Ming, as you have seen by now, my friend Douglas Brown confirmed (on the Carlton page) that William R. Walker & Sons also did the Carlton Theatre. I should have referred you to him in the first place since he has detailed historical knowledge about all of downtown Providence’s buildings. A year ago last June we walked together to all the sites of former theatres in that area and shared what we knew. I saw movies at the Carlton in the early 1950s, but never at the Rialto, which closed in the 1930s, before I was born. Be sure to post any additional findings of your own.
A week before the Central Square closed on April 1, 1980, I saw the last two films I would see there: revivals of To Be or Not to Be (1942) and Sunnyside Up (1929). They ran programs here in both 35mm and 16mm.
A Christmas Day newspaper ad in 1960 listed the films High Time and Young Jesse James with the reminder: “Attention, kids, there will be a matinee Monday.”
I wrote in my log about going to see at film at the “new” Lincoln Mall Cinemas in July 1975. So the place had to have opened in the summer of 1975. The first film I saw there, shortly after opening, was Jaws. I described the decor as being “bomb shelter” style.
Here is an entire PROGRAM BOOKLET for the end of 1928, listing current and coming attractions, both films and vaudeville acts, including Maurice Chevalier.
Boston Symphony Orchestra program booklets give a history of the hall. Included in that history is the fact that the Boston premiere of Cecil B. De Mille’s film version of Carmen, starring Geraldine Farrar, took place here in 1915.
Would it not be nice if at some point a public tour could be offered of the interior? It was done recently with the Orpheum in New Bedford. This might stir up some public support for the restoration of the building, a project that, if I gather correctly, is languishing. A web site devoted to this theatre, with photos, might be nice. Look at the Orpheum, New Bedford site put up by O.R.P.H.
In the summer of 1970 the single-screen Kent was triplexed. Its main auditorium was split in two resulting in one cinema in the front, one in the rear. A third smaller cinema was added on the right side of the building.
The Amherst Cinema Arts Center in nearby Amherst shows the same type of films as the Pleasant Street. It re-opened last year after being shut for a very long time. It has three screens. Amherst is not really walking distance from Northampton but it is a short drive.
For the opening of the theatre as the Orson Welles Cinema on April 8, 1969, Frank Rich, then a student at Harvard, wrote THIS ARTICLE for the Harvard Crimson.
An article in the New Bedford paper described the October 7, 2007 opening of the Orpheum theatre for a “rope light tour.” In it some of the history of the ownership of the Casino is referred to. READ HERE
The theatre opened on February 14, 1964, according to my private notes. It was called the Esquire then. The first film was Emile de Antonio’s documentary Point of Order! about the 1954 Senate Army-McCarthy hearings and consisted entirely of edited TV footage. I went there with two friends the following day after our dinner at Würsthaus off Harvard Square.
Many prints of classic films from past decades were saved and protected by private collectors. When studios lost copies of films or recklessly destroyed them, archives like UCLA, MoMA, George Eastman House, would often obtain them for their collections from PRIVATE COLLECTORS, as well as from donations from the studios themselves.
During televised film preservation series on TCM and AMC requests on behalf of archives routinely ask people to search their attics and garages for old films. The late film scholar William K. Everson bought and was given innumerable copies of 16mm prints from folks he knew at the studios and showewd them (always free) in his classes in New York. Studios sold huge numbers of 16mm films to TV stations in the days when that format was used for telecast. They made the first sale. And by that fact of “first sale,” every subsequent sale was legal. The same would be true of 35mm if they made the first sale, which is evidence that they did by selling blocks of movies to wholesale consolidators.
Years ago George Eastman House bought many 35mm and 16mm prints of films from me (Italian films, not Hollywood product) when I got rid of my Italian collection in favor of video and DVD a good number of years ago. Everything was legally purchased by me from from dealers in the Big Reel and other dealers and by warehouses selling the former holdings of now-defunct companies. These dealers who did not steal the huge inventories they offered and were unfraid to sell them FOR PRIVATE USE. If the studios objected, don’t you think the advertisers in The Big Reel selling 35mm and 70mm(!) prints would have had their asses sued off??? As far as studios and distributors not selling, they may say that, but in reality that is not always what they do, since it is less expensive to sell off large caches of 35mm prints after they are no longer need than to pay to destroy them as they also do.
