Do you mind indicating what city you’re in, LM?
And have you visited any Pittsburgh theaters?
Your photos are often sensational, but in many cases where a posting is older than a year or two, I cannot access them. The same with Warren’s older PhotoBucket offerings. I have no idea why the links sometimes expire in time.
For reasons I’ve forgotten, I was always intrigued by the name Exeter Street Theatre when I was keeping track of Variety’s reported grosses for Boston moviehouses.
When I visited a Boston friend in 1972, we saw one or two of the latest releases in the heart of Boston (“Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex” was one), and somehow the subject of visiting the Exeter came up.
It happened to be playing a revival of Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” (1953), which I loved. But mainly I was struck by the uniqueness of the theater, which informed the experience of watching “Tokyo Story."
I’m sorry to learn the theater had difficulty getting major bookings and that it long ago stopped serving the filmgoing community.
The sheer capacity (a whopping 1,300 seats) must have made the theater difficult to maintain in terms of utilities, et al, and it may have had a weekly nut (operating expenses) greater than most distributors were willing to allow for.
Also, art house distributors tend to favor long runs in more intimate houses. Protracted engagements of "The Mouse That Roared” and “Cousin, Cousine” notwithstanding, I’m guessing most movies burned out too quickly at the large Exeter Street.
Lost Memory, You are an amazing source of information on old theaters. And you’re all over the map, literally, in terms of Cinema Treasures theaters you monitor.
I’m guessing you exhusted your resources on Leesville to come up with all four of those names and that there’s nowhere else on the Internet or in publication that I might find more information.
And I suppose that until someone from Leesville (a small town and therefore a long shot) or someone formerly stationed at Fort Polk can come up with Cinema Treasures entries for these four movie sites, I’m unlikely to make any headway here.
As someone who also was at Fort Gordon, I was lucky to find most of the Augusta GA moviehouses (all except the drive-in) on C.T., but I’ve had no luck tracking down the sites (a drive-in and one then-newish indoor theater in 1965) that were in a small South Carolina town just across the border from Augusta, GA. (Maybe it was Aiken SC.)
I thank you, LM, for your resources and your follow-through.
Like the Super 71 Drive-In in Belle Vernon, the Route 19 advertised in the Pittsburgh newspapers but was sufficiently far enough from the city that was able to play first-run movies concurrent with Downtown Pittsburgh and even, occasionally, just ahead of Pittsburgh.
The Route 19’s screen was plainly visible to motorists on Route 19. As Denny Pine says, the screen was not razed until many, many years after the drive-in closed.
Some of the major first-run movies I drove some distance to see out here on double bills were “The Facts of Life,” “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” and the original “101 Dalmatians.”
Is this the theater that played a roadshow engagement of “Doctor Zhivago”? If not, can anyone tell me where that first played in Houston? Saw it on Memorial Day weekend in 1966.
As someone who was stationed at Fort Polk in 1966, I’m trying to track down the names of the three indoor Downtown Leesville moviehouses and the name of the drive-in that was fairly close to town and Fort Polk.
Can anyone help here? There are no theater listings on Cinema Treasures for Leesville theaters.
As someone who was stationed at Fort Polk in 1966, I’m trying to track down the names of the three indoor Downtown Leesville moviehouses and the name of the drive-in that was fairly close to town and Fort Polk.
Can anyone help here? There are no theater listings on Cinema Treasures for Leesville theaters.
As someone who was stationed at Fort Polk in 1966, I’m trying to track down the names of the three indoor Downtown Leesville moviehouses and the name of the drive-in that was fairly close to town and Fort Polk.
Can anyone help here? There are no theater listings on Cinema Treasures for Leesville theaters.
Various sources list the capacity for the Gaiety/Gayety and the later Fulton as 1,727, 1,532 and, later still, 1,475. Capacities tended to shrink as newer, wider, more-legroom seats were installed.
The Fulton for decades played nearly all first-run Universal/Universal-International pictures. It shared 20th Century Fox films about 50-50 with the nearly adjacent John P. Harris (later Gateway) Theatre.
