Beacon Hill Theatre
1 Beacon Street,
Boston,
MA
02108
1 Beacon Street,
Boston,
MA
02108
7 people
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Showing 1 - 25 of 113 comments
I stand corrected if it was 68 2001 would have been running at the Boston Cinerama Theater but it did run at the Astor probably right after the Cinerama run.
lufweg 2001 ran at the Astor in 70mm probably in 68 and from your description it sounds like you were at the Astor when you saw it. That was right before Sack started block booking everything released and the Astor couldn’t get first run films.
Direspaul…. the cinerama theater was twinned and was showing kung fu/chinese films when I lived there in 74. I think I have seen pics of the balconey cemented over? not sure. It would be so cool to see some pics inside now if it is still there as you say!
luftweg The Boston Cinerama did have the large curved screen and was where I saw 2001 and several other movies. The theater was twinned but is still intact, except for the Washington St. hallway to the lobby and the fire escapes on Harrison Ave. Ext. and Haywood Place. It is the last major theater left in the district to not have been remodeled.
Beacon described in 1922 as “The Shrine of Photoplays” in a shared ad with the Modern displayed here
I saw 2001 in Cinerama the 1st time at the Seattle Cinerama theatre. I then saw it at the Golden Gate Cinerama a few weeks later. Both times I never figured it out. Seattle was a great Cinerama Theatre. The Golden Gate was OK. In San Francisco it was annoying because they kept passing Marijuana0 cigarettes up and down the aisles. No one stopped it. It was legal? to smoke in Calif. Theatres back then but only in the balconies. I was in the orchestra. It was a sickening smell. I couldn,t touch it be cause I was in my Navy uniform then. When I got back to the ship that night I must have reeked of green smoke. Nobody said anything. As far as the film in Boston it played at the Boston Cinerama for over 30 weeks exclusively. After that it played everywhere but in 35mm. Over the yrs it has played in 70mm reissues at the Beacon Hill, Coolidge Corner and Somerville theatres. Just a couple of weeks ago it played as a Fathom event in digital event at several theatres in the area.
MSC77: Thanx for the response. I definitely saw the film somewhere in ‘downtown’ Boston in 1968 when I was little. However, I guess I don’t remember the name of the theater (because for years I was ‘sure’ it was the Beacon Hill Theater — actually right up until just this last month!)… I do remember the presentation being called Cinerama (which didn’t mean much to me at the time, except that it was supposed to be ‘panoramic’)… The theater had a very curved screen which was behind a curtain, I believe it was a deep red velvet curtain…. It was a sort of scary experience…. I recall the spooky ‘overture’ music playing, and that the theater lights were turned pretty dark for it… Maybe I didn’t quite understand how ‘evil’ HAL was supposed to be, but I was actually sad for HAL when he said he was ‘afraid’ and dying…. Then, some many months after seeing the movie, I had a tonsil surgery, and when I was put under anesthesia, I had a a dream, which turned into a nightmare; I didn’t realize at the time, but it was a ‘modified’ version of the stargate sequence, where I was ‘falling’ down an endless tube lined with these flourescent blue-green spheres, which then turned to red as the speed of my falling increased (this was of course the nightmare part, and I awoke from it lying on a recovery bed with a very sore throat)… It seems that, if the roadshow was the only time back in 1968, when the ‘overture’ played, and if the screen was deeply curved, it must have been the Keith-Cinerama?
luftweg: There was a 70mm run of “2001” at Beacon Hill in the summer of 1974 (though I can’t say if that was the only time it ever played there).
luftweg: The Boston Cinerama had an area exclusive during the initial roadshow run of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The film did not play any other area theaters until many months later. For a breakdown of the film’s original run, see (Page 2 of): Still the Ultimate Trip: Remembering 2001: A Space Odyssey On Its 50th Anniversary.
I understand that the (Keith) Cinerama theater on Washington St. had shown ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ upon initial ‘road-show’ release. But was that the ONLY theater in Boston to do so? Was it ever shown at that time, in the old Beacon Hill Sack Cinema (before it was altered), in Cinerama (70 mm, 6 track audio), with the overture and intermission?
