Warren, I don’t think the border between Brooklyn and Queens changed between 1931 and the present. I think what probably happened was that the 1931 Film Daily Year Book listed the Grandview as being in Brooklyn, because it was in postal zone 27 of the Brooklyn post office, even though the Grandview, and the old Brooklyn postal zone 27 itself, was located in the borough of Queens.
This persisted until January 1980, when the former Brooklyn postal zone 27, and the part of Brooklyn postal zone 37 that was in Queens, were re-designated zip code area 11385, part of the Flushing, Queens, NYC NY post office.
The Cinema Tour listing I have of theaters in Brooklyn includes theaters in Ridgewood and Glendale, like the Acme, Glenwood, Grandview, Madison, Majestic and Ridgewood, that are really in Queens. This “Brooklyn” error persists to this day, in newspaper listings of the Ridgewood Theater, which have it under the Brooklyn, not the Queens, heading, in their movie ads and theater listings.
I have an e-pal who graduated Franklin K. Lane High School, on the Cypress Hills-Woodhaven, Bklyn-Queens, border, in 1954. I could ask him about movie ticket prices for kids when he was a kid.
Please e-mail me the photo of your sister in front of the Majestic.
Thank you.
I’ve written lots of personal things on the Ridgewood Theater page, and, so far, nothing bad has happened as a result.
I graduated St. Francis Prep, Bklyn NY, in June 1973, the next-to-last all boys class and also the next-to-last class to graduate from the old building in Williamsburg, Bklyn.
Warren, thanks for posting that anecdote, however sad and regrettable that incident was. I had no idea that had happened inside the Drake. Not the best way to complain about the sound system : damaging and destroying the imaging system, not to mention the seats, candy counter and doors. It also doesn’t say much for Led Zeppelin and their fans.
The crowd at a late night screening of “Ladies and Gentlemen The Rolling Stones” at the Meserole in Greenpoint, Bklyn I attended with three friends in June 1975 was much better behaved, as I recall, although the pot smoke was almost as thick as at an actual concert. You could almost get high just sitting there breathing second-hand pot smoke.
lostmemory, I’m glad you liked my idea. I’m also glad it’s now been estabished beyond any reasonable doubt that 494 Seneca Avenue was indeed once the Majestic Theater. Will you be posting that photo of your younger sister in front of the Majestic on this page ?
By all means, try to find answers to your questions. The Old Timer of The Times Newsweekly may be a good place to start. He seems fairly knowledgable. You may not find answers to all your questions, but, if you never ask any of them, of anyone, you will never find answers to any of them.
Now that it’s been said repeatedly that the Majestic Theater became a funeral home, I’m expecting a comment from Bway about how a funeral home compares to a church as a post-theater function of a building that was originally built as a theater. How is a funeral home like a theater ? One comes to view the body of a loved one instead of a film. There are seats. It’s dark, quiet, sometimes there’s organ music. The body is a focal point of the grief and mourning and remembrances of the patrons, just as cinema spectators press their emotions and fantasies upon the images on the screen.
A similar comparison can be made between a theater and a church.
lostmemory, why not e-mail or paper-mail write to The Old Timer at the Times Newsweekly, and ask how to get in touch with the person who mentioned the Majestic Theater in the May 13, 2004 installment of the “Our Neighborhood” columnn ?
I’m feeling more and more like the “new Old Timer” !
I’m glad you remember Ciro’s Restaurant. Didn’t it have a white stucco exterior, and dark windows with neon beer signs in them ?
I went to Sal’s Barber Shop on the western corner of St. Nicholas and Woodbine for haircuts, 1964 ? through 1970. I remember sayings in round circles on the big glass windows : “Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you cry alone !”
I never hung out in the Ridgewood Grove Poolroom, but my high school class of 1973 had a rowdy, brawling, drunken “reunion” eight days after graduation, in mid-June 1973, in Capone’s Bar, on the first floor of the Ridgewood Grove building, right at the eastern corner of St. Nicholas and Palmetto.
