Loew's Paradise Theatre

movieguy on November 8, 2005 at 2:19 pm

How was the Grand Opening on Oct 29th? I did not get a chance to go.Were there a lot of local
politions Local media (CBS,NBC,ABC,NY1,post NY Daily News,NYT) How was the attendence?
500,1000 1500+? How was the VIP affair before the concert? How were the preformers?

I am supprised that Divinity has not yet shared his experiences of opening night with
your fellow theatre buffs.

stevebob on November 1, 2005 at 8:37 am

Thankfully, the reopening of Loews Paradise did get some more local media coverage in the past week. There were articles in the Daily News and the Post plus a story on NY1 news, our local 24-hour cable news channel.

The NY1 segment had brief interviews with Adolfo Carrión (Bronx Borough President) and Lloyd Ultan, a historian who’s written extensively on Bronx history. The shots weren’t too great, though. They showed the marquee, the lobby, and the balcony. You couldn’t even see the entire proscenium, so the auditorium wasn’t shown to its best advantage.

I’m wondering if the lack of a traditional marquee could at this point hamper the prosperity of the Paradise, simply because there’s no place to advertise upcoming acts. Would the installation of tracks to hold letters, or some other tasteful kind of signboard, be feasible in the lower half of the scroll? (Or could it even be possible given that the exterior is landmarked?)

Finally, is anyone familiar enough with the renovation of the Orpheum in downtown Los Angeles to know if it is considered a success? I know that the Orpheum has hosted a couple of movie premieres, but when I’ve visited their website www.laorpheum.com it hasn’t seemed like much was going on there and that the programs have been fairly few and far between. I mention this just because there are some similarities between the Orpheum and Paradise projects, and because another poster had expressed reservations about the prospects for enough bookings to keep the Paradise open.

ERD on October 30, 2005 at 6:01 am

I was at the Paradise one time during the early 1970’s. I was impressed by the beauty and grandeur of one of the largest atmospheric theatres. Many of the people I know in New York are anxcious to go the Paradise, now that it is reopening. I wish all those concerned in its operation much success.

JimRankin on October 29, 2005 at 9:11 am

I believe that what Valencia heard was the recent hyperbole of the chains desperate to lure back the jaded public with a ‘stab’ at some thematic decor, PLUS the potential moneymakers of restaurants, sports and other indoor games so as to create “Family entertainment centers” (playlands) where they can park the kids if they don’t want to watch a movie. It will all be the usual crass grab for one’s pocketbook, of course. No, the thousand-plus seat movie palace with luxurious decor, trained and uniformed ushers, and something resembling quality on the screen, will never return, sad to say, unless TV and videos somehow disappear.

GeorgeStrum on October 29, 2005 at 4:44 am

Some good news for old movie palace fans. I heard a report that there may be a come back of the movie palaces of old. To lure back audiences from their home set ups some theatre owners plan to revamp themselves into the old style decor including resteraunts, skating and bowling added to their theatres to make for a complete going out experience. Can you believe it?

JimRankin on October 26, 2005 at 3:30 am

Quote:
“Jim, thank you for stepping forward (and jarring my memory). By the way, I absolutely meant no offense with the phrase "bent out of shape”; I should have chosen my own words more carefully and less casually.

For the record, which theater was it that has “decadent” in its description and to which you responded earlier?
posted by stevebob on Oct 25, 2005 at 9:38am"

Sorry, Stevebob, I don’t recall just which theatre I was speaking of when I made the observation. Unfortunately, there are a number of occassions when the word “decadent” has been incorrectly used to describe a theatre. Even the supposedly professional wording of the League of Historic American Theatres (www.LHAT.org) in one of its promotional letters used that word to describe movie palaces, and when I brought that fact to the attention of the woman then in charge, she dismissed my observation about the negative connotation of the word with some sarcastic reply. So, you see, it is an uphill battle. Keep up the fine fight!

mauriceski on October 25, 2005 at 5:34 pm

Fellows, very few working class neighborhoods in the 5 boroughs of New York City have remained the same.Forty years ago there was one large Oriental community now there are several. Also there was one African American community in each borough, now there are several.This society of ours is fluid and people move about all the time.So stating that an area has changed in NEW YORK IS LIKE SAYING THAT IN 2008 WE,LL HAVE A NEW PRESIDENT.

