Star Art Theatre

1posterfan4sure on March 2, 2010 at 6:48 pm

Oh what a colorful past this little theater had. The Star wasn’t always an adult theater. It was simply a very small neighborhood house in an area of town that if you didn’t have to be there, you probably shouldn’t be. It catered to the local audience with second-run movies. I recall it played double-features a lot of the time. “A Star feature means double entertainment!” the ads used to say. I think it opened and closed a few times over the years. I only saw the Star once or twice in my lifetime, before the switch to what the owners euphemistically called “art” films.

That would have been around 1961, perhaps as early as 1960. The Star became the Star-Art, “Home of Unusual Art Films.” They showed what at the time were quaintly called “nudies.” In many ways the Star-Art was a pioneer of the genre. Russ Meyer’s “The Immoral Mister Teas” played there for quite some time. Nudies at the time had little more than a little skin and titillation, and not much of either. There was no actual sex. They were just teasers. Many mainstream Hollywood pictures of today are infinitely more graphic.

There was an audience for those movies and the Star-Art prospered. A lot of cities tried to shut down theaters like the Star-Art. York was battling the Southern into the 1970s before they gave up. Harrisburg just didn’t seem to care as long as the theater was in a shabby neighborhood. For those of us who were teenagers at the time, the Star-Art held a real mystery, but none of us would have dared go there.

As the movies turned to graphic nudity and sex, the Star-Art went right along, but encountered competition it would have never thought possible, from the Senate on Market Square and even from some suburban theaters. The Star-Art finally unreeled its last flick at the end of 1976.

Ironically, the Third Street area where the Star was once located has become “Midtown,” a very trendy residential area for young professionals.

Ross Care on April 22, 2014 at 9:40 pm

One of the twin theaters in Park City Mall in Lancaster (Pa.) eventually showed porn. The other one screened regular films.

I seem to remember the Star was also known for showing obscure B movies, westerns and such, during the ‘50s (much like the downtown Rio).

As I’ve noted elsewhere, the Senate was where I first experienced the Disney features (including the reissue of FANTASIA)and the great UI science fiction films of the ‘50s, some in 3-D. Also the first CinemaScope films in Hbg. (that the State did not get).

I have nothing against porn but I hated to see the beloved Senate go that route. I often wanted to go in to see what my old favorite theater was like before it closed but I did not want to blight some of my favorite movie memories.

DavidKehler on November 20, 2020 at 1:59 am

When I was in high school (1963-1966), the Star showed what were called nudie movies. Customers were required to be at least 18 years old. To get past that barrier, I fashioned an ID in French, but I can’t recall if I used a Quebec address or one in France. When I went to the box office one Saturday afternoon, the ticket seller called for the manager to inspect my ID, and the manager let me slide, after I responded in French to all of his questions. From that point on, I could attend shows at the Star, which I did on occasion on Saturday afternoons. What the Star showed in those days, as I recall, were two sorts of movies. One type were Russ Meyer films, like Lorna–I was mightily impressed by Lorna Maitland–and Mudhoney, and the like. The other type were fetish oriented, like Olga’s House of Shame and other movies in the Olga series. As I remember it, the audience when I attended was all male.

By the mid 1970s, the Star Art, as it had become, was showing porn, with an emphasis on the works of director Alex de Renzy, as I recall.

The theater was of modest size, with seating on one level. There were two aisles and three banks of seats, and, as in many theaters, one entered the seating area by walking down a gentle gradient. The place was pretty threadbare.

In those days, Harrisburg had two daily newspapers, and they had common ownership. The Star advertised in these newspapers every day, but the newspapers censored the names of some of the movies. For example, the Star showed a movie called The Keister, but The Evening News and The Patriot changed the advertising copy so that the Star advertisement had the title of the movie as The Keystoner.