset for kids to play on.
The indoor theater also did a brisk business: you would wend your way through a brightly lit refreshment area and then walk down a long hallway back to the theater.
Mary Poppins, Patton, The Sorcerer, Orca – they all played at the Patchogue indoor/outdoor. The night of my high school graduation , the family packed into the car and we went to see The Big Bus and The Paper Chase. On Sundays, Mom would drop us in her car to see The Sting, Cool Hand Luke, Jeremiah Johnson, The Exorcist.
I saw The Great Gatsby with my sister in the giant indoor theater with only the usher who took a seat, for company. As years went by, they began showing really bad horror films (still to packed audiences). As a budding writer, I would scribble on little pads of paper between shows. The popcorn, as always, remained terrific.
Sometime in the 1980’s they did a curious thing. They demolished the outdoor theater, made the indoor into a multiplex – retaining the great indoor auditorium as “screen 13”.
When I read earlier this year that the theater was being torn down for ‘condo’s’ I resolved to go back to take pictures of that wonderful place. Like everyone else, I procastinated too long, and now the marquee on Sunrise Highway notes that the theater is closed. I really hope someone somewhere (are you listening Newsday?) took pictures of this wonderful theater before it too becomes rubble and another piece of Long Island history exists only in our minds..
A tip of the hat then to a grand old theater, and a million magical memories and impressions that began in the dark of that wonderful cavernous auditorium or outside under the stars of a not-so-distant past.
still not satisfied, i drove by this afternoon as they were taking the letters off the building. some people came out to greet me as i explained that i would love to take a few pics for Cinema Treasures. they called the main office for permission, and we waited over a half hour, talking. turns out they ARE aware of CT , that they objected to some of our sillier comments (management , as anyone in business should know, is not always responsible for all of the directives they are forced to carry out. especially in a merger).
keeping an eye out for ‘some guy in the warehouse’ who might object to pictures, i was permitted to take a few on the fly. The popcorn stand, the smaller theaters, #13, the original, the projectors on the 2nd floor. The place was dark ,the pictures grey and not nearly as detailed were i allowed more time, but to me, they are gold. i wanted to take a picture of the staff – who after days of packing seemed as tired as the building – but i didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. suffice to say, they are as big lovers of film and the film-going experience as any of us . some are going to the Regal in Ronkonkoma. some back out east, some to nassau. We need to support them all. they are terrific dedicated people who sometimes run these theaters in lieu of seeing family. they could have kicked my ass out, but they didn’t. they might have laughed at the woman who went there yesterday in tears, talking about how the theater was part of her life, but they didn’t.
tip of the hat to all the staff at Patchogue, past and present, for keeping that ship afloat for 50 years.
as i left, they sealed the doors for the last time. it sounds silly but i felt a little sense of closure. i drove around the left side of the theater (for the first time) and saw the old building ledge, the old wall. The mound of grass and dirt where the outdoor screen stood. i pulled back for a long shot – that magnificent building – letters off, but the red shadow of the letters still strong. United Artists 13 – the trees, the blue blue skies. Out on the highway, they were pulling the last letters down from the marquee with those long grabber poles.
inside those forever darkened theaters, a little of each of us will always remain.
much thanks to both ant knee and stukgh for their great input!
can’t wait to add those two movies to my collection!
red skelton is from indiana and one of my greatest and first memories is seeing him in the yellow cab man ( the watch in the mailbox scene!) and then the NEXT day watching him in a parade atop my father’s shoulders. Red was standing up in an open limo and his wild red hair was blowing around and he had a HUGE cigar in his mouth as he waved and smiled to the crowd!
musta been around 1962. pretty cool.
The Joker is Wild was a great first movie. Mine was At War with the Army! lol
I also remember a tight wire across Niagara Falls and someone walking across it, all in Cinemascope. I bought the MM film Niagara and it wasn’t THAT one. Any ideas?
Saw Woody Allen’s (miserable) Interiors at this theater.
Also one night arrived to see a new film called Animal House (1978).
As I pulled into the parking lot behind the theater some guys who evidently knew me called my name. My solo moviegoing adventure shattered , I had to wait while they relieved themselves against the concrete wall behind the theater.
