Melba Theatre
3428 Boston Road,
Bronx,
NY
10469
3428 Boston Road,
Bronx,
NY
10469
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I grew up on 112th street around the time this picture was taken. I saw many many movies there and at the Post Theater that used to be at the top of the hill on Boston Road. I remember eating pizza at the pizza shop next to the shoe repair next to the theater. Those were the good old days. Thank for posting the pick, it holds many fond memories.
I lived in Hillside Homes during the late 1960’s and all through the 70’s. I watched my entire childhood at the Melba. Every Bruce Lee movie,some many double features with a filler movie in between. I saw so many movies, was there every Saturday, all day. I saw Rollerball, The Christmas that almost wasn’t. All the Clint Eastwood Westerns. The Melba and the pizza place to the left was my go to place. Many many fond memories of that place.
I grew up in the neighborhood since the late 50s. Spent my childhood in that movie house it seems. Pic is from a flick from 1971; shortly after this would become an ‘art house’ as it were, before closing. Pizza place, though ownership has changed is still there.
Wow, the Melba Theatre was probably my favorite place on earth in the mid to late seventies. I remember the days when Saturday would be spent at the Melba. And I mean ALL DAY Saturday. Three features, starting at noon. It was really awesome for a preteen boy like myself with his hormones starting to flare up, because I could go see two Pam Grier movies, or two “Shaft” features, or any number of highly inappropriate movies for a boy my age, and we never got carded for Rated “R” movies. Stuff like Superfly, The Mack, Black Caesar, Mandingo, and on and on. Lots of nudity & sex scenes, plenty of violence, drugs, pimps & pushers, good old wholesome themes like that. Sometimes it was monster movies, sometimes it was Bruce Lee flicks. They would try to make the outing more family-friendly by inserting a more age-appropriate feature in between, like Swiss Family Robinson or Grizzly Adams. Those middle features turned out to be the social hour, as hundreds of rambunctious preteens passed the time before the real action to start again. Unless you were unfortunate enough to have had to bring your baby sister to the show – then you might actually have to watch Pippi Longstockings. Those sure were the days!
I attended this theater during the 1960s several times.It was a neighborhood movie house in the north east Bronx in the Hillside Homes area.It reminded me a lot of the Malboe Theater out in Jamaica.It had one less seat 594 to 595.
The Melba was still in operation in 1974.
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The Melba’s old auditorium is now a church. The lobby houses a retail store.