Hyland did “SWAK” and the others, as you mentioned, but an oft-overlooked gem was a folk song released mid-summer 1963: “I’m Afraid To Go Home.” Worth checking out.
I don’t believe Brian wants to hear from the likes of me. We used to smack him around regularly in his Franklin K. Lane H.S days. Ran into a guy and his wife at an Indian casino in San Diego recently. He had attended FKL in ‘61-'62. Asked him if he knew BH. Said he’d beat him up. “Why?” I asked. “General Principle.” “How often?” “About once a week.” GMTA. LOL!
Charlie S./Fultonboy, welcome to CT! Thx for your recollections, and also for answering a question posed a few months ago as to when the Embassy was actually demolished.
I lived in the area between ‘58-'78 and agree with your comment that the entire area of ENY went south in the 1970s. Got my discharge from Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children in late '67, just before Tet. (If I could survive “The Crotch,” I figured I could survive anything, including ENY’s severe economic and sociological demise!)
There was a train and hobby shop I frequented on Fulton near Norwood Ave., and the Embassy, of course, was a focal point for us teens in the ‘60s. Drinking age was 18 then, and some bars I recall nearby were Lester and Smitty’s, both on Fulton & Van Siclen, and the White Horse Tavern (Forest Hills) and Dutch’s Lounge on 102nd, run by a former fly-fly boy, now deceased. The general area is still a picture of poverty, mostly Hispanic in make-up, some black folks and a handful of Italian-Americans and other caucasians. I last walked through the area in March/April '06. It was like the aftermath of a former hot LZ…
Made my last trip downtown (for now) during the week and observed that the Balboa’s exterior looks worse than ever, plus more broken windows. Other windows have been left wide open and are now used by cooping pigeons.
There’s a large hanging banner naming Westlake, Reed & Leskowsky as the architects and engineers. I’m really hoping WR&L can pull the rabbit out of the magic hat on this one by 2007.
The homeless in “Dark Days,” prior to their eviction by Amtrak and finding suitable other apartments above ground, built functioning living quarters made of wood and other materials in those tunnels! The colony had electricity, courtesy of tapping into Con Ed lines, plus running water for the longest time. Amazing…and yet sad.
[“Human beings will never burrow underground unless they are compelled.” – Chauncey M. Depew, U.S. Senator 1899-1911. The building of the IRT subway, c. 1900-04, proved him wrong. 75 years later, the homeless and other disenfranchised folks proved him right!]
…and speaking of editing (aka censoring), CT’s very own “Legion of Decency” filter has struck again! I should’ve remembered that the word “g – i – r – l” is verboten when I wrote “Bruce Wayne’s ***” in the last section above. LOL! At any rate, Shirley Patterson played Linda Page, Bruce Wayne’s “girlfriend” or “lady friend.” (I just love it when they make me write so &#!%&@ respectfully…)
[Graffiti written in 3 separate handwritings in a NYU toilet:
Here’s some quality bilge for the day: Just received and watched a 4-star documentary re NYC’s homeless in the tunnels under Penn Station, “Dark Days,” directed by Brit newcomer Marc Singer. Can’t praise it highly enough! (Anyone interested can snag a copy by using eBay’s search command for Dark Days DVD. Got my sealed copy for only $13.99 – and worth every penny. The extras are as good as the documentary.)
Tom X, the Batman serial you referenced above, originally shown in 1943, ran at our local 3rd rate theater, the Peerless in Brooklyn, as a re-run a decade later. Flash-forward to 1966: to capitalize on the popularity of the campy Batman TV show, the 8th Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, NY, and your own Cinema X in Springfield, among others, ran all 4 hours and 20 minutes – with all recaps and coming attractions – of this WWII exercise in adventure and racism. (J. Carroll Naish as the evil Prince Tito Daka was a hoot, though.)
The Batman serial was issued on two VHS tapes in 1988, and earlier this year on DVD, (as was the one from 1949 last year). Expect some dubbed dialog on the first, as Columbia was purchased by Sony back in the ‘80s. But they did leave the following intact:
Linda, Bruce Wayne’s , surprised by Daka in his underground hideout:
“You’re a JAP!!!"
Naish, as Daka, lip curling into a sneer:
"Please to say…‘Nipponese’.”
