RKO Alden Theatre

Thanks, Peter. Greg was only 23 when a rare form of cancer nailed him last year. He was a diehard movie critic. He was friends with French actress/writer/director Agnes Jouie, met his hero David Lynch and even got to do a walk-on for a late ‘05 episode of his fave TV show, “Gilmore Girls.” He loved anything connected with film and Hollywood. We hope to issue a book of his reviews, articles and interviews next year, with all profits going to the Film School Scholarship his film critic peers established at San Diego State University.

We are never good at making sense out of random stuff like this, but I always liked what one of his peers had said: “God needed a foreign film critic He could understand.” That sure works for me.

I first saw “Teenage Frankenstein” on the ABC 4:30 movie. It was called “The Big Show”. CBS, NBC and WOR also had 4:30 movies. The CBS 4:30 movie was called “The Early Show”.

EdSolero, I’m glad it’s your favorite.

I’m glad you remember all those old movies on TV. There was also “The Late Late Show” and Schaefer Award Theater on Saturday night.

The Chiller Theater opening I first remember was a montage of clips from the films they showed, like “Plan 9”, “Attack Of The Fifty Foot Woman”, “The Gorilla”, “Killers From Space”, backed with godawful scary music I couldn’t begin to mimic. The six-fingered hand came later, about 1970.

Whit Bissell even more ubiquitous than John Agar?!? Or John Carradine?!? Not at all ! I couldn’t begin to guess !

One of my favorite lines of Bissell’s was in “I Was A Teenage Frankenstein” :

“Speak ! You have a civil tongue in your head ! I know ! I sewed it there !”

1) “The Thing (from Another World)” :

“An interstellar carrot ! The mind boggles !”

2) “Hud” : I recall my dad’s remark about Paul Newman in 1966’s “Hombre” as “the blue-eyed, Jewish Indian”.

“ … the ubiquitous Whit Bissell!” I know what you mean ! Ditto Ned Glass, Stanley Adams, Richard Deacon, and John Hoyt :

“Oh, no, not HIM again !”

PKoch, 42nd St. ran the gamut of entertainment from my time in the ‘50s until now. Between 7th and 8th Avenues, there were a bunch of theaters lit up like mad. (Some are still there.) This was before the porno wave of the late '60s and '70s. Can’t recall any specific theaters on 42nd St., but two films stand out in my mind:

1) “The Thing (from Another World)” – originally out in ‘51, I saw the '57 re-release. All of us Brooklyn street urchins hit the floor simultaneously when Ken Tobey opened the greenhouse door behind which was 8-foot James Arness as the vegetable from space! shudder

2) “Hud” (‘63) with Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, Brandon de Wilde, Melvin Douglas and others, including the ubiquitous Whit Bissell! The widescreen B&W panorama of Texas – breathtaking! – won the Cinematography Oscar for James Wong Howe, and Neal and Douglas got one for their supporting roles. Watched it twice on the same day!

As for the RKO Alden, it may have been the only theater I’d known to have 2 marquees, the main one on Jamaica Ave. and the other on 165th St. Somewhere I have a color shot of the latter on a NYC Transit calendar which shows not only a battered silver & blue J train pulling out of the 168th St. station, but also a gray & orange LIRR train a bit farther down on Archer Ave. Gotta try to find that one to see how clearly the Alden’s marquee is and perhaps what was playing…

Sorry… Fruedian slip. I typed the word “prurient” (and mispelled it to boot) where I meant “puritan” and as a result said the complete opposite of what I intended! Anyway, it probably should have been “puritanical” anyway. Hopefully you caught my drift.

Thanks for your Bardot-Tablet story, BrooklynJim. I’m ten years younger than you, so it’s a bit hard to relate. I remember Bardot mentioned as a sexpot around 1964-65, but never saw her in any films. I remember an over-scrupulous conversation with my cousin Fran, both of us age nine, in the late fall of 1964, about whether or not the film “Horror Of Party Beach” was indecent or not. It showed scaly monstrosities menacing bikini-clad babes on the beach.

