Ridgewood Theatre

I just called the Ridgewood Theater and got a recorded message of showtimes at the Ridgewood for “Halloween”, “War”, “Balls Of Fury”, “Mr. Bean’s Holiday” and “Return To Humor”.

This is to see how many comments there are now on the Ridgewood Theater page.

Thanks Jim…. Wow, if that door was slightly ajar when I was in there, perhaps if I had the “big ones”, I’d pretend like I thought that door was a continuation of the furniture area….and open it. They did have a door open at the far end of the furniture are the day I was there that led to another stairway. I assume it’s an old emergency stairway from the theater days. I did poke my head in, and it was very old plaster, but not ornate plaster, and had a simple (but very old) railing in it….I think that stairway was probably one of the ones that led from the upper balcony emergency doors. The stairway went both up and down from the landing where the furniture area is.
Furthermore, I believe PKoch is right, while the stairway in the Liberty Dept store that you use to go up to the furniture area probably dates to the theater days, I too now believe that was an exit stairway from the balcony, that led to the OUTER lobby in the theater days, such as the one in the Ridgewood Theater. It’s too close to be the Grand Staircase from the Inner Lobby area that used to have the high ceiling. I am beginning to believe that the ornate white marble Grand Staircase was either jackhammered out, or they sheetrocked the area of it in….I don’t know where it could have been thiniking of the layout of the store, so I fear it may be the former….

One of my first memories of the Ridgewood Theater was of seeing a Greek gods and heroes film there, I’m not sure which one it was, which showed the Greek god Poseidon, ruler of the sea, rising up out of the ocean like a vast blue living mountain, ocean water running off his huge body like waterfalls, looking overpoweringly enormous to me, at age five, in 1961, sitting close to that huge screen.

Brooklyn Jim, I will certainly try and make it “next time”. I didn’t realize that that was the date you guys finally decided on…but even if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to make it anyway, as I had tickets to a football game that day… I haven’t been inside the Ridewood Theater since 1991, so I really am anxious to see it again. But from what it sounds like from Peter’s description in an email he sent me, and what was written here, it sounds like it is just like I remembered it in 1991, and all through the 80’s. Of course for you, last there in 1977, before it was multiplexed, it must have been quite different.
I heard you guys also visited the Liberty Dept Store, the infamous Madison Theater too…I’d love to hear your comments over on that page, and some of our theories (like the one I just posted in the Madison’s section) about Liberty Dept store’s furniture area up there.

Thank YOU, BklynJim ! Glad to read sunny Cal was spared the Bay Ridge-style tornados !

I wonder if John Cameron Swayze and younger Patrick Swayze are related ?

Z-100 !

“It takes a knockin', and keeps on rockin' !”

The other two lines I was trying to recall from “Chuck Berry : Hail Hail Rock ‘N Roll !”

Keith Richards (taunting) : Well, you’re gonna have to live with it [distorted sound in the movie], baby !"

Chuck Berry (indignant, loud) :

“I BEEN LIVIN' WITH IT FOR THIRTY YEARS, MAN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The diner on the triangle formed by Woodbine, Myrtle and St. Nicholas, once known as the Madison and then the Castillo Diner, that frankie, BrooklynJim and I ate at on Saturday August 25th 2007, after seeing “The Bourne Ultimatum” at the Ridgewood, is now known as “Las Montas” (Spanish for “the mountains” ?)

A place of “learning”, and perhaps also of coming of age, and of the baton of champion being passed, as in “The Hustler” (1961), “The Color Of Money” (1982) and the classic Twilight Zone episode, “A Game Of Pool” (1961).

Dominus vobiscum, et cum spiritu tuo.

Also, frankie, thanks for referring to me above as “the eminent Peter K”.

Maybe I can be dubbed “His Eminence” by Patrick Crowley and the other owners / managers of this site.

Good idea. I’ll mention it on the Pavilion page (yes, Peter K, that’s the Sanders page, and no, it’s not a convent any more, but the nun who taught me just sent me a birthday card from Long Island !!!)

Just a thought… perhaps the webmasters can be contacted at brooklynpix.com. They may have a copy of the print where they can make out the grease-pen writing on the photo. That writing may idenitfy the theater name. I can’t quite make it all out – particular on the left side of the image.

Thanks, guys. Can you still get piano lessons at the Holy Name convent ?

There’s a Windsor Theater listed on CT, but it was in Boro Park and seems to be a different building entirely. I really can’t make out the name over the entrance at all… I may have just projected “Windsor” in my mind due to the location in Windsor Terrace.