In the Boston area, almost all of the GCCs that were open in July 1998 are still operating as AMCs today: Fenway 13, Chestnut Hill 5, Braintree 10, Burlington 10, Framingham 14 (now 16), and Tyngsboro 12.
The one exception is the four-screen GCC at Hanover Mall, which had closed in 1998. This reopened in 2001 as a Patriot Cinema. It now has six screens and will soon have ten.
Are Boston, Chicago, and NYC the only places where both Loews and AMC now operate?
Loew’s 1967 annual report mentions the chain’s acquisition of the Picfair, Beverly, Crest, and other Statewide Circuit theatres. See pages 5 through 8.
Loew’s 1967 annual report mentions the chain’s acquisition of the Picfair, Beverly, Crest, and other Statewide Circuit theatres. See pages 5 through 8.
Both the 1966 and 1967 reports include a list of all Loew’s theatres that are open or under construction. The 1966 report says that Loew’s Westcheter is in Coral Gables, but the 1967 report says it’s in Miami. I don’t know which is correct.
I also do not know whether this theatre is still operating. Any further information would be appreciated.
Well, the Loew’s corporation that opened this theatre bought Lorillard tobacco around 1969, then sold off its entire theatre business around 1985. That Loews Corporation still exists, but now has nothing to do with any theatres.
The theatre division eventually fell into the hands of Sony, merged with Cineplex, and went bankrupt in 2001. The resulting Loews Cineplex Entertainment corporation is now about to be merged into AMC.
So you’d like to beat the heat this summer by going to the movies, but can’t stand rubbing elbows with yakking popcorn-munchers? Avant-garde filmmaker Peter Kubelka felt the same way 35 years ago, so he designed and built the Invisible Cinema: a movie theater with peripheral blinders between the seats intended to eliminate distraction from either side. Did it work out? According to an oral history of the Invisible Cinema by cineaste Sky Sitney that appears in the current issue of Grey Room, a quarterly of art and politics published in Cambridge by the MIT Press, yes and no.
In 1969, Kubelka joined with Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney (Sky’s father), and other filmmakers and critics in founding Anthology Film Archives, a museum of experimentalist film in downtown Manhattan. They leased a cinema on Lafayette Street and covered the walls, ceiling, and Kubelka-designed seats with black velvet. In addition to the barriers between seats, latecomers weren’t permitted to enter the theater. Confirming that the seat design cut down on chatter, Brakhage tells Sitney that ‘'people really had a sense of drifting in a black space, a black box, and black ahead of you, nothing visible except the screen."
Another Brakhage memory, however, may explain why the experiment wasn’t repeated after the archives moved to a new location in 1974: ‘'There was a nervousness about it. The minute they tell me I can’t pee, for example, I suddenly have the sensation that I have to. If you get up and leave, you can’t get back in. So there you are, parted between the vision you are seeing and bodily functions. Quite a strain, I thought, in that sense."
Here’s a link to that 1965 annual report. See pages 7 and 8. You will need to wait for the images to load.
I do not know the theatre’s address, the name of the “shopping center complex” that contained it, or whether it is still operating. Any further information would be appreciated.
It was right at the beginning of South Street in Roslindale Square, facing Adams Park. I believe that it was replaced by a medical office building. Here’s a photo of it, with the marquee advertising “Diamonds Are Forever”, so it stayed open at least into the early 1970s.
Having a picket line outside your theatre in a left-leaning neighborhood will definitely hurt its business. I’ve seen this personally in my own neighborhood.
“The land under Loew’s Capitol Theatre on Broadway in New York City has been leased to Uris Building Corporation, which will demolish the theatre and erect a 1,700,000 sq. ft. office building. Loew’s ownership of the basic lease should enable us to realize between $16,000,000 and $17,000,000 on this property, if we elect to mortgage or dispose of it.
“Your Company has many theatres and commercial properties in excellent locations, many of which are completely free and clear of mortgage debt. It is our intention to carry out a mortgaging program over the next few years. With the addition of mortgage money and cash flow to our present cash and security position, we project having available resources approximating $200,000,000 during the next three years. At the opportune time, we intend to use this fund for a major acquisiiion. Pending the fulfillment of this program, we are making investments in marketable securities.”
A year later, that “major acquisition” turned out to be Lorillard, a tobacco company.
“With profits from their hotels, the brothers began buying into Loews in 1959. Tisch ousted then president-CEO Eugene Picker and took control.
Company was one of the larger movie exhibitors in the country, but the Tisch brothers were interested in the real estate they sat on. Two years later, they demolished Gotham’s Loews Lexington theater and built the Summit Hotel. They used other unprofitable theater sites to build apartment buildings and the 2,000-room Americana hotel in 1962."
Anyone know which theatre site the Americana was built on?
Loew’s annual reports from 1965, 1966, and 1967 are online and include lists of all Loew’s theatres and hotels. Unfortunately, the 1968 and later annual reports don’t include these lists.
(I’ve compiled a list of all Loew’s annual reports from 1965 through 1985. They make interesting reading. I wish I could find reports from earlier than 1965.)
