As a boy, I lived in Belmont between 1978 and 80, and visited this theater a number of times. Its modest exterior hides the fact that it’s actually a good, medium-sized theater within. If I remember correctly, the lobby is fairly small, but my favorite detail of the Studio is that the projectionist had to climb a ladder up into the booth! I haven’t been there in about 26 years, so my memory could be flawed. What I know for sure is that I saw “The Magic of Lassie” there, starring an aging Jimmy Stewart in an attempt to revive the Lassie series, “The Black Stallion” and a wonderful, cheap Japanese “Star Wars” rip off called “Message From Space”!
Wow, it was really nice to read all of this. Just found this site, but The Pilgrim has long been a special place to me. Firstly, it was enormous and I believe I read somewhere that it was also referred to as “The Matterhorn” for the steep grade of its balconies! Just the distance from the under the marquee, through the front doors, across the lobby and to the theater doors, was a walk! I was a teen in the 80’s and I would often walk by it but never had the courage to go in until right before it was demolished in ‘95 or 6. I DID buy a fake ID from a guy in some ramshackle hut built between The Pilgrim and another adult business! It was kind of jammed in between the buildings right out on Washington Street for the cops to see. I guess they were busy with bigger fish or they were still letting the Combat Zone fester at that time.
In its final months, they began selling off some of the hand painted advertisements for the “adults only” exploitation films they showed in the mid to late ‘60’s, before the arrival of hardcore. I bought a few of these, as well as a painted poster with a glossy photo of one of the dancers from their burlesque revival in the early 70’s. But the best thing that happened was when I asked if there were any more of these posters around and the manager gave my friend and I a flash light and sent us upstairs to a room above the marquee! It was crammed with billboards and old posters. When we were through there we decided to explore and began heading up and up into the theater. Every time I thought we were at the top there was another staircase. A network of dark Burgundy wallpapered hallways lead to sets of french doors that let out onto the balconies. Never figured out how to get to the opera boxes, but I did find the old projection booth (the Pilgrim, just like most porn theaters, had converted to video projection during the 80’s, and you can imagine the quality of a VHS tape shown on a giant screen!). The hallways were also covered in ancient graffiti, mostly sexual stream of consciousness-like rants! The manager wasn’t too happy with us, until we started buying stuff, then he calmed right down.
On another trip I also found a sub level bathroom at the bottom of a cavernous staircase. Because of that sign on the marquee promising three XXX features, I wasn’t totally sure if the Pilgrim was a single screen theater or not. I thought I was on to finding another screen until I heard the sounds of sloshing water. When I turned the corner there was an ancient tiled bathroom, two men to a stall (all the doors had been removed) going at it, and everyone standing in about an inch of water on the floor! It was like a location out of “Se7en”. I happen to be “straight” (a ridiculous term!) and the Pilgrim only ever showed straight porn. I hadn’t realized, until then, that any porn theater was prime turf for gay cruising, which now seems obvious. I had an older gay friend who had frequented the theater in its wild days and told me a few stories about groping around in total darkness in the stairways under the opera boxes.
For me, though, The Pilgrim was special because it was a beautiful tarnished gem of a theater that had fallen under the stigma, and disrepair, of its days as a porno palace. The lure of seeing something “dirty” was certainly part of my interest in it as a teenager but I also seem to have a love for the buildings no one cares about. Supposedly, The Boston Preservation Society was given a choice over which theater they would like to save; The Pilgrim or The Paramount, and it wasn’t too surprising that they went for the younger deco theater over the urine drenched Pilgrim. But the Pilgrim was special and had some real history. When it opened, it was advertised as “The theater with the moving stairs”, as it was the first, and maybe only, Boston theater with escalators.
What’s kind of amazing is that it outlasted all of its brothers and sisters on 42nd Street. I watched as it was demolished and those rugs and chairs saw the light of day for the first time in 80 years. I would visit it everyday on my way home to Jamaica Plain as that familiar smell of sweet musty bricks filled the street. One night, I was standing at the fence they had erected around it, and an older, possibly homeless, prostitute passed by, saw me looking at what was left, and said “no more whore house, honey, no more…” and walked on.
I live in LosAngeles now, a lot of the places I cared for in Boston are gone, but I’m glad I got to experience them. Lower Washington street is now almost as unrecognizable as 42nd is in New York City. This happens everywhere, all the time, but it’s somehow more poignant with older theaters because they had so much life in them, whether they were first run or “For Adults Only”.