I don’t think the Imperial Theater at Irving and DeKalb Avenues has a page on this site. I think there’s a page here, though, for the Rivoli, which stood at 1374 Myrtle Avenue, on the south side, between Knickerbocker and Wilson Avenues, Harman and Himrod Sts. It’s adjacent to the Metropolitan Avenue-bound platform of the Knickerbocker Avenue station of the Myrtle Avenue el (M train).
lostmemory, when I spoke to Father Kelly on July 30, 2004, he said he came to St. Brigid in 1960. I read aloud for him in first grade in 1961 or 1962. I remember Father McCabe was very tall, and remember remarking to my father that he just seeemed to barely fit through the doorways of the St. Brigid auditorium. I remember the doorway that said “Billiards” to the right of the Ridgewood Theater. Peter P. Rich’s music store, where I took drum lessons in fall 1967, was just to the left of the Ridgewood, one flight up. I was last there in March or April 1972.
My parents, aunts and uncles remember the Parthenon Theater at 329 Wyckoff Avenue, corner of Palmetto St. when it showed films. It was a bowling alley when I started first grade in Sept. 1961.
I recall a BonTon Diner on the southwest corner of Wyckoff and DeKalb, and the Wyckoff Heights 11237 zip code post office nearby at 86 Wyckoff Avenue. The Wagner Theater, at 110 Wyckoff Avenue, was one block southeast, between DeKalb Avenue and Stockholm Street.
S & N Radio and TV Repair, owned and run by Edward Lange, was on the opposite, northeast side of Wyckoff Avenue. I last saw and spoke with Eddie Lange in mid-September 1997. He was my family’s TV, radio and phonograph repairman.
Knickerbocker Boy’s and Men’s shop was the place to buy St. Brigid’s school uniforms. Knickerbocker Avenue was, and still is, a busy shopping street northwest of Myrtle Avenue.
Robert Hall’s at Irving and DeKalb used to be the Imperial Theater. My Uncle John, now age 83, remembers seeing the Lugosi “Dracula” there as a kid, and later going there to buy some civilian clothes after he’d gotten out of the Signal Corps at the end of WW II, after it had become a Robert Hall’s.
KathyO, Jahn’s is at 117-03 Hillside Avenue in Richmond Hill, at the east end of the Q-55 bus line from Ridgewood. Next door is RKO Keith’s of Richmond Hill, now a bingo hall and flea market, and, north of that, Salerno’s Italian Restaurant. The Triangle Hofbrau German Restaurant used to be diagonally across the intersection of Myrtle and Hillside Avenues from Jahn’s, occupying the triangle formed by Myrtle and Jamaica Avenues and 117th Street, which crosses Myrtle to become Hillside Avenue. I last ate in the Hofbrau November 11th, 1994. When I returned in May 1995 it had become the Cafe Europa, featuring French and Russian cuisine. Now, sadly, it is medical offices.
I was last in Jahn’s April 3, 2004. I was sad to see how dark and empty it was. I’ve been in brighter and livelier funeral parlors. I never had a kitchen sink there, but I’ve seen it on their menu.
KathyO : my family and I have been patients at both Wyckoff Heights and the former Bethany Deaconess Hospitals several times. Corato’s is still there on Woodbine between St. Nicholas and Myrtle Avenues. The Villa Maria Restaurant is no longer on Cypress Avenue between Myrtle and Putnam Avenues. I last ate there August 1990. It was a favorite place of my family to eat out and also get orders to go, to eat at home, especially a huge breaded veal cutlet with lots of spaghetti and tomato sauce.
KathyO and lostmemory : do you remember Ciro’s Italian Restaurant on the north corner of St. Nicholas and Woodbine ?
EllenA, I knew a Michael Sheridan, from my h.s., whom I think lived at 58-30 Catalpa Avenue (at Woodward) in Ridgewood, near St. Matthias, where Drs. Bass and Sheflin still have their offices.
KathyO, I don’t remember Hart Lanes Bowling Alley, but when my parents were dating, 1940 to 1945, they went to dances at the Knights Of Columbus at Bushwick Avenue and Hart St.
Hope these are enough neighborhood memories for you.
