RKO 23rd Street Theatre
265 8th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10011
265 8th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10011
7 people
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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.