Exeter Street Theatre

I’m surprised Rocky Horror wasn’t mentioned previously, as it was the theater’s mainstay from 1978 until it’s closure in 1984. 1100 or so seats including the awesome balcony, and it was sold out more times than not on Friday and Saturday at midnight. I performed there for many years until the theater shut down.

My mother used to go there during the 40s. She remembered a funny little guy who used to man the ticket booth.
She went back 35 years later – and the same guy was working the ticket booth. She recognized him instantly. She also told me the Exeter was one of two Boston movie theaters that showed foreign films. The other was on Mass. Ave and was flattened by the Christian Scientists. She remembered seeing Kind Hearts And Coronets at one of these two, in 1949.

I recall “King of Hearts” playing “forever” at the Central Square Cinema across the river — not here at the Exeter.

I went into the building after Waterstone’s Books located in it. The theater was an “upstairs house”, with the auditorium on the second floor. I recall that the only trace that was apparent to me was the street-level foyer and staircases.

The Exeter Street Theatre is listed at “cor. Exeter & Newbury streets” in a 1918 Boston street directory.

Item in Boxoffice magazine, January 29, 1949:

A flurry of excitement was caused at the Exeter Street during the Sunday evening showing of “Paisan” when Rex Harrison, his wife Lilli Palmer and Maria Montez were spotted watching the film. Lilli is playing the lead currently at the Colonial in “Figure of a Girl.” “Paisan” has been booked for its fifth week at the Exeter, setting a new consecutive run record for the house.

simply a wonderful place to see a movie..its intriguing, majestic, ornate charm only added to the movie-goers experience…

Here is a 1983 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/cp5lss

In Boston in the 70’s there was a series of films shown on local TV, hosted by Frank Avurush (who also had been the Boston TV Bozo if I remember correctly), where he would show 1 movie Saturday night and 2 on Sunday, all with the same theme or star, and he would talk about them. One night I was at the Exeter with friends seeing Seven Beauties (I think), it was really crowded, and Frank and film crew show up to shoot the line and crowd and got us buying our tickets at the box office which became the new showopen for his series.

I can still remember the pleasantly musty scent of this great old theatre during its heyday. Right or wrong my memory is that they competed with the Kenmore for British comedies – early Peter Sellers (I’m All Right Jack, The Mouse That Roared) and the great Terry-Thomas in “School for Scoundrels” the most memorable of all. I can still hear T-T repeatedly shouting out “Haaaard Cheese!” every time he outdid his victim, played by Ian Carmichael.

Most notably, the Exeter frequently foisted those god-awful moving abstract painting shorts with harpsuchord music before the feature. Believe me they were even more annoying than Mel Brooks made them out to be in his Oscar-winning short “The Critic” in 1963. (See my posting for the Astor for more on that brilliant little 3 ½ minute film – it was shown all over the land before each screening of “Dr. Strangelove”.)

For reasons I’ve forgotten, I was always intrigued by the name Exeter Street Theatre when I was keeping track of Variety’s reported grosses for Boston moviehouses.
When I visited a Boston friend in 1972, we saw one or two of the latest releases in the heart of Boston (“Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex” was one), and somehow the subject of visiting the Exeter came up.
It happened to be playing a revival of Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” (1953), which I loved. But mainly I was struck by the uniqueness of the theater, which informed the experience of watching “Tokyo Story."
I’m sorry to learn the theater had difficulty getting major bookings and that it long ago stopped serving the filmgoing community.
The sheer capacity (a whopping 1,300 seats) must have made the theater difficult to maintain in terms of utilities, et al, and it may have had a weekly nut (operating expenses) greater than most distributors were willing to allow for.
Also, art house distributors tend to favor long runs in more intimate houses. Protracted engagements of "The Mouse That Roared” and “Cousin, Cousine” notwithstanding, I’m guessing most movies burned out too quickly at the large Exeter Street.

Because of its central location in the elegant Back Bay neighborhood, this theater was able to attract sophisticated audiences for many years. People could easily walk to it from many points or take the Green Line subway to the Copley Place station on Boylston Street. It did indeed show many British and foreign-language films. On one of their early dates together, my parents came here in 1948 or soon after to see the British film, “I Know Where I’m Going,” starring Wendy Hiller. They always told me (much later, of course) that the theater was packed that night and the audience loved the picture, which had nice location photography in Scotland. Eventually I saw that movie on TV and could easily see why they liked it. When I was a B.U. student in the 1970’s, I came here a few times. I remember seeing a rare re-release of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (a made-in-Hollywood classic) at a time when you could not rent those old movies on a VCR or DVD. It is a shame that a cinema like this could not survive in such a vibrant and upscale part of Boston.

I’ve seen an exhibit of Dave’s collection at The Museum of Our National Heritage in Lexington a couple of years ago. It was all about the history of neon signs, and Dave’s got most of the iconic ones (such as the Naked-i, wich was NOT on display.)