Temple Theater
114-16 E. Seneca Street,
Ithaca,
NY
14850
114-16 E. Seneca Street,
Ithaca,
NY
14850
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Hey Cinema Treasurers – if anyone has any info on the ticket pricing at the Temple – or any other theater in ithaca around the 40s and 50s, I’d love to have it. I’m working on a research project about movie theaters in ithaca. Thanks in advance! Nathaniel
I worked as an Usher at different times at this theater in the mid 50’s. Jerry LaFavor
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This opened on December 13th, 1928, one week after the opening of the State. Grand opening ad in the photo section.
There is a four rank Link theater organ in a workers safety museum in Dortmund, Germany. I e-mailed the museum inquiring about this instrument. According to the person who replied, this particular instrument was originally used in the Temple Theater. It was removed at some point and used in a nearby Methodist church from 1935-1960, then purchased by an individual who had it until 1992. This person then sold it to the museum. It is demonstrated on a regular basis to museum visitors.
Paul: I never understood how or why the grungy Temple trumped the beautiful State or Strand in booking the biggest-budget films of the early ‘70s. Perhaps because it was small, it could count on showing the films for long runs even as audiences diminished during those runs.
One of the first films I saw there was the truly awful “Love Story,” in which an early scene depicts a Cornell-Harvard hockey game at Cornell. The audience went predictably wild, not the least because the campus used for filming was clearly not Cornell. After that scene, the film went downhill quickly.
During the fifties, when I attended Cornell, the Temple presented most of the foreign-langage films that were released, and shortly after their New York City openings. The poor sightlines made reading subtitles very difficult.