Inside the theater I was able to lose them in the crowd and enjoy the movie without my own personal Delta fraternity destroying it with their drunkenness.
i find myself more and more buying dvd’s of movies i saw in the “old” days , and less and less seeing new films. i hate to say it cause i know it sounds like bitching, but the movies WERE more exciting and better, and the audiences more courteous.
last time i was at this patchogue theater with my wife, there was a group of about 8 teenagers running up and down the aisles, kicking cardboard containers around, being generally disruptive, until we yelled at them.
and who was the genius who thought of placing the door window in line with the screen? not only are you distracted by blinding light every time some clod has to get up, but it casts a wan pale across the screen!
ya know i don’t wholly subscribe to the megaplex theory; if you’ve ever been to the Huntington Art Cinema, or remember it when it was even dinkier, and happen to see it when there’s a particularly interesting flick, people DO show up.
if the content’s there, i theorize that the people will come in droves.
on the other hand (as Tevya would say) you ARE correct. the megaplexes are alive and well and bustling. which proves to me that people are desperate to be entertained and don’t really care all that much about substance (sort of like the upcoming election! lol)
agree li, i too hope to open a cinema one day.
The Smithhaven Mall was big and clunky and had a giant red curtain, and wonderful films like Splash and Logan’s Run, and Cuckoo’s Nest, and that western movie with James Caan who’s name i’ve forgotten (bertolucci i think directed it) and Judge Roy Bean and Bank shot, and a hundred wonderful memories. I miss it.
I like to blame the theaters less, and the crowds less, and put the problem squarely where it belongs…
The product is simply inferior (movies suck these days) AND the concession center rips people off. How can a family of 4 go to the movies anymore without severely testing their budget?
I’d like to go WATCH a movie, and not necessarily FINANCE the damn thing everytime i go.
In fact i’d go a step further – although this may be largely subjective….refund money if the movie is a bomb. Show better more well-crafted films and stop mugging people at the snack bar, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for success.
i actually spent a few pleasant evenings here, watching light fare like the farrah fawcett-jeff bridges movie whose name i can’t remember. don’t laugh. it wasn’t a bad movie.
my wife took me to a few others. one movie that played here was Stop Or my mom will shoot! with Sly Stallone. perhaps that’s just another reason why theaters close (besides raping their customers at the popcorn stand); movies Hollywood is churning out just plain stink!
who wouldn’t rather fire up the popcorn maker, and toss on a dvd of The Pit and the Pendulum? No extraneous noise from rude customers, no rattling of candy wrappers.
the theater had a sort of arcane way of selling tickets, in that you would stand at a kiosk in the center of the mall on the second level, purchase your tickets, then walk across the mall to the actual theater itself.
at night , when your picture ended, you’d come out to find half the mall closed and several exits blocked.
i wonder if this is where the massapequa drive in was…my father Jim told me tonight that that was the theater where he had his worst chinese eggroll of all time.
of course just why they sold egg rolls at a drive in theater is anyone’s guess…
My uncle Norman Herman was an usher at the Capitol too. Please write to me Elwyn? I’m preparing a book on my family and your memories of that time would be invaluable! ()
Standing there in his usher’s uniform, his sister and friends would sometimes tease him. Also they tell me they threw peanut shells over the balcony to hear them loudly crunch as people walked past in the dark.
I too saw 2001 there in 1968 (breathtaking, although the movie COULD drag in spots) and (I seem to recall) GWTW as well. The screen was HUGE. What a beautiful theater. Like the demolition of Penn Station and so many other landmark spots, another testament to the short sightedness of city planners.
Hi Ted
I have a million questions! My mom is always telling me about that theater. Do you know anything about its history? Who owns it now?
Do you know anything about the Bakers? Can you tell me what the theater is like now??? When it opened , when it closed and then reopened. Are there first run movies there now?
She said the address was 513 Bedford Avenue – perhaps its been rezoned?
Are there any old photographs extant about the theater or its former staff?
(One interesting thing about Mr Baker is he never allowed popcorn to be sold or eaten at his theater!)
Thank you for any information you may have on this subject!!!
i remember standing for 2 hours to see Rocky 2 at the Smithhaven theater. or the two hour walk from my house in the hot summer to bask in the cool air conditioning as i enjoyed That’s Entertainment or Logan’s Run.
the single theater was HUGE, normally less than half filled, and always a treat.
less known was another All-Weather Smithtown drive in and indoor theater practically across the street. to the east of the mall and nestled in the woods, this was where i first saw All the President’s Men, then walked home in the dark on a scary Halloween night…
thanks uarules, just got back from vacation and saw my ugly mug next to Paul Newman’s in the paper (for the record, his picture is on the right!).
and thanks to Cinematreasures for ‘allowing’ them to reprint it (i copied and pasted the same night, not really thinking about reprints etc). my understanding is that they were glad for the publicity so it worked out all the way around.