With a tip of the hat to Ron3853 for listing the Fulton’s films from mid-1958 onward, big hits from the 1949-58 period included “Wake of the Red Witch,” “I Was a Male War Bride,” “Sands of Iwo Jima,” “Broken Arrow,” “Harvey,” “The Quiet Man,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “Hans Christian Andersen,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “The Moon Is Blue,” “How to Marry a Millionaire,” “The Glenn Miller Story,” “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “The Egyptian,” “The Seven Year Itch,” “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing,” “To Hell and Back,” “Carousel,” “The King and I,”
“Written on the Wind” and “The Young Lions.”
The present Byham includes not only the original Fulton Theatre but its 235-seat sibling, a shoebox auditorium whose identity mainly was the Fulton Mini but which sometimes was called Fulton II and finally the Fulton Annex.
It was located at 101 Sixth Street (the main Fulton was at 103 Sixth Street) and opened in March 1970 with a six-week moveover engagement of “Anne of the Thousand Days.” The bill of fare was a mix of moveover runs, frequently from the Fulton, of hits such as “MAS*H,” “The Stewardesses” and “Joe” to a mix of lower-profile films, softcore porno, reissues, exploitation films and the occasional distinguished first run such as “Sounder” (18 weeks) and “Claudine.”
Eventually the Fulton Mini became the Downtown venue of Pittsburgh Filmmakers, which used what it called the Fulton Annex for foreign and independent American art fare, including Three Rivers Arts Festival screenings.
Since losing the Fulton Annex, the front part of which became the Byham’s interior box office, Pittsburgh Filmmakers has been running movies at three venues: Regent Square Theatre, Melwood Screening Room in North Oakland and a Downtown theater long known as the Art Cinema and later rechristened the Harris.
Despite many misleading Internet and phone directory indications to the contrary, Benedum Center, and the Stanley Theatre before it, is not and was not ever at 719 Liberty Avenue. That’s the headquarters of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, not the theater, which is on the east side of Seventh Street between Penn Avenue and Liberty Avenue.
And though it’s true that the Stanley began in 1928 with a capacity of 3,886 seats, the costly transformation of the theater into Benedum Center, with all new, more comfortable seats, reduced the capacity by about 1,000 to roughly 2,880 seats. I say roughly because the capacity is altered for some performances.
The Stanley was for decades the largest moviehouse in Western Pennsylvania.
It played virtually every major first-run Warner Bros. film from 1928 through the mid-1960s, by which time booking patterns changed.
The Stanley also was the Pittsburgh premiere site for many Disney films, the bigger RKO-Radio pictures and approximately half of all Paramount pictures, the other half going to Loew’s Penn.
For many years up until the December 1953 installation of Cinerama in the nearby Warner Theatre, the remaining Warner, RKO and Disney films made their local debuts at the Warner, including the Warner Bros. blockbuster “A Streetcar Named Desire” for an extended run.
But generally, up until the end of 1953, the Warner was used as a moveover house for its bigger sibling, the Stanley. Pictures would play at the Stanley for a week or two before moving to the Warner, which had about half of the Stanley’s capacity.
The occasional booking jam resulted in the Stanley picking up an occasional 1940s or 1950s MGM film such as “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Athena.”
Despite the fact virtually all Columbia pictures opened at the smaller John P. Harris Theatre, Columbia put its 1954 blockbuster “From Here to Eternity” into the Stanley, with its much higher earning potential.
Many thanks to Ron3853 for posting lists of Stanley film openings from mid-1958 onward.
Some of the many pictures to open at the Stanley earlier were “Rear Window,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “A Star Is Born,” “The High and the Mighty,” “White Heat,” “Cinderella,” “Lady and the Tramp,” “House of Wax,” “Shane,” “Battle Cry,” “Sayonara,” “The Pajama Game,” “The Bad Seed,” “The Searchers,” “Mister Roberts,” “The Country Girl,” “The Rose Tattoo,” “East of Eden,” “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant.”
This was the second theater called the Brushton in the Pittsburgh community of Brushton. (There’s a new separate listing for the original.) This one may have had 631 seats as mentioned above, but I also found an indication it had just 400 seats. The theater existed from 1923-50. The earlier Brushton closed in 1921.
