I know what you mean, Jack Tomai. My parents owned a ‘67 Chevy Biscayne, my uncle, a '64 Impala. I’m glad you’re ON this website.
Perhaps you and your wife would enjoy a trip to Loew’s Jersey or Paradise, to relive those cherished experiences of moviegoing.
I know what you mean. Even if the movie was lousy, at least the theater was pretty to look at, and it was an afternoon or a night out.
Re : your “Rear Window” experience : early January 2006 I saw the new “King Kong” at our local multiplex (Greenburgh NY) with my wife, son and then-86 yr old father, and my dad kept waving at the screem for Naomi Watts (Ann Darrow) to get down to safety from atop the Empire State Building.
Yes, magnificent theaters, real show biz architecture and interior designs, rather than ipods and cell phones, though all technology has its place.
I will ask my friend at lunch today what movies he saw at the Valencia.
Thanks, Bway. I mentioned your name because you seem knowledgable about building construction.
I, too, only bowled once at the Glenwood (spring 1966) and, like yourself, did not know it had once been a movie theater. Or, if my parents had told me, I had forgotten.
Martin’s was right near where I lived in Ridgewood for many years, until it was replaced by a Rainbow Shop. I remember the slogan “It ain’t just paint”, Warren.
Neither my mom nor I would classify either Martin’s or Rainbow as one of “those little shit shops”, although even they would be preferable to the burnouts, shooting galleries and homeless and junkie squatting places that many in Ridgewood, including my family and I, feared after the post July 13 1977 blackout looting and arson in Bushwick.
Thank you, Jack Tomai, for posting this important movie memory of yours.
I have a friend at work about your age who went to the Valencia as a boy of twelve, as you did. He thought the beautiful blue ceiling, with its clouds and few twilight stars, was really the sky !
In contrast to THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, SAMSON AND DELILAH seemed to have been filmed on indoor sound stages, judging from the quality of the sound. Did you notioe that then ?
I know what you mean about younger generations having no idea of what a wonderful experience going to the movies used to be. As Jay Leno once so aptly put it, today’s cinemas don’t look like movie theaters any more : they’re concrete bunkers at the end of the shopping mall !
Thanks, Warren. I would think TV had much to do with the closing of the smaller neighborhood movie theaters like the Wyckoff, Majestic and Parthenon, to name three in Ridgewood.
My family’s first TV was a cherry wood Motorola table model with, I think, a 16" diagonally measured screen. I’m not sure when my parents got it (it was there when I was born in November 1955) but it lasted until summer 1966, when we got our Sylvania console floor model TV (another “piece of furniture”).
That’s neat about the 45 rpm record changer which plugged into the TV’s speaker.
Thanks, Jack Tomai. You'rw welcome to the correction on THE NANNY. I know about the Jahn’s in downtown Richmond Hill. I thought there may have once been another Jahn’s across Jamaica Avenue from the Valencia. There used to be a Jahn’s on Queens Blvd. in Forest Hills. I went there with a friend one Saturday in August 1982. We also saw “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” that day at the Midway.
I was last in Jahn’s in downtown Richmond Hill Saturday July 8th 2006. As I’ve posted here before, I have literally been in brighter and livelier funeral homes, it was so dark and quiet and uncrowded, the last few times I’ve been in there. Also on July 8th 2006 I went into RKO Keith’s Richmond Hill. It’s still recognizable within as a movie theater, but there was a flea market going on in there when I was there. I spoke with a man named Bob who pointed to the kiddie section he had sat in there as a kid, fifty-odd years ago.
The RKO Keith’s Richmond Hill has a page on this site. I think it’s theater # 3972. I would be most interested in your memories of it. Thanks in advance.
I think the Hillside Roller Rink was at that wonderful skewed intersection of Hillside and Metropolitan Avenues, where Kew Gardens begins to segue into downtown Jamaica. I went there once as a kid of 12 in April 1968 with other kids from the Ridgewood YMCA.
Panzer65, you’re welcome to my reply, and thanks for your reply, with all the details of the ballparks. It’s good to know that Citi Field will be an Ebbetts Field replica.
I understand that a Metro North RR station will be built adjacent to the old and new Yankee Stadiums as well.
No, I don’t remember Bette Davis' live appearance at the RKO Madison in 1962 for “Baby Jane”, but many thanks for mentioning it. I’m guessing that the ice cream parlor opposite the Valencia was a Jahn’s.
Are either of you guys familiar with “The Last / First Bar In Brooklyn”, about six blocks southeast of Fulton and Crescent, on the Brooklyn / Queens border, near where Fulton Street transitions into Rockaway Boulevard ? I passed it en route to the Cross Bay II at 92nd and Liberty on Easter Eve 1991 to see “Silence Of The Lambs”.
Huge-looking full moon rising dead ahead of me that evening as I walked southeast on Rockaway Blvd. to the Cross Bay II.
