I liked “Invasion Of The Saucer Men” too. I recently identified it for another e-pal of mine. I think I first saw it on “The Big Show”, the ABC 4:30 movie, in 1963 or 1964.
I remember Gorshin as The Riddler on the Batman TV show and 1966 feature film.
Yes, “Plan 9” was Lugosi’s last film. He died during its production, so you get to see Ed Wood’s chiropractor, eight inches taller than Lugosi, and without the slightest resemblance to him, stumbling around California tract housing, with a Dracula cape up under his nose. It was dramatized in the 1994 film, “Ed Wood”.
The film wasn’t released until 1959 because for years Wood couldn’t afford to pay the photo lab’s bill for processing the film ! It features Lugosi, Vampira, Tor Johnson, The Amazing Criswell, washed- up cowboy actors, and movie-crazy Baptists, in a tale of Earth’s invasion by hubcaps and paper plates from outer space. As Criswell intones at its end :
“These are the facts, my friends ! May God help us in the future !”
Thanks, lostmemory. I’m glad you found the Richmond Hill Historical Society website. I’m mentioned by name there on the Jamaica el page.
Or, at least I was.
lostmemory, thanks for the additional info on the Parthenon : for solving the “mystery” of the Ridgewood garage, and supplying the info on its “illustrious” ending. I LOVE those 50’s B low-budget chillers ! I have seen those three 50’s classics you mention. My favorite line from “Teenage Frankenstein” is :
“Speak ! You have a civil tongue in your head ! I know ! I sewed it there !”
When I saw the original “50 Foot Woman” on TeleMundo in June 2003, it was not only translated into Spanish, but converted into the metric system :
“Ataje De La Mujere De Los 15 Metros”
I wrote a review of this film for, and posted by, the Internet Movie Data Base. I’ll send it to you, if you like. I have the film on VHS, along with “Plan 9 From Outer Space”. You might also enjoy my IMDb review of “Queen Of Outer Space”.
Yes, lostmemory I remember that there were two B-38 buses, one continuing on Seneca and the other turning northeast to Grandview.
I remember riding another B-38 from downtown Bklyn to Ridgewood in mid-April 1976 and the ride ending at Broadway and DeKalb Avenue in Bushwick. I had a little walk home to Ridgewood from there also.
You’re probably right, Warren. I spoke with my father about the Monroe Theater yesterday and he said several of them could fit inside the RKo Bushwick. So perhaps in that photo I provided the link to, the Monroe is one of the smaller buildings that appear just to the right of the RKO Bushwick, with a water tower on top, yet behind the cornice lines of the buildings right up against the Jamaica-bound el platform in the near background.
I saw “Mr. Holland’s Opus” at the Cameo in Brewster with my wife and two friends of ours, a married couple, in February 1996. I liked the decor of classic movie posters in the inner lobby. I am sorry that it is now closed.
Here’s a link to an image of 1666 Broadway, only four doors away from where the Decatur Theater once was. It’s as close as I can now come to a photo of the Decatur :
lostmemory, probably Ft. Greene Place. You would know better than me.
I think DeKalb changes from one to two way at Bushwick Avenue, based on your and my experience of the B-38 bus, and because it jogs slightly at Bushwick Avenue.
Incidentally, there’s another great old theater near there, at DeKalb Avenue and Broadway, the Casino, formerly the DeKalb, at 1153-55 DeKalb Avenue, for which there is a page on this site.
Yes, times have certainly changed, and not for the better, regarding children going alone to movie theaters.
lostmemory, I know what you mean. Ridgewood literally often slips through the “crack” between Brooklyn and Queens in terms of being covered in books, and is often not mentioned in books about either borough. Shame.
BTW, last night I was browsing through “Confessions Of A Brooklyn Trolley Dodger” by Stan Fischler on the way home, and it had a chapter on the DeKalb Line, and a photo of the DeKalb trolley at Brooklyn Tech, at DeKalb Avenue and Greene Place.
Warren, as undesirable as a crotchful of lice may be, it’s still not as bad as a stunt recently pulled by some sicko in some theaters, putting HIV-bearing needles on theater seats, with notes saying :
It can be seen as a black-bordered white rectangle, with black letters on it, near the middle of the right edge of the image, under the el, and to the right of the trolley car. I think the image dates from the late 1940’s. The top word on the marquee looks like “FRISKY”. I can’t make out anything else.