Different studios, different distributors will have differing…and inconsistent…policies on this issue. Also, as I pointed out, storage facilities routinely sell prints when storage fees are not paid, in order to recoup their costs. Sometimes smaller film companies and distributors go out of business (common in the foreign film distribution market) and those wind up on ther for-sale lists. So you are inaccurate, very inaccurate, in saying that the only way to get 35mm film is by “takening the item,” that is by theft. These are not thefts that I am talking about! If people had 35mm collections returned to studios, it is possible that they were misusing them via paid public exhibition in violation of copyright.
This whole 35mm issue is becoming moot, given the inevitable move toward digital projection. And what will be a concomitant result? Ironically you will see more and more 35mm prints for sale to nostalgic collectors with a lot of space in their garages.
Justin, the well-known film collector magazine The Big Reel lists deals who have for decades offered 35mm prints for sale to collectors and institutions. Many of these prints were intially turned over to these dealers by studios getting rid of surplus material, by warehouses who were recouping money for defaulted storage payments. It is not true that individuals or archives or educational institutions cannot legally own 35mm prints. In fact, that is absurd! The same is true for 16mm prints, the preferred format for private film collectors before the advent of video and DVD. Many still do collect in that format. The question of rights, however, is a whole different matter. What you show privately in your home is one thing, but public showings or rentals to others for public showings can be copyright violations. If the film is in public domain, you can do anything you want with it, whether video, 16mm, or 35mm.
A friend commented on the above Berkeley Daily Planet article I posted:
“I heard there were several mistakes in the article, and that the Telly Rep was not such a treasure. Films were projected onto a wall and the guy sometimes left the machine running unattended while he walked down the street….”
An interesting article appeared in the 9-18-07 issue of the Berkeley Daily Planet about the founder of the Telegraph Repertory Cinema, George Pauly (1933-2007), who died on August 27. THE ARTICLE
Brucec,
To my knowledge there are almost no pictures of the interior as it was. I found just this one. I agree with you about this theatre. Trinity Rep committed a monumental act of cultural and architectural vandalism when they gutted this theatre. I remember the beauty of this place as a child and can never forget or forgive what they did, and yet they promote themselves as a great cultural institution. They are barbarians.
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco wrote of Eddie Fay and Fays Theatre:
“Just around the corner from the Biltmore Hotel was Fay’s [Fays] Theater. The owner of the popular movie house was Edward M. "Eddie” Fay. For the first 50 years of the tewntieth century, the name Eddie Fay was synonymous with music and theater in Providence. Fay was often referred to as the Dean of Rhode Island Showmen. Born in 1875, he got his start as a child prodigy playing the violin. By age 15, he was performing solos with the Providence Symphony Orchestra. By age 25, Fay was the most sought after band and orchestra conductor anywhere in the region. Around the turn of the century Fay and his brothers, James and Bernard, built their first dance pavilion at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet. People lined up to get in. In 1914, Fay constructed an even more popular dance hall, Hunts Mills, in East Providence. Hunts Mills eventually burned down, but before it did, it became one of the hottest spots in the area. The way customers paid for their fun at Hunts Mills is kind of interesting. Fay would strike up the orchestra. The dance floor would fill with people. After a minute or so the music would stop. Six collectors would move among the dancers gathering a nickel from each couple. When everyone had paid, the head collector would blow a whistle and the music and dancing would start again.
