Lyric Theatre
213 W. 42nd Street,
New York,
NY
10036
213 W. 42nd Street,
New York,
NY
10036
14 people
favorited this theater
Showing 101 - 114 of 114 comments
Listed as Bijou: /theaters/8371/
There was a Lyric Theater on 3rd Ave between 12th and 13th St.,
Manhattan years ago.You can check out the link section on here to view it.
Thanks for the link; really fascinating stuff. Not completely accurate, and with a typo or two, but well worth a visit.
Here is a 1966 shot of The Deuce. Note the billboards over the Lyric. THey would display their coming attractions there. In this case…..THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (10th anniversary re-release) and the remake of STAGECOACH
I won the item on ebay and will be loaded it on to my website soon. Here’s the temporary link:
View link
For those interested, the films showing are:
HARPER & SWINGER’S PARADISE (Lyric), OUT OF THE PAST & TENSION AT TABLE ROCK (Times Square), TROUBLE WITH ANGELS & MYSTERY OF THUG ISLAND (Selwyn), WEEKEND AT DUNKIRK & THAT MAN IN ISTANBUL (New Amsterdam); Apollo appears to have a Gina Lollobrigida film.
saps, I also wondered if the Lyric actually played those films. IMDB lists both as 1974 releases (I thought the titles and posters may have been made up for the film). An IMDB user comment on the second film makes mention of the Taxi Driver connection.
Great tip,lostmemory. Enjoyed the site.
And that’s a very interesting site. Thanks for the tip.
In a word, wow! But I wonder if the Lyric actualy played those two movies, or if it was a mock up for the film.
I just found a beautiful color clip of the Lyric and entire north side of 42nd Street from 1956 on the gettyimages.com website. The Selwyn is showing (3 Coins in the Fountain & Love is a Many Splendid Thing), Apollo (Naked Night & Divided Heart), Times Square (Best of the Badmen & Badman’s Territory), Lyric (Man in the Grey Flannel Suit & Magnificent Roughnecks), Victory (Purple Heart & Guadalcanal Diary). Here’s the link View link
Jerry 42nd Street Memories
I have an exterior photo of the Lyric (circa early 90s). I’ll e-mail it to some if they want to post it.
I recall that the Lyric, like a lot of legit theaters, was not very wide but it certainly was tall. And in the 50s-60s, it was always packed since it was showing some of the newer films on the Deuce, along with the New Amsterdam. Since people did not time the beginning of a showing back then, a lot of the viewing was interrupted by you, or someone else, looking for a seat or two seats together. And if you ended in the top balcony, you were looking down on the screen through the cigarette smoke.
After a week here, the program would move west to the Selwyn.
As always, if anyone know how I can obtain images or booking/programming information for any of the theaters on the Deuce, please let me know. The Lyric did appear in a lot of newspaper ads, since it was showing newer flics, but sometimes they would vary the 2nd feature (as opposed to the RKO circuit)for their “action” audience.
Jerry 42nd Street Memories
I actually had a chance to attend a punk concert here back in the late 80s : the band set up right in front of the screen and pornos played in the backround- the Lyric was really run down by that point, but traces of it’s former beauty were evident in the (dark) painted plaster ceiling, and along the crumbling yet still grand lobby/entrance- the bathrooms were something else- signs warning against prostitution/drug dealing; toilets missing and no running water. It was a great concert, and me and my(underage) friends certainly appreciated being allowed into the verry same porn theater from Taxi Driver!
Although it may have shown a soft-core adult movie from time to time (when porn flirted with mainstream acceptance) the Lyric was never a porno house.
The Lyric – which was then in its period as one of the handful of the Deuce’s porno theatres – was featured in the film ‘Taxi Driver’.
The Lyric was, in the early- to mid-‘90s, the third-to-last (not counting the MoviePlex 42) of the Deuce grindhouses to close its doors for business, followed by the Selwyn and the Harris.