Hey,
I remember going to a restaurant and you put coins in a slot, opened the little
glass door and took out a sandwich or a piece of cake. What were those called?
--- On Sat, 6/20/09, Richard Halegua Comic Art <sa...@comic-art.com> wrote:
From: Richard Halegua Comic Art <sa...@comic-art.com>
Subject: Re: [MOPO] NEW YORK THEATERS
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Saturday, June 20, 2009, 3:18 PM
Times Square was one of the most interesting places on Earth for many
years.
I always liked it because it was an anachronism of life..
in the winter a limousine could be dropping off a guy in $1000 tailored
suit with a fur-coated babe on each arm and they might have to step over
a homeless guy sleeping on the subway grating (warm air comes up through
the gratings), there would be a couple society ladies headed up to
Broadway to see a play and then a couple hookers rousting a guy while a
couple dopers would be buying from a pusher. Every kind of person you
could imagine was standing on that street trying to make plans
One of the most obvious places was a pinball & later video game
parlor called Fascination and Melody Burlesque was down the street.
There were several theatres showing Kung-Fu flicks and to this day I have
never been able to find a copy of one of my favorites - Mad Monkey
Kung-Fu. I remember seeing it on a double bill with the 12 Drunken
Masters
In front of some of the theatres were hawkers trying to get you in and
there was the porno bookstore on ground level that had the private booths
upstairs. All the babes would be advertising to get you to walk into
"their booth" for a show. I remember running into a comic book
dealer friend up there once and even though he was a buddy, he was so
embarassed he left almost immediately
There was a Howard Johnsons and if I remember correctly Dempsey's too. I
think Dempseys had a sign that told you how great their pie was and there
was a Nathan's hot dogs joint. I was surprised on more than one occasion
to see Carol Channing, Walter Cronkite (Walter is about to take his last
breath folks) or other actors there. Once - and this would be
specifically be 1978 because of the girlfriend I was with - we were
having milkshakes and Will Geer sat down at our table (Nathan's had those
long 16 people tables). I asked him for his autograph and he said
"Sure. Just let me finish my hot dog".
I know I had seen teh flea circus that Richard Del Belso mentioned, but I
was pretty young. Maybe 5-6, so I don't recall any of it
sadly, all of this is gone now.. Left in our collective memories which
will also be gone to the black hole at some point and all that will
remain will be pictures.
I lived in Queens and the theatre I most often went to as a kid &
young teen was the Lefferts Theatre on Lefferts Boulevard and 120th
street. I remember seeing a double bill Hard Day's Night & HELP! in
1965. I was with my 2 brothers (I was 8, my brothers 10 & 11). Before
the movie they had the Dave Clark 5 short, Manfred Mann and some others
and outside they had scads of posters including the billboard on the side
of the building that was 120th st. The Beatles heads were enormous. They
also had freebies like a beatles wig and stuff. It was a big weekend and
the theatre was jam packed and if I remember correctly, it was just 75
cents!! We were there all day long. Nobody chased us out after the first
feature. Not too long ago I was able to score the Dave Clark 5 1sh that
was displayed. The theatre was great - they had stills and posters and
lobby cards all over the outside and on the inside too.
the Lefferts was a fun theatre too. Saturdays always had matinees and
they may have been just a quarter. Always a double bill, cartoons, in the
mid-60s they showed the Superman, Batman, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers
serials - one episode of Batman and Supe or later Flash & Buck each
week and you got a little wallet card they would punch out. If you saw
episodes 1-11, you got to see episode 12 for free (I guess that meant we
got in free that week period)
across the street and down a block or so was Uncle Jack's toy shop. I
bought all the Aurora monster kits there and the old man was as nice as
anyone you could meet. If he didn't have the toy or model you wanted, he
would order it for you for a 10 cent deposit and seeing as he didn't have
the Bride of Frankenstein model kit in stock, I ordered that one.
