Center Theater
1638 Market Street,
Philadelphia,
PA
19103
1638 Market Street,
Philadelphia,
PA
19103
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If I remember correctly this was a RKO Stanley Warner theater prior to going porn
This $245,000 Center Theatre was architected by W. Pope Barney. It launched March 5, 1937 with “Gold Diggers of 1937” on a grind policy. It featured double features of Hollywood fare continuing its grind policy into the early 1970s. In 1969, however, the theatre went strictly with M-rated mature art and action films ensuring an adult only audience.
In 1972, the theatre programming switched to porno chic, playing double-features of X-rated films. It then gravitated to showing one rated X porno chic film along with one unrated, what were referred to as “XXX” adult films. In 1978, the policy switched to double-features of only unrated, “XXX” films.
On February 13, 1981, the venue abruptly changed policies to a Chopsocky grind house called the Bruce Lee Center Theater (as noted above) with Bruce Li in “Call Me Dragon” and Chen Kuan-Ti in “Dirty Chan.” On April 30, 1982, the venue closed with John Woo’s “Manhunt” and Bruce Li in “Dynamo” undoubtedly at the expiry of a 20-year and a renewed 25-year leasing agreement. There are no more listings after that other than it became a retail hat store. It was later demolished.
This theater did show hard core porn, I guess in 1975, this was around the time I was in high school, my buddy and I saw “Sexual Freedom in Brooklyn” (soft core) and “The Birds and the Beads”(hard core).
Some of my friends and I visited the Center when we were playing hookey from high school one day in 1975. The films were about the worst films possible to see. They were rip off movies. You thought you were gonna see hardcore porn but they were perverted, censored smut.
the center theatre was also called the BRUCE LEE CENTER
Architects should be updated per the preceding post.
I have to admit that I did pay 99 cents to attend one of the Center Theater’s less stellar presentations in 1975 or thereabouts. Thankfully my mother does not own a computer.
It is funny that it outlasted the Fox and Milgram theatres because when I worked at the Milgram in the early 70’s, there was talk of the buildings west of the Milgram to 17th Street being torn down for an office complex, but in 1980 it was the Fox, Stage Door Cinema and Milgram that was torn down and the PNC Building put up, about 2-3 years, the rest of block was torn down for Liberty Place.
When it was an RKO theater it ran double features and changed on Wed and Sunday’s. When RKO sold it, it became a porno house.