Symphony Space/Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre

AIP at the Symphony

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October 5, 1952 the Symphony advertised 2 New MGM Suspense Thrillers…“Talk About A Stranger” starring George Murphy and Nancy Davis and “Shadow in the Sky” starring Ralph Meeker and Lewis Stone. The Thalia had the Academy Award winning best foreign film “Rasho-Mon” paired with “Under the Paris Sky”.

It was Fine Line who booked the Thalia for a time, hardbop. (I had an article somewhere – think I tossed it long ago – which made mention of a booking relationship between Fine Line and the Thalia; among the films which screened there during that time were ‘Household Saints’ and ‘Naked in New York’.)

The Thalia was a great repertory cinema in the seventies and
eighties. It was run by the late Richard Swartz. Although the theater
was small and contained the bizarre upwards curve (which obscurred
the screen with heads if a tall person sat in the front row), they
did show some rare movies. It had a nice art decor design. It was a fun place to attend which I went to NYU in the seventies. In the eighties they installed selzin
motors and a silver screen so they could show 3-D movies. Swartz
hunted down rare dual projector prints of “The French Line” (in Technicolor with the cut bubbble bath sequence) and even borrowed
a print of “Carnival of Souls” from Herk Harvey. At one point they
advertised an uncut print of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” but
this turned out to be a regular cut print. After Richard Swartz died of AIDS, the theater folded along with most of the great NYC
repertory cinemas,

Briefly it was an Indian cinema run by Malik Tirlok that played films from that country. I booked my own 3-D movie, “Run for Cover”, in it before it shut down again.

I wonder what “bringing the Thalia back to life by incorporating the old theater into its newly redesigned complex” means. If the photo’s suggestive, it doesn’t bode well. When I lived in the Village (West & East) 1962-69, the Thalia was Wonderful! I was very poor, saw theater mostly standing room, got most of my entertainment browsing bookstores. But I’d travel a million miles for the old Thalia just the way it was then.

Nothing to forgive, David S. It’s just that I was utterly certain about that and checked the New York Times microfilm to confirm. You may note that the Playboy was a theatre that I submitted and have had great times there over the decades.

Hi, Gerald. Forget what I said about CRIA. Agree with u 100% on the Thalia. their film noir series were something. Now can u, or any body else out there, show me the way to the Playboy, the one that was located on 57th between 7th and 6th. Could nt find it on the list.

Dosent the Thalia deserve it’s own listing?

Warren is correct; the Thalia was still operating as a cinema at the same time Symphony Space began hosting programs out of the old Symphony Theatre. The Thalia closed in May of 1987 (and was immortalized in a Newsweek article the next month, chronicling the struggles revival houses around the country were facing in the wake of the VCR boom at the time). It sat empty until a neighborhood businessman bought the lease to the Thalia, gave it a slight renovation (including the installation of a new marquee), and reopened it in July of 1993, offering double-feature changes, if I remember correctly, three times a week (unlike during the former run of the Thalia which Gerald makes reference to, where the bills changed six – and, occasionally, seven – times a week). The revival programming at the ‘new’ Thalia, however, failed to catch on, perhaps due to a lack of originality in comparison to what was booked at the Thalia during its heyday, and the booking policy changed sometime around the spring of 1994, focusing exclusively on releases distributed by Fine Line Features (the dependent offshoot of New Line Pictures). That, however, didn’t last long and the Thalia went through several fallow periods and a handful of different lease-holders, all whose efforts to keep the Thalia running failed (the programming during this time could probably be best said to have resembled that of the old Bleecker Street Cinemas – an odd fit for the UWS, but it may have worked if the Thalia was consistently open for business).

Finally, after all those up-and-down periods, Symphony Space renovated the Thalia, which, if the times I’ve attended programs within its walls are to be judged as the rule as opposed to the exception, is more than holding its own. Unfortunately, none of the original architectural elements – including that beloved-by-some, despised-by-others upwardly sloping floor in the auditorium – remain.

For many decades the amazing Thalia on 95th Street had daily changes of double bills: they showed virtually everything: foreign films, recent American movies, classic revivals, silents, educational film programs, cartoon programs, films from private collections, films forgotten, films dumped, films rarely or never programmed. I submit that, from the viewpoint of programming alone, this paradise for film lovers was the greatest commercial movie theatre in the history of the United States, if not the world.

The original Thalia was located around the corner. The interior of the theater was strangely sloped.It apparently followed the slope of the street outside.It was very small inside but no one seemed to mind because the revival films were great.