UA Duffield Twin Theatre
249 Duffield Street,
Brooklyn,
NY
11201
249 Duffield Street,
Brooklyn,
NY
11201
4 people
favorited this theater
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As said by Bette Davis in that film with Joseph Cotten, quoted by “Martha” in “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf ?” :
“ WHAT A DUMPPPPPPP !!!”
When “New Jack City” happens for real (someone is killed) inside a cinema, then it’s time to close it.
I jumped over to this site at the request of my dear old aunt and godmother in Jersey (almost 90 now) to say that the old Duffield was a dump in her day, a dump in my day, that it’s always been a dump, but alla you guys beat us to it!!!
Before the Duff closed it’s door it was really run down and the neighborhood it was in was also in shambles. At the time the Wesley Snipes Movie was playing people were shot and killed. I could not believe that it had happened. Then again they put airport type metal detectors at the Sunrise Cinemas in green Acres NY.
What was really ironic is that earlier that day I was in the area.
There’s a passage in the novel “The Fortress of Solitude” concerning the Duffield in 1975: “The Duffield was a grand ruin of an Art Deco movie palace, an experiment in what happened if you never cleaned a place for fifty years, just sold tickets and stale candy to stick to the floor and flat cola to erode the hinges of the sprung upholstered chairs when it spilled. One chair in four was upright enough to sit in. Others looked like they might have been attacked, stabbed by angry gangs. The wals were panels of torn crimson felt between gold-painted cherubs and rosettes, now blackened and nose-chipped into dingy gargoyles. The place was unnaturally dark. Red exit signs hovered in the murk, cigarette haze floated up through the projector beam to nest in the massive wrecked chandelier, below the peeling vault of the ceiling, the misaligned film played over the edges fo the heavy rotting curtain at both sides of the screen. The screen itself showed bullet holes and was prominently tagged by Strike and Bel II.”
Here is a 1964 ad for “McHales Navy”. Around the same time there was also a theatrical version of “The Munsters"
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I remember this place when I was wandering around downtown Brooklyn shortly after I moved to NYC (early 1980s). I never did go it, though I always found that its slightly off the beaten track location to be odd.
Hey, the Duffied wasn’t always a dive or rerun house. Growing up in Brooklyn in the 50’s and 60’s the Duffield was a great movie theater to go to. Granted it wasn’t the Fox or Paramount but I remember seeing some great flicks there as a kid. My mom used to have a small collection of dishes that she collected from when they used to hand them out as gifts to patrons. It wasn’t till the mulitplex craze hit that it went down hill.
Hey Melvin j.
I only went to The Duffield a couple of times in the early ‘70s so i can’t speak on it, BUT!, i’ll have you know that my friends and i, growing up on Macon st., loved The Banco and The Regent Theaters. They were the only local theaters that we could get into at that time ('70-'73) to see the latest blacksploitation and karate movies.
And trust me, we paid $2.50 to see 2-3 of the latest movies on saturdays and sundays, not to wallow in the splendor,decor or charm of the place.
Ummmmmm could be…
So we could say that the Duffield was UA’s role model which they turned all of their theatres into sooner or later. :)
Warren and Don, you are absolutely correct. It was a dive. It ranked right up there with the Regent Theater on Fulton Street and Bedford and the Banko on Fulton Stree past Nostrand Ave.
Believe me – the Duffield was no movie palace. It was a 2nd or 3rd rate rerun house.
Donmorin
From Indiana
Ask me about Brooklyn moves of the 40s and 50s etc
The UA Duffield Theatre was located at 249 Duffield Street and it seated 900 people as a single screen theatre.