Hi Mike and Nataloff, I find the story about the redlining of those Boston theaters astounding, for lack of a better word. Thanks for confirming what I knew was true based on my experience growing up Black in Boston in the 70’s. Wow. The Pi Alley and the Beacon Hill were my go to theaters after work. My office was in One Boston Place, now Mellon Place, so we would run down to the Pi and get hot popcorn on our breaks.
Hi Mike: You’re on the money with the redlining of your grandfather’s theatres — or perhaps we should call it blacklining. It’s also why he’d open films at the 57 and Cheri date and date and watch the audiences bifurcate. I did his publicity in 1973 and 1974 and can tell you that it wasn’t an arrangement with the Boston Police Department as much as with the industry’s racism. I’m sorry to put it that way, but I was in those Saturday exec meetings at the Savoy and heard it. (BTW, my love to Ina and David.)
What law did the BPD cite in order to justify this restriction?
The beacon hill (along with the pi alley and the old Savoy) was one of three theatres the BPD would permit movies to be shown if the film was expected to draw a predominantly African-American audience. The police were very eager to keep such audiences in certain venues.
I’m Ben Sack’s grandson and he told me the story.
1956 photo courtesy of the Dirty Old Boston Facebook page.
Ad for the 1973 re-release of This is Cinerama in 70mm now on the Cinerama web site – http://incinerama.com/beacon.htm .
Have to revise my comment. I went to the Beacon Hill one other time to see Little Big Man. Very noisy then with the Subway running underneath.
An article about the Beacon Theatre in the June 9, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Beacon had recently reopened after a fifteen-day shutdown for a $75,000 renovation. The project included both refurbishing the house and mechanical improvements such as a new ventilation system. The Beacon Theatre had originally cost $100,000 to build, and had opened on February 17, 1910.
We used to call the second version of this theatre “the bunker.” You had to walk down a humongous flight of stairs to get there after buying your ticket at street level, and then walk up them afterward when the show was over. (So much for the Americans with Disabilities Act.) The rumbling that occurred every so often was the Green Line MBTA passing nearby underground. And everyone is right about the reissue of “This is Cinerama” that played there. It was wrong in every possible way.
To CS. I just looked up on wikipedia about the 70mm version of House of Wax. They said that the 70mm version played at the Metropolitan theatre. The Beacon Hill may have pled it in 70mm or srtereovision 35mm but it was after the Met. I saw it at the Astor which could have been either format and also at the Exeter which must have been in 35mm. Sorry about doubting you on a 70mm version but I had never heard of that version.
Note to dickneeds111 regarding 1952’s “House of Wax”: Some of the 3-D prints of the film issued during the 1972 re-release were on 70mm stock though not projected in any of the ratios that were typical of films actually shot in or blown up to 70mm.
A company called Stereovision devised a way of printing the two original 35mm images needed to produce the 3-D effect by printing them side by side on 70mm film stock and then using a special lens and and a revolving shutter that alternately blanked out one image then the other but so rapidly that the switching back and forth could not be perceived by the viewer of the film. This meant that only one projector would be needed whereas during the early-1950s 3-D craze, two projectors were needed which caused a number of problems and necessitated an intermission to change reels.
The same company also devised a method of projecting 3-D using 35mm film by stacking the two images for each projected frame on top of each other, and again using a special shutter during projection.
I worked there in the 80’s. I remember Breakin and crush groove playing there and at the pi alley as well. It was my after school job and a lot of fun.
Please remove this theatre from your list of Cinerama theatres. It never was one. It did play a re-release of the 70mm version of This Is Cinerama in the 70’s. It was awful. Not a very big 70mm screen(flat) poor sound because you could hear the subway trains running underneath. This was typical of Sack(USA) theatres who let there theatres fall apart and become dumps. Boston had only one real CINERAMA Theatre and that was the (RKO) Boston Cinerama on Washington St.
The House Of Wax was never released in 70mm. I don’t know when it played the Beacon Hill. I do know that it played the Astor and also was re-released about 1972-72 and played the old Exeter on a new years eve.
Walked past the former location yesterday(6/19)– still looks the same as the street view(which is circa 2009) Pressed Sandwiches closed almost a year and a half ago.
I will say that looking at the structure, it has the look of a movie theater marquee, even with the signage on it.