Sometime in the late 60s I remember the shop was closed for a few days
because a couple junkies had robbed & beaten him
also, Bruce is right.. at 8-9-10-11, we used to get on the subway by
ourselves and go all the way to Manhattan. When I was 9 I took the trains
all the way up to the Bronx - by myself - with $100 cash that I had made
selling comics - to go to a guy's house who was a friend of Gary Dolgoff
so I could buy early Marvels. I came back - again, all by myself - with 2
shopping bags full of comics. I don't think anyone bothered me. I also
used to take the trains regularly at that age to go to the Museum of
Natural History on 79th street in Manhattan because I was in love with
dinosaurs and they had the best exhibit of fossils and the rooms with
live lizards were totally kick-ass.
NYC was lots of fun back in those days, but I haven't been back since
1992 or 93, even though I've been planning on going for a visit for some
years. The first place I'm going to head to os Katz's Delicatessen on
Houston St and have some corn beef, some of their hand made hotdogs and a
potato kanish
Rich
At 08:03 AM 6/20/2009, Bruce Hershenson wrote:
Richard
One of the great disappointments of my childhood was when my uncle (a
weird guy and the highlight of my childhood) promised to take me to
HUBERT'S FLEA CIRCUS. It must have been around 1964 or 1965 when I was
around 11 or 12.
I was really excited, and I met him at Penn Station (my parents used to
let the 11 year old me go by myself to Manhattan, where strikes me as
crazy in retrospect), and we went to Times Square, and if I remember
right it was in the basement of some building, but the flea circus was
gone (although the sign was still there).
So I never did get to see those trained fleas!
Bruce
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 9:40 AM, Richard Del Belso
<rdel...@msn.com> wrote:
Bruce, claude...
The "art house" on 42nd street back in the day was called
the Apollo. I used to go there late at night, after doing my college
homework, and see double bills of old Ingmar Bergman movies, like THE
NAKED NIGHT and MONIKA. It was a "grind house'..just kept
repeating the shows all day and all night. The Theater is still there but
It has been converted into a legitimate playhouse now, under a different
name, repudiating its somewhat unsavory past. So has the theater next
door, the Victory.
Across the street is the New Amsterdam , which was originally used as
a legit theater for the Ziegfeld Follies. When I was in college, it had
fallen into disrepair and was just another grind house showing third-run
American movies and exploitation films...but signs of its former glory
were still visible. After almost falling apart, the theater was
beautifully restored and the musical version of THE LION KING was
installed there. I think disney put up a lot of the money for the
restoration, as they did in LA for the El Capitan.
Around 1960, i once went down to the penny arcade on the corner of
42nd St. and Broadway to see the flea circus. Yes, it was a real flea
circus (HUBERT'S FLEA CIRCUS) where the guy had put thin-stretched
strands of gold wire around the necks of these tiny fleas, which he kept
in a box filled with cotton wadding. he could pick them up by the wire,
and then attach them to toy chariots to stage a chariot race, or turn
them upside down and place balsa wood balls on their legs to stage a 'who
can kick the ball farthest" contest. he also had cut out tiny paper
triangular costumes in different colors and placed one over each flea.
the fleas wold then naturally start to jump, and the costumes would
wriggle, which, when set to music, became 'the dancing fleas". The
cost for this never-to-be-forgotten display of weirdness? One
quarter!
Ah, New York, New York. I'm with Claude...a total New York-o-phile.
but I had to move to LA in 1976, and I have to admit it's pretty nice
there, too...Academy screening are one of the nicest things about life
here.
ciao for now...
Richard
Richard Del Belso
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:32:37 -0400
From: twoni...@aol.com
Subject: Re: [MOPO] NEW YORK THEATERS
To:
MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
In the 70's there were a huge amount of those theaters and peep shows
in that area. This went from 8th Ave to 6th Ave and from 40th St to
50th St. There were also a huge amount of street walkers hanging
around all the theaters and they were very dangerous if you were not
polite. I remember when one man was approached and instead of
saying "no thanks" called her a whore. She stabbed him
right in broad daylight.
