RKO Madison Theatre
54-30 Myrtle Avenue,
Ridgewood,
NY
11385
54-30 Myrtle Avenue,
Ridgewood,
NY
11385
21 people
favorited this theater
Showing 126 - 150 of 1,251 comments
Would the RKO Madison by any other name be as fondly remembered ?
Bway usually assists me in viewing them. I will ask for his help. Thanks for thinking of me !
Indeed Lost Memory,
And to think ,it was almost “B.S. Moss Beacon Theater”.
Peter, hope you can view these images somehow!
Lost Memory,
Thanks, the etching does appear to proclaim “B.S. Moss Madison Theater”. My eyes are not what they used to be.
Perhaps there was a last minute change in Madison’s actual design. The earliest pictures show the blade type sign, which would have blocked the stone etching.The sign really projects what a once proud theater this was.
Peter,
The first line of the image labeled newmad.jpg,posted at 7:52 am.
Panzer65, what image are you looking at ? I can’t see Warren’s photobucket images; they’re blocked by my PC for some reason.
Interesting artist’s rendering of the facade of Madison,the area below the arch was to contain a stone etching proclaiming “Madison Theater”, which was never added to the actual design. The first few words are illegible to me, can anybody see what they say?
You’re welcome, East Coast Rocker and Warren.
Thanks Peter. Warren I was just on the Academy of Music page as well and anything prior to your links to the 2 intirior pix are not showing either. If you do have any pix of the Academy intirior or extirior I would love to see them. For what ever reason I can not seem to find any on google or any other search engine. It is almost like it was never there. NYU can bite me.
It refers to your PC keyboard, Warren. Hold down the “ALT” key, then hit the “F” key.
Warren there are quite a few. What you may want to do is an ALT-F and type in photobucket on this page and it should take you to all the links you have posted one by one. You may also want to check some of your other favorite sites on here as well.
Does anyone recsall if the Madison still had the “Blade” above the Marquee at the time it closed. I don’t recall if it did or not but that was 30 years ago.
Btw Warren most of your photobucket links from 2007 on back don’t seem to be there. Were they deleted?
I will consider Halloween 1977 to be the closing date of the RKO Madison Theatre, until I read a clear and convincing proof otherwise.
Thanks for all the details, Warren. It reads more like a Renaissance palazzo in Italy than it does a theatre in Ridgewood, Queens, NYC.
I wonder where all that marble went, and how much money was paid for it.
My thanks to East Coast Rocker for clarifying that “Sasquatch” was playing at the Ridgewood in the winter of ‘78. That pretty well settles a two year old quandary. The movie clock must have been a misprint.
I know, Lost Memory. It still bugs me, especially because I walked by the Madison every day around the time it must have closed, yet either never noticed nor remembered when it showed its last movie.
This all has a vaguely familiar ring to it.
Hey Lost when I was living out there Sasquatch was playing at the Ridgewood and the Madison was boarded up.
Thanks, Ed Solero. Did the clipping say what movie(s) were playing at the Madison on January 25, 1978 ?
Back on August 3rd, 2006, I posted a clipping of the Daily News Movie Clock from January 25, 1978, that suggested this theatre may still have been in operation as of that date.
OK.
To the best of my knowledge, the RKO Madison showed its last film around Halloween 1977, going on thirty-one years ago.
Thanks for the link, Lost Memory. I remember reading and printing out that article. Perhaps much of that electric equipment shown in still up there in the projection room.
Bway, have you e-mailed the CT management about correcting the intro on this page for the Madison ?
Bway, your dad’s story about the movie star who nonchalantly walked into the Madison from the subway, nonchalantly and unannounced, is like my dad’s story about Al Jolson doing the same, my dad meeting Jolson, and getting free tickets from Jolson for his show. My dad remembers Jolson bringing the house down with “Mammy !”
Actors running up and down the aisles scaring people during a horror movie …. Film Forum in lower Manhattan (57 Watts Street) did stuff like that for “The Tingler” …. near the end of the film, there is a scene when The Tingler is supposed to be loosed in a movie theater, and the audience is told it needs to scream, scream, SCREAM FOR THEIR LIVES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And, of course, for the fun of it, the audience screams their lungs out !!!
I’m trying to think what could have been done in person for “The Exorcist” when it was shown at the Madison in summer 1976.
Free barf bags, like for “Mark Of The Devil”, in 1972 ?
A dummy of Reagan in the outer lobby with a revolving head, spewing vomit ?
I’ve seen “Follow the bouncing ball” musical cartoons on TV when I was a small kid (about 5 or 6) but I don’t think I ever saw any in a theater.
Yeah, too bad your dad tossed those old photos. They’d be worth an Internet mint now !
I wish I had some of my father’s photographs….he said he used to stand outside the Madison when the movie stars would pull up in their limos, and had photos of them getting out and walking into the theater in a big todo. Unfortunately, one day back in the 70’s, he thought it was a good idea to “clean up”, and threw it all out.
He mentioned one movie star coming for some movie (I have to ask him which film or who it was, I don’t remember), but everyone was standing in front of the theater waiting for his limo to pull up in front of the Madison Theatre, and instead, he walked up the stairs from the L train subway just down the blocks to everyone’s surprise, and just nonchalantly walked into the theater, it wasn’t until he was under the marquee that anyone noticed him!! And of course by that time the crowd went wild.
He also remembers some horror movies playing at the Madison Theatre…and the management would have actors come out and run up and down the aisles in costumes scaring everyone in the theater in the dark…..he said all you would hear is screams through the whole movie!! Imagine stuff as dramatic as that in a movie theater today…it just doesn’t happen….
He also remembers the Madison’s organ playing when you walked into the theater. They would have a ball bouncing up and down over the words to the song, and the people in the theater would be singing along as the organ played.
There are so many stories that this building holds.
The introduction for this page leaves much to be desired, although a lot of introductions are like this on the site. Even some much more important or famous theaters than the Madison have even shorter or worse introductions!
I have mentioned a few times, that the last sentence of the intro is completely wrong….not only does the store take up the entire outer and inner lobbies, in addition to the whole auditorium on the orchestra level….it also takes up a good part of the former stage area as the store. The whole downstairs of the building is basically used for the store.
As for the second sentence, about the personal appearances, that is VERY true. My father used to stand outside the theater on certain nights, and the ACTUAL movie stars would make appearances at the Madison theater to promote their films. I know it happened in the 50’s and the 60’s. Sad, that by just a decade later, this theater would meet it’s untimely end.