I am the brother of BobD. I was 3 years old when I first stepped foot in to our Grandfathers Movie Theater in 1953. His name was Abraham Cohen and as far as I know the first talking picture played in the Peerless in the Borough of Brooklyn. Here’s the story. My Grandfather came to America before World War 2 and came through Michigan. He sold rags to housewives and was known back then as a Customer Peddler. He eventually moved to Brooklyn. He and my Grandmother were the parents of my mother who diesd about 4 years ago at 92. My grandfrather might have been the first or maybe second owner of the Peerless. I remember the theater very well. I remember seeing High Noon there when it first came out on the huge screen. The theater was huge and yes the candy stand was under the screen like many theaters in those days. There was a very large fan in the wall on the right of the Theater and there was no air coditioning back then. It was a hot room during the summer months. You enetered from the street with the “L"above and walked down a wide sort of long hallway with the movie posters in glass cases on the wall. The box office was at the end of the hallway on the righht kind of caddy cornered and the same lady who worked for my Grandfather soold tickets if I can remember and was possibly also the bookkeeper. Abe Cohen was a wonderful man and generous to the core. He use to give people who came in to the theater who were poor, money. He did very well. Now for the truth. He was run out of there by the people in the neighborhood. Mostly people who didn’t like Jews and peoploe who didn’t like white people. By the mid 60s or maybe earlier he was being attacked by people and robbed. My grandmother at the time was in a Nursing home in Flushing. He eventually closed the theater because of the neighborhood and the attacks and theft and vandalism. He then went on to spend much of the money he worked most of his life saving paying for the Nursing Home. He passed away in 1968 with little money left.So that’s the real story. The Peerless Movie Theater was Abraham Cohen. He made it what it was and the very neighborhood it was in and some of the miscreants who lived their destroyed it!
We lived at 210 Clinton Avenue up the street from the Theater. We moved to Long Island in 1955 when things turned bad there.
I am the brother of BobD. I was 3 years old when I first stepped foot in to our Grandfathers Movie Theater in 1953. His name was Abraham Cohen and as far as I know the first talking picture played in the Peerless in the Borough of Brooklyn. Here’s the story. My Grandfather came to America before World War 2 and came through Michigan. He sold rags to housewives and was known back then as a Customer Peddler. He eventually moved to Brooklyn. He and my Grandmother were the parents of my mother who diesd about 4 years ago at 92. My grandfrather might have been the first or maybe second owner of the Peerless. I remember the theater very well. I remember seeing High Noon there when it first came out on the huge screen. The theater was huge and yes the candy stand was under the screen like many theaters in those days. There was a very large fan in the wall on the right of the Theater and there was no air coditioning back then. It was a hot room during the summer months. You enetered from the street with the “L"above and walked down a wide sort of long hallway with the movie posters in glass cases on the wall. The box office was at the end of the hallway on the righht kind of caddy cornered and the same lady who worked for my Grandfather soold tickets if I can remember and was possibly also the bookkeeper. Abe Cohen was a wonderful man and generous to the core. He use to give people who came in to the theater who were poor, money. He did very well. Now for the truth. He was run out of there by the people in the neighborhood. Mostly people who didn’t like Jews and peoploe who didn’t like white people. By the mid 60s or maybe earlier he was being attacked by people and robbed. My grandmother at the time was in a Nursing home in Flushing. He eventually closed the theater because of the neighborhood and the attacks and theft and vandalism. He then went on to spend much of the money he worked most of his life saving paying for the Nursing Home. He passed away in 1968 with little money left.So that’s the real story. The Peerless Movie Theater was Abraham Cohen. He made it what it was and the very neighborhood it was in and some of the miscreants who lived their destroyed it!