Thanks, lostmemory. Much of the brick housing in Ridgewood was built near the end of World War I, 1918, so those tracks, which must have been sidings, or, as you prefer, job sites, off the LIRR Bushwick Branch, were at least a few years older. I will leave the finding of the exact date to more knowledgable railroad buffs than myself.
It would be easier if there were a book about this titled, “The Building Of Ridgewood”, or something similar.
I’m reminded of 1953’s “House Of Wax”, also in 3-D, with the ball of the hawker’s paddle, ball and elastic cord made to apparently fly into the face of the audience. I’m also reminded of Hazel Court almost popping out of the top of her dress in “The Raven”.
Perhaps “When Worlds Collide” should have been done in 3-D, with Arlene Dahl’s heaving bosoms as planets Xyra and Bellus hurtling towards Earth !
I am not sure, but that might be the Monroe Theater, at 4 Howard Avenue, near the RKO Bushwick, in the upper right quadrant of image 2637, above the platform canopy, the near end of the silver train, and the person on the platform. I mean the long building with the peaked roof, two rows of windows, and a water tower at each end.
In image 26237 the roofline of the Colonial is visible between the top of the front of the train and the “square head and shoulders” apt. bldgs in the distance. It appears below these two apt. bldgs. in the other two images.
The Colonial is used as an evangelical church. Much of the interior is still intact, but re-decorated in different colors from the original, which was nothing to get very excited over. It was always just a plain, neighborhood theatre, originally built by the S&S Circuit (Small & Strausberg), which was later acquired by William Fox and eventually spun into the Randforce Circuit. The Colonial was situated at 1746 Broadway and had 2,222 seats, according to the 1944 Film Daily Year Book, which I believe is a bit exaggerated. I would guess 2,000 at most.
Thank you, Bway ! I’m expecting Warren to add material of his on the Colonial, already posted on pages of the RKO Bushwick and other nearby theatres, on this site.
lostmemory, you’re welcome to the links about P.S. 81.
I’ll pass on Roswell, too. I am not a paranoiac Roswell conspiracy theorist-fanatic. I’m not waiting for my savior to step out of a U.F.O. I’ll stick with Ridgewood.
Your assumption about the brown boxcar being dismantled and trucked away is probbaly correct, but as the starship Enterprise has been known to travel back in time to the 20th century, as in the episode “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” of the original series, Scotty may have beamed it somewhere after all. Or maybe it’s in that Air Force hangar in Roswell, New Mexico ….. for more info, see “The X Files”.
Here’s a link to an old image of Seneca Avenue five blocks southeast of the former Majestic Theater, facing southeast to the Seneca Avenue el station of the BMT Myrtle Avenue el station over Palmetto Street. The “DeKalb” trolley car is the predecessor of the current B-38 bus, and must have gone over the Brooklyn Bridge to “Park Row” in downtown Manhattan, as well. Note the cobblestone paving of Seneca Avenue :
The Wyckoff Theater stood at 247 Wyckoff Avenue, eastern corner of Wyckoff Avenue and Bleecker Street. It was before my time, so my earliest memory of it is as a Jehovah’s Witnesses Hall, about 1960 or 1961. My oldest aunt went there with her mother to see “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” for an adult admission of ten cents. It was not air conditioned at first, but my oldest aunt recalls going there as a kid in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s for a nickel, and having a “grand old time” there, seeing double features with cartoons, newsreels and short subjects.
I thought the Colonial in Bushwick had its own page here, until I tried to go there and didn’t find any !
BTW, I just submitted a page to this site for the Colonial Theater at 1746 Bway (at Rockaway Avenue, and Chauncey St. in Bushwick). I hope your recent photo of it, as the Wayside Baptist Church, and information on it, supplied by Warren, on the RKO Bushwick and other pages on this site, eventually finds its way onto the new Colonial Theater page.
Perhaps I should also submit pages for the Decatur, Empire, and Monroe Theaters, while I’m at it.
lostmemory, thanks for the additional detail about the tracks between Cypress and Seneca. All I can think is that they either led into the car barns at Seneca and Dekalb or the Bushwick Branch of the LIRR. Beyond that, I’m stumped.
This might be a job for Kevin Walsh’s “Forgotten NY” site, or Tom Scannello’s “Forgotten NYC” site.
