LOL Comedy Lounge
711 7th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10036
711 7th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10036
4 people
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Previously operated by: City Cinemas
Previous Names: Agee 1 & 2, West Side Cine 1 & 2, Cine 1 & 2, Lesser Cine Twin, Fantasy Twin Theatres, Big Apple Theatre, Jocx Cinema, Show Follies Center, Sage Theater, Peepland
Phone Numbers:
Box Office:
212.643.6557
Nearby Theaters
This theatre started life in the 1970’s as a Spanish language twin. Only the box office was on street level, everything else was down a flight of stairs in the basement. It then became porno, known as Cine 1 & 2.
Surprisingly in the mid-1980’s it went back to showing commercial movies as the Lesser Cine Twin. It started out showing second and third rate first run (“Garbage Pail Kids”, “He’s My Girl”). The grosses were never great but the theatre being open to 4AM helped the box office. Then the owner made a deal with City Cinemas for almost two years. One of the “Lethal Weapon” movies actually opened here first run on Broadway in both of its screens.
It became the Fantasy Twin Theatre. By 1984 it was operating as the Big Apple Theatre. In the late-1980’s, another screen, possibly located in a space upstairs operated as the Jocx Cinema screening Gay male porn. A fourth screen was also in operation.
The theatre then went back to porno renamed Show Follies Center, and then Peepland. This operated until the city’s huge cleanup of Times Square. Around 2002, at least part of the theatre space was converted into an Off-Off Broadway theatre space and events venue, known as the Sage Theater. This was a short lived venture, and the building was then used selling tourist souvenirs and t-shirts.Club. By August 2015 it became the LOL Comedy Lounge. It had closed and the building had been demolished by May 2023.
Contributed by
RobertR
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Recent comments (view all 55 comments)
That pic above as the Fantasy I believe was the last time it was used as a theatre. Here it is as a Spanish Twin
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Some films that the Cine Twin played in 1987 (the first year that the theatre was listed in the New York Times):
Platoon (second run)
Commando Squad (first run)
Beverly Hills Cop II (second run)
Dragnet (second run)
Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (first run)
Adventures In Babysitting (second run)
Can’t Buy Me Love (second run)
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (first run)
He’s My Girl (first run)
Barfly (second run)
Teen Wolf Too (second run)
The Stranger (first run, Manhattan exclusive)
Home Is Where The Hart Is (first run, Manhattan exclusive)
Leonard Part 6 (first run, on both screens)
The theatre began its association with City Cinemas around November or December 1988. The first two movies I noticed on the City Cinemas block ad printed were Crossing Delancey and Mystic Pizza (both films deep into their runs).
Undated marquee photo added, photo credit Stephen Harmon.
1978 photo added courtesy of Al Ponte’s Time Machine – New York Facebook page.
Looking at the photo section it looks like Show Follies and Peepland were next to each other at the same time and that Peepland was NOT another name for this theatre.
Just posted a pic I found on a Facebook group (The Forty-Deuce), labeled 1984 and credited to Kent Almqvist. It shows this theater under the banner of “The Big Apple Theater,” showing Caligula on one screen (in English with Spanish subtitles) and porno double bill on the other. Same Big Apple lettering and logo as the former Globe down on Broadway between 43rd and 42nd Streets. I guess we can add that to the list of names for this cinema. I don’t personally recall it ever being the Big Apple, and 1984 would have been a time of frequent visits to the area for me!
This site is now the LOL comedy club.
Note that it’s been the LOL comedy club since no later than August 2015, per Google streetview.
And it’s gone. Walked by last week and the building is completely demolished. So this needs to be marked as closed.