AMC Loews Harvard Square 5
10 Church Street,
Cambridge,
MA
02138
10 Church Street,
Cambridge,
MA
02138
21 people
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Showing 26 - 50 of 105 comments
Does anyone recall seeing the Wizard of Oz on release in 1939 at the Theatre? Or have any documentation that it was shown? (I asked this before and got some useful feedback, but not a definitive yes or no). Thanks.
What I reported here back in March 2010 seems to have been just a temporary aberration that lasted a week or so. AMC still advertises the Harvard Square Theatre, and all of its other local cinemas (Loews Boston Common, Braintree, Burlington, Loews Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, Framingham, and Chestnut Hill) in the Globe’s “g” section.
Got the particular name I was looking for, but still, it would be good to find a listing of films shown in HST during eighties.
DrJG,
The movie you’re thinking of is The Official Story (1985). It opened in America in November of that year.
Great movie. I saw it on cable a few years ago.
I have been trying to recall the names of some very good films I saw in eighties, very often in Harvard square theatre, and it would help if there were a list of films shows in Harvard Square theatre – also if someone can recall the name of a film made in Brazil, mid eighties, about an upper class woman realising that her adopted daughter is actually a child of massacred political opponents of the regime, and that her husband was party to it, please do tell.
For the past week, AMC has not advertised the Harvard Square theatre in the Boston Globe’s movie directory. Are they planning to close or sell it? AMC still advertises their other cinemas at Boston Common, Braintree, Burlington, Chestnut Hill, Danvers, and Framingham (but not Methuen or Tynsboro).
I was, for a year or so, the manager of the Harvard Sq. Theatre at the time when it was transitioning from USA CINEMA to LOEWS. It was a very demanding period. But even amidst the confusion, I was enchanted with the idea of being the manager of the old University Theatre that I had attended as a small child in the early 1940’s on Saturday afternoons. I think Bill White had been the manager before me and maybe was still the “House Manager” for a while when I started.
Tom Heathwood 1/28/10
I can now say I have seen at least one film in each of the 5 auditoriums in this complex.
cinemas 4 and 5 are generally closets mainly to be avoided.
cinema 3 now has DLP capacity.
Hi my name is Ron Hooper and i believe my grandfather Lindsay Hooper owned the theater in the 1930’s. My mother who is 95 remembers going there in 1932 with my father to be Lindsy Hooper Jr. My grandfather owned an investment business Hooper,Kimball, and Williams in Boston. I’m not sure if they built the theater though. My mother thinks the manager’s name was Garrett,but she isn’t sure.
Hi Larry, Can’t confirm for sure, but the University Theatre played a lot of M~G~M product, so it is likely that “Oz” played at some point in its general release.
Does anyone know if / when The Wizard of Oz showed at the theater in 1939? Just a confirmation it was shown in that year would help. Thanks.
You might find such schedules in advertisements in the Boston Phoenix and Real Paper, which are archived at the Boston Public Library.
anyone know how to find printed schedules from fall1 979-spring 1980? would love to revisit those movies i saw, many for first time
Here is a 1986 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/d7fu8e
I still miss the days when the Harvard Square Theatre was a revival movie house.
Unfortunately, Ferrante-Dege closed on October 13, 2006.
While I was an undergraduate at the school across the street in the late 1960s, I worked part time at the Ferrante-Dege camera store at 1252 Mass Ave. One of the “older” (that is “adult”)employees at the store, Bob Smith, was the night manager at the Harvard Square, and when he was on duty he let other FD staff in at a substantial discount. Plus, we got to sit in the loge, which was otherwise closed. I recall that the seats were wicker and had upholstered cushions. (Is my memory failing me?) And when my girlfriend and I went there we’d generally know the few other people in the loge.
I also might add that I’ve seen In the Name of the Father, and, more recently, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, in the Harvard Square Theatre. I also saw Schindler’s List there too, which was a sold-out show, during the winter of 1994. All good movies.