i had a sentence in there about the hard working staff too but of course it never made the cut. working matinee’s, holidays, weekends – these are the real unsung heroes.
thank you! not a bad line-up. (and now its here for posterity).
thanks.
i could kick myself for not visiting in its last days. i read in that rag Newsday it would be closed in May. when it continued through the summer i thought ‘ah, must have been reprieved by the governor.’
i could write much about ‘big brother’ and corporate America but i’ll spare you. suffice to say that if i ever write a book on how to run a business into the ground, i have much material just from my own former company.
when i was a kid, i used to pass the dumpster by the Jerry Lewis Cinema in Ronkonkoma (now OTB) and rescue pieces of 35 mm film from the trashman. they’d just be laying on the top.
i had frames from Cabaret, The New Centurions, a few others. i suppose some collector somewhere would pay some pittance for them but who cares. i grabbed them for the inspiration they gave me (to write, to dream of directing my own films).
a friend of mine was passing Metromedia (tv channel 5) when they had a 2 yard dumpster behind the building. He found an old camera (that MIGHT have been one of three used to shoot The Honeymooner’s). Another friend found old kinescopes of Chuck McAnn, Sandy Becker, etc. Seinfeld’s first appearance on tv. No one had heard of DVD’s or realized the collecting market potential out there. One man’s dross is another’s gold.
Seems like nothing has changed. U/A was created by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin. You think they’d have a better sense of their own history, or an eye toward a future cineaste museum. Ah well.
MY guess is that most of the crap in a dumpster belongs there… :)
i will , thanks. the staff seemed not unaware of the value of some of the history. pretty wild. i keep meaning to check out what was playing the LAST day. i see from an old advert someone posted that it had its grand opening with The Sons Of Katie Elder!
shamas shamas el ma kababis. for 75 dollars these days, you couldn’t even find room in that dumpster let alone a studio apartment with Charles Boyer upstairs!
the interplay between an angry Paul (Redford) and the phone repairman (Herb Edelman) always makes me laugh..
-i said, do you want a drink?
-who?
-you.
-me?
-yeah.
-no.
-right!
you captured it perfectly Bob.
i thought some of those impressions were lost on others – but you nailed them!
very touching words,too: those are very nice memories of your parents that you’ll carry forever.
you know what’s funny – i find myself buying back all the films i saw as a kid, and forcing the young ‘uns in the family to revisit them.
and its not a hard sell.
when they visit my house, neices and nephews ASK me for Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, The Pink Panther, Charlie Chaplin, Peter Sellers! Barefoot in the Park is STILL a terrific film, and out on dvd! Walmart sold it at Valentine’s time for under 5 bucks.
Before i started screening for the kids, they’d never heard of the 3 Stooges, or John Wayne! My God, Jerry Lewis! Presley in Viva Las Vegas or Girl Happy. I can’t even imagine growing up in a world without Laurel and Hardy, Mickey Rooney or Gene Kelly.
Last count i heard there were 363 drive ins left in America. I visited one about a year ago in Turro, Cape Cod (?) that showed a double feature, with cartoons and the original intermission films! What a treat! They even had those wonderful weighty speakers! I think there are a few left in Pennsylvania – one owner generously offered to talk to me when i looked into starting one on Long Island once. They really were a special treat for the whole family. There certainly aren’t many left.
omg. i wrote a beautiful elegy to this theater and its wonderful staff, and then checked TERMS OF USE. my essay disappeared.
i rewrote as much as i could remember, then clicked PREVIEW. told me i wasn’t logged in, and wiped me out again.
third time may be lucky but i’m running out of steam here.
when i first drove past the theater last night and read that it was closed, i was heartbroken. at 1 am , i wrote this to a local paper…
For half a century the Patchogue All Weather Indoor/Outdoor Theater was the jewel the surrounding community flocked to every weekend. With speakers that hung heavily from your windows, and the best popcorn in town, Patchogue showed double features with all the intermission cartoons intact and of course Woody Woodpecker cartoons before and after each feature. There was a little park set up with a swingset for kids to play on.
The indoor theater also did a brisk business: you would wend your way through a brightly lit refreshment area and then walk down a long hallway back to the theater.
Mary Poppins, Patton, The Sorcerer, Orca – they all played at the Patchogue indoor/outdoor. The night of my high school graduation , the family packed into the car and we went to see The Big Bus and The Paper Chase. On Sundays, Mom would drop us in her car to see The Sting, Cool Hand Luke, Jeremiah Johnson, The Exorcist.