Welcome, Jack Tomai. Yes, you posted correctly. I don’t remember the litte Italian restaurant on Fulton near the Embassy. My dad’s parents and sister lived at 169 Chestnut St. nearby from 1955 to summer 1968, and my parents and I visited them there often, but, as all but my dad are now deceased, and my dad’s memory is not all that great, I can no longer question any of them about this. I’m a Ridgewood boy myself. I DO remember a German deli near one of the corners of Fulton and Crescent, and a store nearby that had the Rolling Stones' “High Tide and Green Grass (Big Hits)” for sale, in a rack of LP’s out front.
Hope you get an answer from Robbie Dupree. Best wishes.
Good to see you on this page, oodygdin. I thought the Alhambra was the theater that you remembered passing on the 26 trolley in the 1940’s. I posted in detail, earlier today, on the RKO Madison Theater page, how and why there was never a theater at Wyckoff Avenue and Weirfield or Centre Sts.
So you attended Pratt, 1953-57 ? I applied to Pratt, but instead attended Cooper Union, 1973-74 (architecture)then 1975-1979, graduating 28 years ago today (30 May 1979) in civil engineering.
I’ll have to ask my dad about attending the Alhambra. He passed it all the time, on the way home from Halsey Junior High.
My mom used to refer to the “deep discount retailers” and 99 cent stores springing up within Ridgewood three to four decades ago as “those little shit shops”.
oodygdin, living in Ridgewood as I did from mid-November 1955 to the end of May 1999 (on Cornelia between Cypress and Wyckoff), if there had been a movie theater at Wyckoff and Weirfield, or Centre, I would have known about it, and my family and I almost certainly would have gone there, as well as to the Madison and to the Ridgewood.
oodygdin, as far back as I can recall (I’ve been in and to Ridgewood since mid-November 1955) the northeast side of Wyckoff Avenue between Weirfield and Centre has always been three to six family houses, with some storefronts and garages at street level. The western corner of Wyckoff and Halsey has always been a gas station, and, back in the 1930’s, a diner. The southern corner is now the Red Carpet Inn, a motel. I’m not sure what was there before the motel (I should : I’ve been there enough : perhaps Bway can help me out here)probably more houses, but I don’t think it was ever a theater, otherwise I would have noticed.
So the then-BMT el over Liberty Avenue had been completed, and was running, when the theater opened in November 1922. The “strategic” location between the Greenwood Avenue (now 111th Street)and Lefferts Boulevard stations of the el is apparent, as well as the two busy streets themselves.
BrooklynJim, I saw “Death Wish” in a Manhattan theater near 59th and 3rd (Baronet ? Coronet ? Also saw “Chinatown” there) with my dad in June or July of 1974, and, during and after the rape scene, my dad and I looked at each other, and agreed that it was a good thing my mom had not come with us, and seen this film.
Yes, in it, you have a repetition of the “p” sound for emphasis (alliteration), and “Prince of Pitkin Avenue” was an idiom, long associated with that part of Brownsville.
To get back on topic here, we might also discuss the aesthetics of what the Oasis became : first, the roller rink, which Bway has done an excellent job describing his memories thereof, and second, the mini-mall (?) that now occupies that southeastern corner of Fresh Pond Road and Metropolitan Avenue, near the former Fresh Pond LIRR “station”.
Panzer65, thanks for your reply. What are the only two classic ball parks left ? It’s good that you’re noticing, and thinking in terms of, aesthetics. New theaters following the trend of the resurrection of “retro” ballparks ? Have you been to the new Atlas Park Cinema at 80th and Cooper in Glendale ? I was there last July 15th, 2006, and, although I didn’t see a film there, I did step into the outer lobby, and liked what I saw. It may not have been as splendid as the revived and restored Loew’s Jersey in Jersey City, but neither was it a concrete bunker at the end of the shopping mall ! I would rserve that “honor” and dubious distinction for the Green Acres 16-plex in Valley Stream, Nassau County, Long Island. Or is it up to twnety-four screens now ?
The lobby of the Green Acres Multiplex, when I was there the last Saturday of January 1987, to see “Star Trek IV”, was so busy, both visually, and in terms of people, that it reminded me of the New York Stock Exchange.
I know what you mean, Jack Tomai. My parents owned a ‘67 Chevy Biscayne, my uncle, a '64 Impala. I’m glad you’re ON this website.
Perhaps you and your wife would enjoy a trip to Loew’s Jersey or Paradise, to relive those cherished experiences of moviegoing.
I know what you mean. Even if the movie was lousy, at least the theater was pretty to look at, and it was an afternoon or a night out.
Re : your “Rear Window” experience : early January 2006 I saw the new “King Kong” at our local multiplex (Greenburgh NY) with my wife, son and then-86 yr old father, and my dad kept waving at the screem for Naomi Watts (Ann Darrow) to get down to safety from atop the Empire State Building.