“All during this period, Eddie Fay was known as ‘The Dance King.’ Sometime after 1910, Fay began branching out into vaudeville and silent movie theaters. In 1916, Fay bought the former Union Theater and renamed it after himself. He used the Fays as the center of his ever-expanding theatrical empire and kept his office on Union Street for almost 40 years. In the mid-1920s, Fay took over five theaters in downtown Providence in a million dollar deal with the A.C. Emery entertainment chain. Included in the deal was the stately Majestic Theater on Washington Street, which today hosts the nationally renowned Trinity Repertory Company. Eddie Fay’s holdings extended far beyond the confines of Providence. He owned theaters in New York and Philadelphia and was part of a chain that controlled houses all over the eastern United States. Many of the brightest stars to shine in Providence were brought here by impresario Fay: Gentleman Jim Corbett, Harry Houdini, Sarah Bernhardt, Ed Wynn, Jack Dempsey, Ethel Barrymore, Tallulah Bankhead. One tale tells how in 1925 Fay lured English Channel swimmer Gertrude Ederle to come to Providence. Fay paid Gertrude $6,000 to swim around in circles in a water tank he built especially for the occasion. The show sold out. Fay introduced the first talking picture equipment into Providence, at the Majestic Theater. People who remember Fay report he was a friendly, generous man, who always made time for causes, whether it was selling war bonds during World War II, or raising money for the Jimmy Fund. The photographs that survive of Fay, however, show him as a rather dour looking gentleman, with a shock of white hair, wearing pince-nez glasses, holding a cigar. The Fays Theater was knocked down in 1951, putting out of work a number of individuals, including lon-term projectionist Phil Sugarman. The building was replaced by -what else? – a parking lot. After. the Fays was closed, Eddie M. moved his office up to the Majestic Theater. The final curtain came down on Eddie Fay in 1964, when he left the stage for good at age 88.”
Here is a PHOTO of Thames Street, circa 1908, with the sign for the Star Theatre on the right.
Ming, as you have seen by now, my friend Douglas Brown confirmed (on the Carlton page) that William R. Walker & Sons also did the Carlton Theatre. I should have referred you to him in the first place since he has detailed historical knowledge about all of downtown Providence’s buildings. A year ago last June we walked together to all the sites of former theatres in that area and shared what we knew. I saw movies at the Carlton in the early 1950s, but never at the Rialto, which closed in the 1930s, before I was born. Be sure to post any additional findings of your own.
Ming, I don’t know. But Roger Brett’s book Temples of Illusion may contain that information. I don’t remember.
Here is a New York Times article on the current situation of the Regent/Slave No. 1 Theatre.
A week before the Central Square closed on April 1, 1980, I saw the last two films I would see there: revivals of To Be or Not to Be (1942) and Sunnyside Up (1929). They ran programs here in both 35mm and 16mm.
A Christmas Day newspaper ad in 1960 listed the films High Time and Young Jesse James with the reminder: “Attention, kids, there will be a matinee Monday.”
I wrote in my log about going to see at film at the “new” Lincoln Mall Cinemas in July 1975. So the place had to have opened in the summer of 1975. The first film I saw there, shortly after opening, was Jaws. I described the decor as being “bomb shelter” style.
Here is an entire PROGRAM BOOKLET for the end of 1928, listing current and coming attractions, both films and vaudeville acts, including Maurice Chevalier.
Boston Symphony Orchestra program booklets give a history of the hall. Included in that history is the fact that the Boston premiere of Cecil B. De Mille’s film version of Carmen, starring Geraldine Farrar, took place here in 1915.
When Naples Sings at the Belmont circa 1931.
PUBLICITY FLYER.
Would it not be nice if at some point a public tour could be offered of the interior? It was done recently with the Orpheum in New Bedford. This might stir up some public support for the restoration of the building, a project that, if I gather correctly, is languishing. A web site devoted to this theatre, with photos, might be nice. Look at the Orpheum, New Bedford site put up by O.R.P.H.
On July 20, 1970 I noted in my log that I had seen Robert Aldrich’s Too Late the Hero at Cine 1.
In the summer of 1970 the single-screen Kent was triplexed. Its main auditorium was split in two resulting in one cinema in the front, one in the rear. A third smaller cinema was added on the right side of the building.