My parents, aunts and uncles remember the Car Barns well. I think there was also a vacant lot there that circuses and carnivals would set up their tents on. I think it’s a playground and running track now.
lostmemory, I never knew there were train tracks behind the Majestic Theater (between Seneca and Cypress Avenues). All I can think is that they were trolley tracks.
The northwest to southeast tracks that ran parallel to and between Wyckoff and Irving Avenues began in the late 19th century as the Evergreen Branch of the Long Island Rail Road. They then became a freight line, connecting Bushwick Terminal at Bushwick and Montrose Avenues to the Connecting Line + Bay Ridge LIRR east of Cooper Street, near where the 14th Street Canarsie Line comes out of the ground between Halsey St. and Wilson Avenue stations. I and my family knew them as the “dummy tracks”. They serviced local industry such as Dietz Coal and Fuel Oil, and Tulnoy Lumber, at Ridgewood Place, between Putnam Avenue and Palmetto Street, and Wyckoff and Irving Avenues.
My mother grew up near the “dummy tracks” on Harman Street, and, as a girl, liked to put pieces of glass on the tracks, and watch passing
trains crush them to powder. I last remember trains on those tracks on a clear sunny morning in October 1962.
As to the size of theaters in Ridgewood, some were small, others were built larger, deliberately. From 1945 to 1955, television seemed to have put the smaller theaters, like the Wyckoff, Parthenon, Majestic, Glenwood, and the Grandview, out of business.
I liked “Invasion Of The Saucer Men” too. I recently identified it for another e-pal of mine. I think I first saw it on “The Big Show”, the ABC 4:30 movie, in 1963 or 1964.
I remember Gorshin as The Riddler on the Batman TV show and 1966 feature film.
Yes, “Plan 9” was Lugosi’s last film. He died during its production, so you get to see Ed Wood’s chiropractor, eight inches taller than Lugosi, and without the slightest resemblance to him, stumbling around California tract housing, with a Dracula cape up under his nose. It was dramatized in the 1994 film, “Ed Wood”.
The film wasn’t released until 1959 because for years Wood couldn’t afford to pay the photo lab’s bill for processing the film ! It features Lugosi, Vampira, Tor Johnson, The Amazing Criswell, washed- up cowboy actors, and movie-crazy Baptists, in a tale of Earth’s invasion by hubcaps and paper plates from outer space. As Criswell intones at its end :
“These are the facts, my friends ! May God help us in the future !”
Thanks, Bway. All the more reason for me to take a thorough “field trip” to Bushwick one day soon.
lostmemory, thanks. I’ve seen the Times Newsweekly “Our Neighborhood” article that mentions this.
Thanks, lostmemory. I’m glad you found the Richmond Hill Historical Society website. I’m mentioned by name there on the Jamaica el page.
Or, at least I was.
lostmemory, thanks for the additional info on the Parthenon : for solving the “mystery” of the Ridgewood garage, and supplying the info on its “illustrious” ending. I LOVE those 50’s B low-budget chillers ! I have seen those three 50’s classics you mention. My favorite line from “Teenage Frankenstein” is :
“Speak ! You have a civil tongue in your head ! I know ! I sewed it there !”
When I saw the original “50 Foot Woman” on TeleMundo in June 2003, it was not only translated into Spanish, but converted into the metric system :
“Ataje De La Mujere De Los 15 Metros”
I wrote a review of this film for, and posted by, the Internet Movie Data Base. I’ll send it to you, if you like. I have the film on VHS, along with “Plan 9 From Outer Space”. You might also enjoy my IMDb review of “Queen Of Outer Space”.
Yes, lostmemory I remember that there were two B-38 buses, one continuing on Seneca and the other turning northeast to Grandview.
I remember riding another B-38 from downtown Bklyn to Ridgewood in mid-April 1976 and the ride ending at Broadway and DeKalb Avenue in Bushwick. I had a little walk home to Ridgewood from there also.
You’re probably right, Warren. I spoke with my father about the Monroe Theater yesterday and he said several of them could fit inside the RKo Bushwick. So perhaps in that photo I provided the link to, the Monroe is one of the smaller buildings that appear just to the right of the RKO Bushwick, with a water tower on top, yet behind the cornice lines of the buildings right up against the Jamaica-bound el platform in the near background.