As a boy, I lived in Belmont between 1978 and 80, and visited this theater a number of times. Its modest exterior hides the fact that it’s actually a good, medium-sized theater within. If I remember correctly, the lobby is fairly small, but my favorite detail of the Studio is that the projectionist had to climb a ladder up into the booth! I haven’t been there in about 26 years, so my memory could be flawed. What I know for sure is that I saw “The Magic of Lassie” there, starring an aging Jimmy Stewart in an attempt to revive the Lassie series, “The Black Stallion” and a wonderful, cheap Japanese “Star Wars” rip off called “Message From Space”!
Wow, it was really nice to read all of this. Just found this site, but The Pilgrim has long been a special place to me. Firstly, it was enormous and I believe I read somewhere that it was also referred to as “The Matterhorn” for the steep grade of its balconies! Just the distance from the under the marquee, through the front doors, across the lobby and to the theater doors, was a walk! I was a teen in the 80’s and I would often walk by it but never had the courage to go in until right before it was demolished in ‘95 or 6. I DID buy a fake ID from a guy in some ramshackle hut built between The Pilgrim and another adult business! It was kind of jammed in between the buildings right out on Washington Street for the cops to see. I guess they were busy with bigger fish or they were still letting the Combat Zone fester at that time.
In its final months, they began selling off some of the hand painted advertisements for the “adults only” exploitation films they showed in the mid to late ‘60’s, before the arrival of hardcore. I bought a few of these, as well as a painted poster with a glossy photo of one of the dancers from their burlesque revival in the early 70’s. But the best thing that happened was when I asked if there were any more of these posters around and the manager gave my friend and I a flash light and sent us upstairs to a room above the marquee! It was crammed with billboards and old posters. When we were through there we decided to explore and began heading up and up into the theater. Every time I thought we were at the top there was another staircase. A network of dark Burgundy wallpapered hallways lead to sets of french doors that let out onto the balconies. Never figured out how to get to the opera boxes, but I did find the old projection booth (the Pilgrim, just like most porn theaters, had converted to video projection during the 80’s, and you can imagine the quality of a VHS tape shown on a giant screen!). The hallways were also covered in ancient graffiti, mostly sexual stream of consciousness-like rants! The manager wasn’t too happy with us, until we started buying stuff, then he calmed right down.
On another trip I also found a sub level bathroom at the bottom of a cavernous staircase. Because of that sign on the marquee promising three XXX features, I wasn’t totally sure if the Pilgrim was a single screen theater or not. I thought I was on to finding another screen until I heard the sounds of sloshing water. When I turned the corner there was an ancient tiled bathroom, two men to a stall (all the doors had been removed) going at it, and everyone standing in about an inch of water on the floor! It was like a location out of “Se7en”. I happen to be “straight” (a ridiculous term!) and the Pilgrim only ever showed straight porn. I hadn’t realized, until then, that any porn theater was prime turf for gay cruising, which now seems obvious. I had an older gay friend who had frequented the theater in its wild days and told me a few stories about groping around in total darkness in the stairways under the opera boxes.
For me, though, The Pilgrim was special because it was a beautiful tarnished gem of a theater that had fallen under the stigma, and disrepair, of its days as a porno palace. The lure of seeing something “dirty” was certainly part of my interest in it as a teenager but I also seem to have a love for the buildings no one cares about. Supposedly, The Boston Preservation Society was given a choice over which theater they would like to save; The Pilgrim or The Paramount, and it wasn’t too surprising that they went for the younger deco theater over the urine drenched Pilgrim. But the Pilgrim was special and had some real history. When it opened, it was advertised as “The theater with the moving stairs”, as it was the first, and maybe only, Boston theater with escalators.
What’s kind of amazing is that it outlasted all of its brothers and sisters on 42nd Street. I watched as it was demolished and those rugs and chairs saw the light of day for the first time in 80 years. I would visit it everyday on my way home to Jamaica Plain as that familiar smell of sweet musty bricks filled the street. One night, I was standing at the fence they had erected around it, and an older, possibly homeless, prostitute passed by, saw me looking at what was left, and said “no more whore house, honey, no more…” and walked on.
I live in LosAngeles now, a lot of the places I cared for in Boston are gone, but I’m glad I got to experience them. Lower Washington street is now almost as unrecognizable as 42nd is in New York City. This happens everywhere, all the time, but it’s somehow more poignant with older theaters because they had so much life in them, whether they were first run or “For Adults Only”.