Downtown B'klyn (Fort Greene & Clinton Hill – check out the Peerless Theater page /7090/ on Myrtle Ave. for some good memories) & ENY (‘46-'78). Your grandmom and grandpa named your father well! :)
Holy Roller, Peter! I’ll hafta check it out in the fall. Hope to come in for a few months: my SoCal tan is up to a pre-cancerous glow. (Kidding.) Will also be looking for all this Ridgewood bilge I keep reading about, so stay tuned, amigo. LOL!
Apologies, BTW. Back in June, I’d gotten Squeamy Ellis and Joe Marcelli switched as to who died where. So, for posterity, Joe (on crutches) bought the farm first by being tossed from the rear of the Hotel Hillcrest. Later, when Squeamy exited the elevator at the laywer’s office, he tried to shoot Butcher Benton, but instead got dumped over the ornate railing for a four-story fall.
[“You used to be the best torchman in town. Now I don’t think you could crack a safe if you knew the combination.” – Attorney Paul Lowe to Joe Marcelli in “The Indestructible Man” (1956)]
Congrats! You solved it on your own, Anniegirl! The shot was from ‘54, as evidenced by the “wide screen” and “stereophonic” blurbs. (P.S.: Left you a cool link on the Park page.)
At the top of your screen is a URL for Cinema Treasures. This theater is /1373/. Go up to that field, left click on the URL, click again (so the blue highlight disappears), and then you can replace 1337 with 557. That’ll bring up the Loew’s State page. EZ as pie. :)
A good friend of mine will be ordering your DVD soon, Jim. Assume you’ve been run ragged and pretty busy these days, so I just wanted to let you know I’d left you a pair of leads for booking and festivals on your original “PMS” Radio Documentary news post late last month. Hope this helps some. Good luck!
Thx, Bway. From what I’ve been reading of late, seems as if the Glenwood and the Belvedere were literally a stone’s throw apart. Was totally unaware of that fact. Earlier, I popped Silvio’s link – the exact URL provided courtesy of LM Research Co. – onto the Park Theater (Rockaway) page earlier: seemed more appropos to the beach and amusement park devotees there, yes?
Thx for getting back to me, micheleandanniegirl. If you don’t click on many other Brooklyn/Queens theaters listed on CT, then you’re probably unaware that I’ve been out here on the “left” coast for about 28 years. (Had to be near an ocean. Go figure.)
A new guy named Silvio dropped a neat Coney Island link on a Glendale movie theater page the other day. It’s a good one, so I’ll drop it in here where it’s a bit more appropriate for the beach and amusement park crowd:
The map contains some colorful old postcards and B&W photos which you can access by clicking on the red dots. It’s a real time trip, and I mailed my mom a floppy as part of her “Memory Lane” birthday gift. You can judge for yourself whether the coaster in “Beast…” was based on the Thunderbolt or the Cyclone. Ciao for now.
“I know none o' this is your doin', Mister Burris. Ya just got a cruddy job.” – Melvyn Douglas to Whit Bissell (“Hud”) after being informed that he had the worst thing a cattleman could have: bilge. No! I mean foot and mouth disease. His cattle, anyway…
When it was booked into a small beach theater in SoCal, my wife and I curiously attended this potpourri of history, hype and horny porn, which cost us a total of 12 bucks for the privilege!
After the showing we attended, there were long lines of folks around the block. I went home, quickly fashioned a toga from a bedsheet, put on sandals and resurrected some of the Latin I’d previously learned back in high school: “De profundis, clamavat ad te, Domine! Dona nobis pacem!” or “Quotidianum da nobis hodie” or “Mater Caesaris erat meratrix!” (The last one roughly translates to “Caesar’s old lady was a hooker.”) Imperiously intoning all of the above, I walked among the eager, milling throng and added in English, “Caesar himself urges you to save six denarii and go get a pizza instead. My cousin ‘Caligula’ bites the big one!”
To our amazement, a few smart ones actually listened and dropped out of line. I had struck a blow for taste and against Bob Guccione & Co.
Thx for the correction, TomG. (Don’t know where my head was that day…)
Two San Diegans recently posted elsewhere on weird pairings. One gent listed the Readers Digest musical “Huckleberry Finn” with Bronson’s “Death Wish.” (Perhaps if it played it Mississippi or some other “Deliverance” county!) And writer Jay Allen Sanford mentioned “Blue Thunder” and “Purple Rain.” Colorful, to say the least.
