RKO 23rd Street Theatre
265 8th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10011
265 8th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10011
6 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 49 of 49 comments
8 years shy of its 100th birthday. Sad day indeed. I remember, as a10 year old, standing on the south side of 23rd Street watching the fire and the firemen.
I vividly remember standees from AT WAR WITH THE ARMY and TONKA being thrown out on the street.
The theater had closed on June 15 to make way for the ILGWU Co-Op development. The site became a bank, a Chicken Delight and other “necessities”.
I still miss this place and I hope someday to find images of the long foyer, the staircase and the concession area. Jerry
1925 Closed For Repairs images
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Happy New Year. Jerry
An RKO promo in 1958, April 19 to May 31. Flyer with discount admissions to SAturday morning Kid Shows ($.20 instead of $.30). 7 consecutive weeks of a “surprise” film with the regular double feature. And a “star stamp collection”. Great times.
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3D at the RKO….1953. Note the “short”…Nat King Cole in 3D!
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Happy Holidays, CTers.
The 1897-98 edition of Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide says of the Grand Opera House: “…we find on the northwest corner (of Eighth Ave and 23rd St) the Grand Opera House, erected by Samuel Pike, and afterward purchased by Jay Gould, and managed by the redoubtable Col. Jim Fisk. This theatre has been recently remodeled, and is now one of the city’s most popular playhouses for combinations. It is still owned by the Gould estate and is managed by Augustus Pitou”. The admission prices ranged from 25 cents to $1.50. There were 2,149 seats and 500 standing room places. The proscenium opening was 36 feet wide x 32 feet high, and the stage was 63 feet deep. The theatre was on the ground floor and there were 11 members of the house orchestra.
In the latest issue of FILMS OF THE GOLDEN AGE magazine, they published an edited version of an article I did on the old RKO 23rd Street.
On the home page, you can request a free sample. I do not know if you’ll receive this issue, but hey, it’s free.
Keeping the memory alive!
http://www.filmsofthegoldenage.com/
Found a great frontal shot from 1936 pre-RKO. jerry
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Here is that ad I mentioned last year. Imagine doing this for 1 DAY!!!
Sorry about the duplicate post above; I received an error message on the first submit. jerry
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An ad depicting better times in 1959. Two movies. 11 cartoons, free photo of Edd “Kookie” Byrnes. Throw in a hot dog heated under a light bulb, grape soda right from the machine (make sure the cup comes down straight), bon-bons and I’m there. jerry
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An ad depicting better times in 1959. Two movies. 11 cartoons, free photo of Edd “Kookie” Byrnes. Throw in a hot dog heated under a light bulb, grape soda right from the machine (make sure the cup comes down straight), bon-bons and I’m there. jerry
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Here is a sad shot of the vacant RKO site during construction of the ILGWU Co-Ops aka Monolith Monsters. Should be around late 1960 – early 1961. Another great neighborhood theater, The Terrace, was located west of the Cornish Arms hotel, but had closed in the late 1950s. Haven’t found anyone yet on CT who recalls that one. Jerry
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Great ads Jerry!
Here’s two great William Castle ads from films that I saw at the RKO. EMERGO had the packed theater screaming as a skeleton (on wire) came from a curtained booth at the top right corner of the screen, over the audience to the front of the balcony and back (as the skeleton was menacing on screen). Castle was a marketing genius. j
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I have a copy of a the NYT article about the history (and closing) of the theater. June 1, 1960 for anyone interested. Has a shot of the marquee at that time.
I was standing on the 23rd Street side while it burned, after the closing, but didn’t have the heart to copy the article.
I also copied ads of many of the films that I saw there, from the NYT microfilm.
So, since I’m not near Lincoln Center any longer, this will have to do. Thanks again. (Don’t forget the Terrace on 23rd; would love to see images of that one – lol), jk
Warren, you’d make a great private investigator. I lived a tad to the right at 24th & 8th; somewhat after this photo.
How about some interior shots of the long entrance way and the beautiful concession area. You can do it!
Thanks. jerry
Warren,
What was the source for the bottom image. I’d like to see more shots of this great theater. Jerry K
Great photo, Warren— your post of 14 March ‘04 explains the modernization.
Here you go, Gerald:
Court Jester & Rainmaker (Coliseum)….Paramount
A Place in the Sun & St Louis Blues (Alhambra)
Night Passage & Son of Ali Baba (Yonkers) U-I
All About Eve & 13th Letter (White Plains) Fox
Kings Go Forth & Horse Soldiers (Madison) UA?
Monkey Business & White Witch Doctor (Strand) Fox
Don’t Go Near the Water & The Badlanders (Chester) MGM
And on and on it goes. Interesting mix. As I said, those were the days. Jerry
Both those films were distributed by United Artists. What were some of the films for the other 26 theatres? Were they all UA features? Might this have been a UA strategy to give a pile of their films some exposure for one day? Interesting.