I saw “Mr. Holland’s Opus” at the Cameo in Brewster with my wife and two friends of ours, a married couple, in February 1996. I liked the decor of classic movie posters in the inner lobby. I am sorry that it is now closed.
Here’s a link to an image of 1666 Broadway, only four doors away from where the Decatur Theater once was. It’s as close as I can now come to a photo of the Decatur :
http://www.frankjump.com/032.html
I suspect the Decatur Theater was much like the small former Haven Theater near Jamaica Avenue and Forest Parkway in Woodhaven, Queens, NY.
lostmemory, probably Ft. Greene Place. You would know better than me.
I think DeKalb changes from one to two way at Bushwick Avenue, based on your and my experience of the B-38 bus, and because it jogs slightly at Bushwick Avenue.
Incidentally, there’s another great old theater near there, at DeKalb Avenue and Broadway, the Casino, formerly the DeKalb, at 1153-55 DeKalb Avenue, for which there is a page on this site.
Yes, times have certainly changed, and not for the better, regarding children going alone to movie theaters.
lostmemory, I know what you mean. Ridgewood literally often slips through the “crack” between Brooklyn and Queens in terms of being covered in books, and is often not mentioned in books about either borough. Shame.
BTW, last night I was browsing through “Confessions Of A Brooklyn Trolley Dodger” by Stan Fischler on the way home, and it had a chapter on the DeKalb Line, and a photo of the DeKalb trolley at Brooklyn Tech, at DeKalb Avenue and Greene Place.
Warren, as undesirable as a crotchful of lice may be, it’s still not as bad as a stunt recently pulled by some sicko in some theaters, putting HIV-bearing needles on theater seats, with notes saying :
“Congratulations. You are now HIV positive.”
The marquee of the Parthenon Theater can be glimpsed in the following image :
http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?33351
It can be seen as a black-bordered white rectangle, with black letters on it, near the middle of the right edge of the image, under the el, and to the right of the trolley car. I think the image dates from the late 1940’s. The top word on the marquee looks like “FRISKY”. I can’t make out anything else.
Thanks, lostmemory. Much of the brick housing in Ridgewood was built near the end of World War I, 1918, so those tracks, which must have been sidings, or, as you prefer, job sites, off the LIRR Bushwick Branch, were at least a few years older. I will leave the finding of the exact date to more knowledgable railroad buffs than myself.
It would be easier if there were a book about this titled, “The Building Of Ridgewood”, or something similar.
Jane Russell, who starred in “The Outlaw”, as well ?
I’ve always thought of Alison Hayes, star of “Attack Of The Fifty Foot Woman”, as a cut-rate Jane Russell. Both dark-haired, pouty, buxom.
I’m reminded of 1953’s “House Of Wax”, also in 3-D, with the ball of the hawker’s paddle, ball and elastic cord made to apparently fly into the face of the audience. I’m also reminded of Hazel Court almost popping out of the top of her dress in “The Raven”.
Perhaps “When Worlds Collide” should have been done in 3-D, with Arlene Dahl’s heaving bosoms as planets Xyra and Bellus hurtling towards Earth !
I am not sure, but that might be the Monroe Theater, at 4 Howard Avenue, near the RKO Bushwick, in the upper right quadrant of image 2637, above the platform canopy, the near end of the silver train, and the person on the platform. I mean the long building with the peaked roof, two rows of windows, and a water tower at each end.
http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?2637
The RKO Bushwick is above the far (front) end of the departing silver train in this image.
The roofline of the Colonial Theater at 1746 Broadway, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY is also visible in these images near the vanishing point :
http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?26237
http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?26236
http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?26417
In image 26237 the roofline of the Colonial is visible between the top of the front of the train and the “square head and shoulders” apt. bldgs in the distance. It appears below these two apt. bldgs. in the other two images.
The Colonial is used as an evangelical church. Much of the interior is still intact, but re-decorated in different colors from the original, which was nothing to get very excited over. It was always just a plain, neighborhood theatre, originally built by the S&S Circuit (Small & Strausberg), which was later acquired by William Fox and eventually spun into the Randforce Circuit. The Colonial was situated at 1746 Broadway and had 2,222 seats, according to the 1944 Film Daily Year Book, which I believe is a bit exaggerated. I would guess 2,000 at most.
posted by Warren on May 12, 2004 at 4:26pm
Thank you, Bway ! I’m expecting Warren to add material of his on the Colonial, already posted on pages of the RKO Bushwick and other nearby theatres, on this site.
lostmemory, you’re welcome to the links about P.S. 81.