The Amherst Cinema Arts Center in nearby Amherst shows the same type of films as the Pleasant Street. It re-opened last year after being shut for a very long time. It has three screens. Amherst is not really walking distance from Northampton but it is a short drive.
“Salute to Italian Films Week,” October 1952.
PRINTED PROGRAM FLYER
For the opening of the theatre as the Orson Welles Cinema on April 8, 1969, Frank Rich, then a student at Harvard, wrote THIS ARTICLE for the Harvard Crimson.
An article in the New Bedford paper described the October 7, 2007 opening of the Orpheum theatre for a “rope light tour.” In it some of the history of the ownership of the Casino is referred to.
READ HERE
An article in the New Bedford paper described the October 7, 2007 opening of the theatre for a “rope light tour.”
READ HERE
The theatre opened on February 14, 1964, according to my private notes. It was called the Esquire then. The first film was Emile de Antonio’s documentary Point of Order! about the 1954 Senate Army-McCarthy hearings and consisted entirely of edited TV footage. I went there with two friends the following day after our dinner at Würsthaus off Harvard Square.
Many prints of classic films from past decades were saved and protected by private collectors. When studios lost copies of films or recklessly destroyed them, archives like UCLA, MoMA, George Eastman House, would often obtain them for their collections from PRIVATE COLLECTORS, as well as from donations from the studios themselves.
During televised film preservation series on TCM and AMC requests on behalf of archives routinely ask people to search their attics and garages for old films. The late film scholar William K. Everson bought and was given innumerable copies of 16mm prints from folks he knew at the studios and showewd them (always free) in his classes in New York. Studios sold huge numbers of 16mm films to TV stations in the days when that format was used for telecast. They made the first sale. And by that fact of “first sale,” every subsequent sale was legal. The same would be true of 35mm if they made the first sale, which is evidence that they did by selling blocks of movies to wholesale consolidators.
Years ago George Eastman House bought many 35mm and 16mm prints of films from me (Italian films, not Hollywood product) when I got rid of my Italian collection in favor of video and DVD a good number of years ago. Everything was legally purchased by me from from dealers in the Big Reel and other dealers and by warehouses selling the former holdings of now-defunct companies. These dealers who did not steal the huge inventories they offered and were unfraid to sell them FOR PRIVATE USE. If the studios objected, don’t you think the advertisers in The Big Reel selling 35mm and 70mm(!) prints would have had their asses sued off??? As far as studios and distributors not selling, they may say that, but in reality that is not always what they do, since it is less expensive to sell off large caches of 35mm prints after they are no longer need than to pay to destroy them as they also do.
Different studios, different distributors will have differing…and inconsistent…policies on this issue. Also, as I pointed out, storage facilities routinely sell prints when storage fees are not paid, in order to recoup their costs. Sometimes smaller film companies and distributors go out of business (common in the foreign film distribution market) and those wind up on ther for-sale lists. So you are inaccurate, very inaccurate, in saying that the only way to get 35mm film is by “takening the item,” that is by theft. These are not thefts that I am talking about! If people had 35mm collections returned to studios, it is possible that they were misusing them via paid public exhibition in violation of copyright.
This whole 35mm issue is becoming moot, given the inevitable move toward digital projection. And what will be a concomitant result? Ironically you will see more and more 35mm prints for sale to nostalgic collectors with a lot of space in their garages.
Justin, the well-known film collector magazine The Big Reel lists deals who have for decades offered 35mm prints for sale to collectors and institutions. Many of these prints were intially turned over to these dealers by studios getting rid of surplus material, by warehouses who were recouping money for defaulted storage payments. It is not true that individuals or archives or educational institutions cannot legally own 35mm prints. In fact, that is absurd! The same is true for 16mm prints, the preferred format for private film collectors before the advent of video and DVD. Many still do collect in that format. The question of rights, however, is a whole different matter. What you show privately in your home is one thing, but public showings or rentals to others for public showings can be copyright violations. If the film is in public domain, you can do anything you want with it, whether video, 16mm, or 35mm.