That “Our Neighborhood The Way It Was” article in the May 13, 2004 Times Newsweekly is very near and dear to me and my family, because it describes much of our lives spent in Ridgewood in the past eighty or so years, particularly the mention and photograph of Father York, former pastor of St. Brigid’s, whose parochial school I and my mother and many members of her family attended. I printed three copies of that article and mailed it to my three aunts and two uncles. They were very glad to receive it.
lostmemory, I’m glad you posted the link to that “Our Neighborhood The Way It Was” article in the May 13, 2004 Times Newsweekly (former Ridgewood Times)that mentioned the Majestic being at Seneca and Greene Avenues. I was going to mention that article to you.
Many theaters have the same name. The Majestic on Fulton Street later became, I think, part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, nearby on Lafayette Avenue near Fulton Street.
The CinemaTour listings for the former Majestic and Grandview theaters, among many others, suffer from the common Brooklyn-Queens confusion : it lists them in Brooklyn, but they are really in Queens.
I just checked the CinemaTour listing and it lists a Grandview Theater, at 659 Grandview Avenue, between Linden St. and Gates Avenue, according to MapQuest, separate and distinct from the Majestic Theater which was on Seneca Avenue.
ErwinM, my father, born 1919, remembers outdoor movies in the summer near the Colonial Theater, 1746 Broadway, at Rockaway Avenue, in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. He says they were shown on an outside wall of the Colonial, with seating in an adjacent lot. He also remembers people watching from fire escapes outside their apartments in nearby tenements.
I just ran MapQuest on 424 and 494 Seneca Avenue. 424 is between Stanhope and Himrod Sts. 494 is at Greene Avenue so perhaps 424 in my listing is incorrect, and should be 494.
lostmemory, thanks for the link. I just looked at it, and it’s alot like the first chapter in a book I have at home about the making of “Psycho”, titled “The Atrocities of Ed Gein”. True, Gein went way beyond Norman Bates to “Buffalo Bill” of “Silence Of The Lambs”.
Other former theaters in Ridgewood : the Parthenon, at Myrtle and Wyckoff, the Oasis, on Fresh Pond Road a few blocks south of Metropolitan Avenue, the Glenwood (now the Ridgewood post office, before that, a bowling alley) at Myrtle and Decatur, the Wyckoff, at Wyckoff and Bleeker. Where was the theater in Ridgewood you are trying to remember the name of ?
I don’t know about searching by address or street on this site.
The Casino on Liberty Avenue in Richmond Hill may have been pornographic at one time, but I never saw it as such. I don’t think I ever saw the theater at all, between early April 1974 and late November 1989.
Agreed. The Madison greatly enchanced my viewing of the horror films I saw there, such as “The Premature Burial” (summer 1962)“Black Sabbath” (summer 1964),“I Saw What You Did” (summer 1965), “Die Monster Die !” (day before start of school, September 1966), “Dracula Has Risen From The Grave” (January 1969), and “Tales From The Crypt”(March 1972).
Which brings us to two Clive Barker short stories, “Sex, Death and Starshine”, the ultimate haunted theater story, and “Son Of Celluloid”, in which the memories, thoughts and emotions the audience presses upon the images on the screen of a revival cinema, combine with the stomach cancer of a dead escaped convict between the screen and back wall of the theater, to form a shape-shifting monster.
if you wish to check the release date. Yes, I know Charles Bronson was in “House Of Wax”. Also Vincent Price and Phyllis Kirk. Perhaps Buchinsky was Bronson’s original first name. That would be on the imdb also.
Bway and lostmemory, thanks for mentioning that “Psycho” was shown at the RKO Madison. Now, one of my favorite films, ever, and a favorite movie house I grew up with, will be forever linked in my psyche.
I recall “Psycho” being shown at the Ridgewood in its May 1969 re-release, and the Daily News referring to it as “Randforce’s Ridgewood”.