movieguy on October 25, 2005 at 4:19 pm

I am excited about the grand opening of the Paradise this Sat.My question how many people are comming
from the NYC Manhatan area and or Westchester? If so would anyone like to go as a group
taking public transportation or driving? I know the neighborhood has imporoved in the last 20 yrs
but the area can still be a little “dicey”

JimRankin on October 25, 2005 at 6:03 am

Well, “stevebob,” this is from “all bent out of shape” over the use of the word “decadent” in regard to theatres, but I thought I was merely pointing out the misuse of a word, just as you justly do here. The first definition you quote for “grandiose” is called the Denotation, and conveys the basic root meaning. Those that follow are called the Connotations, and most every word carries such since they convey Usage and implied meaning within context. As to ‘grandiose’ you are so right, and I had thought of pointing out your careful distinction more than once, but I find that most people just let their ‘eyes glaze over,’ sad to say, at any mention of good English usage. Neither word carries a positive connotation, so if one uses them in regard to theatres, we can only take such one to mean that he dislikes theatres. It is hard being ‘voices in the wilderness’ but maybe a few insightful eyes will take this to heart.

IanJudge on October 23, 2005 at 5:02 pm

I think that Warren was referring to the number of booked shows being low, as opposed to the kinds of shows booked, as being a concern, and he is right. There is no way the Paradise can be a financial success with only sporadic programming; it needs to have a solid calendar of events to keep the cash flowing in, unless the owner is willing to make up the losses himself. No doubt, rental income from the theater building will subsidize the theater, but a successful venue should have a steady supply of regular users. It is also alarming to see that the bookers are inexperienced, because it takes a lot of showmanship and publicity to make a name for any new venue, no matter how resplendently wonderful it is. That said, we shall all have to see how it goes and hope for success.

RobertR on October 23, 2005 at 5:03 am

With all the new technology in fiber optics I would think they could have had the twinkling stars re-created without the use of the old fashioned lightbulbs?

dave-bronx™ on October 22, 2005 at 11:18 pm

For those not registered for the New York Times online, I’ll paste in the article referred to above by ‘Tonino:

October 22, 2005
In Nearly All Its Grandeur, Paradise Reopens in Bronx
By JOSEPH BERGER

Stars will not be twinkling in an enchanted nighttime sky, and goldfish will not be gliding through the fountain, but otherwise Paradise – or at least the Bronx version of it – is about to be regained.

The Loew’s Paradise, a 76-year-old movie palace that gave generations of working-class strivers a taste of Old World opulence and gave generations of teenagers a haunting setting for the taste of their first kiss, is scheduled to reopen next Saturday after more than 30 years of either being boarded up or sliced up into multiple screens.

The new owner of what was once the Bronx equivalent of Radio City Music Hall has restored much of its Italian baroque grandeur. Since putting up $4.5 million to acquire the theater two years ago, the owner, Gerald Lieblich, has gotten workers to clean the cherubs, caryatids, recumbent lions, gargoyles and other statuary in the vaulted lobby and gargantuan auditorium, install almost 4,000 burgundy seats and repaint the famed midnight-blue ceiling.

Lloyd Ultan, the Bronx borough historian, called the reopening “the resurrection of one of the most spectacular movie palaces ever built.”

“It was the showplace of the Bronx,” he said. “It was meant to take people out of their humdrum existence and bring them into a world of unimagined wealth and luxury.”

The Paradise will not reopen as a movie house, however. Its opening night performance is a salsa and merengue concert, clearly a bid to cater to a borough where Latinos now make up half the populace. The entrepreneurs leasing the space also plan to hold gospel, rhythm and blues and comedy acts, live boxing matches, closed-circuit sports events, beauty pageants and nostalgia acts that might appeal to onetime Bronx residents.

The entrepreneurs also plan to use the giant auditorium once more for high school graduations, and to rent out the ornate lobby and mezzanine for weddings and bar mitzvahs, perhaps even for the grandchildren of those who remember first seeing “Singin' in the Rain” or “Jailhouse Rock” at the Paradise.

However the theater is used, the reopening of the 45,000-square-foot building is another milestone in the gathering renaissance of a borough that two decades ago was known for its landscape of eviscerated buildings and Fort Apache air of menace. Indeed, the once-princely boulevard it sits on, the 99-year-old Grand Concourse, is itself being spruced up. The refurbished Loew’s Paradise is likely to dazzle a different generation of strivers and their children just as it dazzled one resident, Diane Levine Edelstein, when she was a teenager almost a half-century ago.