I’ll pass on Roswell, too. I am not a paranoiac Roswell conspiracy theorist-fanatic. I’m not waiting for my savior to step out of a U.F.O. I’ll stick with Ridgewood.
lostmemory, there’s several recent articles about PS 81 in the “Our Neighborhood” column of the Times Newsweekly that you may want to check out at :
http://timesnewsweekly.com/
Just click on “Archives”.
Your assumption about the brown boxcar being dismantled and trucked away is probbaly correct, but as the starship Enterprise has been known to travel back in time to the 20th century, as in the episode “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” of the original series, Scotty may have beamed it somewhere after all. Or maybe it’s in that Air Force hangar in Roswell, New Mexico ….. for more info, see “The X Files”.
OK, Bway, will do.
Here’s a link to an old image of Seneca Avenue five blocks southeast of the former Majestic Theater, facing southeast to the Seneca Avenue el station of the BMT Myrtle Avenue el station over Palmetto Street. The “DeKalb” trolley car is the predecessor of the current B-38 bus, and must have gone over the Brooklyn Bridge to “Park Row” in downtown Manhattan, as well. Note the cobblestone paving of Seneca Avenue :
http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?30992
The Wyckoff Theater stood at 247 Wyckoff Avenue, eastern corner of Wyckoff Avenue and Bleecker Street. It was before my time, so my earliest memory of it is as a Jehovah’s Witnesses Hall, about 1960 or 1961. My oldest aunt went there with her mother to see “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” for an adult admission of ten cents. It was not air conditioned at first, but my oldest aunt recalls going there as a kid in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s for a nickel, and having a “grand old time” there, seeing double features with cartoons, newsreels and short subjects.
I thought the Colonial in Bushwick had its own page here, until I tried to go there and didn’t find any !
Glad you’re on the case, Bway !
BTW, I just submitted a page to this site for the Colonial Theater at 1746 Bway (at Rockaway Avenue, and Chauncey St. in Bushwick). I hope your recent photo of it, as the Wayside Baptist Church, and information on it, supplied by Warren, on the RKO Bushwick and other pages on this site, eventually finds its way onto the new Colonial Theater page.
Perhaps I should also submit pages for the Decatur, Empire, and Monroe Theaters, while I’m at it.
lostmemory, thanks for the additional detail about the tracks between Cypress and Seneca. All I can think is that they either led into the car barns at Seneca and Dekalb or the Bushwick Branch of the LIRR. Beyond that, I’m stumped.
This might be a job for Kevin Walsh’s “Forgotten NY” site, or Tom Scannello’s “Forgotten NYC” site.
My parents, aunts and uncles remember the Car Barns well. I think there was also a vacant lot there that circuses and carnivals would set up their tents on. I think it’s a playground and running track now.
lostmemory, I never knew there were train tracks behind the Majestic Theater (between Seneca and Cypress Avenues). All I can think is that they were trolley tracks.
The northwest to southeast tracks that ran parallel to and between Wyckoff and Irving Avenues began in the late 19th century as the Evergreen Branch of the Long Island Rail Road. They then became a freight line, connecting Bushwick Terminal at Bushwick and Montrose Avenues to the Connecting Line + Bay Ridge LIRR east of Cooper Street, near where the 14th Street Canarsie Line comes out of the ground between Halsey St. and Wilson Avenue stations. I and my family knew them as the “dummy tracks”. They serviced local industry such as Dietz Coal and Fuel Oil, and Tulnoy Lumber, at Ridgewood Place, between Putnam Avenue and Palmetto Street, and Wyckoff and Irving Avenues.
My mother grew up near the “dummy tracks” on Harman Street, and, as a girl, liked to put pieces of glass on the tracks, and watch passing
trains crush them to powder. I last remember trains on those tracks on a clear sunny morning in October 1962.
As to the size of theaters in Ridgewood, some were small, others were built larger, deliberately. From 1945 to 1955, television seemed to have put the smaller theaters, like the Wyckoff, Parthenon, Majestic, Glenwood, and the Grandview, out of business.