My first time to the original Crossbay was June 1975 to see a double bill of “Flesh Gordon” and “The Groove Tube”. I was next there the last Saturday of November 1989 to see “Back To The Future II”. I was sorry to see how it had deteriorated since 1975. Ditto the Saturday of Labor Day weekend 1993 when I returned there to see “Hard Target”.
Harrison Ford in “The Fugitive” was playing in an adjacent cinema.
I haven’t been there since.
Crossbay 2 a few blocks west at Liberty Avenue and 92nd Street was already open in mid-October 1990, because I almost saw Barry Levinson’s “Avalon” there, then. The 1990 remake of “Night Of The Living Dead” was playing there also. The first film I saw at the Crossbay 2 was “Silence Of The Lambs” on Easter Eve 1991, then “Defenseless” in late August 1991, and, most recently, the Christopher Reeve-Kirstie Alley remake of “Village Of The Damned” the first Saturday in May 1995.
One almost wouldn’t know the Crossbay 2 were there unless one was looking for it. I think it’s more visible from Rockaway Blvd. than it is from Liberty Avenue.
My parents and I saw the film, “Serpico”, starring Al Pacino and directed by Sidney Lumet, at the Casino Theater on Liberty Avenue in Richmond Hill, early April 1974. The entrance was on the south side of Liberty Avenue, between 113th and 114th Sts.
The last Saturday in November 1989, I went looking for it while walking under the el on the south side of Liberty Avenue. I was too close. A bit later, walking by on the north side of Liberty, I saw clearly where it had been : the length of what had been the auditorium, running parallel to, and the lobby’s length south of, Liberty Avenue, between 114th and 113th Streets. I do not know now what the theater has become : probably stores.
Warren, what about “The Ten Commandments”(1956) ?
Warren, I don’t think the border between Brooklyn and Queens changed between 1931 and the present. I think what probably happened was that the 1931 Film Daily Year Book listed the Grandview as being in Brooklyn, because it was in postal zone 27 of the Brooklyn post office, even though the Grandview, and the old Brooklyn postal zone 27 itself, was located in the borough of Queens.
This persisted until January 1980, when the former Brooklyn postal zone 27, and the part of Brooklyn postal zone 37 that was in Queens, were re-designated zip code area 11385, part of the Flushing, Queens, NYC NY post office.
The Cinema Tour listing I have of theaters in Brooklyn includes theaters in Ridgewood and Glendale, like the Acme, Glenwood, Grandview, Madison, Majestic and Ridgewood, that are really in Queens. This “Brooklyn” error persists to this day, in newspaper listings of the Ridgewood Theater, which have it under the Brooklyn, not the Queens, heading, in their movie ads and theater listings.
lostmemory, I received your private e-mail with the picture. Thanks.
Your comment above, and the reasoning it contains, is the essence of the detective work of “urban archaeology”. Keep up the good work !
Here’s the e-address of the Internet Movie DataBase, if you don’t already have it, for further film research :
www.imdb.com
I have an e-pal who graduated Franklin K. Lane High School, on the Cypress Hills-Woodhaven, Bklyn-Queens, border, in 1954. I could ask him about movie ticket prices for kids when he was a kid.
lostmemory, my e-mail address is :
.army.mil
Please e-mail me the photo of your sister in front of the Majestic.
Thank you.
I’ve written lots of personal things on the Ridgewood Theater page, and, so far, nothing bad has happened as a result.
I graduated St. Francis Prep, Bklyn NY, in June 1973, the next-to-last all boys class and also the next-to-last class to graduate from the old building in Williamsburg, Bklyn.
Warren, thanks for posting that anecdote, however sad and regrettable that incident was. I had no idea that had happened inside the Drake. Not the best way to complain about the sound system : damaging and destroying the imaging system, not to mention the seats, candy counter and doors. It also doesn’t say much for Led Zeppelin and their fans.
The crowd at a late night screening of “Ladies and Gentlemen The Rolling Stones” at the Meserole in Greenpoint, Bklyn I attended with three friends in June 1975 was much better behaved, as I recall, although the pot smoke was almost as thick as at an actual concert. You could almost get high just sitting there breathing second-hand pot smoke.
lostmemory, I’m glad you liked my idea. I’m also glad it’s now been estabished beyond any reasonable doubt that 494 Seneca Avenue was indeed once the Majestic Theater. Will you be posting that photo of your younger sister in front of the Majestic on this page ?
