Avon Cinema
260 Thayer Street,
Providence,
RI
02906
260 Thayer Street,
Providence,
RI
02906
17 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 50 of 64 comments
In May of 1965 the Avon was running the film The Cool World, directed by Shirley Clark and produced by Boston documentarian Frederick Wiseman. It was a harrowing portrayal of Harlem street life in the 1960s. From a distribution point of view it is very interesting to note that the Avon run of the film actually day-dated with showings at Johnston’s Pike Drive-In and the Seekonk Drive-In! The Avon sharing a program with two area drive-ins! So strange. But that was a movie that could appeal to both art house audiences and mass audiences, even youth audiences. So it was a clever marketing move by the distributor, Cinema V.
Earlier I mentioned Henry V as being the only reserved seat engagement at the Avon that I knew of. Not so any more. Beginning June 1, 1949 there was a reserved seat run of another British movie, the beloved ballet story The Red Shoes, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and starring Moira Shearer. Here is AN AD FOR OPENING DAY. Admission prices ranged from 90¢ to $2.40.
In June, 1948 the Providence Police banned the 1941 French film Volpone by Maurice Tourneur, as “indecent and irreligious.” It was scheduled to be shown at the Avon. It had also been condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency (CLOD). I don’t know yet if the decision was ever reversed. The movie, of course, had been based on Ben Jonson’s great comedy. It had played for over five months in New York at the Ambassador Theatre. Bradford F. Swan, author of a June 5th Providence Journal article reporting the ban, wrote, …“If its reputation as a period piece is kept in mind, and if it is taken as a mordant commentary on avarice and evil, ‘Volpone’ seemed hardly the movie to corrupt Providence.
During the World War II years the Avon Theatre generally showed selected revivals of U.S. films. The unavailability of most new European product would have made it difficult to show many European films. There were exceptions. The Avon put in a Russian-made film for the week beginning on January 17, 1943. Entitled Mashenka, it is a love story set during the Russian war with Finland and stars Valentina Karavayeva in the title role. The movie was favorably reviewed in the Providence Journal the following day by Bradford F. Swan who said that it “had its moments of deeply moving emotion.”
HERE IS THE NEWSPAPER AD FOR OPENING DAY. The film ran for one week. It seems to have vanished without a trace since then.
The Avon certainly went fairly mainstream when it was showing The Poseidon Adventure in early 1973, day-dating with the Warwick Cinema on Post Road in Warwick. They shared newspaper ads.
In January of 1947 the Avon began a “classy” reserved-seat engagement of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V. To my knowledge it is the only reserved-seat engagement that ever played this art house. Here is a newspaper ad from a few weeks before the opening. Note that the prices, ranging from $1.20 to $2.40, were about three to four times the going rates for that period. There were two showings per day.
Between 1916, when the Toy Theatre closed, and 1938, when the Avon Theatre opened, the building was used as the Toy Garage. I assume it was an automobile service garage of some type. The Providence City Directory lists the establishment under this name during those years at the address of 460 Thayer Street and gives the names of various owners/managers during that time period.
Regarding Professor Mamlock, which I spoke of on August 18: the Rhode Island Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Francis B. Condon, held that the Providence Bureau of Police and Fire was within its rights in banning a public showing here (in March, 1939)of the Soviet-made film, “Professor Mamlock,” sought by the Thayer Amusemnent Company, operators of the Avon Theatre. The decision came on July 17, 1939 and was reported a day later by The Providence Journal. So the film was indeed banned and the ban upheld.
Here is a newspaper ad for opening day at the Avon Cinema, February 15, 1938. The film Life and Loves of Beethoven was the French film by Abel Gance, Un grand amour de Beethoven, made in 1936. The Avon was opened in the old Toy Theatre building, not previously used as a theatre since 1916…as far as we now know. Note the admission prices from 25 cents to 65 cents.
Newspaper ad for the Toy Theatre, from December, 1915.
Article in The Providence Journal, exactly one year later on November 2, 1916 when the theatre was being sold:
TOY THEATRE MAY CHANGE HANDS IN NEXT FEW WEEKS
Members of The Players and Others Interested
An amateur theatre and gymnasiums will probably be established in this city within a few months. An option has already been taken on the Toy Theatre property on Thayer Street by a committee which is considering the matter.
Members of The Players, of the gymnasium class, which formerly met in the Talma Theatre* and representatives of Brown University are all interested in the project. Several plans have been broached, but the matter has finally narrowed down to two, one the purchase of the Toy Theatre, and the other the erection of a building on the Brown Campus.
It is the consensus of opinion of the committee that, with the close of the Talma Theatre, the last place where amateur theatricals can be given on a regular stage was gone, the only houses left being the down-town professional structures which would allow productions only for a week at a time.
Moreover the East Side is without gymnasium facilities of any kind. It is believed that the project can be put through, so that the Toy Theatre can be utilized for a theatre and for a gymnasium, including the installation of a swimming pool.
[Poster’s notes: It remains unclear what exactly happened to the Toy Theatre building between the years 1916 until the place opened as the Avon Cinema in February, 1938. Many say it was an automotive garage. The current management is doubtful of that. Further research may bring more information to light.
*The Talma Theatre referred to in the newspaper piece was located on South Main Street at the corner of Power Street, across Power from what is today the Cable Car Cinema. It was later demolished. and The Players moved in 1932 into what is now known as Barker Playhouse on lower Benefit Street.]
Toy Theatre, 1915-1916. The Avon, in its first incarnation
Article in The Providence Journal, November 2, 1915:
TOY THEATRE OF EAST SIDE OPENS ITS DOORS
Large Audience Attend First Public Performances
The Toy Theatre, at the corner of Thayer and Meeting Streets, opened its doors to the public yesterday [November 1, 1915] with two performances. Both were largely attended, and several features of decoration, lighting and seating arrangement caused considerable favorable comment. A private exhibition of “The Battle Cry of the Republic” was given in the theatre Sunday evening.