Yes, magnificent theaters, real show biz architecture and interior designs, rather than ipods and cell phones, though all technology has its place.
I will ask my friend at lunch today what movies he saw at the Valencia.
Thanks, Bway. I mentioned your name because you seem knowledgable about building construction.
I, too, only bowled once at the Glenwood (spring 1966) and, like yourself, did not know it had once been a movie theater. Or, if my parents had told me, I had forgotten.
Thanks for the details, Warren.
What about 16 and 78 rpm discs ?
I’ve got a 4-speed phonograph in my garage which I’m not giving up for anything.
Martin’s was right near where I lived in Ridgewood for many years, until it was replaced by a Rainbow Shop. I remember the slogan “It ain’t just paint”, Warren.
Neither my mom nor I would classify either Martin’s or Rainbow as one of “those little shit shops”, although even they would be preferable to the burnouts, shooting galleries and homeless and junkie squatting places that many in Ridgewood, including my family and I, feared after the post July 13 1977 blackout looting and arson in Bushwick.
Thanks, Bway and Patsy.
Yes, thanks, Life ! Good to see a photo of the theater with the original marquee still on !
Thank you, Jack Tomai, for posting this important movie memory of yours.
I have a friend at work about your age who went to the Valencia as a boy of twelve, as you did. He thought the beautiful blue ceiling, with its clouds and few twilight stars, was really the sky !
In contrast to THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, SAMSON AND DELILAH seemed to have been filmed on indoor sound stages, judging from the quality of the sound. Did you notioe that then ?
I know what you mean about younger generations having no idea of what a wonderful experience going to the movies used to be. As Jay Leno once so aptly put it, today’s cinemas don’t look like movie theaters any more : they’re concrete bunkers at the end of the shopping mall !
Thanks, Warren. I would think TV had much to do with the closing of the smaller neighborhood movie theaters like the Wyckoff, Majestic and Parthenon, to name three in Ridgewood.
My family’s first TV was a cherry wood Motorola table model with, I think, a 16" diagonally measured screen. I’m not sure when my parents got it (it was there when I was born in November 1955) but it lasted until summer 1966, when we got our Sylvania console floor model TV (another “piece of furniture”).
That’s neat about the 45 rpm record changer which plugged into the TV’s speaker.
Thanks, Jack Tomai. You'rw welcome to the correction on THE NANNY. I know about the Jahn’s in downtown Richmond Hill. I thought there may have once been another Jahn’s across Jamaica Avenue from the Valencia. There used to be a Jahn’s on Queens Blvd. in Forest Hills. I went there with a friend one Saturday in August 1982. We also saw “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” that day at the Midway.
I was last in Jahn’s in downtown Richmond Hill Saturday July 8th 2006. As I’ve posted here before, I have literally been in brighter and livelier funeral homes, it was so dark and quiet and uncrowded, the last few times I’ve been in there. Also on July 8th 2006 I went into RKO Keith’s Richmond Hill. It’s still recognizable within as a movie theater, but there was a flea market going on in there when I was there. I spoke with a man named Bob who pointed to the kiddie section he had sat in there as a kid, fifty-odd years ago.
The RKO Keith’s Richmond Hill has a page on this site. I think it’s theater # 3972. I would be most interested in your memories of it. Thanks in advance.
I think the Hillside Roller Rink was at that wonderful skewed intersection of Hillside and Metropolitan Avenues, where Kew Gardens begins to segue into downtown Jamaica. I went there once as a kid of 12 in April 1968 with other kids from the Ridgewood YMCA.
Panzer65, you’re welcome to my reply, and thanks for your reply, with all the details of the ballparks. It’s good to know that Citi Field will be an Ebbetts Field replica.
I understand that a Metro North RR station will be built adjacent to the old and new Yankee Stadiums as well.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059496/
Bette Davis : “The Nanny” : release date, 27 October 1965.
Thanks, Jack Tomai and BrooklynJim (love your accent, and how you spell it). Glad you enjoyed the Boston Baked Scrod.
Thanks, Jack, for your Ridgewood stories. I remember THE BABYSITTER on TV in 1968. I’ll check the release date on the IMDb.
www.imdb.com
No, I don’t remember Bette Davis' live appearance at the RKO Madison in 1962 for “Baby Jane”, but many thanks for mentioning it. I’m guessing that the ice cream parlor opposite the Valencia was a Jahn’s.
Are either of you guys familiar with “The Last / First Bar In Brooklyn”, about six blocks southeast of Fulton and Crescent, on the Brooklyn / Queens border, near where Fulton Street transitions into Rockaway Boulevard ? I passed it en route to the Cross Bay II at 92nd and Liberty on Easter Eve 1991 to see “Silence Of The Lambs”.