I saw The Great Gatsby with my sister in the giant indoor theater with only the usher who took a seat, for company. As years went by, they began showing really bad horror films (still to packed audiences). As a budding writer, I would scribble on little pads of paper between shows. The popcorn, as always, remained terrific.
Sometime in the 1980’s they did a curious thing. They demolished the outdoor theater, made the indoor into a multiplex – retaining the great indoor auditorium as “screen 13”.
When I read earlier this year that the theater was being torn down for ‘condo’s’ I resolved to go back to take pictures of that wonderful place. Like everyone else, I procastinated too long, and now the marquee on Sunrise Highway notes that the theater is closed. I really hope someone somewhere (are you listening Newsday?) took pictures of this wonderful theater before it too becomes rubble and another piece of Long Island history exists only in our minds..
A tip of the hat then to a grand old theater, and a million magical memories and impressions that began in the dark of that wonderful cavernous auditorium or outside under the stars of a not-so-distant past.
still not satisfied, i drove by this afternoon as they were taking the letters off the building. some people came out to greet me as i explained that i would love to take a few pics for Cinema Treasures. they called the main office for permission, and we waited over a half hour, talking. turns out they ARE aware of CT , that they objected to some of our sillier comments (management , as anyone in business should know, is not always responsible for all of the directives they are forced to carry out. especially in a merger).
keeping an eye out for ‘some guy in the warehouse’ who might object to pictures, i was permitted to take a few on the fly. The popcorn stand, the smaller theaters, #13, the original, the projectors on the 2nd floor. The place was dark ,the pictures grey and not nearly as detailed were i allowed more time, but to me, they are gold. i wanted to take a picture of the staff – who after days of packing seemed as tired as the building – but i didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. suffice to say, they are as big lovers of film and the film-going experience as any of us . some are going to the Regal in Ronkonkoma. some back out east, some to nassau. We need to support them all. they are terrific dedicated people who sometimes run these theaters in lieu of seeing family. they could have kicked my ass out, but they didn’t. they might have laughed at the woman who went there yesterday in tears, talking about how the theater was part of her life, but they didn’t.
tip of the hat to all the staff at Patchogue, past and present, for keeping that ship afloat for 50 years.
as i left, they sealed the doors for the last time. it sounds silly but i felt a little sense of closure. i drove around the left side of the theater (for the first time) and saw the old building ledge, the old wall. The mound of grass and dirt where the outdoor screen stood. i pulled back for a long shot – that magnificent building – letters off, but the red shadow of the letters still strong. United Artists 13 – the trees, the blue blue skies. Out on the highway, they were pulling the last letters down from the marquee with those long grabber poles.
inside those forever darkened theaters, a little of each of us will always remain.
i think we need to patronize it more! i plan on going this weekend!
The Capitol was a beautiful theater – i guess its just another sign of the times. Like Nedicks, Penn Station, and Grand Central, nothing good lasts.
very interesting Warren. where did you find that out? that’s great
mury, i’m a free lance writer and i’d love to ask you a few questions about your experiences in 1946. if interested please contact me at
much thanks to both ant knee and stukgh for their great input!
can’t wait to add those two movies to my collection!
red skelton is from indiana and one of my greatest and first memories is seeing him in the yellow cab man ( the watch in the mailbox scene!) and then the NEXT day watching him in a parade atop my father’s shoulders. Red was standing up in an open limo and his wild red hair was blowing around and he had a HUGE cigar in his mouth as he waved and smiled to the crowd!
musta been around 1962. pretty cool.
Red made a movie called The Clown? Cool if he did. I wasn’t aware of it.
I vividly remember The Yellow Cab Man. That’s one I’d love to see on DVD..
The Joker is Wild was a great first movie. Mine was At War with the Army! lol
I also remember a tight wire across Niagara Falls and someone walking across it, all in Cinemascope. I bought the MM film Niagara and it wasn’t THAT one. Any ideas?
Saw Woody Allen’s (miserable) Interiors at this theater.
Also one night arrived to see a new film called Animal House (1978).
As I pulled into the parking lot behind the theater some guys who evidently knew me called my name. My solo moviegoing adventure shattered , I had to wait while they relieved themselves against the concrete wall behind the theater.
Inside the theater I was able to lose them in the crowd and enjoy the movie without my own personal Delta fraternity destroying it with their drunkenness.