The principal picture shown at the initial public performance was “In the Palace of the King,” a dramatization of the novel of the same name by F. Marion Crawford. “Broncho Billy Begins Life Anew,” “The Animated Grouch Chaser,” a series of humorous motion cartoons, and the Pathe current events were the other pictures shown.
The front of the floor of the theatre is composed of reserved seats, and the rear part is divided into 10 loges, containing eight seats each, and separated from each other by brass rails. Seats are reserved for the evening performances until 8:15, when the show starts. The ventilation system, worked by large suction pumps and motors, kept the air in the hall remarkably fresh and temperate throughout the performances.
A number of American flags, draped effectively in semi-circles beneath the mural decorative painting and pictures of dramatic stars in the rear wall of the theatre, are both artistic and in good taste. The theatre is lighted by inverted clusters of bulbs in huge brass holders underneath which smaller frosted lights are attached. The color scheme of the body of the theatre and the lobby is an effective combination of yellow and purple.
When did the Lockwood Gordon chain break ties with the Avon? My guess would be at the time that the theater became a revival house.
Richard, that was the Avon’s “golden era”…in my opinion.
I worked, as part of my training, at the Avon under then manager, Nelson Wright in the early fifties. Lockwood and Gordon Theaters of Boston, Mass. operated the Avon at the time as well as the Hope and Castle.
Yes, I went too and I remember that “promise.” Incidentally, that is one of my least favorite Mastroianni films. I never liked it, despite the fact that I am really into Italian movies and Elio Petri is a fine director.
When the Four Seasons first opened, the theater announced that one of its two screens would show mostly foreign films, but the policy did not last. I saw “The Tenth Victim” when it opened there.
A newspaper ad from October, 1962, the era of art-house mania. Both the Avon and the Art, on the other side of town, were run at the time by the Lockwood Gordon chain of Boston.
Yes, true. I remember the 1965 Sylvia played there forever, and it was such a mediocre film. I think the competition from these theatres, especially the Cinerama, is why the Avon would find its niche in repertory in the 1970s. The death of the Cinerama in 1983 was bad for filmgoers, good for the Avon. I don’t think the Four Seasons was much competition for very long in the 1960s, although they got first-run on some important films like Juliet of the Spirits (if I remember correctly) which was really Avon stuff, if they had cared about it at that point. By the end of the 1960s the Columbus/Studio had already moved to ultra-sexy stuff before descending into outright porn.
In the latter half of the sixties, the theater’s reputation as an art house began to diminish, at least in my mind. It would schedule more mainstream fare and fewer foreign films. One reason is likely the competition from other theaters like the Columbus Theater/Studio Cinema, the newly opened Four Seasons Cinemas in East Providence, and, years later, the Midland and Cinerama Theater.
I’m not sure how long it lasted, but probably through the 1960s. Johnston and Pawtucket had similar licensing interference in the 1970s. Roberts stated that the “showing of this picture [The Spanish Earth] in places of public entertainment…might lead to antagonize and stir up racial hatreds among a large number of people of foreign extraction. We are living peacefully together in this community.”
Incidentaly, there was a great deal of pro-Mussolini public sentiment in this heavily Italian area. Pro-Mussolini documentaries were shown at the Uptown (Columbus) Theatre. There were Mussolini societies, a pro-fascist paper, and even a Mussolini Street on Federal Hill, changed when the war broke out, though a Balbo Avenue (named after a high-ranking Blackshirt and possible Mussolini successor) lingered on for years after until it finally became DePasquale Ave.
Whew— that’s quite a statement about “The Spanish Earth.” When did the office of Police Censor shut down? In the early ‘60s? Or did it still chug along until the late 60’s, when most of that stuff melted away?
How about this…? The film about the Spanish Civil War, The Spanish Earth, by Joris Ivens, was also banned in Providence in 1937, before the Avon was born. The police censor Thomas H. Roberts said the (pro-republican) film’s dialog contained “unfriendly references to friendly powers,” namely Germany and Italy. Can’t offend the sensibilities of those two nice communist-fighting countries!
Gerald—
I’m glad to hear that the Avon is thriving, as I should imagine it would in the neighborhood of Brown and RISD. In the early ‘60s I saw here a few European films—I can’t recall which specific ones—upon visiting my college friend who hailed from RI, and I remember it as a terrific theater. The mid-century problems with censorship take our breath away. I don’t at all know “Professor Mamlock,” but you can imagine how reverse discrimination might stain the day. Some viewers could well have resented the chutzpah of “der Jude” who dared to resist the Brown Shirts.
For the life of me, however, I can’t imagine why the NCD (or CLOD, as Theaterat called it on this site) condemned “Daybreak.” In the ‘60s, some of my Roman-collared friends rated films for NCD; most of them were progressive-minded, evidently in reaction against their predecessors. Still, the very institution of an NCD as a further corrective to the secular policing of Lieut. Blessing and the like was outrageous.
More censorship: In June of 1959, at the urging of Providence Police Lt. George P. Blessing, city amusements inspector, the Avon Cinema made several cuts in the Brigitte Bardot film that was scheduled to be shown, Love is My Profession (En cas de malheur). A year earlier the Avon had been given permission to show another Bardot vehicle, And God Created Woman, after making cuts recommended by Lieutenant Blessing. What a blessing to have the lieutenant protect our morals! A court test was not sought by either the distributor, Kingsley International Pictures, or Thayer Amusement Corp., owners of the Avon.