And woodie, in the late ‘60s, the Haven management experimented with softcore erotica, such as “I, a Woman.” Hot stuff for its day (via the imagination route), but totally tame by today’s raunchy standards (XXX-plicit). At least it brought in some sorely needed green stamps for the theater during that period.
On dates after the movies, we’d hit one of the two nearby pizza shops on Jamaica Ave. Today, there’s a terrific old-fashioned ice cream place called “Pops” around 86th St. If you haven’t been there, try it! (You can always get some beer down the block later.) Pops has ambience and atmosphere, plus a most friendly staff.
PK, can’t ascertain if you got lucky over the weekend or if you’re low on meds… :)
I suspect what Professor L. Memory plans to do is to add additional college courses on concrete prep and design, sculpting (I know a few folks who can model for gargoyles), electrical wiring and lighting, screen hanging, Dolby THX sound installation, film/cartoon booking procedures on $10/day, correct spelling guides for theater marquees and concession stands for a profit. As I type, that kind and gentle madman is probably planning to build his very own state-of-the-art Ridgewood II Popcorn Palace!
Bway, we’re just following Ed’s suggestion about pillaging and plundering elsewhere. As you stated, the RKO Madison was certainly closer than the new Atlas Park Stadium 8 in Glendale. (We’ll get that one when there’s no more room here. LOL!)
Forget about Ridgewood II, the Second Coming. Forget about purging by remote control. Forget about what damage the real Joe Pesci can do. Instead, let’s pillage and sack all the Warner Theaters that Patsy has just provided for our entertainment and pleasure. Besides, they’ll never figure out which Warner Theater we’re on! LOL!
“I want the world, Chico… and everythin' tha’s in it."
– Tony "Last of the Bad Guys” Montana
Hyland did “SWAK” and the others, as you mentioned, but an oft-overlooked gem was a folk song released mid-summer 1963: “I’m Afraid To Go Home.” Worth checking out.
I don’t believe Brian wants to hear from the likes of me. We used to smack him around regularly in his Franklin K. Lane H.S days. Ran into a guy and his wife at an Indian casino in San Diego recently. He had attended FKL in ‘61-'62. Asked him if he knew BH. Said he’d beat him up. “Why?” I asked. “General Principle.” “How often?” “About once a week.” GMTA. LOL!
Charlie S./Fultonboy, welcome to CT! Thx for your recollections, and also for answering a question posed a few months ago as to when the Embassy was actually demolished.
I lived in the area between ‘58-'78 and agree with your comment that the entire area of ENY went south in the 1970s. Got my discharge from Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children in late '67, just before Tet. (If I could survive “The Crotch,” I figured I could survive anything, including ENY’s severe economic and sociological demise!)
There was a train and hobby shop I frequented on Fulton near Norwood Ave., and the Embassy, of course, was a focal point for us teens in the ‘60s. Drinking age was 18 then, and some bars I recall nearby were Lester and Smitty’s, both on Fulton & Van Siclen, and the White Horse Tavern (Forest Hills) and Dutch’s Lounge on 102nd, run by a former fly-fly boy, now deceased. The general area is still a picture of poverty, mostly Hispanic in make-up, some black folks and a handful of Italian-Americans and other caucasians. I last walked through the area in March/April '06. It was like the aftermath of a former hot LZ…
Made my last trip downtown (for now) during the week and observed that the Balboa’s exterior looks worse than ever, plus more broken windows. Other windows have been left wide open and are now used by cooping pigeons.
There’s a large hanging banner naming Westlake, Reed & Leskowsky as the architects and engineers. I’m really hoping WR&L can pull the rabbit out of the magic hat on this one by 2007.
The homeless in “Dark Days,” prior to their eviction by Amtrak and finding suitable other apartments above ground, built functioning living quarters made of wood and other materials in those tunnels! The colony had electricity, courtesy of tapping into Con Ed lines, plus running water for the longest time. Amazing…and yet sad.
[“Human beings will never burrow underground unless they are compelled.” – Chauncey M. Depew, U.S. Senator 1899-1911. The building of the IRT subway, c. 1900-04, proved him wrong. 75 years later, the homeless and other disenfranchised folks proved him right!]