You mean its in operation again? That’s good news.
this is awesome news, if true. next time i’ll be sure to bring a camera!
really wow.
why???
i find myself more and more buying dvd’s of movies i saw in the “old” days , and less and less seeing new films. i hate to say it cause i know it sounds like bitching, but the movies WERE more exciting and better, and the audiences more courteous.
last time i was at this patchogue theater with my wife, there was a group of about 8 teenagers running up and down the aisles, kicking cardboard containers around, being generally disruptive, until we yelled at them.
and who was the genius who thought of placing the door window in line with the screen? not only are you distracted by blinding light every time some clod has to get up, but it casts a wan pale across the screen!
its still there? where??? i would love to see it!
its in the vicinity of the multiplex, no?
ya know i don’t wholly subscribe to the megaplex theory; if you’ve ever been to the Huntington Art Cinema, or remember it when it was even dinkier, and happen to see it when there’s a particularly interesting flick, people DO show up.
if the content’s there, i theorize that the people will come in droves.
on the other hand (as Tevya would say) you ARE correct. the megaplexes are alive and well and bustling. which proves to me that people are desperate to be entertained and don’t really care all that much about substance (sort of like the upcoming election! lol)
agree li, i too hope to open a cinema one day.
The Smithhaven Mall was big and clunky and had a giant red curtain, and wonderful films like Splash and Logan’s Run, and Cuckoo’s Nest, and that western movie with James Caan who’s name i’ve forgotten (bertolucci i think directed it) and Judge Roy Bean and Bank shot, and a hundred wonderful memories. I miss it.
I like to blame the theaters less, and the crowds less, and put the problem squarely where it belongs…
The product is simply inferior (movies suck these days) AND the concession center rips people off. How can a family of 4 go to the movies anymore without severely testing their budget?
I’d like to go WATCH a movie, and not necessarily FINANCE the damn thing everytime i go.
In fact i’d go a step further – although this may be largely subjective….refund money if the movie is a bomb. Show better more well-crafted films and stop mugging people at the snack bar, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for success.
Anyway, good luck .
i actually spent a few pleasant evenings here, watching light fare like the farrah fawcett-jeff bridges movie whose name i can’t remember. don’t laugh. it wasn’t a bad movie.
my wife took me to a few others. one movie that played here was Stop Or my mom will shoot! with Sly Stallone. perhaps that’s just another reason why theaters close (besides raping their customers at the popcorn stand); movies Hollywood is churning out just plain stink!
who wouldn’t rather fire up the popcorn maker, and toss on a dvd of The Pit and the Pendulum? No extraneous noise from rude customers, no rattling of candy wrappers.
the theater had a sort of arcane way of selling tickets, in that you would stand at a kiosk in the center of the mall on the second level, purchase your tickets, then walk across the mall to the actual theater itself.
at night , when your picture ended, you’d come out to find half the mall closed and several exits blocked.
i wonder if this is where the massapequa drive in was…my father Jim told me tonight that that was the theater where he had his worst chinese eggroll of all time.
of course just why they sold egg rolls at a drive in theater is anyone’s guess…
My uncle Norman Herman was an usher at the Capitol too. Please write to me Elwyn? I’m preparing a book on my family and your memories of that time would be invaluable! ()
Standing there in his usher’s uniform, his sister and friends would sometimes tease him. Also they tell me they threw peanut shells over the balcony to hear them loudly crunch as people walked past in the dark.
I too saw 2001 there in 1968 (breathtaking, although the movie COULD drag in spots) and (I seem to recall) GWTW as well. The screen was HUGE. What a beautiful theater. Like the demolition of Penn Station and so many other landmark spots, another testament to the short sightedness of city planners.
Hi Ted
I have a million questions! My mom is always telling me about that theater. Do you know anything about its history? Who owns it now?
Do you know anything about the Bakers? Can you tell me what the theater is like now??? When it opened , when it closed and then reopened. Are there first run movies there now?
She said the address was 513 Bedford Avenue – perhaps its been rezoned?
Are there any old photographs extant about the theater or its former staff?
(One interesting thing about Mr Baker is he never allowed popcorn to be sold or eaten at his theater!)
Thank you for any information you may have on this subject!!!
i remember standing for 2 hours to see Rocky 2 at the Smithhaven theater. or the two hour walk from my house in the hot summer to bask in the cool air conditioning as i enjoyed That’s Entertainment or Logan’s Run.
the single theater was HUGE, normally less than half filled, and always a treat.
less known was another All-Weather Smithtown drive in and indoor theater practically across the street. to the east of the mall and nestled in the woods, this was where i first saw All the President’s Men, then walked home in the dark on a scary Halloween night…