By all means, try to find answers to your questions. The Old Timer of The Times Newsweekly may be a good place to start. He seems fairly knowledgable. You may not find answers to all your questions, but, if you never ask any of them, of anyone, you will never find answers to any of them.
Now that it’s been said repeatedly that the Majestic Theater became a funeral home, I’m expecting a comment from Bway about how a funeral home compares to a church as a post-theater function of a building that was originally built as a theater. How is a funeral home like a theater ? One comes to view the body of a loved one instead of a film. There are seats. It’s dark, quiet, sometimes there’s organ music. The body is a focal point of the grief and mourning and remembrances of the patrons, just as cinema spectators press their emotions and fantasies upon the images on the screen.
A similar comparison can be made between a theater and a church.
lostmemory, why not e-mail or paper-mail write to The Old Timer at the Times Newsweekly, and ask how to get in touch with the person who mentioned the Majestic Theater in the May 13, 2004 installment of the “Our Neighborhood” columnn ?
I’m feeling more and more like the “new Old Timer” !
lostmemory :
I’m glad you remember Ciro’s Restaurant. Didn’t it have a white stucco exterior, and dark windows with neon beer signs in them ?
I went to Sal’s Barber Shop on the western corner of St. Nicholas and Woodbine for haircuts, 1964 ? through 1970. I remember sayings in round circles on the big glass windows : “Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you cry alone !”
I never hung out in the Ridgewood Grove Poolroom, but my high school class of 1973 had a rowdy, brawling, drunken “reunion” eight days after graduation, in mid-June 1973, in Capone’s Bar, on the first floor of the Ridgewood Grove building, right at the eastern corner of St. Nicholas and Palmetto.
I don’t think the Imperial Theater at Irving and DeKalb Avenues has a page on this site. I think there’s a page here, though, for the Rivoli, which stood at 1374 Myrtle Avenue, on the south side, between Knickerbocker and Wilson Avenues, Harman and Himrod Sts. It’s adjacent to the Metropolitan Avenue-bound platform of the Knickerbocker Avenue station of the Myrtle Avenue el (M train).
lostmemory, when I spoke to Father Kelly on July 30, 2004, he said he came to St. Brigid in 1960. I read aloud for him in first grade in 1961 or 1962. I remember Father McCabe was very tall, and remember remarking to my father that he just seeemed to barely fit through the doorways of the St. Brigid auditorium. I remember the doorway that said “Billiards” to the right of the Ridgewood Theater. Peter P. Rich’s music store, where I took drum lessons in fall 1967, was just to the left of the Ridgewood, one flight up. I was last there in March or April 1972.
My parents, aunts and uncles remember the Parthenon Theater at 329 Wyckoff Avenue, corner of Palmetto St. when it showed films. It was a bowling alley when I started first grade in Sept. 1961.
I recall a BonTon Diner on the southwest corner of Wyckoff and DeKalb, and the Wyckoff Heights 11237 zip code post office nearby at 86 Wyckoff Avenue. The Wagner Theater, at 110 Wyckoff Avenue, was one block southeast, between DeKalb Avenue and Stockholm Street.
S & N Radio and TV Repair, owned and run by Edward Lange, was on the opposite, northeast side of Wyckoff Avenue. I last saw and spoke with Eddie Lange in mid-September 1997. He was my family’s TV, radio and phonograph repairman.
Knickerbocker Boy’s and Men’s shop was the place to buy St. Brigid’s school uniforms. Knickerbocker Avenue was, and still is, a busy shopping street northwest of Myrtle Avenue.
Robert Hall’s at Irving and DeKalb used to be the Imperial Theater. My Uncle John, now age 83, remembers seeing the Lugosi “Dracula” there as a kid, and later going there to buy some civilian clothes after he’d gotten out of the Signal Corps at the end of WW II, after it had become a Robert Hall’s.