…and speaking of editing (aka censoring), CT’s very own “Legion of Decency” filter has struck again! I should’ve remembered that the word “g – i – r – l” is verboten when I wrote “Bruce Wayne’s ***” in the last section above. LOL! At any rate, Shirley Patterson played Linda Page, Bruce Wayne’s “girlfriend” or “lady friend.” (I just love it when they make me write so &#!%&@ respectfully…)
[Graffiti written in 3 separate handwritings in a NYU toilet:
“I love grils.”
“That’s ‘G -i- r – l – s,’ stupid!”
“What about us grils?”
Yep, you mentioned “Electric” & “Indestructible.”
Here’s some quality bilge for the day: Just received and watched a 4-star documentary re NYC’s homeless in the tunnels under Penn Station, “Dark Days,” directed by Brit newcomer Marc Singer. Can’t praise it highly enough! (Anyone interested can snag a copy by using eBay’s search command for Dark Days DVD. Got my sealed copy for only $13.99 – and worth every penny. The extras are as good as the documentary.)
Tom X, the Batman serial you referenced above, originally shown in 1943, ran at our local 3rd rate theater, the Peerless in Brooklyn, as a re-run a decade later. Flash-forward to 1966: to capitalize on the popularity of the campy Batman TV show, the 8th Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, NY, and your own Cinema X in Springfield, among others, ran all 4 hours and 20 minutes – with all recaps and coming attractions – of this WWII exercise in adventure and racism. (J. Carroll Naish as the evil Prince Tito Daka was a hoot, though.)
The Batman serial was issued on two VHS tapes in 1988, and earlier this year on DVD, (as was the one from 1949 last year). Expect some dubbed dialog on the first, as Columbia was purchased by Sony back in the ‘80s. But they did leave the following intact:
Linda, Bruce Wayne’s , surprised by Daka in his underground hideout:
“You’re a JAP!!!"
Naish, as Daka, lip curling into a sneer:
"Please to say…‘Nipponese’.”
Downtown B'klyn (Fort Greene & Clinton Hill – check out the Peerless Theater page /7090/ on Myrtle Ave. for some good memories) & ENY (‘46-'78). Your grandmom and grandpa named your father well! :)
“No link is too big or too small.”
I’ll be sure to let Jimmy Dean know that. – Plugz-R-Us
[Will we get scolded again if it appears we’re having way too much fun?]
Holy Roller, Peter! I’ll hafta check it out in the fall. Hope to come in for a few months: my SoCal tan is up to a pre-cancerous glow. (Kidding.) Will also be looking for all this Ridgewood bilge I keep reading about, so stay tuned, amigo. LOL!
Apologies, BTW. Back in June, I’d gotten Squeamy Ellis and Joe Marcelli switched as to who died where. So, for posterity, Joe (on crutches) bought the farm first by being tossed from the rear of the Hotel Hillcrest. Later, when Squeamy exited the elevator at the laywer’s office, he tried to shoot Butcher Benton, but instead got dumped over the ornate railing for a four-story fall.
[“You used to be the best torchman in town. Now I don’t think you could crack a safe if you knew the combination.” – Attorney Paul Lowe to Joe Marcelli in “The Indestructible Man” (1956)]
Congrats! You solved it on your own, Anniegirl! The shot was from ‘54, as evidenced by the “wide screen” and “stereophonic” blurbs. (P.S.: Left you a cool link on the Park page.)
At the top of your screen is a URL for Cinema Treasures. This theater is /1373/. Go up to that field, left click on the URL, click again (so the blue highlight disappears), and then you can replace 1337 with 557. That’ll bring up the Loew’s State page. EZ as pie. :)
A good friend of mine will be ordering your DVD soon, Jim. Assume you’ve been run ragged and pretty busy these days, so I just wanted to let you know I’d left you a pair of leads for booking and festivals on your original “PMS” Radio Documentary news post late last month. Hope this helps some. Good luck!
Check out the great GWTW pic he posted 8-6-06 on the Loew’s State Theater page (#557). It’s a keeper.
Thx, Bway. From what I’ve been reading of late, seems as if the Glenwood and the Belvedere were literally a stone’s throw apart. Was totally unaware of that fact. Earlier, I popped Silvio’s link – the exact URL provided courtesy of LM Research Co. – onto the Park Theater (Rockaway) page earlier: seemed more appropos to the beach and amusement park devotees there, yes?
Thx for getting back to me, micheleandanniegirl. If you don’t click on many other Brooklyn/Queens theaters listed on CT, then you’re probably unaware that I’ve been out here on the “left” coast for about 28 years. (Had to be near an ocean. Go figure.)