I don’t recall a “hot” movie that all the guys felt they had to see when I finished 8th grade at St. Brigid’s parochial school in the spring of 1969, only that, by the end of that year, film-makers were letting it all hang out with films like “Midnight Cowboy” and “I Am Curious”, both blue and yellow, and later in April 1970 with “Without A Stitch”. I remember being taken aback by the sex and nudity in the film “Joe” when I first saw it in February 1971.

Things seemed to peak in the late spring and early summer of 1975, when I saw a re-release of “Harrad Experiment” and “Harrad Summer” at the RKO Madison, then the first run of “The Incarnation Of Peter Proud” at the Madison in July 1975, showing Margot Kidder masturbating fully frontally nude in her bathtub.

Then DeNiro in “Taxi Driver” at the Madison in May 1976, then the trashy “Lipstick”, with the Hemingway sisters and Chris Sarandon at the Madison in July 1976, which is the last film I ever saw at the Madison.

Films nowadays seem much more restrained in terms of sex and nudity than the films of the early to mid 1970’s.

OK, youse guys, time for that story I promised in my recent RKO Keith’s (Richmond Hill) post…

The time is 1959. We parochial school kids (I had attended St. Malachy’s in ENY only for my final grammar school year, ‘58-'59) were brainwashed into reading THE TABLET each and every week. Now this paper had a section in which movies were placed into several categories for non-offensive, family-oriented viewing purposes: There were 3 categories of “A” movies, followed by the “B” section (these might play some havoc with yer faith 'n’ morals, kids, and then finally, the infamous “C” list for CONDEMNED movies. What a promo! We devoured “C” for ones to try to get to “SEE” without our parents ever finding out.

Bridget Bardot was a pot of the 1950s, no argument there. And the Vatican certainly had it in for in her (figuratively speaking only, amigos) ever since her debut in Roger Vadim’s “And God Created Woman” in 1955 or ‘56. If Bardot’s name should appear in the credits, La Iglesia de Catolica Romana instantly and without hesitation condemned the film.

At some point in ‘59, I spotted a movie ad in the L.I. Press that a Bardot movie had begun playing at the RKO Alden. With my young teenage hormones raging at warp speed, I hadda go no matter what the cost, no matter what the risk!

So, on one rainy summer afternoon, I ducked out of the house, got on the Jamaica train and made my first visit to the Alden to see this proverbial “sex kitten” in “Babette Goes to War.” It turned out to be a slow moving WWII movie, in black & white, and could never seem to make up its mind whether it wanted to be a drama or light comedy. At any rate, it was so tame I nearly dozed off several times. Bardot was gorgeous, I admit, and she bent forward once or twice to display cleavage that went clear to China, but that was IT! Nothing else! And for this it earned a big fat “C” rating by the Legion of Decency? Sorry, but LMAO…then and now, folks.

Anyone else out there have a similar Bardot moment???

According to the asterisk in the following ad, only the bottom half of this double bill was playing one of the Alden’s four auditoriums in December of 1980:

Vampire Playgirls Daily News 12/12/80

No Manhattan theaters are listed in the ad, but don’t tell me this pairing didn’t wind up in one of the 42nd Street grind houses! Sorry for the blurry image.

The last time I attended the Alden was some time in the late 50s or early 60s I saw a stage show featuring the great swing trumpeter “HOT LIPS PAGE”.The rest of the program I don’t remember.Maybe Warren remembers the year that “HOT LIPS” appeared.

I live in Washington State, but I was just in Jamaica, and took a long walk along Jamaica Ave. There are still some architectual points of interest, such as the Jamaica Arts Center Building between 161st and 162. In my mind’s eye, I can still see Fischer-Bear (Dep’t Store), Skouras Restaurant, which had autographed pictures of the actor Thomas Gomez (Key Largo, et al). I think his sister worked at Jamaica High. Other great stores included the Parsons Smoke Shop and a marvelous music store. Stetson Hats also, and Gertz, where I saw Paul Winchell perform in about 1960 and a host of others. New population, different stores, but still a vital neighborhood!

To promote his new film “The Ladies Man,” Jerry Lewis appeared on stage at this theater on July 13, 1961.