KathyO, Jahn’s is at 117-03 Hillside Avenue in Richmond Hill, at the east end of the Q-55 bus line from Ridgewood. Next door is RKO Keith’s of Richmond Hill, now a bingo hall and flea market, and, north of that, Salerno’s Italian Restaurant. The Triangle Hofbrau German Restaurant used to be diagonally across the intersection of Myrtle and Hillside Avenues from Jahn’s, occupying the triangle formed by Myrtle and Jamaica Avenues and 117th Street, which crosses Myrtle to become Hillside Avenue. I last ate in the Hofbrau November 11th, 1994. When I returned in May 1995 it had become the Cafe Europa, featuring French and Russian cuisine. Now, sadly, it is medical offices.
I was last in Jahn’s April 3, 2004. I was sad to see how dark and empty it was. I’ve been in brighter and livelier funeral parlors. I never had a kitchen sink there, but I’ve seen it on their menu.
KathyO : my family and I have been patients at both Wyckoff Heights and the former Bethany Deaconess Hospitals several times. Corato’s is still there on Woodbine between St. Nicholas and Myrtle Avenues. The Villa Maria Restaurant is no longer on Cypress Avenue between Myrtle and Putnam Avenues. I last ate there August 1990. It was a favorite place of my family to eat out and also get orders to go, to eat at home, especially a huge breaded veal cutlet with lots of spaghetti and tomato sauce.
KathyO and lostmemory : do you remember Ciro’s Italian Restaurant on the north corner of St. Nicholas and Woodbine ?
EllenA, I knew a Michael Sheridan, from my h.s., whom I think lived at 58-30 Catalpa Avenue (at Woodward) in Ridgewood, near St. Matthias, where Drs. Bass and Sheflin still have their offices.
KathyO, I don’t remember Hart Lanes Bowling Alley, but when my parents were dating, 1940 to 1945, they went to dances at the Knights Of Columbus at Bushwick Avenue and Hart St.
Hope these are enough neighborhood memories for you.
That “Our Neighborhood The Way It Was” article in the May 13, 2004 Times Newsweekly is very near and dear to me and my family, because it describes much of our lives spent in Ridgewood in the past eighty or so years, particularly the mention and photograph of Father York, former pastor of St. Brigid’s, whose parochial school I and my mother and many members of her family attended. I printed three copies of that article and mailed it to my three aunts and two uncles. They were very glad to receive it.
lostmemory, I’m glad you posted the link to that “Our Neighborhood The Way It Was” article in the May 13, 2004 Times Newsweekly (former Ridgewood Times)that mentioned the Majestic being at Seneca and Greene Avenues. I was going to mention that article to you.
Many theaters have the same name. The Majestic on Fulton Street later became, I think, part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, nearby on Lafayette Avenue near Fulton Street.
The CinemaTour listings for the former Majestic and Grandview theaters, among many others, suffer from the common Brooklyn-Queens confusion : it lists them in Brooklyn, but they are really in Queens.
I would say it’s probably the one in downtown Brooklyn, though I can’t prove it.There’s not enough information in the photo to be sure.
I just checked the CinemaTour listing and it lists a Grandview Theater, at 659 Grandview Avenue, between Linden St. and Gates Avenue, according to MapQuest, separate and distinct from the Majestic Theater which was on Seneca Avenue.
ErwinM, my father, born 1919, remembers outdoor movies in the summer near the Colonial Theater, 1746 Broadway, at Rockaway Avenue, in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. He says they were shown on an outside wall of the Colonial, with seating in an adjacent lot. He also remembers people watching from fire escapes outside their apartments in nearby tenements.
I just ran MapQuest on 424 and 494 Seneca Avenue. 424 is between Stanhope and Himrod Sts. 494 is at Greene Avenue so perhaps 424 in my listing is incorrect, and should be 494.
