Comments from Georgeat1814

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Georgeat1814
Georgeat1814 commented about Wagner Theater on Aug 31, 2006 at 7:56 pm

Hello to all especially to PKoch who I just met on the Ridgewood Theater site. My parents took me to the Wagner often while growing up. Maybe they had to drag me sometimes, but once there is was OK.
I remember best the ‘Bavarian’ comedies.

As to the PKoch posting of August 17, 2006, I just saw Elco a few months ago at a family christening. Elco was a very close friend of my brother-in-law.

Georgeat1814
Georgeat1814 commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Aug 31, 2006 at 4:53 pm

Greetings! I clicked on to this site as I was trying to remember the name of a bar on Fresh Pond Road. This site on the Ridgewood movie house is informative and with the input of its contributers, is quite nostalgic.
My memory tells me the Ridgewood is where I saw “The Robe”. Richard Burton & Victor Mature?
I think a few times a year the theatre also had live variety shows (not vaudeville) before some movies. This would have been in the evening – before I was allowed to go by myself. Did they have a Dish Night?
I’m pretty sure it was in the Ridgewood, not the Madison, where the graduation exercises for Grover Cleveland High School were held in 1958 or 1959. My cousin, Rose, was a member of that graduating
class.
Some interior renovation work may have taken place in the mid-
sixties. If work was done, it was probably performed by Eastern
Scagliola Company of Decauter St in Ridgewood. The last two
sentences are a little vauge, but it has been a few years and I
don’t know how to verify this reccollection.
Non Ridgwewood Theatre comments follow.
I didn’t read the e-mails from the last two years but a word or two
on some that I did catch. The walk-up Chinese restaurant/strippers
bar (I don’t think they were female impersonators – either way, I
was too young to be a patron) was the Ridgewood Terrace.
My father, George, at one time owned the Linden Inn at Myrtle and
Linden. He told me that The Swedish Angel, one of the strong men in
the tug-of-war scene, in the original “Mighty Joe Young”, fought at
the Ridgwood Grove.

Does anybody remember the Alhambra? It was a movie house on
Knickerbocker Ave near St. Martin of Tours. It is my understanding
that Jackie Gleason, before he became The Great One, appeared there.
His Ralph Kramden character was one of my father’s favorites.
Considering all the bars (we used to call them saloons) in Ridgwood, I’m sure some of Jackie’s other characters were influenced by the neihborhood.

I lived at 405 Irving Ave (near Bushwick High School), attended St. Martin of Tours till the 2nd grade. We moved to Cooper Ave and 60th Lane and I attended and graduated St. Matthias in 1955.

Can you make contact with former and current Ridgwoodites without
taking time and space from this Ridgewood Cinema Treasure site?
Thanks for letting me ramble!
George S
P.S. I think Monica H and her home page are GREAT!!!