An earlier Brighton Theatre was at 1810 Brighton (Road or Place), circa 1917. It must have been gone by 1928 this Brighton Theatre (also known as the New Brighton, probably in the beginning), opened Nov. 10, 1928, at 1739 Brighton Place. The capacity was listed as 700 and 750, both probably rounded off numbers, in different sources.
Before becoming a union meeting hall for Branch 84 of the National Association of Letter Carriers in 1982, it had been used for warehouse storage by the Frame Electric Company.
The theater was known at least briefly as the Braverman.
For decades after the Boulevard closed, the building was used by the Cedar of Lebanon Society, which may still be there. I have the theater’s address as 808 Brookline Boulevard. It probably occupied 808 and 810.
What a mess! I’m not sure I’d want Broadway to lose all of its honky-tonk quality, but that block cries out for some sort of gentrification, doesn’t it? Visually, that’s about as bad as it gets in terms of a neon/commercial nightmare. Behind it … within it … lurks a once-nice moviehouse.
I have many happy memories of catching oup on American and foreign classics on double bills, so often linked by star, director or theme, from 1967 through the 1980s. What an odd little theater with its upward slope and its audience of diehard movie buffs. There was something of an adventure about going there.
When a site is removed, what happens to the information and postings that were on it? Have they been threaded into this one or just erased? I’d hate to see the information just liquidated.
Thanks for all of the extra information, Warren. I didn’t know enough then to be impressed by the combined Dorsey bands, and I’m guessing Joey Bishop was no more to me than someone who turned up on Ed Sullivan occasionally. I even enjoy knowing what we had trailers of that day.
Do you mind indicating what city you’re in, LM?
And have you visited any Pittsburgh theaters?
Your photos are often sensational, but in many cases where a posting is older than a year or two, I cannot access them. The same with Warren’s older PhotoBucket offerings. I have no idea why the links sometimes expire in time.
For reasons I’ve forgotten, I was always intrigued by the name Exeter Street Theatre when I was keeping track of Variety’s reported grosses for Boston moviehouses.
When I visited a Boston friend in 1972, we saw one or two of the latest releases in the heart of Boston (“Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex” was one), and somehow the subject of visiting the Exeter came up.
It happened to be playing a revival of Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” (1953), which I loved. But mainly I was struck by the uniqueness of the theater, which informed the experience of watching “Tokyo Story."
I’m sorry to learn the theater had difficulty getting major bookings and that it long ago stopped serving the filmgoing community.
The sheer capacity (a whopping 1,300 seats) must have made the theater difficult to maintain in terms of utilities, et al, and it may have had a weekly nut (operating expenses) greater than most distributors were willing to allow for.
Also, art house distributors tend to favor long runs in more intimate houses. Protracted engagements of "The Mouse That Roared” and “Cousin, Cousine” notwithstanding, I’m guessing most movies burned out too quickly at the large Exeter Street.
That’s an astonishing facade for a theater that did not survive long.
Lost Memory, You are an amazing source of information on old theaters. And you’re all over the map, literally, in terms of Cinema Treasures theaters you monitor.
I’m guessing you exhusted your resources on Leesville to come up with all four of those names and that there’s nowhere else on the Internet or in publication that I might find more information.
And I suppose that until someone from Leesville (a small town and therefore a long shot) or someone formerly stationed at Fort Polk can come up with Cinema Treasures entries for these four movie sites, I’m unlikely to make any headway here.
As someone who also was at Fort Gordon, I was lucky to find most of the Augusta GA moviehouses (all except the drive-in) on C.T., but I’ve had no luck tracking down the sites (a drive-in and one then-newish indoor theater in 1965) that were in a small South Carolina town just across the border from Augusta, GA. (Maybe it was Aiken SC.)
I thank you, LM, for your resources and your follow-through.
Like the Super 71 Drive-In in Belle Vernon, the Route 19 advertised in the Pittsburgh newspapers but was sufficiently far enough from the city that was able to play first-run movies concurrent with Downtown Pittsburgh and even, occasionally, just ahead of Pittsburgh.
