Tuxedo Theater
3050 Ocean Parkway,
Brooklyn,
NY
11224
3050 Ocean Parkway,
Brooklyn,
NY
11224
1 person
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The Tuxedo Theatre was a luxurious theater that stood on Ocean Parkway near Brighton Beach Avenue and not far from the now demolished Brighton Beach Theater.
It was opened in May 1929 and had a vertical sign on the facade and a large neon sign on the roof that advertised the theater.
It was operated by Rugoff & Becker, the same owners of the Oceana Theater and the Sheepshead Theater. All three theaters were acquired by Century Theaters in the late-1950’s.
But the Tuxedo Theater was soon acquired by Fred Trump, father of President-elect Donald Trump, who planned to demolish it for an outdoor parking lot to accomodate his new apartment building complex he was building.
Yet this planned demolition was delayed when he offered the operation of the theater to local theater owner Sam Horwitz. The former owner of Coney Island’s Mermaid Theater took over operation and successfully ran the house until 1963, including an exclusive run of “West Side Story”.
In 1963, Fred Trump closed the theater and demolished it for his parking lot. At the time, the Tuxedo Theater was still a highly profitable theater.
Contributed by
pgilipgoldberg
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Recent comments (view all 8 comments)
The Tuxedo Theatre was located at 3050 Ocean Parkway and it seated 1735 people.
I wonder if this was the theater where my sister Cathy & I saw “State Fair” in 1962 when I was 18 or 19 ? I’ll never forget the audience laughing when Pat Boone burst into his first song ! frankie from Brooklyn
My grandmother lived on the same block, the first north of the Brighton Line Ocean Parkway station. Her building was torn down at the same time.
I remember seeing a Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis film there in the ‘50s, something with “circus” in the title. My mother and aunt, on the other side, knew Lewis as a child, but that is another story.
A big theatre of nearly 2,000 seats and no picture? May 27th, 1929 ad uploaded.
Grew up in Brighton Beach (Banner Avenue and Brighton 7th Street) in the 1950s. The Tuxedo was one of our regular neighborhood theaters, along with the Oceana on Brighton Beach Avenue between Brighton 11th and 12th Streets. Many Saturday morning kiddie shows with cartoons, Westerns, serials (Flash Gordon, etc.). They would give out promo strips in school listing the films to be shown that Saturday. The strips came in multiple colors; when you showed up on Saturday morning, if your strip matched the color of the one posted in the box office, you got in free.
Uploaded a 1962 image (pre-Century management) from coneyislandhistory.org
I just uploaded an old photo of the Tuxedo, from the 1939-41 NYC Tax Photo project. These mostly unseen photos were released in Nov. 2018.
See it here: http://cinematreasures.org/photos/261872