According to this New York Times article of February 6, 1968, the Tisch brothers, who already owned several hotels, took over Loew’s Theatres in 1960.
“Loew’s Hotels was created as a subsidiary. Their first project under the Loew’s roof was the construction of the Summit Hotel on Lexington Avenue, where the old Loew’s Lexington had stood.”
A sign advertising this theatre still stands today, next to Route 24. Where the list of seven movies should be, there is just the single word “CLOSED”.
“The program of building large multiple auditorium theatres, equipped with state-of- the-art sound and projection systems and comfortable push back seats, will continue at an accelerated pace in 1984. Construction of a luxury six auditorium theatre at Eighty-fourth Street and Broadway in Manhattan is scheduled to open [sic] in December.
…
"In all, forty-eight new screens are anticipated for operation by the end of 1984, the most ambitious single-year building program in the [Theatre] Division’s history. All will be the comfortable, luxury theatres for which the company is noted.”
“During 1982 the [Theatres] Division added seventeen new screens in three ultra-modem complexes. Our new theatres, featuring spacious lobbies with giant refreshment centers, and large, wide auditoriums with wall-to-wall screens, which our research indicates the public prefers, have met with great acceptance.
“In the fast-growing Houston suburbs, a five- screen complex was opened in the exclusive Southpoint Center. A six-screen free-standing building was constructed opposite New Jersey’s mammoth shopping center, Willowbrook Mall, and another six-screen theatre is the focal point of the Harmon Meadow complex of shops, hotel, restaurants and office buildings located within sight of the New Jersey Meadowlands sports complex.”
In the Boston area, almost all of the GCCs that were open in July 1998 are still operating as AMCs today: Fenway 13, Chestnut Hill 5, Braintree 10, Burlington 10, Framingham 14 (now 16), and Tyngsboro 12.
The one exception is the four-screen GCC at Hanover Mall, which had closed in 1998. This reopened in 2001 as a Patriot Cinema. It now has six screens and will soon have ten.
Are Boston, Chicago, and NYC the only places where both Loews and AMC now operate?
Loew’s 1967 annual report mentions the chain’s acquisition of the Picfair, Beverly, Crest, and other Statewide Circuit theatres. See pages 5 through 8.
Loew’s 1967 annual report mentions the chain’s acquisition of the Picfair, Beverly, Crest, and other Statewide Circuit theatres. See pages 5 through 8.
Here’s the Picwood’s listing.
Here’s a link to Loew’s 1967 annual report. See page 5.
I do not know whether this theatre is still operating. Any further information would be appreciated.
Here’s a link to Loew’s 1967 annual report. See page 6.
I do not know whether this theatre is still operating. Any further information would be appreciated.
Here’s a link to Loew’s 1966 annual report. See pages 6 and 7.
Both the 1966 and 1967 reports include a list of all Loew’s theatres that are open or under construction. The 1966 report says that Loew’s Westcheter is in Coral Gables, but the 1967 report says it’s in Miami. I don’t know which is correct.
I also do not know whether this theatre is still operating. Any further information would be appreciated.
If the merger causes some theatres to close, won’t that also cause job losses?
From Loews 1976 annual report:
“During 1976, a new three screen complex in Inverarry, Florida, and a new quad cinema in Harmon Cove, New Jersey, were opened.”
Well, the Loew’s corporation that opened this theatre bought Lorillard tobacco around 1969, then sold off its entire theatre business around 1985. That Loews Corporation still exists, but now has nothing to do with any theatres.
The theatre division eventually fell into the hands of Sony, merged with Cineplex, and went bankrupt in 2001. The resulting Loews Cineplex Entertainment corporation is now about to be merged into AMC.
The “Invisible Cinema” is mentioned in this week’s Boston Sunday Globe Ideas section:
Isolation Cinema
By Joshua Glenn | July 3, 2005
So you’d like to beat the heat this summer by going to the movies, but can’t stand rubbing elbows with yakking popcorn-munchers? Avant-garde filmmaker Peter Kubelka felt the same way 35 years ago, so he designed and built the Invisible Cinema: a movie theater with peripheral blinders between the seats intended to eliminate distraction from either side. Did it work out? According to an oral history of the Invisible Cinema by cineaste Sky Sitney that appears in the current issue of Grey Room, a quarterly of art and politics published in Cambridge by the MIT Press, yes and no.
In 1969, Kubelka joined with Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney (Sky’s father), and other filmmakers and critics in founding Anthology Film Archives, a museum of experimentalist film in downtown Manhattan. They leased a cinema on Lafayette Street and covered the walls, ceiling, and Kubelka-designed seats with black velvet. In addition to the barriers between seats, latecomers weren’t permitted to enter the theater. Confirming that the seat design cut down on chatter, Brakhage tells Sitney that ‘'people really had a sense of drifting in a black space, a black box, and black ahead of you, nothing visible except the screen."