The Route 19’s screen was plainly visible to motorists on Route 19. As Denny Pine says, the screen was not razed until many, many years after the drive-in closed.
Some of the major first-run movies I drove some distance to see out here on double bills were “The Facts of Life,” “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” and the original “101 Dalmatians.”
Is this the theater that played a roadshow engagement of “Doctor Zhivago”? If not, can anyone tell me where that first played in Houston? Saw it on Memorial Day weekend in 1966.
Is Aiken the nearest city of some size in South Carolina?
As someone who was stationed at Fort Polk in 1966, I’m trying to track down the names of the three indoor Downtown Leesville moviehouses and the name of the drive-in that was fairly close to town and Fort Polk.
Can anyone help here? There are no theater listings on Cinema Treasures for Leesville theaters.
Thanks very much for any help.
As someone who was stationed at Fort Polk in 1966, I’m trying to track down the names of the three indoor Downtown Leesville moviehouses and the name of the drive-in that was fairly close to town and Fort Polk.
Can anyone help here? There are no theater listings on Cinema Treasures for Leesville theaters.
Thanks very much for any help.
As someone who was stationed at Fort Polk in 1966, I’m trying to track down the names of the three indoor Downtown Leesville moviehouses and the name of the drive-in that was fairly close to town and Fort Polk.
Can anyone help here? There are no theater listings on Cinema Treasures for Leesville theaters.
Thanks very much for any help.
Saw “Birdman of Alcatraz” here in the summer of 1962.
Ron3853, if you want to backdate your files on Downtown theater bookings from January 1949 through mid-1958, I can help.
Various sources list the capacity for the Gaiety/Gayety and the later Fulton as 1,727, 1,532 and, later still, 1,475. Capacities tended to shrink as newer, wider, more-legroom seats were installed.
The Fulton for decades played nearly all first-run Universal/Universal-International pictures. It shared 20th Century Fox films about 50-50 with the nearly adjacent John P. Harris (later Gateway) Theatre.
With a tip of the hat to Ron3853 for listing the Fulton’s films from mid-1958 onward, big hits from the 1949-58 period included “Wake of the Red Witch,” “I Was a Male War Bride,” “Sands of Iwo Jima,” “Broken Arrow,” “Harvey,” “The Quiet Man,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “Hans Christian Andersen,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “The Moon Is Blue,” “How to Marry a Millionaire,” “The Glenn Miller Story,” “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “The Egyptian,” “The Seven Year Itch,” “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing,” “To Hell and Back,” “Carousel,” “The King and I,”
“Written on the Wind” and “The Young Lions.”
The present Byham includes not only the original Fulton Theatre but its 235-seat sibling, a shoebox auditorium whose identity mainly was the Fulton Mini but which sometimes was called Fulton II and finally the Fulton Annex.
It was located at 101 Sixth Street (the main Fulton was at 103 Sixth Street) and opened in March 1970 with a six-week moveover engagement of “Anne of the Thousand Days.” The bill of fare was a mix of moveover runs, frequently from the Fulton, of hits such as “MAS*H,” “The Stewardesses” and “Joe” to a mix of lower-profile films, softcore porno, reissues, exploitation films and the occasional distinguished first run such as “Sounder” (18 weeks) and “Claudine.”
Eventually the Fulton Mini became the Downtown venue of Pittsburgh Filmmakers, which used what it called the Fulton Annex for foreign and independent American art fare, including Three Rivers Arts Festival screenings.
Since losing the Fulton Annex, the front part of which became the Byham’s interior box office, Pittsburgh Filmmakers has been running movies at three venues: Regent Square Theatre, Melwood Screening Room in North Oakland and a Downtown theater long known as the Art Cinema and later rechristened the Harris.
Despite many misleading Internet and phone directory indications to the contrary, Benedum Center, and the Stanley Theatre before it, is not and was not ever at 719 Liberty Avenue. That’s the headquarters of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, not the theater, which is on the east side of Seventh Street between Penn Avenue and Liberty Avenue.
