Harbor Theatre
9215 4th Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11209
9215 4th Avenue,
Brooklyn,
NY
11209
4 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 34 of 34 comments
Re: Legion of “Decency.” In high school (LaSalle Academy in Providence) we had to take a solemn oath in 1956 not to see “Baby Doll” which was then playing at the Majestic. Lists of films not to see were also read off from the pulpit at Sunday mass in the early 1950s, and we had to take a pledge to avoid them, while standing with our right hand raised! I don’t remember all the titles, but one was the 1951 version of “M”.
Great masterpieces and other significant classics of the cinema on the Legion of Decency no-no condemned list included, among others:
“Breathless"
"Contempt"
"Jules and Jim"
"Knife in the Water"
"L'Avventura"
"La Notte"
"The Silence"
"Viridiana"
"The Balcony"
"Boccaccio ‘70"
"Bell'Antonio"
"Kiss Me, Stupid"
"Never on Sunday"
"Ways of Love” with Rossellini’s “The Miracle”
When “Never on Sunday” was to be shown on the University of R.I. campus, the Catholic chaplain protested vociferously and tried to get it banned.
Such stupidity!
“The Clod”! Great! I never heard that term! From an early age I flouted The Clod, chiefly because all the best movies got at least an “Objectionable in Part” rating, virtually a guarantee of high filmic quality. Remember the ruckus over “The Greatest Show on Earth” and “Singin' in the Rain”? Both of them played at RCMH with that rating, and the nuns warned us against seeing them at grave peril to our immortal souls.
I remember the Catholic Legion Of Decency very well. Before I was 13 years old my mother, a devout Catholic would check every movie I wanted to see. We used to call it The Clod for short
When the Catholic Legion of Decency gave “The Moon Is Blue†a Condemned rating in Summer ’53, the Loew’s and RKO circuits declined to show the film. It was left to the Harbor to make a killing by running it for a week. Parochial schools in Brooklyn ran a contest for kids to draw posters denouncing the movie. I began by sketching an exquisitely detailed cut-off view of the interior and exterior sides of the Harbor, with a projection of the film’s title on the screen, subsequently engulfed by flames from hell. I soon nixed the idea, because the detail I wanted was beyond my ability but mostly because I couldn’t abide the idea of incinerating such a nice theater. I wound up sketching a hill with a bunch of people at the top pushing a book named “The Moon Is Blue†off its sharp cliff. But my heart wasn’t in it, and I came nowhere close to getting recognition for my work. Besides, the nuns knew all along that I was a movie-mad subversive who would watch anything (well, practically anything) projected on a screen, even and especially off-color comedies and musicals with suggestive costuming.
When I was about 11 years old, a local pizzeria sponsored a free cartoon marathon one Saturday morning. You had to have one of the pizzeria’s flyers to get in, but they had printed thousands of them, and every kid in Bay Ridge, it seemed, was lined up for the show. Some of us wound up sitting in the aisle in the balcony, it was that crowded. The cartoons went on for over an hour, a grand thing for us.
In the early 60’s the Harbor became something of an “art” house. Like many smaller theatres in the area, it received its feature films after they had played everywhere else. But the management also seemed willing to try presenting films that other neighborhood theatres wouldn’t bother with. I can recall seeing such films as “The Pawnbroker”, with Rod Steiger, and a revival of “Sweet Smell of Success”, with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. The Harbor also presented award-winning short subjects, such as a documentary that cinematographer Haskell Wexler did about a tumbleweed rolling through the roads and prairies of a western state — all without dialogue. Wexler later went on to film such classics as “In the Heat of the Night” and “Medium Cool”.
Alas, the Harbor’s efforts to bring something special to the area couldn’t save it from the realities of the business. But some of us still remember it fondly.
The last movie ever to play at the Harbor Theatre was Norma Rae staring Sally Fields. The date and time was Tuesday June 26,1979 at 8:00pm. The local Bayridge paper The Home Reporter wrote an article and took my picture as I purchased the last two tickets ever sold which I still have.
I remember going to the Harbor Theater with my friends. We brought our lunch and sat through two features, coming attractions and newsreels. We sat in the front row mezzanine every Saturday.
I remeber seeing the classics of my youth at the Harbor theater with my uncle Carlos and my cousins Alex and Ricky. I saw “Star Wars” there in 1978 and “Superman” in 1979. I remeber buying a program there and then after seeing the films walking out across the street to a store that sold the trading cards to the movies. It was a happy memory of a happy childhood.
The Harbor Theatre was located at 9215 4th Ave. and it seated 1092 people.