A new guy named Silvio dropped a neat Coney Island link on a Glendale movie theater page the other day. It’s a good one, so I’ll drop it in here where it’s a bit more appropriate for the beach and amusement park crowd:
View link
The map contains some colorful old postcards and B&W photos which you can access by clicking on the red dots. It’s a real time trip, and I mailed my mom a floppy as part of her “Memory Lane” birthday gift. You can judge for yourself whether the coaster in “Beast…” was based on the Thunderbolt or the Cyclone. Ciao for now.
“I know none o' this is your doin', Mister Burris. Ya just got a cruddy job.” – Melvyn Douglas to Whit Bissell (“Hud”) after being informed that he had the worst thing a cattleman could have: bilge. No! I mean foot and mouth disease. His cattle, anyway…
Much appreciated, LM!
64-28 Myrtle: What cross streets was the Belvedere between? And is that actually Glendale or still Ridgewood?
Greg Opt, you might enjoy this “Caligula” story:
When it was booked into a small beach theater in SoCal, my wife and I curiously attended this potpourri of history, hype and horny porn, which cost us a total of 12 bucks for the privilege!
After the showing we attended, there were long lines of folks around the block. I went home, quickly fashioned a toga from a bedsheet, put on sandals and resurrected some of the Latin I’d previously learned back in high school: “De profundis, clamavat ad te, Domine! Dona nobis pacem!” or “Quotidianum da nobis hodie” or “Mater Caesaris erat meratrix!” (The last one roughly translates to “Caesar’s old lady was a hooker.”) Imperiously intoning all of the above, I walked among the eager, milling throng and added in English, “Caesar himself urges you to save six denarii and go get a pizza instead. My cousin ‘Caligula’ bites the big one!”
To our amazement, a few smart ones actually listened and dropped out of line. I had struck a blow for taste and against Bob Guccione & Co.
Thx for the correction, TomG. (Don’t know where my head was that day…)
Two San Diegans recently posted elsewhere on weird pairings. One gent listed the Readers Digest musical “Huckleberry Finn” with Bronson’s “Death Wish.” (Perhaps if it played it Mississippi or some other “Deliverance” county!) And writer Jay Allen Sanford mentioned “Blue Thunder” and “Purple Rain.” Colorful, to say the least.
And woodie, in the late ‘60s, the Haven management experimented with softcore erotica, such as “I, a Woman.” Hot stuff for its day (via the imagination route), but totally tame by today’s raunchy standards (XXX-plicit). At least it brought in some sorely needed green stamps for the theater during that period.
On dates after the movies, we’d hit one of the two nearby pizza shops on Jamaica Ave. Today, there’s a terrific old-fashioned ice cream place called “Pops” around 86th St. If you haven’t been there, try it! (You can always get some beer down the block later.) Pops has ambience and atmosphere, plus a most friendly staff.
PK, can’t ascertain if you got lucky over the weekend or if you’re low on meds… :)
I suspect what Professor L. Memory plans to do is to add additional college courses on concrete prep and design, sculpting (I know a few folks who can model for gargoyles), electrical wiring and lighting, screen hanging, Dolby THX sound installation, film/cartoon booking procedures on $10/day, correct spelling guides for theater marquees and concession stands for a profit. As I type, that kind and gentle madman is probably planning to build his very own state-of-the-art Ridgewood II Popcorn Palace!
Bets, anyone??? Pete Rose???
“Why didn’t you come to your Don first? Your enemies would become my enemies. They would suffer this very day.” – Vito Andolini, 1945
Bway, we’re just following Ed’s suggestion about pillaging and plundering elsewhere. As you stated, the RKO Madison was certainly closer than the new Atlas Park Stadium 8 in Glendale. (We’ll get that one when there’s no more room here. LOL!)
Think we should all get plastered, LM?
[“SHEESH, what a grouch!” – Ed Norton]
OK, that’s it!
Forget about Ridgewood II, the Second Coming. Forget about purging by remote control. Forget about what damage the real Joe Pesci can do. Instead, let’s pillage and sack all the Warner Theaters that Patsy has just provided for our entertainment and pleasure. Besides, they’ll never figure out which Warner Theater we’re on! LOL!
“I want the world, Chico… and everythin' tha’s in it."
– Tony "Last of the Bad Guys” Montana