And though it’s true that the Stanley began in 1928 with a capacity of 3,886 seats, the costly transformation of the theater into Benedum Center, with all new, more comfortable seats, reduced the capacity by about 1,000 to roughly 2,880 seats. I say roughly because the capacity is altered for some performances.
The Stanley was for decades the largest moviehouse in Western Pennsylvania.
It played virtually every major first-run Warner Bros. film from 1928 through the mid-1960s, by which time booking patterns changed.
The Stanley also was the Pittsburgh premiere site for many Disney films, the bigger RKO-Radio pictures and approximately half of all Paramount pictures, the other half going to Loew’s Penn.
For many years up until the December 1953 installation of Cinerama in the nearby Warner Theatre, the remaining Warner, RKO and Disney films made their local debuts at the Warner, including the Warner Bros. blockbuster “A Streetcar Named Desire” for an extended run.
But generally, up until the end of 1953, the Warner was used as a moveover house for its bigger sibling, the Stanley. Pictures would play at the Stanley for a week or two before moving to the Warner, which had about half of the Stanley’s capacity.
The occasional booking jam resulted in the Stanley picking up an occasional 1940s or 1950s MGM film such as “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Athena.”
Despite the fact virtually all Columbia pictures opened at the smaller John P. Harris Theatre, Columbia put its 1954 blockbuster “From Here to Eternity” into the Stanley, with its much higher earning potential.
Many thanks to Ron3853 for posting lists of Stanley film openings from mid-1958 onward.
Some of the many pictures to open at the Stanley earlier were “Rear Window,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “A Star Is Born,” “The High and the Mighty,” “White Heat,” “Cinderella,” “Lady and the Tramp,” “House of Wax,” “Shane,” “Battle Cry,” “Sayonara,” “The Pajama Game,” “The Bad Seed,” “The Searchers,” “Mister Roberts,” “The Country Girl,” “The Rose Tattoo,” “East of Eden,” “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant.”
This was the second theater called the Brushton in the Pittsburgh community of Brushton. (There’s a new separate listing for the original.) This one may have had 631 seats as mentioned above, but I also found an indication it had just 400 seats. The theater existed from 1923-50. The earlier Brushton closed in 1921.
It was also a dance studio at one point. My records indicate it closed in 1959, but I lack a precise date and the final attractions.
An earlier Brighton Theatre was at 1810 Brighton (Road or Place), circa 1917. It must have been gone by 1928 this Brighton Theatre (also known as the New Brighton, probably in the beginning), opened Nov. 10, 1928, at 1739 Brighton Place. The capacity was listed as 700 and 750, both probably rounded off numbers, in different sources.
Before becoming a union meeting hall for Branch 84 of the National Association of Letter Carriers in 1982, it had been used for warehouse storage by the Frame Electric Company.
The theater was known at least briefly as the Braverman.
For decades after the Boulevard closed, the building was used by the Cedar of Lebanon Society, which may still be there. I have the theater’s address as 808 Brookline Boulevard. It probably occupied 808 and 810.
What a mess! I’m not sure I’d want Broadway to lose all of its honky-tonk quality, but that block cries out for some sort of gentrification, doesn’t it? Visually, that’s about as bad as it gets in terms of a neon/commercial nightmare. Behind it … within it … lurks a once-nice moviehouse.
I have many happy memories of catching oup on American and foreign classics on double bills, so often linked by star, director or theme, from 1967 through the 1980s. What an odd little theater with its upward slope and its audience of diehard movie buffs. There was something of an adventure about going there.
Anyone know where Lincoln Square 13 ranks now in terms of total annual revenue and/or the highest revenue per screen average?
When a site is removed, what happens to the information and postings that were on it? Have they been threaded into this one or just erased? I’d hate to see the information just liquidated.
Thanks for all of the extra information, Warren. I didn’t know enough then to be impressed by the combined Dorsey bands, and I’m guessing Joey Bishop was no more to me than someone who turned up on Ed Sullivan occasionally. I even enjoy knowing what we had trailers of that day.
What a massive collection you must have – and no doubt superbly catalogued so everything’s at your fingertips. Thanks for sharing with all of us.
No doubt the organ was used to accompany silent films. Any idea if it survived into the Victor’s sound era.