Huge-looking full moon rising dead ahead of me that evening as I walked southeast on Rockaway Blvd. to the Cross Bay II.
Welcome, Jack Tomai. Yes, you posted correctly. I don’t remember the litte Italian restaurant on Fulton near the Embassy. My dad’s parents and sister lived at 169 Chestnut St. nearby from 1955 to summer 1968, and my parents and I visited them there often, but, as all but my dad are now deceased, and my dad’s memory is not all that great, I can no longer question any of them about this. I’m a Ridgewood boy myself. I DO remember a German deli near one of the corners of Fulton and Crescent, and a store nearby that had the Rolling Stones' “High Tide and Green Grass (Big Hits)” for sale, in a rack of LP’s out front.
Hope you get an answer from Robbie Dupree. Best wishes.
Good to see you on this page, oodygdin. I thought the Alhambra was the theater that you remembered passing on the 26 trolley in the 1940’s. I posted in detail, earlier today, on the RKO Madison Theater page, how and why there was never a theater at Wyckoff Avenue and Weirfield or Centre Sts.
So you attended Pratt, 1953-57 ? I applied to Pratt, but instead attended Cooper Union, 1973-74 (architecture)then 1975-1979, graduating 28 years ago today (30 May 1979) in civil engineering.
I’ll have to ask my dad about attending the Alhambra. He passed it all the time, on the way home from Halsey Junior High.
Thanks for your posts, Patsy. I, too, would love to see a vintage photo of this theatre’s exterior and interior!
Thanks for the details, Lost Memory.
My mom used to refer to the “deep discount retailers” and 99 cent stores springing up within Ridgewood three to four decades ago as “those little shit shops”.
VA (82) was Van Dyke. Ridgewood Savings Bank’s phone # used to be VA1-4600.
oodygdin, living in Ridgewood as I did from mid-November 1955 to the end of May 1999 (on Cornelia between Cypress and Wyckoff), if there had been a movie theater at Wyckoff and Weirfield, or Centre, I would have known about it, and my family and I almost certainly would have gone there, as well as to the Madison and to the Ridgewood.
oodygdin, as far back as I can recall (I’ve been in and to Ridgewood since mid-November 1955) the northeast side of Wyckoff Avenue between Weirfield and Centre has always been three to six family houses, with some storefronts and garages at street level. The western corner of Wyckoff and Halsey has always been a gas station, and, back in the 1930’s, a diner. The southern corner is now the Red Carpet Inn, a motel. I’m not sure what was there before the motel (I should : I’ve been there enough : perhaps Bway can help me out here)probably more houses, but I don’t think it was ever a theater, otherwise I would have noticed.
So the then-BMT el over Liberty Avenue had been completed, and was running, when the theater opened in November 1922. The “strategic” location between the Greenwood Avenue (now 111th Street)and Lefferts Boulevard stations of the el is apparent, as well as the two busy streets themselves.
Thanks for all the details, Warren.
BrooklynJim, I saw “Death Wish” in a Manhattan theater near 59th and 3rd (Baronet ? Coronet ? Also saw “Chinatown” there) with my dad in June or July of 1974, and, during and after the rape scene, my dad and I looked at each other, and agreed that it was a good thing my mom had not come with us, and seen this film.
You’re welcome, Panzer65. Perhaps both Warren and Bway will be posting on this page again before too long.
The view of the movie screen from an opera box would be quite skewed, so I would think they would only be occupied during live stage shows.
Yes, in it, you have a repetition of the “p” sound for emphasis (alliteration), and “Prince of Pitkin Avenue” was an idiom, long associated with that part of Brownsville.
To get back on topic here, we might also discuss the aesthetics of what the Oasis became : first, the roller rink, which Bway has done an excellent job describing his memories thereof, and second, the mini-mall (?) that now occupies that southeastern corner of Fresh Pond Road and Metropolitan Avenue, near the former Fresh Pond LIRR “station”.
Panzer65, thanks for your reply. What are the only two classic ball parks left ? It’s good that you’re noticing, and thinking in terms of, aesthetics. New theaters following the trend of the resurrection of “retro” ballparks ? Have you been to the new Atlas Park Cinema at 80th and Cooper in Glendale ? I was there last July 15th, 2006, and, although I didn’t see a film there, I did step into the outer lobby, and liked what I saw. It may not have been as splendid as the revived and restored Loew’s Jersey in Jersey City, but neither was it a concrete bunker at the end of the shopping mall ! I would rserve that “honor” and dubious distinction for the Green Acres 16-plex in Valley Stream, Nassau County, Long Island. Or is it up to twnety-four screens now ?
The lobby of the Green Acres Multiplex, when I was there the last Saturday of January 1987, to see “Star Trek IV”, was so busy, both visually, and in terms of people, that it reminded me of the New York Stock Exchange.