Another Brakhage memory, however, may explain why the experiment wasn’t repeated after the archives moved to a new location in 1974: ‘'There was a nervousness about it. The minute they tell me I can’t pee, for example, I suddenly have the sensation that I have to. If you get up and leave, you can’t get back in. So there you are, parted between the vision you are seeing and bodily functions. Quite a strain, I thought, in that sense."
Here’s a link to that 1965 annual report. See pages 7 and 8. You will need to wait for the images to load.
I do not know the theatre’s address, the name of the “shopping center complex” that contained it, or whether it is still operating. Any further information would be appreciated.
Here’s a link to that 1965 annual report. See pages 7 and 8. You will need to wait for the images to load.
I do not know the theatre’s address or whether it is still operating. Any further information would be appreciated.
In fact, I think this is the new building that is replacing the Rialto.
It was right at the beginning of South Street in Roslindale Square, facing Adams Park. I believe that it was replaced by a medical office building. Here’s a photo of it, with the marquee advertising “Diamonds Are Forever”, so it stayed open at least into the early 1970s.
Loew’s 1965 annual report lists this as under construction, and scheduled to open in 1966. The 1966 annual report lists it as open.
Having a picket line outside your theatre in a left-leaning neighborhood will definitely hurt its business. I’ve seen this personally in my own neighborhood.
From the 1967 Loew’s annual report:
“The land under Loew’s Capitol Theatre on Broadway in New York City has been leased to Uris Building Corporation, which will demolish the theatre and erect a 1,700,000 sq. ft. office building. Loew’s ownership of the basic lease should enable us to realize between $16,000,000 and $17,000,000 on this property, if we elect to mortgage or dispose of it.
“Your Company has many theatres and commercial properties in excellent locations, many of which are completely free and clear of mortgage debt. It is our intention to carry out a mortgaging program over the next few years. With the addition of mortgage money and cash flow to our present cash and security position, we project having available resources approximating $200,000,000 during the next three years. At the opportune time, we intend to use this fund for a major acquisiiion. Pending the fulfillment of this program, we are making investments in marketable securities.”
A year later, that “major acquisition” turned out to be Lorillard, a tobacco company.
Variety’s obiturary for Laurence Tisch says:
“With profits from their hotels, the brothers began buying into Loews in 1959. Tisch ousted then president-CEO Eugene Picker and took control.
Company was one of the larger movie exhibitors in the country, but the Tisch brothers were interested in the real estate they sat on. Two years later, they demolished Gotham’s Loews Lexington theater and built the Summit Hotel. They used other unprofitable theater sites to build apartment buildings and the 2,000-room Americana hotel in 1962."
Anyone know which theatre site the Americana was built on?
Loew’s annual reports from 1965, 1966, and 1967 are online and include lists of all Loew’s theatres and hotels. Unfortunately, the 1968 and later annual reports don’t include these lists.
(I’ve compiled a list of all Loew’s annual reports from 1965 through 1985. They make interesting reading. I wish I could find reports from earlier than 1965.)
According to this New York Times article of February 6, 1968, the Tisch brothers, who already owned several hotels, took over Loew’s Theatres in 1960.
“Loew’s Hotels was created as a subsidiary. Their first project under the Loew’s roof was the construction of the Summit Hotel on Lexington Avenue, where the old Loew’s Lexington had stood.”
This press release from Loew’s Hotels says:
“In 1959, they bought controlling interest in Loews Theatres, Inc., and began building hotels on sites of unprofitable movie theaters.”
What other Loew’s hotels are on sites of former Loew’s theatres?
A sign advertising this theatre still stands today, next to Route 24. Where the list of seven movies should be, there is just the single word “CLOSED”.
From Loew’s 1983 annual report:
“The program of building large multiple auditorium theatres, equipped with state-of- the-art sound and projection systems and comfortable push back seats, will continue at an accelerated pace in 1984. Construction of a luxury six auditorium theatre at Eighty-fourth Street and Broadway in Manhattan is scheduled to open [sic] in December.
…
"In all, forty-eight new screens are anticipated for operation by the end of 1984, the most ambitious single-year building program in the [Theatre] Division’s history. All will be the comfortable, luxury theatres for which the company is noted.”
And from the 1983 annual report:
“In Levittown, Long Island, the name of our very successful Nassau Quad was changed to Loews Nassau Six when two additional auditoriums were added.”
From Loew’s 1982 annual report:
“Our highly successful Nassau Quad in Levittown, Long Island has plans for two additional auditoriums”
From Loew’s 1982 annual report:
“During 1982 the [Theatres] Division added seventeen new screens in three ultra-modem complexes. Our new theatres, featuring spacious lobbies with giant refreshment centers, and large, wide auditoriums with wall-to-wall screens, which our research indicates the public prefers, have met with great acceptance.
“In the fast-growing Houston suburbs, a five- screen complex was opened in the exclusive Southpoint Center. A six-screen free-standing building was constructed opposite New Jersey’s mammoth shopping center, Willowbrook Mall, and another six-screen theatre is the focal point of the Harmon Meadow complex of shops, hotel, restaurants and office buildings located within sight of the New Jersey Meadowlands sports complex.”