In my college years I went to a theater on 86th St. where they only
showed films in German. I used to go on Fridays when classes ended
early. 86th St. was known as Germantown. We went to a
famous German restaurant there when I graduated from law school. I
don't recall the name. The real estate boom also killed the area
and the developers moved in. Today it hardly exists. This is
a part of town that I really miss.
Claude
In a message dated 6/20/2009 9:21:22 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
brucehershen...@gmail.com
writes:
In my youth they would still show some classic movies in
the falling down Times Square theaters. I think the admission was like
$1.75.
I remember once I went to some classic movie, and a scary guy was
hanging by the ticket booth. I gave $2 to the ticket taker, and was
handed a quarter back, and the scary guy said, "Give me the
quarter". I just kept walking and he said, "Give me the quarter
or I'll kill you"!
I kept walking, and he said, "I am going to wait right here, and
whenever you come out, I will kill you."
I went in and watched the movie, and the whole time I kept thinking
of that guy. When it was over I went out, and he was nowhere to be
seen. If that was the present day, I would give him the
quarter!
Bruce
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 7:47 AM, Claude Litton
<twoni...@aol.com>
wrote:
I have seen them all since I was 17 years old. I went to
college and law school in New York City and have spent my working life
there. I have walked the streets of NYC for over 50 years and
have always been thrilled with everything. I have been involved
with NYC real estate all these years and still love it. I
went to NYU in Greenwich Village and my friends and I used to peek
in at the old burlesque theaters (before we got kicked out) and got
to the movies in virtually every theater already mentioned in other
emails (so I wont repeat them). I remember all the old decrepit
Times Square theaters before they cleaned up the area. The police
used to walk 4 abreast because the area was so dangerous and I am
speaking about daylight hours, not just at night.
I remember going to the theaters on 57th street when one of them was
an art theater and the other was showing xxx films. I
remember Deep Throat and the Devil In Miss Jones playing for many years
as a double bill. The Paris Theater showed art films for many, many
years before the real estate got too valuable and getting old movies on
VHS destroyed the market for these theaters.
My office is at 295 Fifth Avenue across from the Empire State
Building and if anyone is in NYC they are welcome to visit. I have
over 50 movie posters framed in my office suite including 6 of my Chan 3
sheets. Joe Bonelli stopped in last year and we had a great
time. Just email me in advance to make certain I am in
because I don't work as many hours as I did when I was younger. I
stopped going to work on Fridays 9 years ago and leave at 2 pm.
Claude Litton
In a message dated 6/20/2009 3:06:34 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
ghostsandghoul...@verizon.net writes:
I was lucky enough to be in NYC when HORROR OF DRACULA
had just opened at the Marfair Theater so I got to see the hugh Times
Square wrap-around billboard poster above the theater. I also got
to see the display of the fiends (in a hugh fish tank) from FIEND WITHOUT
A FACE located right in front of the theater in Times Square.
Anybody else in our group see these fantastic advertising
displays???? Larry Springer
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at
www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to:
lists...@listserv.american.edu
In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible for its
content.
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.80/2187 - Release Date:
06/19/09 06:53:00
Visit the MoPo
Mailing List Web Site at
www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to:
lists...@listserv.american.edu
In
the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible
for its content.
A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above.
See yours in just 2 easy steps!
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at
www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to:
lists...@listserv.american.edu
In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible for its
content.
A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above.
See yours in just 2 easy steps!
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at
www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to:
lists...@listserv.american.edu
In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible for its
content.
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at
www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to:
lists...@listserv.american.edu
In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible for its
content.
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at
www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to: lists...@listserv.american.edu
In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to: lists...@listserv.american.edu
In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to: lists...@listserv.american.edu
In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