The Harvard Square Theatre……ahhhhh, yes!
I remember when it was a revival movie house, back in the 70’s and early to mid 80’s, and a single-screen theatre, to boot. I remember going to see a number of cool films, such as Around the World in 80 Days, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, and Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a number of other films, including my alltime favorite, West Side Story. It was a cool theatre—I miss those days.
It appears that Sonny & Eddy (chain owned by Edward “Eddy” Lider’s Fall River Theatres) acquired the Harvard Square Theatre in fall of 1974 and sold it in April 1976 to the owners of Cinema 733, H-B Enterprises (the above-mentioned Mauriello & Taylor). S&E found the Harvard Sq. redundant after purchasing the Galeria in October 1975. That’s from a Harvard Crimson aricle you can see here.
Another S&E property, the Central Sq., was purchased by the Brattle Theatre Company in early June 1977. The successor operators of the Brattle (the Pollacks) ended up acquiring the Galeria from Lider in 1984 (he also gave up his lease at the Exeter around this time). In 1986, the Pollack’s Brattle entered Chapter 11, and the Harvard Sq. Theatre folks purchased the Galeria to run their double bills. This didn’t last long, as that fall both theatres were acquired by USA/Sack.
In his satiric 1990 novel A Tenured Professor, John Kenneth Galbraith described a visit by one of his characters to what is clearly the Harvard Square Theatre:
“Walking across the Yard in front of the Widener Library and then along beside Massachusetts Hall, the oldest of Harvard buildings, which now houses the office of the president, he made his way through the traffic in the upper part of Harvard Square. Glancing around out of habit to see that he was unnoticed, he went into the recently refurbished movie theatre. Once one great hall for the display and breathless admiration of Pickford, Chaplin, Swanson, Grant, Cooper and Bacall, it was now divided into five anonymous cubicles, each with its equally anonymous offering. Professor McCrimmon chose one at random and settled down for the afternoon.”
In his book A Life in the 20th Century, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. writes a chapter on what he enjoyed while at Harvard in the 1930s. In this quoted paragraph, he mentions seeing movies at the University Theatre in Cambridge and then goes on about the Fine Arts Theatre in Boston:
“Came the talkies. The University Theater in Harvard Square was a constant refuge. So was George Krasna’s Fine Arts Theater, near Symphony Hall in Boston. Here one saw the great UFA movies from Germany – von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Die Frau im Mond (By Rocket to the Moon, both feeding my fascination with the future, and his powerful and scary M, with Peter Lorre as the child murderer. Here too one saw lighthearted German musicals like Erik Charrell’s Congress Dances and William Thiele’s Die Drei von der Tankstelle, where I acquired an early enthusiasm for the ravishing Lilian Harvey, English by birth but a great favorite in pre-Hitler Germany.”
Here is a 1925 Harvard Crimson piece on plans to build a theatre in Harvard Square. It would be completed in 1926 as the University Theatre.
Here is a report in the Harvard Crimson on the day of the informal opening of the University Theatre on October 30, 1926 to invited guests. The theatre would formally open the following day to the general public. The first film presentation was The Midnight Sun with Laura La Plante and Pat O'Malley. The online report has it weirdly as “The Mad in his Sun…Stirrings Laura La Planet.”! Uh huh, yeah.
Theater 1 is a great place to see a movie- I saw some big epics on that screen (BRAVEHEART, MASTER AND COMMANDER). Theaters 2 and 3 are both fine, but 4 and 5, built in the “stagehouse”, are both below average: long and narrow, a nearly-flat floor,and a smallish screen set too high off the floor. Plus, you have to climb 2 flights of stairs to get to #5 from the lobby. And last but not least, the bathrooms are all the way on the other side of the building, so if you are in theater 5 and you need to take a leak, you have to descend two flights of stairs, walk up a long inclined hallway, through the lobby, then up another flight of stairs to the bathrooms.