“You walked in and you felt you were in another world, you weren’t in a movie theater,” said Ms. Edelstein, now a senior research assistant at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “We always sat in the balcony because you felt closer to heaven. I remember watching the stars and not looking at the movie.”

Others remembered its balcony as something of a lovers' lane. “I remember going to the Paradise in the late 1950’s when they were showing ‘The Ten Commandments,’ and the couple to my right was breaking nine of them,” said Stephen M. Samtur, co-publisher of Back in the Bronx magazine, a nostalgic quarterly.

Phyllis Gross Greenbaum, now a publisher of community newspapers in the Washington-Baltimore area, suggested that the Paradise stunned her and her friends because “I don’t think many of us grew up with that kind of elegance.”

The Paradise, whose five-story facade has been declared a city landmark, opened in 1929, six weeks before the stock market crashed, with a showing of the “all-talking” film, “The Mysterious Dr. Fu-Manchu,” starring Warner Oland. Its architect was John Eberson, an Austrian immigrant who began his career designing opera houses and went on to create dozens of what were known as “atmospheric” theaters, including five “Wonder Theaters” for the Loew’s national chain in the New York area.

The Paradise’s atmospheric show included twinkling stars, rolling clouds and flying pigeons. The stage was surrounded by sculptured walls with flowing vines, cypress trees and shrubs and classical statues everywhere. In three domes set into the lobby’s filigreed ceiling, Eberson had painters execute dreamy murals of ersatz half-nude deities: Sound, Story and Film.

The grand lobby was surrounded by fluted and gilded mahogany pillars and, at mezzanine level, an arched balustrade of royal proportions. On the lobby’s north wall Eberson placed a Carrara marble fountain of a child on a dolphin. (The fountain’s pool, which once held the goldfish, will not be replaced because it would interfere with a new concessions stand.) For the cream-toned terra cotta and marble facade, Eberson designed a mechanical clock topped by St. George astride a charger slaying a fire-breathing dragon every time the clock struck the hour. The theater cost $4 million to build.

Over the years, the fountain stopped bubbling, the clock stopped working and St. George vanished around 1970, somehow lowered five stories onto a busy thoroughfare. As television made it difficult to fill the theater’s seats and middle-class audiences moved to the suburbs, the Paradise was divided up, first as a twin around 1973 and then in the early 1980’s as a quadriplex, which it remained until 1994, when, severely run-down, it closed for good.

At least one effort to resurrect it collapsed, with $1 million alone spent on gilding. But in 2003, the Paradise was taken over by Mr. Lieblich, a 44-year-old developer of small commercial buildings.

“For the last 20 years that I’ve been in the Bronx, it’s been better and better, and in the theater I saw an eyesore that needed to be brought back as the crown jewel,” Mr. Lieblich said.

With workmen still vacuuming the auditorium, Mr. Lieblich showed a reporter around, highlighting the new air-conditioning, the repointing of the facade, the replacement of reddish neons in the marquee and the replication of the original oval ticket booth. Getting the lights to twinkle again, he said, proved uneconomical. He declined to say how much he had spent.

One of the keys to making the project profitable, he said, is renting the 30,000 square feet of commercial space that is part of the theater building to a significant retailer. One has not been secured yet. A major retailer would be a step up from the shops flanking the theater to the north, a 99-cents store and one that sells furniture on credit.

The opening-night concert is an only-in-New York production. The impresarios leasing the theater are Gabriel Boter, 58, who immigrated from the former Soviet state of Georgia in 1979, and his son Richard, 30, a nonpracticing lawyer who is married to a Dominican and is fluent in Spanish. Father and son expect to schedule 35 concerts a year and 10 boxing matches, though they do not have any longtime experience in organizing events.

There are three firm bookings after opening night, including a concert sponsored by WQHT-FM 97.1 “Hot 97” and a Latina beauty contest.

“There is a strong personal attachment I found people have to the Paradise,” the younger Mr. Boter said. “That gives me a strong sense of personal responsibility to make sure that it will have the splendor and be the jewel it once was.”

RobertR on October 22, 2005 at 9:47 am

“48 Hours” when the theatre was a Quad
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