Looking at an interesting ad from 1959. All of the RKO theaters would book a different double feature for ONE DAY ONLY. Amazing. The ad reads :
TODAY ONLY
TAKE YOUR CHOICE
54 GREAT PICTURES * 27 DIFFERENT SHOWS.
My theater, the RKO 23rd St had PORK CHOP HILL & Brigitte Bardot in LA PARISIENNE. Now that’s programming.
Imagine the time & expense to pull this off at 27 theaters for 1 day. Those were the days!
In the late 1950s, I used to walk by this theater when I was visiting a relative who lived in the neighborhood. As far as I know I never went inside this theater, but as a kid I found the outside of this theater really fascinating — and “funny” — because it had two entrances, each of which looked like it could have been a “main” entrance. For that reason, I kind of wished that I would be taken to see a movie in it, just to see what the inside of this “funny” theater looked like.
P.S. — I believe there was a supermarket or foodstore across the street (the south side of 23rd St.?) that that had what I’ll call a “sky railway” for deliveries. It was similar to those roller bearing “chutes” that you still see today — where the boxes are rolled into the basement of a store from a truck parked on the street — but these “chutes” were hung from the ceiling I think. It reminded me of something I had seen in, I believe, a Betty Boop cartoon, and as a kid I wanted to ride in this grocery store “roller coaster.”
Wonder if anyone more familiar with the neighborhood than I remembers this store?
If this store with the “roller coaster” delivery system was indeed across the street from the double-entrance movie theater, this was some delightfully bizarre part of town!
There is a picture on page 80 of the book “Lost New York”, of the Grand Opera House, what I affectionately call “The Painted Lady”. This is because the beautiful white marble building with her statues depicting acting and music (later removed by RKO) and relief portraits of Shakespear and Beethoven is flanked by a radio shop, a trouser shop, and a jeweler, while the theatre herself sports a garish art deco marquee. One can see workmen removing the corner sign, with PHOTOPLAYS clearly visible, but what obviuosly used to say VAUDEVILLE boarded up. The double-feature on the marquee offers patrons the brim and dregs of Hollywood studios: Top billed is the
MGM Robert Young starer “Married Before Breakfast”. At the bottom,
one time MGM star Conrad Nagel, now quitely soldiering on in “Bank
Alarm”, made for the newly-formed Grand National Pictures, an
ultimately short-lived “B”-studio with one of the sadddest histories
for just such a studio. During my many trips to Midnight Records, a
nearby record store, I often made pilgrimages to the site of the old
theatre. The bowling alley across the street was still there up to
the 1980’s, but the Ligget’s drug store had given way to a
Lamston’s, which would soon give way to Woolworth’s, which itself
would give entirely (at least in the US). The Cornish Arms Hotel,
where my father stayed on his first trip to New York (and yes he did
see a movie at what was now the RKO, and as he remembered, there was
also a donut shop nearby)had become the Broadmoor Apartments. An
anonymous-looking three story building now stands where the Opera
House/RKO Theare once stood, an indication that the ILGWU didn’t
touch the spot, and thus she may have gone down in vain. The movies on the marquee of the above-mentioned picture date the pic as 1937, the last full callendar year as the Grand Opera House. In my interest in old theatres, it may very well be that the Grand Opera House was the best theatre I never went to.
I feel as if I lived in the RKO on 23rd in the 1950s. My dad was an usher there in the 40s and met my mom there. My favorite memories were House on Haunted Hill with the skeleton flying over the RKO audience, Rodan was “on display” in a box in the large entrance way, the all-day Saturday kiddie-shows, camera-flashes going off when Elvis appeared in Love Me Tender. The theater itself was large and beautiful. My research shows that the theater opened in 1868 as Pike’s Opera House. It lost money and Jim Fisk bought it the next year for showgirl Josie Mansfield (the “Cleopatra of 23rd St”). RKO opened there on Aug 4, 1938 with “Having A Wonderful Time” with Ginger Rogers and “Sky Giant” with Richard Dix. The theater was slated for demolition due to the ILGWU Co-Op Housing currently there(lived there but always resented it).The old lady went out in style as it burned down before demolition. The last film, South Pacific (eegads!) played there on June 15 1960. I’ll post regarding the other Chelsea theaters, the new RKO and the Terrace on the appropriate pages. Thanks. Jerry the K
To the best of my knowledge,a new RKO 23rd Street Theater, specifically designed as a movie house, opened in 1962 with a showing of Orson Welles’s THE TRAIL. The theater was located on 23rd, between 8th and 9th Avenues in Manhatttan’s Chelsea district. I believe the first film to be shown was Orson Welles’s THE TRIAL and there was an invited midnight screening for all the working actors on Broadway at the time, yours truely among them, and during that screening, someone had accidently screwed up order of the reels, hense the picture was not seen with its scenes in the proper order. The sad part of this story is that nobody seemed to notice! The good part was that neither Welles nor Anthony Perkins, the star of the movie, were in attenance. The theater functioned as a second run movie house for many years until it was converted into an off-broadway playhouse and housed a local repertory company, if my memory serves me correctly.