I have a listing for the Majestic Theater at 424 Seneca Avenue, at Greene Avenue. I’ve seen Seneca Chapels myself.
lostmemory, like yourself, I find my short term memory weakening as my long term memory sharpens. A sign of aging.
lostmemory, thanks for the link. I just looked at it, and it’s alot like the first chapter in a book I have at home about the making of “Psycho”, titled “The Atrocities of Ed Gein”. True, Gein went way beyond Norman Bates to “Buffalo Bill” of “Silence Of The Lambs”.
Other former theaters in Ridgewood : the Parthenon, at Myrtle and Wyckoff, the Oasis, on Fresh Pond Road a few blocks south of Metropolitan Avenue, the Glenwood (now the Ridgewood post office, before that, a bowling alley) at Myrtle and Decatur, the Wyckoff, at Wyckoff and Bleeker. Where was the theater in Ridgewood you are trying to remember the name of ?
I don’t know about searching by address or street on this site.
lostmemory, I just checked the IMDb, and it shows a release date of 1953 for “House Of Wax”.
The Casino on Liberty Avenue in Richmond Hill may have been pornographic at one time, but I never saw it as such. I don’t think I ever saw the theater at all, between early April 1974 and late November 1989.
Agreed. The Madison greatly enchanced my viewing of the horror films I saw there, such as “The Premature Burial” (summer 1962)“Black Sabbath” (summer 1964),“I Saw What You Did” (summer 1965), “Die Monster Die !” (day before start of school, September 1966), “Dracula Has Risen From The Grave” (January 1969), and “Tales From The Crypt”(March 1972).
Which brings us to two Clive Barker short stories, “Sex, Death and Starshine”, the ultimate haunted theater story, and “Son Of Celluloid”, in which the memories, thoughts and emotions the audience presses upon the images on the screen of a revival cinema, combine with the stomach cancer of a dead escaped convict between the screen and back wall of the theater, to form a shape-shifting monster.
Hi lostmemory … you can check out “House Of Wax” at :
www.imdb.com
if you wish to check the release date. Yes, I know Charles Bronson was in “House Of Wax”. Also Vincent Price and Phyllis Kirk. Perhaps Buchinsky was Bronson’s original first name. That would be on the imdb also.
Bway and lostmemory, thanks for mentioning that “Psycho” was shown at the RKO Madison. Now, one of my favorite films, ever, and a favorite movie house I grew up with, will be forever linked in my psyche.
I recall “Psycho” being shown at the Ridgewood in its May 1969 re-release, and the Daily News referring to it as “Randforce’s Ridgewood”.
Thank you, RobertR.
My first time to the original Crossbay was June 1975 to see a double bill of “Flesh Gordon” and “The Groove Tube”. I was next there the last Saturday of November 1989 to see “Back To The Future II”. I was sorry to see how it had deteriorated since 1975. Ditto the Saturday of Labor Day weekend 1993 when I returned there to see “Hard Target”.
Harrison Ford in “The Fugitive” was playing in an adjacent cinema.
I haven’t been there since.
Crossbay 2 a few blocks west at Liberty Avenue and 92nd Street was already open in mid-October 1990, because I almost saw Barry Levinson’s “Avalon” there, then. The 1990 remake of “Night Of The Living Dead” was playing there also. The first film I saw at the Crossbay 2 was “Silence Of The Lambs” on Easter Eve 1991, then “Defenseless” in late August 1991, and, most recently, the Christopher Reeve-Kirstie Alley remake of “Village Of The Damned” the first Saturday in May 1995.
One almost wouldn’t know the Crossbay 2 were there unless one was looking for it. I think it’s more visible from Rockaway Blvd. than it is from Liberty Avenue.
My parents and I saw the film, “Serpico”, starring Al Pacino and directed by Sidney Lumet, at the Casino Theater on Liberty Avenue in Richmond Hill, early April 1974. The entrance was on the south side of Liberty Avenue, between 113th and 114th Sts.
The last Saturday in November 1989, I went looking for it while walking under the el on the south side of Liberty Avenue. I was too close. A bit later, walking by on the north side of Liberty, I saw clearly where it had been : the length of what had been the auditorium, running parallel to, and the lobby’s length south of, Liberty Avenue, between 114th and 113th Streets. I do not know now what the theater has become : probably stores.