A friend commented on the above Berkeley Daily Planet article I posted:
“I heard there were several mistakes in the article, and that the Telly Rep was not such a treasure. Films were projected onto a wall and the guy sometimes left the machine running unattended while he walked down the street….”
An interesting article appeared in the 9-18-07 issue of the Berkeley Daily Planet about the founder of the Telegraph Repertory Cinema, George Pauly (1933-2007), who died on August 27.
THE ARTICLE
Brucec,
To my knowledge there are almost no pictures of the interior as it was. I found just this one. I agree with you about this theatre. Trinity Rep committed a monumental act of cultural and architectural vandalism when they gutted this theatre. I remember the beauty of this place as a child and can never forget or forgive what they did, and yet they promote themselves as a great cultural institution. They are barbarians.
In his book Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Carmen Maiocco wrote of Eddie Fay and Fays Theatre:
“Just around the corner from the Biltmore Hotel was Fay’s [Fays] Theater. The owner of the popular movie house was Edward M. "Eddie” Fay. For the first 50 years of the tewntieth century, the name Eddie Fay was synonymous with music and theater in Providence. Fay was often referred to as the Dean of Rhode Island Showmen. Born in 1875, he got his start as a child prodigy playing the violin. By age 15, he was performing solos with the Providence Symphony Orchestra. By age 25, Fay was the most sought after band and orchestra conductor anywhere in the region. Around the turn of the century Fay and his brothers, James and Bernard, built their first dance pavilion at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet. People lined up to get in. In 1914, Fay constructed an even more popular dance hall, Hunts Mills, in East Providence. Hunts Mills eventually burned down, but before it did, it became one of the hottest spots in the area. The way customers paid for their fun at Hunts Mills is kind of interesting. Fay would strike up the orchestra. The dance floor would fill with people. After a minute or so the music would stop. Six collectors would move among the dancers gathering a nickel from each couple. When everyone had paid, the head collector would blow a whistle and the music and dancing would start again.
“All during this period, Eddie Fay was known as ‘The Dance King.’ Sometime after 1910, Fay began branching out into vaudeville and silent movie theaters. In 1916, Fay bought the former Union Theater and renamed it after himself. He used the Fays as the center of his ever-expanding theatrical empire and kept his office on Union Street for almost 40 years. In the mid-1920s, Fay took over five theaters in downtown Providence in a million dollar deal with the A.C. Emery entertainment chain. Included in the deal was the stately Majestic Theater on Washington Street, which today hosts the nationally renowned Trinity Repertory Company. Eddie Fay’s holdings extended far beyond the confines of Providence. He owned theaters in New York and Philadelphia and was part of a chain that controlled houses all over the eastern United States. Many of the brightest stars to shine in Providence were brought here by impresario Fay: Gentleman Jim Corbett, Harry Houdini, Sarah Bernhardt, Ed Wynn, Jack Dempsey, Ethel Barrymore, Tallulah Bankhead. One tale tells how in 1925 Fay lured English Channel swimmer Gertrude Ederle to come to Providence. Fay paid Gertrude $6,000 to swim around in circles in a water tank he built especially for the occasion. The show sold out. Fay introduced the first talking picture equipment into Providence, at the Majestic Theater. People who remember Fay report he was a friendly, generous man, who always made time for causes, whether it was selling war bonds during World War II, or raising money for the Jimmy Fund. The photographs that survive of Fay, however, show him as a rather dour looking gentleman, with a shock of white hair, wearing pince-nez glasses, holding a cigar. The Fays Theater was knocked down in 1951, putting out of work a number of individuals, including lon-term projectionist Phil Sugarman. The building was replaced by -what else? – a parking lot. After. the Fays was closed, Eddie M. moved his office up to the Majestic Theater. The final curtain came down on Eddie Fay in 1964, when he left the stage for good at age 88.”